Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  ‘The “evidential time-frame we’ve already constructed” – see? I’ll never learn all this new lingo. But I think I understand what it is you’re saying, Chris. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re saying that as far as this call to the hotel on Sunday morning is concerned, you don’t believe a bloody word of it.’

  Waters nodded.

  ‘Good. Neither do I.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The staff in the hospitality business work long hours for little enough reward, and the season was still in full swing, thanks to the fine weather – that’s probably why Smith and Waters got lucky with the interviews again. The young man who took the phone call on the Sunday morning, Sean Morton, was on duty again. They interviewed him together.

  He remembered speaking to Mr Sokoloff simply because it was a little unusual to be getting a phone call from a man who had checked out when the hotel’s record said that he should either be still in his room, which was number eight, by the way, or having a late breakfast in the dining suite. Smith had double-checked what Sean Morton was saying about this – had Mr Sokoloff checked out in the conventional sense – that is, had someone spoken to him at the desk – or had he checked himself out by simply leaving the building at some time during the night?

  ‘I wasn’t on duty overnight,’ Sean said, ‘but he told me himself. He had to leave straight away. He told me it was a family crisis, so I suppose it was illness or an accident or something like that. He apologised for just going and for not settling up but there had been no-one on duty at the desk. And that must be true because if there had been, they would have asked him to pay, you see, they wouldn’t have let him just leave, would they?’

  Smith took Sean Morton back through it line by line, and Waters wrote down every word that he could remember. No, Mr Sokoloff had not said where he was calling from, or how the emergency had resolved itself. Yes, Mr Sokoloff had paid by card and all the details would be stored in the system, and yes, the payment had gone through at the first attempt. And no, the hotel does not record all incoming calls.

  Waters said, ‘What sort of phone did you take the call on, Sean? Mobile or landline?’

  Like Gina Clarke, the young man was now thoroughly enjoying himself.

  ‘We have both but that was on the house mobile. I was in reception when he rang.’

  To Smith, Waters said, ‘As long as the phone isn’t as antiquated as the CCTV, there’s a chance we can still get the number from the ‘Recents’ folder. If he used the same number to make the booking, we might find that as well.’

  ‘Good thinking. Very good thinking… We’ve got a hell of a lot to do here today, now. We really could have done with Murray and Butler. Listen, you deal with the phone business and then check out the camera situation. I’m going to get a tour of the hotel with Sean, including a quick look at the room Bernard stayed in. We have to do that dangerous thing and assume that Kings Lake are chasing up a phone number from that Nowicki woman, but send any likely numbers to Serena to see if that speeds things up. Also, what are the chances that we can find out where that phone was when it was used to call the hotel and settle the bill?’

  ‘With the signals up here, triangulation might not be great but you might get something.’

  ‘I’m leaving all that with you, then. Right, Sean. Let’s go, the grand tour. Don’t miss anything out – we never know what might be vital later on. For example, where do they make the coffee?’

  Waters had been right about the telephone number. The mobile that had been used to call the hotel at 08.29 on the Sunday morning had also been used to book room 8 at 13.14 on Wednesday the 7th of September, two days before Sokoloff had arrived. When he checked with the reception staff, they told him that the man had been lucky to find a room available at such short notice; Waters kept the thought to himself that Bernard Sokoloff had perhaps been very unlucky when he did so.

  This, then, was almost certainly Sokoloff’s mobile number, and the mystery of how it had been used to call the Royal Victoria on the Sunday morning deepened a little. There was one obvious explanation, of course, but Sean Morton had not encountered this particular guest in person, and so he could not say whether he thought he was talking to the occupant of room 8 when he accepted payment for it. Waters took a minute then to stand in the lounge of the hotel and stare out across the road and the eastern end of the little harbour. The saltmarshes were a green and purple haze in the late morning sunshine, and it was, strangely, at that moment that he felt for the first time the beauty of this coastline, rather than simply seeing it. Somewhere out there this man had died a violent death, and that could not be allowed to go unpunished, but in the true scale of things, under the vastness of that blue sky and across the expanse of this place that is neither land nor water, it was only an instant in the long history of things that seem to matter.

  After a few seconds of that, his mind was back to it, operating, as he was all too well aware, on this day of all days, as Smith had trained it to operate; when there appears to be confusion, get back to the binary choices: either Bernard Sokoloff had been alive at 08.29 on the Sunday morning and called the hotel to pay his bill, or he had not. The evidence from the post-mortem so far, along with the opinions of the coastguard and Sam Cole, suggested that at that time on the Sunday, Bernard Sokoloff was already dead, that his body was by then drifting slowly westward with the tides. Unless those expert witnesses were all mistaken, then, someone else had used that phone to make us believe that he was still very much alive. And that someone had probably killed him.

  Waters sent the mobile phone number and the details of the two calls in an email to Serena Butler, and then he went to examine the positioning of the CCTV cameras. There were only two, as if the Royal Victoria was still reluctant to abandon its air of faded grandeur and its sense that the past was another and a better country, one in which the guests didn’t need or expect to be monitored every minute of the day.

