The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Do you know what these marks are, Brian?’

  He said no, he did not, but it was plain that he had made a pretty good guess.

  ‘These are dried blood stains. The blood belonged to Mark Randall. We are certain this shovel was used to kill Mark Randall. Can you offer us any explanation as to how these bloodstains came to be on the shovel that you have said belonged to you?’

  Smith said, ‘Watch the solicitor, Chris. He doesn’t like the way this is going. He’ll-’

  Before Smith could finish the sentence, the solicitor spoke.

  ‘Inspector, my client agreed to be interviewed about a possible offence that is entirely unrelated to the one you are now pursuing. At the very least, you should give me, without prejudice, some more time to discuss this new matter with Mr Davis. Is there anything else that you are prepared to disclose before I do so?’

  Smith said, ‘He’s quite canny. He could have just asked for the interview to be suspended but he wanted that point about disclosure on the record. The boss needs to give way on this now.’

  She did so, answering that there would be no further disclosure at this point (Smith was grateful that she did not add “in time”) and asking how long they would like to confer. The solicitor said that fifteen minutes would be enough and the interview was suspended.

  The interview room was only two doors away but it was five minutes before Reeve and Wilson appeared – Smith wondered which of them had wanted time to review before speaking to him about what he had been watching. Reeve walked into the recording room and said simply, ‘Well?’

  Smith said, ‘He’s worried but not entirely surprised, and I’m guessing that’s why the solicitor is here. If you’ve come in voluntarily to help with inquiries into animal abuse, you wouldn’t usually have a briefcase in tow, would you? I don’t know the solicitor. Where’s he from?’

  Wilson said, ‘Does that really matter?’

  Reeve had opened her notes and found the answer – ‘Wisbech.’

  Smith was speaking to Reeve still but all four people present knew that the point was aimed at Wilson: ‘That’s all but fifteen miles. By the time he’s organised any paperwork, kissed the secretary goodbye, negotiated the Friday afternoon traffic, found somewhere to park and signed in here, that’s forty five minutes to an hour. How long between Davis’s call and his brief turning up? If no-one here has the answer, we can find out from the front desk…’

  Alison Reeve was looking to Wilson for the answer – he had immediate responsibility for Brian Davis’s interview. Despite Wilson’s recently reborn enthusiasm for the job, there was a familiar surliness about him now as he said, ‘About fifteen minutes, ma’am.’

  Smith said, ‘Maybe he was in town having lunch with his accountant and Brian got lucky. Or maybe Brian had already had a word. When we fetched in Brian, his Mrs rang Mr – who is it, Mr Truman? – and gave him the heads up. Something like that.’

  Wilson said, ‘So?’, still unwilling to give way on this.

  ‘So it tells me that Davis was prepared, well before we knocked on his door this morning. He knew that the interview was likely about to be about something other than digging up a badger.’

  Wilson laughed – ‘Of course he did! I’m not sure which way you’re leaning on this, DC, but to me you’re making a good case for the prosecution. He’ll now come up with some ridiculous story about the shovel or say it wasn’t his after all, but we’ve got his prints on it. I’ve said all this before, ma’am…’

  Smith said, ‘True, we’ve both said all this before. The one thing you haven’t said is where the shovel has been for the past fortnight.’

  Wilson was beginning to raise his voice – ‘It’s been on the effing riverbank! We missed it! We own up to that and get on with the case, which, after all that which-way-is-the-grass-growing bollocks, is a solid one. We’ve got a known villain’s prints on a blood-stained murder weapon. We’ve got the same villain plus accomplices in the same field the night before, a few yards from where the body was found. If they’re interviewed properly,’ – with a pointed look at Smith – ‘one or both of those will cough and give us more against Davis. Motive? Something passed between Randall and Davis that night, and Davis clocked him round the head. Might not have been premeditated but he did it and we can worry about the final charge later.’

