The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  He said that last thing with a very passable West Country accent. Waters gave him a sideways glance and thought, I’m not imagining it, he’s been in a funny mood ever since he got back. Maybe he did have a reaction to the anaesthetic. ‘Treasure Island’?

  But it was the regular Smith who then said, ‘What was he after? Randall’s phone, most likely. Listen – we came out here to ask about badger-digging and forgot. Funny that Brother Jeremy never mentioned it either. Make sure you do when we meet these people. But look at this place. Isn’t it lovely?’

  The ground was rising a little again as they climbed the next of the gently rolling hills that make up much of the west Norfolk countryside. The road had begun a wide bend to the right, and on that side was a field of rapeseed in full, chrome-yellow flower, so tall that they could not see beyond it; on the other, successive acres of wheat, barley, feed beans and sugar beet dropped away in subtly different shades of green. Between the fields there were hedgerows and tall hedgerow trees – oak, ash and maple – that told anyone with an eye to see that this farm was run by people who saw more in the landscape than a profit margin. As they began the decline from the top of the hill, they entered an avenue of cherry trees, not the flowering sort from the Far East but the native Europeans, and some were heavily in fruit. Ahead of them now was the farmhouse and its attendant cluster of sheds and barns.

  Smith said, ‘Flints Farm. Any idea why it’s called that?’

  ‘Er, no. Is it something to do with pirates again?’

  It took Smith a moment to make the connection.

  ‘Very good. I still forget sometimes that you’re even more educated than you look. No – it’s my guess that it’s geology and early history. Where the chalk outcrops it’s sometimes full of flint nodules. In the Stone Age they dug them up to make axe heads and arrows. Ones from Norfolk and Suffolk have been found all over Europe. Have you never been to Grimes Graves?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if you’re a good boy, I’ll take you one weekend. You can tick it off in your I-spy book of ancient history. Here we are.’

  He pulled up and parked the car on the gravel in front of a sprawling, double-fronted house; the brick was old and sandy red in colour but the front of the building was smothered in Virginia creeper. Then Smith ducked his head so that he could see the whole house through the windscreen, and nodded approvingly. The front door and windows were of traditional construction in white-painted wood – plastic would have been completely wrong here.

  Waters said, ‘My what sort of book?’

  ‘I-spy. It’s how we used to educate our children. They had to go out into the real world and look at real things. I once got thirty five points for the Flying Scotsman.’

  He could only conclude that Waters’ silence was of the awestruck variety, and got out of the car, saying, ‘Come on, round the back. People like this never use the front door.’

  Joan Harper had her back to them as she washed the flour from her hands.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry. I just assumed it was about the diesel thieves again. I’d forgotten about the poor man in the field. I hope that doesn’t sound too callous.’

  They were already sitting at the table in the centre of the kitchen – a table so old and so heavy that five or six good men would be needed to move it any distance at all – and the kettle on the range was already beginning to hiss. Smith could see jars on shelves in an open cupboard that must be home-made preserves, and his mouth watered a little at the thought. From the low beams above their heads were hanging bunches of lavender and dried herbs. Despite the warmth of the day outside, he imagined for a moment this room at Christmas time – it was a comforting thought.

  He said, ‘Not at all, Mrs Harper. I know there’s been a spate of it again. Have you been hit yourselves?’

  She turned around, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Not this time but it’s a constant worry – and an expense. New gates and then new ditches so they can’t just drive around them in their off-roaders; dummy tanks, cameras, security lights. We pay for it all – if they do get past that lot, the losses are uninsurable.’

  ‘Not exactly the pastoral idyll, is it?’

  She shrugged and said, ‘Tea for the both of you?’

