The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Most of this had been said without looking at his visitor – instead he had been concentrating on squeezing the last of the water from the mop, pushing down hard and twisting it into the metal bucket. The only way he could get it much drier would be to hang it up on a washing line.

  ‘As a guess, it was appalling. I didn’t know any of that, sir. But thank you for sharing.’

  Brother Joe relented and let the mop rest in peace in the bucket.

  ‘Sorry. I feel stupid now.’

  ‘So do I, every day. I think it’s an important part of growing up. The main thing is to be honest about our feelings.’

  Joe Ritz, fraudster and friar, looked more carefully at the detective then – at the dead straight face, the clear blue eyes, the closely shaved cheeks and the scar that he suspected was not the result of a childhood accident. It was as difficult to guess his exact age as it was to tell whether he had been at all serious in anything that he had just said.

  The friar held up the mop and bucket.

  ‘I’ll put these away, and then I’m going out the back for a smoke. You’re welcome to join me.’

  They sat on a low wall at the rear of the building. There was a patch of asphalt that had been there a long time and that would last a long time more because there was no way of driving a vehicle round to park on it, and beyond the wall was an area of rough ground, long grass and low brambles that extended to an overgrown hedge. Joe had taken out a packet of rolling tobacco but it disappeared when Smith offered him a tailor-made instead – if you have lived on the street, you’ve learned to make the most of such opportunities, and it’s a lesson you never forget.

  He had owned a small, specialist plastics fabrication business making mostly medical things – nice premises on a business park and going places for several years until the credit crisis in 2008 caught him out. He had a creative young accountant who could hide things for a month or two just to get over the worst of it, but a month or two became six months and then a year. He, Joe, made nothing out of that – in fact, he put all of his remaining capital in to save the business because by then he was employing more than twenty people, mostly young and all with mortgages to pay. When the end came, of course, it was Joseph Ritz’s signature on the falsified accounts that mattered, and the judge had said that there was far too much of this going on now and an example must be made.

  The six months was easy, he said – the real sentence began when he came out and found that his house had been repossessed and that his marriage was over. His wife’s parents had found her somewhere to live on condition that she divorced him and cut all ties, especially those involving the two children. If you’ve done time, you don’t have a particularly strong case for demanding access… There was a pause in his story-telling at that point, and then he summarised the final descent into homelessness with a handful of sentences; without blame or bitterness, and, as far as Smith could tell, without drink or drugs, Brother Joe had found himself walking the streets.

  ‘Literally,’ he said, ‘that’s where I found out that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I went walkabout like an aborigine until I was someone else. The things that can happen to you on the streets are unbelievable. So I was standing outside a Seaman’s Mission in Bristol wearing an overcoat I pinched out of a recycled clothing bin, and carrying the world as I knew it then in a couple of plastic bags and a man came out, looked at me and said, “Come inside”. I said I’d never been on anything bigger than a rowing boat all my life, and he said “But we’re all sailors, brother. Come inside” and I did.’

  Smith offered him another cigarette and Joe took it with a hand that was trembling a little; it looked as if he hadn’t told that story for a while.

  ‘So, what about your children now?’

  ‘Recently I made sure that they know where I am and what I am. It’s up to them now.’

  ‘My guess is you’ll hear from them. They’ll come and find you.’

  Smith had not taken another cigarette himself – he watched the friar smoking the second one more meditatively than the first, and thought how peculiar it looked, the man of god in his universally recognised robe puffing away on the wall as if the two of them were behind the bike-sheds at junior school.

  Joe said, ‘What about you? Kids?’

  It was the first time since Belfast that anyone had asked him that. It might have taken years – he might never have been asked it at all, but it had happened in just three weeks. A simple enough question but answering it honestly would be like taking a vow, making some sort of pledge, saying ‘I do’ – and to top it all, he had been asked it by some sort of priest.

  ‘Yes. I have a son. All grown up now, a bit of a hot-shot businessman himself.’

  ‘Oh well… Good. Tell him to keep his accounts straight!’

  Billy McCann came to the open doorway and looked out at them for a moment before disappearing back inside. Joe put out the cigarette and dropped the stub on the tarmac where the remains of several roll-ups lay.

  Joe said, ‘I don’t know why I told you all that stuff, and I’ve no idea why it is you’ve come to see me. Was it something I said earlier today?’

  ‘Not really. I wanted to ask you about the retreat down in Essex. Have you been there yourself?’

  ‘No, not on a retreat. I’ve visited it. If you want to know the details, you need to speak to Jeremy – Brother Jeremy. Anyone can go, not just Franciscans, so if you’re feeling the need, sergeant…’

  It was after eight o’clock and the two shadows on the tarmac were beginning to lengthen. Waterfall Road isn’t far from the river, and looking north Smith could see the apartment block where Ma Budge lived, and beyond that the three cranes that stand sentinel over the original docks. He thought to himself, the time has come, Brother Joe, to ask you a different kind of question.

  ‘I did mention it to your boss but he wasn’t very forthcoming, so I thought I’d try you instead. How would you describe your relationship with Brother Jeremy?’