  The camera above the front entrance, the entrance that overlooked the harbour, was of modern design and hadn’t been in place for long – the brickwork behind it had been damaged a little and repaired with recent cement. It was mains powered and sent a signal wirelessly to an application on the hotel’s computer system, which, Mr D’Olivera had explained to them last night, was set on a rolling, seven-day record – in other words, with today being Wednesday the 14th, the file should hold images of everyone entering or leaving the building for the past week. That would include Bernard Sokoloff if he had used the front entrance at all during his stay. Waters would have a look this morning but it would be a simple matter to download the file to his iPad and view it at Kings Lake if necessary.

  The security camera that overlooked the car-park was a different animal altogether. For a start, it hardly merited the adjective ‘security’. Several years ago, the hotel had had a problem with visitors to the town using the Victoria’s car-park but none of its facilities. The twenty spaces sometimes contained more day-trippers’ vehicles than guests’, and the guests then had to park out in the surrounding streets. The camera had been installed to combat this, and it had largely been successful, perhaps because it was much bigger and more visible than its modern descendants. One still image was taken every ten minutes, fed back through wiring to a control unit inside the building, where it was held on a quaint little thing called a minidisc. Somewhere, Waters had been told, there was a reader that plugged into the computer but no-one looked at the images now and they probably hadn’t done so for months, maybe for years. And no-one knew how many images the minidisc could store – it might be a year’s worth or just a couple of days.

  He was rummaging through the drawers of the desk on which the hotel’s server stood when Smith reappeared. After watching for a few seconds, Smith said, ‘Is this a formal search? Do you have a warrant?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you aware that you might be committing a criminal offence?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Probably
committing one or probably aware that you are?’

  ‘Both, I should think. Or neither… Just look in that cupboard. It’ll be a small box thing with a lead attached and a slot to read a minidisc.’

  Smith looked dubious.

  ‘I’m not sure I should get involved in such reckless behaviour. I have my pension as well as my career to think about now.’

  Waters closed one drawer and opened the next one down, removing the contents item by item and placing them on the top of the desk. He answered Smith without looking at him.

  ‘Yes, true. No sense in spoiling that completely unblemished record now, is there?’

  Smith opened the cupboard door and took out the first thing he saw, which was a small box thing with a lead attached and a slot in it. He watched as Waters finished emptying the drawer and then began replacing the contents in a much more tidy manner than the one in which he had found them. When that was finished, Waters moved on to the next drawer down, and began to repeat the process.

  Smith said, ‘I detected a note of cynicism in your remarks about my service record. Something has made you a little more bitter and twisted since you arrived at Kings Lake, Detective Constable Waters.’

  ‘Really? I cannot for the life of me think what could have caused that… Any luck?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would this thing you’re looking for have written on the side of it “MDR 8026 Pat. Pending 2007”?’

  With his hands still busy searching through the detritus of a long-disused desk, Waters said, ‘Well, I’ve no idea. I suppose…’ and then he turned to see Smith holding up the mini-disc reader and turning it over with an idle sort of interest.

  ‘Very good, DC. As I was saying, I cannot imagine what could have caused me to become even remotely bitter and twisted. Hand it over.’

  Smith did so and watched as it was plugged into a wall-socket and then connected to the old-fashioned desktop PC. Waters watched the screen, estimating his chances of success at about twenty per cent; they could take the disc away, obviously, but that would mean handing it over to someone else at Kings Lake, and perhaps even sending it to Norwich. He didn’t want to do that unless he had to – he had that feeling this morning of a fresh scent and the need to follow it quickly.

  ‘What about you? Get anything from your tour of the hotel?’

  ‘The coffee’s not bad. Out of a machine, of course, but it’s a good one – a Nuova Simonelli. I had a double espresso.’

  ‘Right. That explains why you’re so focused at the moment…’

  Waters was still watching the screen, getting a mouse involved now as various menus appeared and disappeared.

  ‘…and make sure you get all that detail into your next report for DI Terek.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure he’s a coffee man. If he is, I reckon it will be one level teaspoon of instant, a couple of sugars and the milk in last.’

  Smith pulled a face of disgust and continued, ‘I saw our man’s room, though. Nothing to find, obviously, it’s had two guests since he departed, been cleaned half a dozen times. I checked with the chief of cleaning and she told me that nothing had been left behind, not even a tissue in the waste-bin. She remembers because she was told on Sunday morning that they could do that room early, the guest having left overnight.’

  Waters turned to look at Smith now, and Smith nodded.

  ‘Yes, quite. Interesting, isn’t it? Bernard was booked in for the Friday and the Saturday night, expected to leave after breakfast on Sunday morning. If he ran into some unexpected trouble on the Friday or the Saturday night – or rather, if trouble ran into him, as seems to be the case – you would think there would be plenty of him left in the hotel room. Clothes, suitcase or travel bag, a toothbrush? But not so – clean as a whistle.’