  Joan Harper was sixty, maybe sixty five, and although she was small and a little stooped now, Smith recognised her kind; she had shrugged off every calamity that life had thrown at her, put the kettle on the range and got on with things. The far end of the table was covered with the bureaucratic insanity that modern agriculture demands: grant forms, EU subsidy applications, produce marketing records, fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide usage notifications and a myriad other requests for data, data and more data. But these papers were organised into neat piles, there was a calculator at the ready and a laptop blinking patiently. This was her doing too, but in a moment, if needed, she would be out ready to drive a drive a tractor, mend a fence or clear a drain. The farming was her life and when it was gone from her, for whatever reason, she would die, quickly, quietly and without a lot of fuss.

  Smith said, ‘Yes, please. A dash of milk for me. My colleague will have two sugars.’

  She looked at Waters and smiled, as if she understood. Then she turned back to the job and produced a proper brown ceramic teapot, a little white jug for the milk and some bone china teacups and saucers from the kitchen dresser – she had company, after all. Smith was delighted.

  She said, ‘So how is Brother Jeremy?’

  After Smith told her that the friar was in good health, she talked about the phone call that she had made to him in April – with a brief examination of the Farmers’ Weekly calendar that was hanging on the wall, she was able to tell them within a couple of days when this must have been. If they needed to know exactly, she said, she could tell from her telephone bill. Smith declined that offer but accepted the one that involved a cheese scone and a pat of butter.

  ‘Did you see the vehicle yourself, Mrs Harper?’

  ‘No. It was my son, Steven. He was pulling a sprayer up from the forty acres and so he couldn’t stop and speak to them there and then – he would have blocked the lane. He came up to the farm and took the Range Rover back down but they had gone. I called Jeremy anyway, as we do.’

  Smith said, ‘The Countryside Watch.’

  She had not sat down with them at the table but continued the conversation from various points around the kitchen as she tidied and wiped and straightened things.

  ‘I suppose so. I mean no disrespect, sergeant, but for most of this sort of thing, we‘ve learned not to rely too much on people like yourselves. I imagine the town keeps you busy enough.’

  She was right, of course. He had heard the same thoughts expressed with considerable disrespect over the years but on those occasions too the speakers had been justified enough – the countryside was always the poor relation when it came to police manpower and resources. Always, that is, until someone finds a body.

  ‘Mrs Harper – a moment ago you said that your son couldn’t speak to ‘them’ there and then. Did he see more than one person hanging around that day?’

  She didn’t know; if they needed more detail, they would need to speak to Steven themselves. He was here on the farm, down at the potato store. Then she crossed the kitchen and went into a small room, an office off to their left. They heard a click and a brief crackle before she spoke into a short-wave radio. A voice came back, indistinct so that Smith could not make out all the words but distinct enough to hear the curtness of a busy man who thinks that he has better things to do. Mrs Harper had only said that the police would like a word – she had not told her son what the word would be about.

  While they waited, Smith asked about the running of the farm, and she told them that her husband, Ted, and Steven managed the business between them. They had two other sons and a daughter but all had left for brighter lights now. She said it without bitterness, with something of a smile, but Smith knew that they had been fortunate
to keep even one of their four children involved – family farms are a rarity now. When Mr and Mrs Harper passed away, it was more than likely that the land would be divided four ways; Steven would never raise the capital to buy out the others and so their shares would be sold on the open market. A quarter of it would not be viable as an arable farming enterprise. Ownership would pass to a pension fund or an anonymous foreign buyer, and a management company would hire in a farm manager and contractors to do the work. The trees and hedgerows would disappear soon afterwards.

  They heard steps outside and Mrs Harper shouted ‘Boots!’

  A male voice muttered something and then the door opened. Steven Harper looked directly at the two visitors, gave the slightest of nods and then went across to the sink – his hands were grimy with silt from the potato store. He kept his back to them for a long time while he washed and dried his fingers one by one, meticulously. Waters looked at Smith but Smith’s attention never left the thin, wiry, overalled figure in front of them.

  Joan Harper said, ‘Tea? There’s a fresh one in the pot.’

  ‘Depends how long we’re going to be.’