  Reeve was weighing it up, as senior investigating officers must; such disagreements are a necessary part of the process, even when they are also personal like this one. When she eventually looked at Smith for a final word, he said, ‘I’m still not convinced it’s that straightforward, ma’am.’

  Wilson said, ‘Fortunately you won’t be on the jury.’

  Reeve said, ‘OK, John – that’s enough.’

  Waters felt embarrassed then, though he could not have said for whom – maybe it was just for himself and for being there. But Detective Inspector Reeve looked at her watch and said, ‘Well, time’s up, Mr Truman. If he has advised Davis to clam up, I’m going to arrest him – Davis, not Mr Truman. If Davis keeps talking, we ask about more the shovel. If he comes up with a silly story, we disclose the fingerprint evidence; unless he can come up with something amazing to account for that, I’m going to arrest him. I think I’m going to arrest him, by the look of it.’

  Smith showed no reaction, and Waters sensed him stepping away from it; after all, he had said from the beginning that it was not his case, though the distinction between working on a case and it’s not being your case seemed a strange one. Reeve looked around at the three of them and then said, ‘And the other two aren’t out of the woods by any means. John is right about that – we want their stories. If we place them at the scene, a good defence for Davis will be to sow doubt as to who did what on the night, especially as someone tried to clear evidence off the handle of the shovel. I want their mobile phones in our hands at some point – have they been talking or, even better, texting about this since it happened? Have they colluded on a story? If you have to arrest them to get to the phones, do so. John, get that message to Mike and Serena before we re-start. Chop chop, everyone!’

  When Reeve and Wilson left the recording room, there was a short silence. The video screen, in the absence of any other input, had resorted to a prehistoric screen-saver – an infinitely receding spiral pattern of pink and blue swirls. Smith stared at it for a little while, and Waters waited patiently, thinking that it had been a funny sort of week.

  Eventually Smith said, ‘Well, looking on the bright side, once we’ve got everyone safely locked up, we can go home early for once. It’s poets’ day, after all.’

  ‘Poets’ day?’

  ‘Good God, Waters. How much is your university debt?’

  ‘About thirty five thousand to go, I think…’

  ‘And they didn’t teach you any vernacular at all… Poets’ day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Come on, chop chop, son of Douglas. I think Levi must be missing you by now. We’ll probably have to arrest him soon, and I think it would be better coming from you.’

  Smith had made one or two comments like that, and Waters really couldn’t see where it was coming from. He stood up, following Smith’s lead, and said, ‘You don’t seem too bothered about which way this goes, if you don’t mind me saying so, DC.’

  ‘I’m not and I don’t.’

  Then he paused in the doorway and looked back at Waters before he added, ‘At this point in time.’

  Mr Truman had said, ‘We must make it clear that my client has only stated that the shovel, of which he has only seen a photograph, might be one that belonged to him, and that even if it happened to be the same shovel, he has had no idea of its whereabouts for some time. It looks to be a common or garden shovel, available in all sorts of outlets. This is flimsy, inspector. I have advised Mr Davis to leave the interview where it is, unless you feel that you have a stronger basis upon which to continue this line of questioning.’

  The inspector had opened the folder of forensic evidence then, and Smith
, still watching two doors away, had said to Waters, ‘And here we go…’

  It was half past four in the afternoon before they returned to the main office. Levi Street and Alan Fitch – older and more awkward than Street but less intelligent than Davis – were safely tucked up for the evening, though it was Smith’s guess that both of them would be released on police bail at some point during the night. There was nothing with which they could realistically be charged, unlike Davis, who now almost certainly would be. The fingerprint evidence had led to a combination of no comments, non-committal responses and muttered consultations with the solicitor. But all three had admitted to be being in the Abbeyfields area on the night of the attack on Mark Randall, and to attempting to procure a badger for the purposes of baiting it on a future occasion. Smith had said to Street that the thought of procuring a badger put the case into a whole new light for him but the young traveller didn’t understand. In fact, he understood less and looked increasingly miserable as the proceedings moved along, and when Waters eventually arrested him – mainly for the planned purpose of obtaining his mobile phone – there seemed to be tears in his eyes.

