The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  …one of them had struck him down, coming back to it with a sense of mild irritation. Which left just a couple of questions, and Smith could hear the judge’s voice directing the deliberations of the jury that sat in his own court of common sense, if not of justice. Which of them had done this deed, and why? Now, the circumstances leading up to the discovery of the murder weapon itself might be of some concern; enough concern, perhaps, for one of the defending barristers to call to the stand the first detective on the scene after the shovel was found – not the first policeman who saw it but the first detective. Take the stand and swear that good old oath, Detective Sergeant David Conrad Smith of Kings Lake Central police station…

  …that sense of timelessness, of one beautiful day being an eternity in which the three of them had to do nothing, had nowhere else to be but here and now, feeling only the sun and the wind, the sand and the sea – where had that gone? If it was timeless, where had that moment gone? Gone? If time and space are indeed one as the modern philosophers of physics would have us believe, and if places do not cease to exist because we are no longer present in them, then neither do moments in time; the three of them were still present then on that beach, and would be eternally so, himself pointing out to sea, Sheila laughing, the dog running into the surf…

  …if only Wilson had gone out there, and Smith had only seen the photographs. There might not even have been many photographs, not as many as there were now; Wilson would not have sent for Gervaise Frazer, a couple of snaps on his phone would have done for Wilson. If he, Smith, hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. But we cannot un-see, we cannot erase or delete. We have other choices, though. We can fight, we can ignore, we can accept…

  …after this weekend, Shirley Salmon had let the caravan for the next six. School holidays, children running around with sand in their shoes, sand in their sandals, sand gritty on the caravan floor, sea-shells and seaweed in buckets under the steps, pine cones collected from the woods – all to be taken home like memories, and all often forgotten. It meant that his visit today – he was still going, wasn’t he? – would be his last for a little while, and when he went again it would be September, the month of change, of slowly lengthening shadows, of another summer ending…

  …and he had never been able to ignore, which was probably why it always seemed as if he was fighting someone or something. Always, and this morning of all mornings it came to him that he was tired of it now. There is always acceptance, he said, and he really should get up out of this bed and meditate for half an hour – but the thought that he was tired of it now would not leave him. Tired of it. Every boxer, no matter how fit and how talented, only has so many rounds in him. Every horse only so many races, every lead guitarist only so many original riffs, and then it’s over – or it should be. Detective Chief Superintendent Allen had not tried to get him to retire for at least six months – maybe he too had found acceptance – and so perhaps this was the moment. Perhaps it was over.

  It was a morning for expresso. The machine had calmed itself down to a quiet grumble, like Charlie Hills by Thursday afternoons, and Smith had poured the first shot into the little Italian cup on its little Italian saucer when the landline began to ring. A London number. He watched it for a few seconds – she should have arrived at the caravan last night but she had been a day late once before – or she might be ringing to tell him that there had been a change of plan. Perhaps Mrs Maddison wasn’t up to it after all, and he felt a momentary disappointment at the thought of that.

  ‘David Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant David Smith of Kings Lake police?’

  A neutral voice, no accent and no hurry – a voice that was accustomed to asking questions and having them answered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Cunningham. I-’

  ‘Laurence Cunningham of Silversmiths’ Chambers, WC2A?’

  There was amusement now in the voice when it responded.

  ‘Indeed. I left messages yesterday but I don’t recall giving that information.’

  Messages plural? Apparently so, the first ones being left with a peculiarly gruff desk sergeant who had said that he couldn’t be sure but he thought that a detective called Smith had retired only last week and no, he hadn’t got his number.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Cunningham?’

  ‘First, allow me to apologise for calling you at home and when you are off-duty…’ and as he listened and poured the next cup of coffee, Smith thought , fat chance, I’ve been at work on and off since a quarter past five this morning. That’s the point, isn’t it, with this job – it’s all or nothing for me. Not many lawyers work on Saturdays though.

  ‘…so I do need to clarify one matter, Mr Smith. You were the senior investigating officer in the cases of four young women who were murdered in Norfolk ten years ago?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Do we have our wires crossed?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We might have made one or two assumptions in our research, though. Easy to do if you only read case summaries.’

  Smith could sense Cunningham recalibrating at the other end of the line.

  ‘My apologies, Mr Smith. Where have I got this wrong?’

  Better – the lawyer was probably still at school on the morning when the detective was staring at the naked body of the third girl to be found in the dunes but he had earned himself at least another minute of Smith’s time with his apology.

  ‘I was SIO on the third and fourth cases.’

  ‘Ah, of course. It was Detective Chief Inspector Hannaford on the first and second. My apologies again.’

  Which meant he had the papers in front of him and had looked that up quickly – he was familiar enough with the case, then, had been working on it for a while, probably – not long enough to have remembered every detail but long enough to know where to look for them. This wasn’t good news.

  ‘Mr Cunningham – is this call being recorded?’

  Hesitation, then, before, ‘All our calls are recorded, Mr Smith, as a matter of course.’

  At least he didn’t add that it was for training purposes.