  Harper turned at last and looked at them again. He looked pointedly down at the table, at the tea cups and plates and the crumbs of cheese scones.

  ‘Nice work if you can get it.’

  ‘Steven!’

  Smith returned the younger man’s stare as he said, ‘It’s fine, Mrs Harper. We don’t often receive such hospitality while we’re working, not these days, and I’ll be the first to admit that we make the most of it when we do. I’ve never eaten a better cheese scone.’

  She said, ‘Good – I’m pleased to hear it. Would you like another one, sergeant?’

  Harper was watching intently. Smith smiled at their hostess, and then, smile maintained, he looked back at her son.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  As she prepared two more – Waters, it seemed, being young and tall, would be fed without question – Harper sniffed and went to pour his own tea; he took a large mug down from the rack behind the tiled work-surface. Like his mother, he showed no sign of sitting down at the table with them; in fact, thought Smith, he’d probably chop off one of his little fingers rather than do so. Nevertheless, it was Steven Harper who moved things on.

  ‘What’s this about, then? Someone complained about mud on the road again?’

  Joan Harper closed her eyes but when she looked at Smith she could see enough to keep her peace.

  Smith said, ‘No – wrong time of year for that really, isn’t it? Wrong sort of weather as well…’

  Harper took a mouthful of tea and said nothing more.

  ‘Anyway, Detective Constable Waters and I are filling in some background on what happened to Mr Mark Randall a couple of weeks ago. He was the man found dead not far from Abbeyfield – a metal detectorist. One of those nighthawks that I understand you have trouble with yourselves, sometimes. Brother Jeremy told us that back in April Mrs Harper called him and said that you had seen someone hanging around who looked like they might be in that line of business. Do you recall that, Mr Harper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where exactly was that?’

  ‘On the twenty five acre.’

  Mrs Harper stepped in then, which was a good thing; if Steven Harper became any more unhelpful, Smith might need to call in the emergency squad from Community Relations.

  She said, ‘It’s one of our own fields back towards the river. On the right as you go back towards Abbeyfield.’

  ‘Thank you. How many people did you see there that day, Mr Harper?’

  ‘Just the one.’

  ‘And what was he doing? I’m assuming that it was a man.’

  ‘From what I could see it was. Poking about like they do.’

  ‘With a metal detector?’

  ‘No.’

  Harper drank some more tea. His mother looked a little lost, somewhere between annoyance and embarrassment, and there was tension in the room. The person least affected by it seemed to be Smith himself. He took another bite of the cheese scone, and then they all had to wait while he finished chewing it.

  ‘So how do we know, Mr Harper, that he wasn’t some chap just answering the call of nature – begging your pardon, Mrs Harper. By the way, what sort of cheese do you make these with? They are delicious.’

  She looked at him as if she must have mis-heard, and then she said, ‘It’s an extra mature farmhouse cheddar…’

  Harper said, ‘No, he was a little way out in the field. They walk about as if they’ve lost a two pound coin. He was one of them.’

  ‘It wasn’t Mr Randall by any chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You seem sure about that. So you got a good look at him?’

  ‘Good enough.’

  ‘From how far away, roughly? You were in the tractor on the road, and he was a little way out in the field. How far away was he from you?’

  For the first time Harper had to think about his answer, and he took long enough for all three of them to be looking at him by the time he finally gave it.

  ‘Fifty yards – maybe sixty.’

  Smith said, ‘So there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight, Mr Harper.’

  With a thumb and two fingers he dabbed together the remaining crumbs on the plate, and then he ate them – Waters was actually afraid that Smith would smack his lips or make the Italian kissing gesture when the taste of food is exquisite.

  Waters spoke for the first time, then.

  ‘Can I ask what sort of vehicle he had, Mr Harper?’

  ‘A white van, transit sort of thing.’

  ‘Any distinctive marks, anything unusual about it?’

  ‘No.’