  Poor little sod, Smith had thought; trying to compensate, trying to do something a bit macho – beating up a badger. It must be tough, being the way you are and growing up in a culture like that one. But Street had told them some useful things, including the fact that various items had been carried from Davis’s truck to the sett, including iron stakes, a heavy hammer, sacks, tongs and at least two shovels, carried between them. He could not be certain that two shovels went back to the vehicle but said that Davis and Fitch did most of the digging while he kept watch. From his description of the place, Smith knew that it was the same sett that he had visited with Steven Harper.

  On the way down to the office at four thirty, Waters had taken a peek at the phone. He would put it into evidence now where it would be examined thoroughly, but Smith knew that they wouldn’t find any more than Waters himself unless it needed specialist work. Smith watched Waters tapping and swiping away, and was not surprised when the final result of all that was a shake of the head.

  Serena Butler was at her desk, typing. She looked up when they entered and gave Smith a cross smile; Mike Dunn was halfway across the office, going back to Wilson’s side of it, and he was laughing at something she had told him. Waters went to his own desk beside hers and Smith looked at his emails – he didn’t seem to get many compared to other people and wondered whether that was a good or a bad thing – and then found a note folded on his desk, his initials on the side facing up. He opened it and read, eyes on the paper, ears listening in to the story Serena was telling Waters, the story of how she had been re-united with a certain item of sanitary equipment.

  The note was from Priti in admin: Hello, Sergeant Smith. I took a phone call for you this afternoon. Actually I did not take it myself, it was passed on to me by Sergeant Hills. It was from someone called Laurence Cunningham. He wanted to speak to you. When I said that was not possible, he said that he would try another time. When I asked what it was about, he said that it was a legal matter. He was very polite and well-spoken, if that helps. And then Smith could see that she had added as an afterthought – or perhaps it was the forethought – I hope you are not too tired after your first week back. Call in and see us down here again soon.

  Dear me. All he had done was to pinch a couple of her Malted Milks and say that she made nice tea… Charlie Hills could be grumpy but at least they had an uncomplicated relationship; there were no demands, no jealousies, they could allow each other the freedom to try the biscuits and beverages of consenting adults anywhere in the building.

  He typed in the name, pressed search and the little wheel went spinning around, the way the world does these days. Waters was laughing at the end of the story – Serena reached down and put the offending item on the table in front of her, as if to emphasise the truth of her story. But Waters was enjoying it a little too much it seemed because then she told him that he wasn’t getting away scot-free.

  ‘Why?’ said Christopher Waters. ‘I’d like to see him catch me with it as well,’ with a knowing glance in Smith’s direction. Smith didn’t seem that interested – he smiled, shrugged and carried on with whatever he was doing on the computer.

  Serena said, ‘He doesn’t need to. He’s already taken plenty of what goes in here,’ indicating the receptacle. ‘What have you spent your afternoon doing?’

  ‘Interviewing, the same as you.’

  ‘Maybe not quite. I didn’t spend any time alone with Alan Fitch. I wouldn’t say we really got to know each other…’

  Smith looked up at Waters – no sign of the penny dropping as yet.

  Waters said, ‘That was part of the plan, getting him to lower his guard. And it worked, he was very easy to deal with by the time it was over.’

  Serena was laughing openly.

  She said, ‘I’ll bet he was! When you arrested him, did he put out his hands and ask to be cuffed?’

  ‘No, he… Serena, what’s so funny?’

  She was pulling a face as if the most painful part was having to explain it.

  ‘Jesus, Chris! Did Levi seem like a nice boy, to you? DC thought the two of you might enjoy spending a little quality time together!’