  Waters glanced at the screen, gave it a couple more clicks and then turned back to Smith.

  ‘We need to know when he was last seen in the hotel.’

  ‘I got that as well, just now. He had a full English breakfast on the Saturday morning. It’s on his tab, and I got a positive id from the waitress who was on that morning. They’re all talking about it now, of course. We know then, that Bernard likes a good fry-up. I wonder if Dr Robinson can corroborate that yet.’

  Waters was picking up speed now.

  ‘He was here on Saturday morning. Now we need to know what he got up to during the day, assuming that it wasn’t being killed. I still go with your theory that what was done to him wasn’t done in daylight. So, where did he spend the day? What was he up to?’

  Smith said, ‘I can’t answer all of those, I’m afraid… But I can tell you what he had for tea, if that’s any help.’

  Waters folded his arms and waited – he should have known better by now.

  ‘He was back in the lounge bar at around six o’clock, eating a toasted bacon and brie sandwich. The same girl served him as brought him breakfast. By now he thinks they’re old acquaintances, of course. So, guess why she remembers him very clearly on the Saturday evening.’

  ‘He came onto her like he did Gina Clarke?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Now, at this point I have to say I’m losing a little respect for Bernard. This other young lady is maybe not even twenty. Nevertheless, even she didn’t seem to be especially shocked. It happens, she said. What is wrong with people?’

  Smith shook his head and looked as if he was expecting an answer, so Waters had a go.

  ‘Maybe it’s the uniforms.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The uniforms. You know – the short black skirts, the white blouses, the frilly aprons…’

  Smith’s expression then was that of a man who has turned over one too many stones and found something lurking under the last that he would rather not see, mingled with a modicum of concern for his detective constable’s own moral welfare.

  ‘Anyway, moving on… I had to ask the young woman whether she thought he was serious or just doing a bit of the usual flirting away from home. She thought he meant it, sadly. She thought that if she had shown any sign of succumbing to Bernard’s undoubted charms, she could have made an arrangement to meet him later on. And that’s what I find interesting – as well as somewhat disgusting.’

  Waters had got that straight away.

  ‘Because if she’s right, he was expecting to be back here later on.’

  Smith shrugged and let Waters run with the ball – the touchline wasn’t far away.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that there were only two explanations for why his room looked like it did on Sunday morning. One, he knew he wasn’t coming back to sleep here on the Saturday night, so he packed his bags and put everything into his car before he went out to wherever he met his fate. But if the waitress is correct, then he wouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t thinking along those lines. I suppose he might have changed his mind afterwards but…’

  Smith said, ‘Or there is explanation number two – someone else came back here and cleared the room after the event. Presumably the same person or persons who made the phone call on the Sunday morning to settle the bill.’

  Now, suddenly, to Waters it seemed that a whole flock of questions had taken off, like wild brent geese on the marshes at the appearance of a peregrine over the horizon.

  ‘But why bother? Why take the risk? That takes some nerve, doesn’t it? Coming in here in the middle of the night, going to his room? Then packing his bag or bags and getting those into a vehicle, presumably. Phoning up to pay using Sokoloff’s own bank-card, and his own mobile, and risking that being recorded, because it might have been. And then there are the cameras…’

  Smith was nodding towards the screen of the desktop.

  ‘Talking of which, I think you’ve got something there, and I don’t think it’s ‘Watch With Mother’.

  Chapter Fourteen

  John Murray watched the conversation that was taking place between Mike Dunn and Serena Butler. Passing by his desk, Serena had stopped when Mike said something to her – something unrelated to
work – but then her eyes had gone over the screen on Mike’s desk, and she had begun to ask questions.

  Murray thought, she doesn’t miss a trick, Mike, and if you’re ever going to get anywhere, you’ll need to accept that fact. Dunn had lowered his voice and was glancing around as he spoke, wondering who else might be listening in or watching; he caught Murray’s eye then but nothing came back from that other than the briefest raising of eyebrows. Murray continued writing up all that the four of them had accomplished yesterday; it was almost done, and he had the feeling that he would soon be hearing about what Serena had discovered over on the other side of room 17. Sure enough, out of the corner of his eye, Murray could see that she was already on her way.

  She sat in her seat, the one next to his own, scowled all around the room and said underneath her breath but loudly enough for him to hear, ‘Bastards!’

  ‘Men in general?’

  Murray was able to continue typing away during a conversation; he always had been, it was a sort of natural ability that certain other people were inclined to take for granted.

  ‘No, just most of them. I’m prepared to make a few exceptions.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Well, I was just talking to Mike-’

  ‘While reading his screen at the same time.’

  ‘-and I happened to notice that they’ve already got stuff back from Dagenham this morning. There’s intelligence sitting on their effing screens but no-one has bothered to let us know. Can you believe it?’

  Murray made a point of pausing for this one.

  ‘Can I believe that members of Wilson’s team have forgotten to share intelligence with members of Smith’s team? Er… Yes, I can.’