The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  ‘DC?’

  He did another double take, a real one this time, aware of his recently acquired reputation for absent-mindedness. It was recent, wasn’t it? Alison Reeve was standing by his desk.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Uniform have picked them both up, they’ll be here in twenty minutes. Chris?’

  She waved Waters around to Smith’s desk.

  ‘Let’s agree some common lines of questioning. Superintendent Allen and I want a short initial session, maybe a quarter of an hour, and then there’s a meeting back here where we compare notes. The first thing is to establish where they say they were on June 17th. I want other people now going over the new names and looking for any connections to the metal detector group – I know it’s repetitive but we cannot ignore the spadework on this one. Thank you, DC – it was intentional. Yes, Chris?’

  Waters had a way of half-putting his hand up to ask a question that made him look like a six foot, one inch schoolboy. For some reason that Smith was unable to fathom, this made him quite appealing to women.

  ‘Ma’am. Am I right in thinking that Davis hasn’t been told anything yet about the real reason he’s here?’

  Reeve glanced at Smith as she answered, ‘Yes…’

  ‘So we could be reading too much into this calling a solicitor. Maybe the three of them were out mistreating wildlife and that’s all there is to it. He’s called the solicitor because he is already on a suspended sentence, ma’am.’

  Reeve was well aware that this whole thing was still very much a tangled mess of such possibilities.

  ‘True. Which is why the first priority is to establish their whereabouts on June 17th. If, and it’s an important ‘if’, they were in the Abbeyfields area that night, that at least makes them key witnesses if not persons of considerable interest. If they can prove they were elsewhere, we have to come at things another way. This isn’t a straightforward case by any means , as I’m sure DC has already explained; for example, we only have Mr Baxter’s word for it that there is any connection at all between the three people we are about to interview. Alan Fitch and Levi Street need to feel that they are very much helping us with our inquiries at this stage – nothing more. In my view, we do have enough to detain Brian Davis if needed.’

  Smith looked thoughtful then, which could often unnerve people. Reeve asked for his opinion, and he answered her directly.

  ‘If Davis admits to being in Abbeyfields that night, the 17th, what then?’

  ‘That’s the critical moment. Prints on the murder weapon and in the vicinity? I don’t think I could hold John Wilson back at that point.’

  But it’s only one print, thought Smith again, but he didn’t want to have the argument in front of Waters. Instead he simply said, ‘Even with all the other stuff…’

  Reeve looked at them both, first Smith and then Waters, and then she said, ‘Sometimes we have to go with the balance of probabilities.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Levi Street was twenty one years old. His family were travellers and had lived on the site at Linghill for several years. He had even attended Lake Community College for a term or two but had somehow failed to achieve any recognition in the public examinations system. Levi did not, at present, have a regular stream of income. And yet he had no criminal record either. Smith studied the screen in front of him and the notes he had made, while Street waited, arms crossed on the other side of the table in the interview room. Something, Smith concluded, doesn’t add up.

  Without moving his head, he glanced up at Street – blinking a little too often, acts tough whenever you speak to him directly but he keeps looking at Waters, split-second looks and then away again. Is Waters doing a Wilson? He checked and saw that Waters was doing no such thing; Waters was simply waiting for Smith to begin, and doing his best not to look threatening – which, it has to be said, wasn’t difficult for him.

  ‘So, Levi – is it OK to use your first name, by the way? Mr Street, if you’d rather…’

  Mr Levi Street gave a shrug that was a little too theatrical to be convincing.

  ‘So, Levi. Thank you for coming in. I’m Detective Sergeant Smith and this Detective Constable Waters, and we’re both from the police station here, Kings Lake Central. This is an informal interview, and you’re here voluntarily to assist us with our inquiries. Should that change at all during the interview, I promise you that I will give you due warning.’

  Another glance at Waters before Street said, ‘What d’you mean – change? Warning?’

  ‘Fair question, Levi, as you’re new to all this. At present I’d say that you’re here as a potential witness to an offence. What you tell us might help us to charge someone else with that offence, and you might be asked to appear in court to repeat what you told us here – that’s all.’

  The ‘appear in court’ bit brought about quite a little burst of blinking, almost a fluttering of the eyelashes in the direction of the detective constable, and Smith thought, Ah, right, well I never did, which was completely true.

  Street said, ‘I’m not going to court.’

  Smith said, ‘Fine, Levi. I’m sure it won’t come to that because you probably won’t tell us anything of importance. But I have to tell you that if you withhold something which you really should tell us and we find out about it, that changes things a bit. You might then go from being a witness to what we call a general suspect – again nothing to worry about because it mainly implies that you’re someone we cannot yet eliminate from our inquiries. If after that you start to look as if you might actually be involved in something, you would become a specific suspect, and so on… But I’m only explaining the theory, I’m sure it won’t come to anything like that, Levi.’

  All delivered in a friendly, almost offhand manner, as if he was telling Street the best way to polish superficial scratches out of your car’s bodywork – does he drive, by the way? Smith glanced through the screen and the notes but there was no mention of that. He looked across at Waters then with another variation of the infuriating smile that could not be understood, and which would worry you until it was.