  Waters coloured up – Mike Dunn and one or two others were looking across and laughing as well. Smith murmured something that Waters didn’t catch, still looking at the screen, and Serena Butler was telling no-one in particular that she would rather have one of these, waving the cardboard receptacle in the air.

  What Smith had murmured was ‘As one gives, so one will receive’ but his attention really was elsewhere. It’s always surprising how many people share the same name, even the more unusual ones; he had accepted many years ago that there must be at least half a billion David Smiths on the planet but there was an unexpected number of Laurence Cunninghams too. It wasn’t difficult then, though, to add in another term or two to narrow it down, and there he was: Silversmith Chambers, London; year of call 2010, so not a junior doing dogsbody work; and there is a photo, too, in this modern but sharply-suited, go-ahead law practice – the sort of picture the proud Mrs Cunningham, mother, will have on her sideboard. Young, handsome, successful and ambitious… Almost an antithesis to the thesis of me, he concluded, clicking now on ‘About Us’. Silversmith Chambers had the usual sententious, pretentious nonsense in their mission statements and promises to clients; he skipped over those empty words to their list of areas of special interest. It was second on the list, their long and varied experience of successfully managing appeals against serious criminal convictions. He clicked back to the areas of practice for young Cunningham, and sure enough there was only one – criminal law. He would not be running an appeal himself yet, not enough miles on the clock, but someone senior would have put him onto the case, doing the preliminaries. This was what Jo Evison had warned him about months ago, he was certain of it.

  Not that he was bothered – instead he allowed the stream of thought to carry on towards tomorrow afternoon, when he had agreed to go down and spend an hour or two with Jo and her aunt at Pinehills. He recalled the previous meetings with her last year, the fish and chips on the harbour wall, cooking on the caravan stove the dabs she had caught, the splendid wine she had brought that they drank with the meal, and then the walk under the trees, in the resin-scented shadows of early autumn. Something had almost bloomed then, hadn’t it, like late chrysanthemums? And now she wanted him to meet her family, after all these months.

  The young people were all back at work. Waters either didn’t notice him leaving or did and did not acknowledge it. Well, it’s a tough old world, son, and you’re better learning it from me than plenty I could name. Smith went down and had a brief word with Charlie, thanked him for his assistance with staff development earlier in the day, and then he went home. It wasn’t even half past five when he left the building.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the clear earl
y light of a Saturday morning in July, Smith woke up thinking about several things at once. That’s only a figure of speech, of course, and an illusion – we cannot do it, but the mind, mortal though it might be, is a remarkable thing. It can move so quickly inside itself and so creatively that we do not see the joins between – we do not see how, to put it simply, one thing leads to another.

  There was the shovel. It was likely that he had been dreaming about the thing, in some way or another, but that was gone for now. There had been at least two of them, Street had said – what were the chances that neither of those was the one found by poor Marie Williams last week? Smith wondered whether she had joined a gym by now or bought herself a rowing machine… But anyway, the chances of there being a third shovel with Brian Davis’s thumbprint on it were, to be fair, remote. Assume – the danger word but sometimes we have to take a risk in this life – assume then that one of the two shovels carried by the three sad individuals that evening had been used to attack Mark Randall as he too went about the business of digging up the countryside around Abbeyfields. It was a funny – forgive the choice of word, your honour – sort of attack, just a single blow of considerable force, but again, what were the chances that a third party had carried it out? How could that have happened? Any rational person was going to conclude that it had not – that one of the three would-be badger baiters had struck, for reasons as yet unknown, Mark Randall down…

  Smith leaned halfway out of the bed, pulled open one of the curtains and then lay back in the new light, the quilt across his middle, his chest exposed to the cooler air that came from the open window. Sometimes, on these fine early mornings, they used to take the dog for a long walk before breakfast - from the caravan, through the dew-silent pinewoods, up over the steep dunes and then along the seemingly infinite golden strand that ran east into the rising sun and also west to where it would set some eighteen hours later. Those were long days indeed, and the best of days…