  ‘If you could tell me what the reason for your call is, then, I would be grateful.’

  Cunningham was reading from a script now, a carefully prepared line of explanation. Only a fact-finding chat at this time, checking the details, making sure of the whereabouts of certain people who might need to be contacted at a future stage of the case. Their client’s instructions were only preliminary and –

  ‘Who is your client, Mr Cunningham?’

  ‘I don’t think that at this stage-’

  ‘What is ‘the case’, Mr Cunningham?’

  ‘Again, I-’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Cunningham.’

  Smith sipped at the coffee – the tiny cups make you do that, very clever because only then do you get the full flavour of the newly-ground beans – and watched the handset for a couple of minutes, wondering whether the lawyer would call back. It wasn’t necessary but he might do so if he had taken offence, say; but if he was by now a proper lawyer he would not take offence, knowing that his main objective had been achieved. He had located Detective Sergeant Smith for future reference and he had let him know that something was coming, something connected to the Andretti murders, the Ice-cream Murders of a decade ago. Laurence Cunningham might even be imagining that he had given the policeman something of a fright.

  He was on the patio, sharpening the blades of the lawnmower with a file when his mobile on the outdoor table began to ring. There was no way that Cunningham could have got that number.

  ‘Sir? It’s Chris.’

  ‘You can drop the ‘sir’, Detective Constable Waters. Call me Dave.’

  ‘Oh… Right…’ but then there was silence because the younger man could never do such a thing and they both knew it. Waters was disconcerted again and Smith was still feeling somewhat guilty about yesterday’s pay-back.

  ‘Chris, seriously
, we’re not at work, or at least I’m not. Call me anything but sir. What’s up?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Hold on – let me sit down before you go any further. I wasn’t ready for this.’

  Waters reviewed the Randall killing then, straightening it out in his own mind as he spoke and laying the foundations for whatever he was going to put to Smith; clearly and logically, pausing once in a while to get Smith’s agreement that such and such was the correct interpretation or the most likely scenario.

  ‘You told me yesterday that it was about time I came up with something, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about, DC.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘Why now what?’

  ‘Sounds like the name of a Chinese lawyer. No – why are you now doing everything that I tell you? Is this going to continue for very long?’

  Waters quite rightly ignored him.

  ‘The only thing that I can come up with – assuming that uniform didn’t miss the shovel on the first search – is that the spade was put there to incriminate Davis. Nothing else makes any sense. I even put it to Kat last night - no names or details obviously - and she came up with the same answer.’

  Smith decided to ignore for now the looming professional and personal tragedy of the young couple discussing each other’s cases; between them they had arrived at the same conclusion as he had himself a day or two ago.

  He said, ‘OK. Who, and why?’

  ‘Fitch and Street would seem to be good candidates initially but again… Fitch isn’t very smart according to Serena, and I just don’t think that Levi Street is – well, mean enough.’

  ‘I’m going to have to trust your judgement on that, Chris.’

  ‘Very good, DC. While we’re on the subject, what’s the etiquette now? Do we have to get you back because you got us back?’

  ‘No. All you have to do is admit defeat, wear a dress and curtsey when I come into the office for one week. Serena has to wear the offending item as a hat.’

  ‘I’ll discuss it with her. Neither Fitch nor Street could have been so stupid, though. Incriminating Davis like that would incriminate themselves and risk their own prosecution for some serious charges. I know that’s what happened but I don’t believe that they brought it about.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Which means that someone else planted the spade that night, before it was found. That’s a risky thing to do, DC.’

  It’s curious, thought Smith, that in a building full of experienced detectives, the only one thinking like me is still a relative novice, with a first class honours degree in modern European history and a PhD in naivete – surely that must mean something.

  Smith said, ‘Risky because you might be seen and because you might contaminate the evidence yourself. Give me a motive for taking risks like that and I’ll let you off wearing the dress bit.’

  Waters said, ‘We’ve already entered the realms of speculation but maybe they did contaminate the evidence. The fibres caught under the handle?’

  ‘Which have now gone to Nottingham. It’s my guess that will take at least a week, especially now that someone has been charged – not so much of a hurry when you’re convinced you’ve caught the bugger. But you’re avoiding the matter of motive, detective constable.’

  Smith’s mobile – which had not confused him for quite a while – now bleeped three times. He looked at the screen and there was briefly a symbol that he did not recognise, but Waters had not been cut off. Maybe the phone was joining in, sort of saying getting warmer or getting colder as it listened to their conversation; it was smarter than some of the people that he had worked with over the years, after all. He shook it just to see if there was a loose connection and then listened to Waters again.

  ‘We cannot find any link between Davis and Randall, so assume for now that there isn’t one. Assume for now that they didn’t even meet on the night… Maybe we have to go back to the metal detectorists.’

  ‘Symons is in the clear. If we need to check out his alibi again, I’m not going on my own, I’m not reprising me and Mrs Jones for anyone. Are you saying that there are metal detectorists in the case as yet - sorry, I can’t think of another way to put this - as yet undetected? It’s a half-decent theory without a shred of evidence.’