  ‘So, Levi – let’s begin with an easy one. Where were you on the night of the 17th of June this year?’

  That question turned out to be not so easy after all, and neither were the others. He couldn’t remember where he was three weeks ago, not hour by hour – how was he supposed to remember all that? With a straight face, Smith asked him if he kept a diary, and Street answered that he did not. What about a blog or that sort of thing? Or did he keep a Facebook page up to date – would he have recorded it there? Recorded what, said Street. Where you were on the night of the 17th… Like I said, I can’t remember. He thought he might have met someone called Brian Davis but he couldn’t remember when or where; when pushed a little on this one he said that it might have been recently but… He couldn’t remember for certain.

  With a painfully bright smile, Smith said, ‘Alright, Levi. We’ve obviously started on the wrong page. Let’s go back a chapter or two. Can you confirm your present address for me? I have to warn you that if you say that you can’t remember on this one, I might have to request some medical tests.’

  At that moment the door opened. It was John Wilson, and he beckoned Smith out into the corridor.

  ‘She’s just disclosed part of the print evidence to Davis and he’s about to sing. She wants to hear his initial statement and then the three of us meet in her office – about ten minutes, she reckons. She’s suspending the other two interviews until we have what Davis is going to say in front of us. Her office in ten minutes,’ and then Wilson was gone, with his tail up and Smith well and truly told.

  He looked into the interview room through the glass panel in the door. What she was doing made sense and might save them a lot of time – it’s common practice to use what one suspect tells you to lever open the others, so they might as well hear what Davis has to say first. But what would it be? He knows about the fingerprint now, but has she told him what it�
�s on? Smith would not have done so – he would have informed Davis initially that they had strong forensic evidence and let him worry about what it might be for a few minutes at least. The more suspects worry, the more mistakes they make. And now he’s going to sing, Wilson had said, but sing about what?

  Smith went back into the room and asked Waters to step outside – all done with a quiet voice, a shake of the head and a serious look just to worry Street a little more. Then he told Waters what was happening.

  Waters said, ‘What do you want me to do, DC?’

  ‘Stay in here with him. Keep off the case. Just have a few words, put him at his ease – you know, chat him up a bit.’

  ‘Chat him up a bit?’

  ‘Yes, you know, good cop, bad cop.’

  ‘Right…’

  Waters didn’t look entirely convinced but Smith knew that he would do his best, as always – a pity this one wasn’t being recorded. And he had to wonder again whether a university education really is all it’s cracked up to be. They don’t seem to get much life experience; Waters, as yet, had no idea how much Levi Street would like to be put at his ease by the young, tall, blond detective constable.

  Did Smith have even a pang of guilt? Well, when he thought he might be about to feel such a thing, he just reminded himself of that disposable urine receptacle. Then he checked his watch; seven minutes – just time to get a mug of Charlie’s tea and arrange something similar for the other miscreant, the one who had undoubtedly come up with the whole scheme. She deserved something special.

  Brian Davis admitted everything. The three of them, himself, Alan Fitch and Levi Street had gone out to the Lowacre area, to a well-known badger sett, with the dogs and the equipment needed to capture a badger for the purposes of badger-baiting. On the night in question, Monday the 17th of June, they had been unsuccessful but he was prepared to admit to making the attempt, in the full knowledge that he was breaking the law, specifically the Protection of Badgers Act, 1992. Smith had asked whether Davis had given that detail, and he had – the solicitor had briefed his client well.

  The three of them were sitting in Reeve’s office again, and it was almost lunchtime. She said, ‘So, we have Davis there by his own admission, already committing an offence. It could be argued that that gives him a motive – to silence anyone who witnessed it. That’s what might have happened. We have his prints – sorry, a print – on the weapon that was used to kill Mark Randall a couple of hundred yards away, on the same night. When we go back in, I’m going to show him the shovel – or the pictures – and ask him if it belongs to him; in case you were wondering, DC, although he knows about the print, he doesn’t know what it was on – or at least he hasn’t been told that by us. He might have guessed, of course. I’m beginning to think that Davis is being quite clever. Admitting to the badger-digging accounts for him being at Abbeyfields, and for having a shovel in his possession. If the other two now tell stories that back him up, and they all deny any knowledge of what happened to Randall, where does that leave us?’

  Smith had no immediate answer; this and similar questions had been buzzing around in his head like a swarm of lost bees for the past few days, but Wilson, it seemed had no such concerns – in fact he was more persuaded than ever that they now had the murderers of Mark Randall sitting in Kings Lake Central.

  Wilson said, ‘Ma’am, I know it’s a bit of cliché’ – Smith made little attempt to conceal his surprise at this sudden and unexpected demonstration of lexical dexterity – ‘but they would say that, wouldn’t they? Now that we know that the three of them were present and the nature of the enterprise, we can’t be sure yet who delivered the blow. But the print is definitive. The CPS might go for joint enterprise, and if we can charge that and get these into custody, at least one of them will cough it all up. What about the traveller kid?’