  There was a short pause in the proceedings, and then, after the customary frown, Smith said, ‘Can I ask how you know it wasn’t Mark Randall that you saw there in April? You seem quite definite about that. But if you’d never met Mr Randall – and obviously you would have told someone if you had – how do you know it wasn’t him in the field?’

  Steven Harper had stopped swinging at every ball – in fact, the constant probing away at his off-stump had brought him into a much more defensive frame of mind altogether. As he answered this time, he looked at his mother for some sort of support.

  ‘His picture was on the news and in the local rag – I expect we’ve still got that somewhere, we usually do. Of course I would’ve said something if it had been the same bloke but it wasn’t. We get two or three of this lot hanging around every month at the moment. It was nothing unusual, me seeing someone in a field.’

  Mrs Harper said, ‘We have got that paper, sergeant.’

  Smith said, ‘And when you went back in the Range Rover, there was no sign of him?’

  Steven Harper shook his head, looking now away from his mother and into the distance beyond Smith’s left shoulder.

  ‘Did you have a ride round, see if he was on another field somewhere?’

  Another shake of the head, and again Harper not quite meeting his eye.

  ‘And no-one from Kings Lake police was told about it, when they came to see you? I’m assuming that someone did, of course, what with Mr Randall being found on land that you farm.’

  Mother and son exchanged glances before Joan Harper said, ‘Well, no, they didn’t actually come to see us. You’re the first ones, sergeant. It’s not our land – it’s friary land. We only rent it from them. They’d have gone to see Brother Jeremy, as the landowner.’

  Smith got up from the table then, taking the others by surprise.

  ‘Good – I think we’re done for now. What I would say is, if you have any of these characters about from now on, please do let us know. Don’t put yourselves at risk but any information might be useful. Vehicle numbers, that sort of thing. DC Waters will now remove a page from his notebook and write my number on it for you. Thank you for your assistance. Especially about the extra mature farmhouse cheddar…’

  ‘Gordon Bennett!’

 
Smith was holding onto the steering wheel, hands at the correct position – ten to two – and staring ahead as if they were travelling at ninety miles an hour and approaching a tight bend, instead of still being parked at the front of the farmhouse. A wood pigeon murmured contentedly in the trees behind them and another clattered noisily into and then out of the ancient creeper that covered the headquarters of Flints Farm.

  Waters said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘So you – I don’t mean you personally, yet – you speak to the man who owns the field but who in all likelihood never sets foot in it and who has most definitely never driven a tractor around it, and you don’t interview the people who do all those things and more on at least a weekly basis. It’s a murder scene and the people who go there most frequently haven’t been spoken to until today? I repeat – Gordon bloody Bennett!’

  Even as he said it, Waters knew that to do so could be a near-fatal error – ‘I think they just assumed…’

  Smith’s head turned slowly towards him.

  ‘We’re – you’re – not in kindergarten any more. We should have learned our alphabet by now. You also need to learn that those above you will often forget it but that if you’re going to be successful at solving cases as opposed to climbing greasy poles, you cannot afford to forget it. A - B - C.’

  Waters wondered if Smith was waiting for him to say it aloud but, as Smith no doubt knew, that was not necessary; the well-worn phrase became just a little more well-worn, a little more shiny, as it went around a few times in his mind. Assume nothing, Believe no-one, Check everything. Detective Inspector Reeve and Detective Sergeant Wilson had at some point missed at least two of the three, and Detective Sergeant Smith seemed to be genuinely cross about it. Not for the first time, Waters wondered what it had been like to work for him when he had been a Detective Chief Inspector. ‘Inspirational’, ‘exciting’ and ‘hilarious’ were all words that he had heard used to describe the experience, and Waters’ own father had known him in those times as well as anyone – but there must have been moments, too, for some of those officers, when it was pretty scary. Still, in this particular case, no harm had been done, he concluded. Obviously it was useful to know that there had been other nighthawks about but-