  If you throw a lighted match into a box of fireworks, there is no telling which one will go off first. Joe’s face was a picture.

  ‘My boss! My boss is up there,’ pointing skywards, ‘or in here,’ with a jab at his chest, ‘not sitting in his study at Abbeyfields. My boss doesn’t spend most of his days photographing birds and writing bloody nature poetry!’

  Smith said, ‘Sorry. I thought, being Franciscans, you were all into the nature thing, you know, talking to the animals, everything equal under God’s heaven, the Garden of Eden…’

  He smiled then because he could see Joe slowing himself down, Joe realising that he had been played a little.

  Joe said, ‘Well, my garden’s a bit like this,’ indicating the waste-ground in front of them, ‘and I seem to spend a lot of my time weeding it. Jeremy probably sees the world differently to me. He was some sort of academic, taught literature in a university. But he’s a smart bloke and the friary runs well.’

  Joe stopped himself there and looked pointedly at Smith, making it clear that he had made an effort to re-balance matters as far as the guardian of Abbeyfields was concerned.

  ‘What about Brother Andrew?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Does he have the same sort of background?’

  ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t been at the friary that long – a few months, not a year. I wouldn’t say he’s really opened up, not to me, anyway. Why are you asking about Andrew?’

  ‘Just curiosity, really. He’s the only person I’ve yet to speak to who might be a witness to the comings and goings around Lowacre. Would you say he’s close to Jeremy?’

  The penultimate sentence and the final question were as blatant a non-sequitur as Smith was ever likely to construct and he knew it perfectly well; Joseph Ritz looked back at him and was met by a level, blue and unblinking stare. The silence lasted a full five seconds.

  ‘Yes, he is. They have the same interest in the whole natural world thing. They wander around together and talk about
trees – I heard them doing that not long ago. But I still don’t…’

  ‘And the retreat in Essex – you say that anyone can go. Can you just turn up? Hello, my head’s exploding, can I bunk down here for a few days? Or is it more organised, and you have to book up – sort of planning your crisis in advance?’

  Brother Joe found his smile again.

  ‘It isn’t a crisis centre. It’s organised, you’d arrange a stay some time before you go. These places are busy nowadays – a lot of people out there aren’t leading the happiest of lives, sergeant. You must have noticed that in your line of work.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Smith got up from the wall, straightened his trousers and slipped the packet of cigarettes into one pocket and the lighter into the other. Then he said, ‘Anyway, I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for taking the time, and for your help.’

  Joe was on his feet now.

  ‘My help? I can’t see that I gave you much of that. Was there anything else?’

  ‘No – I’m just colouring in the background, as we say. We don’t really say that, though – I made it up. But what you’re doing is important, so keep up the good work.’

  ‘At the moment I’m mopping up somebody’s sick…’

  Smith put out a hand as if to show that he wasn’t afraid of that, and when Brother Joe took it, Smith said, ‘Welcome to the club.’

  This time he managed to drive all the way home; he had been halfway there earlier in the evening before turning the car around and heading out to Waterfall Road. Late in the afternoon, after watching Michael Symons’ interview, reporting to Detective Inspector Reeve and completing his paperwork that didn’t involve any paper any more, he had phoned Dolores Argyris. Dolores was very large, very Greek and very much the owner and presiding genius of ABC Taxis. When she realised who was on the other end of the line, she said that if he needed a taxi she would bring it herself, that they would drive it to Athens where she would then give him the best time of his life. Smith had the feeling that this would not involve visiting the Acropolis very much. When he asked whether she still wrote down every booking in the great tome that recorded the comings and goings of the citizens of Kings Lake – he had feared for a moment that it had been replaced by a spreadsheet – she said, ‘So, once again all you want of Dolores is her book. You tease, you flirt with her but it is all about this book. I curse this book. I burn this book! How about that, Mr DC?’

  ‘Dolly. Then I would have to come and arrest you for arson. Or wilfully destroying evidence, or something.’

  ‘Arrest me! Yes! Put me into the handcuffs, you wicked man!’

  But in the end Smith had fought his way courageously through the dark and tangled undergrowth of Dolores Argyris’s passions – it would have taken longer if he had gone in person – and found his answer. No, that collection at the Abbeyfields friary had not been pre-arranged – there had been a phone call on the morning of the 19th of June asking for an immediate pick-up, to go the station.

  ‘In-a fact…’ and then Smith could hear Dolly turning the pages – he realised that everything she had told him up to that point had come from her memory. ‘Yes, first job of the day – he leave a message on my machine, I call him back and do the job. You want to know what I charge?’

  ‘No thanks, Dolly. You wouldn’t still have that message, would you?’

  ‘Course not, what you think this is, library? I delete them every day. Why you investigate these holy men? I got diesel stolen every day, you come to Dolores and investigate this normal business. I pay all my taxes, what sort of service do I get?’