  Wilson looked at Smith, wanting an answer.

  ‘Maybe. Waters is turning on the charm as we speak… I agree there’s a case to be made but it comes back to the bloody shovel. I know you’re prepared to accept that everyone looking for it plus various passers-by suffered from some sort of collective myopia for a fortnight but I’m not, John. Where has it been – sunning itself on a beach in Majorca?’

  Wilson looked annoyed that they were back here again, and it was impossible to read the detective inspector’s inclinations; once upon a time he would have known what she would do because he had trained her but that was a while ago now.

  Smith said, ‘Look at it this way. If we’d found the shovel in the original search, we’d still have some issues – who wiped the handle almost clean? Why only one print? Bearing those in mind, how do we show that it was Davis who hit Randall with it? If each defendant had a separate lawyer – and they would – they would give us a hard time on these questions but I wouldn’t have a problem going with it. But we didn’t find it in the original search. A jogger – and not any old jogger either – came across it almost three weeks later, lying in the open in virtually full view of a public footpath. Who put it there? And why? Can you imagine what a QC is going to do with that in open court? They’ll be selling tickets to the Bar Association Dinner and there’ll be a hot-dog stand outside the building.’

  Reeve said, ‘I think it’s evenly balanced. I think that what Davis has just told us is the truth but not the whole truth. If we get overly-cautious, we have to face the prospect of releasing three suspects who were a matter of yards from the body and who had a motive for attacking Randall – I think John is onto something there. And one of these suspects’ thumbprint is on the weapon used. DC – I take your point about the defence but that’s months away. If we arrest and charge at least one of these, I’m betting that that will lead to things that strengthen the case when it finally gets to court.’

  Wilson leaned back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other and said ‘Exactly, ma’am.’

  Overly cautious? Maybe he was but, thinking about it, she had been lucky; Smith could not recall a case in which she had been held over the coals in front of a judge and jury. One could put that down to good judgement, of course, rather than luck… But Smith had experienced it and he wasn’t going there again if he could help it. Good grief – just imagine if it was Gloria Butterfield, QC!

  He said, ‘It’s your call, ma’am. Definitely time to bring in the shovel and see what Davis makes of that, and we might as well disclose that it’s the source of the print, especially if he says it belongs to him. I agree that he’s got some explaining to do.’

  She paused, waiting and probably expecting more. When it didn’t come, she smiled and turned to Wilson.

  ‘OK, John. We’ll go back in to Davis in fifteen minutes. The other interviews remain suspended until we’ve had further discussions about what he does or does not tell us. I need everything ready to make the initial call to the CPS.’

  It looked as if they were done here but Smith had one more thing to say.

  ‘Gareth Stone? I know it’s easy to forget about arrested people in the cells, I’ve done it hundreds of times, but I think we owe him a de-arrest, a bacon butty, a mug of tea and a lift home unless we’re going to charge him with trespass with intent.’

  Reeve said, ‘John, see to that as well, will you?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ And then he gave Smith one of those looks that say, do I have to do everything around here? – and got back in return absolutely nothing.

  ‘So, how have you got on with Levi?’

  They were back in the main office, Smith seated at his desk and Waters resting his backside against his own, hands in trouser pockets. Serena Butler was at her screen, typing away, waiting for the lesser interviews to resume.

  Waters said, ‘He definitely relaxed a bit when you were out of the room. I kept off the case as you suggested. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s involved in any sort of animal cruelty.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘He just doesn’t seem the sort, if there is such a thing. He was talking about cars a bit �
�� said he’s doing up a soft-top Mercedes. And did you notice his clothes? He’s wearing designer labels – I don’t think they’re fakes.’

  Smith said, ‘Good observation, DC Waters. A soft-top, you say… He obviously fell for your good cop routine in a big way. Do you think it would be better if I kept out of it for now?’

  He could see that Serena’s eyes had left her screen – she was listening to the conversation and looking suspiciously at Smith. You couldn’t fault her radar under normal circumstances, he had to admit that.

  Waters said, ‘We’re not recording, so anything he said could be disputed later if there is only one of us present, DC.’

  ‘Right, yes, that completely slipped my mind. We’ll just leave him to stew for a while, then. DI Reeve asked me to watch the live feed of the next interview with Brian Davis – it could be a gripping episode in the long-running soap opera that is Kings Lake Central. You might as well come along and see that as well. It’s about time you came up with some bright ideas on this.’

  As they walked away, Waters was saying, ‘Fordy is adamant that they searched that area properly, so how…’

  Serena Butler watched them go and wondered what Smith was up to; there was no way he had forgotten that the interview with Levi Street was not being recorded yet. And what was all that outdated nonsense about the good cop, bad cop routine? Waters was more streetwise than he used to be but there was still about him a certain ingenuousness at times – good fun in the police station but worrying out there amongst the hyenas and jackals.