  Waters was thinking. Smith ran the file across the lawnmower blade in a desultory fashion as he did the same, and Waters said, ‘What are you doing? Sounds like you’re sawing your leg off.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been known to do that when a case gets to me… And another thing. If there is a third party involved, if Davis and his crack division of badger snatchers had nothing to do with any of it, how did the third party get hold of a shovel with a nice, incriminating thumb print on it?’

  This time there was a longer silence, and Smith knew that Waters wasn’t far behind him now – Waters could probably see the broken twigs and the footprints in the grass as he followed Smith’s line of thought. But he needed a little more encouragement.

  Smith said, ‘Person A owns a shovel. What are the possible ways that this same shovel comes into the possession of person B?’

  ‘A could give it to B – or sell it to B. A could lose it and B finds it. B could steal it from A. And there could be a C involved, some sort of intermediary. And-’

  ‘Yes, there could be a whole bloody alphabet involved in theory but we’re talking about the events of one night, I’m sure of that, so I don’t think this shovel went through twenty five pairs of hands. And I don’t think that Brian Davis would choose to be sitting in a cell this morning rather than tell us the name of the person to whom he gave or sold the shovel. Assuming,’ said with considerable emphasis, ‘that the shovel we found was one of those carried by our badgering friends from their vehicle – and the print makes that a good assumption, in my view – and assuming that Davis did not then hold an auction of said equipment at midnight in the woods, he either lost it or had it nicked. Now go with those two possibilities. And don’t be too slow about it – if I sit here much longer, I’m going to need a scythe instead of a lawnmower.’

  To his credit, Waters didn’t hurry. Smith waited and watched a blackbird on the lawn – a jet-black blackbird in his prime still, with a bill as orange as the finest from Seville – and wondered whether it was the same bird that nested in the garden last season or one of their offspring. Some people ringed these birds so that they could follow their lives over the years. Very time-consuming that would be, but something you could do if you were retired…

  Waters said eventually, ‘If Davis just lost the shovel, it’s asking a bit much to believe that a random person came along during the night, found it somehow in the dark and then decided to hit Randall with it, isn’t it?’

  ‘ “Asking a bit much” is one way of putting it, Chris.’

  A shorter wait this time, hopefully. The blackbird had found some sort of grub in the lawn but had not eaten it; the grub was wriggling in the bill and the bird was looking for more. There was a nest, then, that he had not found this year. He should – Sheila always liked to know where they were.

  ‘So someone was watching them, and close enough to take the shovel. And quick enough or quiet enough not to be seen. And then they… DC, this is pretty weird.’

  ‘Yes, and so is my phone. It’s making a bleeping noise again and I’m not pressing any buttons. Is that a self-destruct warning? Is it giving off too much short-wave radiation? This isn’t how I planned to go at all.’

  ‘I’m guessing someone else is trying to ring you, DC.’

  ‘Who? All I’ve done all morning is answer the phone.’

  ‘Sorry…’

  ‘You don’t count. Yes, it’s weird and all that speculation comes to precisely nothing unless somebody finds something or someone to back it up. Fortunately, I have the weekend off. Before you go, what happened to Messrs Fitch and Street?’

  ‘Bailed for Monday morning.’

  ‘Fair enough. Someone should ask Davis to make
a list of all the equipment they carried from his vehicle that night, and who carried what there and back. Then double check that with the other two on Monday – see if anything was missing. It’s quite possible they thought someone else was carrying the other shovel, it being all dark.’

  Waters said, ‘OK, I’ll suggest it. I’ll say you thought it was a good idea.’

  ‘No need – it probably won’t get done then. Suggest it yourself.’

  Waters had one of his drifting away moments then, and Smith began sharpening the lawnmower blade again.

  ‘So, DC. What are you doing with the rest of the day?’

  ‘I’m going to cut the lawns. Then I’m going to read the paper over lunch, and this afternoon I’m going to the seaside.’

  He could have said a little more. He could have added that tonight he was intending to go onto the website of the Police Pensions Scheme and do some investigation of a completely different kind. “There’s no harm in just looking” his mother used to say, and he had realised over the years that that was not always the case, but on this occasion he had decided to take the chance.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘And do you think, David, that, in loco parentis, I am now supposed to be asking you questions about your suitability as boyfriend material?’

  They were back on the harbour wall in the sunshine but this time the treat of choice was ice-cream instead of fish and chips. Jo had crossed the road and joined the queue at the little shop, despite Smith’s insistence that he would fetch what they wanted; it had been clear to the remaining parties that Jo had fully intended them to be just that, the two remaining parties – hence Veronica Maddison’s amused and half-ironic question.

  ‘I think that I can safely answer the ‘boy’ part with a no, for all sorts of self-evident reasons. We met a few times last year and earlier this year, and we got on well. I think I can safely say that Jo and I are friends.’

  ‘Answered like a detective!’

  ‘I don’t know whether to feel complimented or insulted, Mrs Maddison.’