  Obviously not the sort you want, thought Smith as he made his escape. If his memory served him well, and it usually did, even now, the taxi firm opened for business at eight in the morning – someone from Abbeyfields had been in quite a hurry to catch an early train if they had left a call-me-back message before that…

  But seriously, Smith – so what? It’s a minor mystery. He had only observed the first part of Michael Symons’ interview that afternoon but five minutes had been enough for him; when John Wilson explained how many lies they had already found in what Gareth Stone had told them and then Serena had made the point about conspiracy once they had charged Gareth – she didn’t say with murder but it was hanging heavily in the air by then – Symons had turned pale and sweaty. Serena had done something then that Maggie Henderson would have been proud of – she reached across and put her hand on Michael Symons’ arm. She said, ‘If Gareth has threatened you, Michael, we understand – we see that all the time. What I want you to see is just how serious this might be now. Take your time. Think about it carefully. If you have any questions, we will answer them truthfully.’

  Wilson looked askance at her but then, even on the video screen, Smith could see the tears welling up in Symons’ eyes. When he could talk, he said that he would like to speak to a solicitor after all, and that’s when you know you’ve got them, people like Michael Symons. So Stone was lying and Symons had been lying; night-hawking was plainly a secretive, competitive business that could involve sizeable sums of money, and that provides a motive. Gareth Stone knew the victim well - the case in most murders, of course - and had not yet accounted for his movements that night. In addition, they now had evidence that he was familiar with the locality where the body was found; that is pretty close to opportunity being established. Stone’s twenty four hours were just about over but they certainly had enough to get additional time, and plenty of calls to the Crown Prosecution Service have produced a go-ahead-and-charge result on less than they already had. Serena Butler was probably still at work, and he could call her and find out the latest – in fact, he was a little surprised that she had not let him know something. Maybe she thought there was no point after the afternoon’s rather awkward briefing meeting.

  After he had parked the car and before going into the house, he checked his phone to see if he had missed a call or a message from her, and found that he had not. There was, however, a much more surprising text message: Hello – busy? Can you take a call? Jo.

  Smith had sent back No and yes. He had time to make a sandwich and a cup of tea, and to get to his table on the patio before his mobile began to ring. There were the usual greetings and pleasantries, followed by a silence that was not usual with her. There is no magic in intuition – it is analysis with shortcuts, founded, in Smith’s case at least, on too many years successfully assuming the worst. His intuition was telling him that something was wrong.

  ‘How is Germany?’

  ‘Just as one imagines it – prosperous and annoyingly efficient.’

  ‘And the weather? Even hotter than it is here, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not there – I’m here.’

  ‘Oh – right…’

  He was genuinely surprised; her last plan had been to spend the first part of the summer vacation in Munich preparing for the autumn term’s lecturing. Maybe she had completed that – but there was still something wrong.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Two words, but it seemed a curiously intimate question as soon as he had asked it, and more full of assumptions than he had realised or had time to examine because she answered him immediately.

  ‘My dad died.’

  Three weeks ago, just before he left for Belfast. She had almost called him, she said, but then she remembered that he had worries of his own, what with going into hospital, and after that there had been so much to do because it had been so unexpected. He was fit and well, her dad, a sprightly seventy three, still as keen as ever on his beautiful garden – you’d have loved it, she said to Smith – and that’s where Jo’s aunt, his sister, had found him, collapsed onto his hands and knees. He lived for three more days, long enough for Jo to get back from Germany and spend the final two at his bedside before his heart gave out for good. Mrs Veronica Maddison, the sister who had lived with him for several years, had entered the state of protective numbness some call shock, and most of the arrangements –
a wonderfully neutral word, she said – had fallen to Jo.

  ‘And how’s your aunt now?’

  ‘She’s improving. Coming to terms with it, finally. They were always close, even before she moved in with him after mum died. She lost her husband years ago.’

  ‘Well, I know there’s nothing I can do, but…’

  ‘Actually, there might be, David. That’s one of the reasons I called.’

  Earlier that afternoon she had spoken to Shirley Salmon at Pinehills to see whether Smith’s static caravan had been booked out to anyone for the coming weekend. Shirley had told her that it was not but she did not know, of course, whether Smith himself intended to use it – hence the text message and this phone call. She wanted to get her aunt away and out of the house for a few days, and the Norfolk coast would be ideal. But obviously, if he already had plans…

  He might have gone down, as he did most weekends if the weather was good and the caravan was free, but that hardly constituted ‘plans’ and her need was much more pressing – it was free and she could use the caravan for as long as she liked. She thanked him but would not accept it as his guest; she would go back to Shirley and make a proper booking, despite his protests. He wondered why. Was it a way of keeping a certain distance in their friendship, a certain formality? Or was she unwilling to be thought of as taking advantage of a friendship?

  He said, ‘Not the best time of year for fishing, though. You might catch an eel if you’re lucky.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll be doing any – I just need to get her walking in the woods and along the beaches. The doctor gave her something to help her sleep but she won’t take them. So I thought, fresh air and exercise might help – and a change of scene. She hasn’t left the house properly since it happened.’

  ‘Because he’s still there, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He felt her own emotion then in that single word and wondered whether he had said the wrong thing, but then she said something surprising.