Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Murray had known Smith too long to take that as criticism. He had also known him long enough to guess why there had been all the little delays that began before they left Kings Lake. Smith wanted the other interview to be ahead of his own. If Fisher said anything useful to the DI and Wilson, and if the phones were working, Smith might be able to use it in his own interview with Peter Vince. It’s all in the timing.

  Vince’s garage had a door marked ‘Reception’ – it even had a girl sitting behind a desk in there – but Smith and Murray walked past that until they reached the corner of the building. There was a tarmac walkway down the side, and they followed this until they could see the area of parked vehicles and partially dismantled ones and others just rusting away in the yard behind the business. The two of them stood on the corner and looked at the dreary and dismal scene, the way our love affair with the automobile always ends. The rain had ceased for now but there was drizzle in the air, and a tang of salt in the drizzle – they were less than a quarter of a mile from the sea.

  Murray’s elbow nudged Smith’s shoulder but he had already seen it – a dark green Toyota Hilux parked inside the rear entrance to the yard. Smith set off towards it and Murray followed. Not procedure, of course, but perfectly intentional; they had no warrant and Vince would be within his rights to tell them that they could not look around without one, but more to the point, Murray knew that Smith wanted Vince to find them doing this sort of thing. The way in which he reacted when he did so would tell them something.

  The Hilux was a good few years old and there were dents and scrapes on the front and rear bumpers. Inside, it was as respectably untidy as a garage owner’s vehicle ought to be. Vince was a smoker and the scent of tobacco caught Smith unprepared – he had concluded that once retired there would be far too many opportunities to indulge and so the process of giving it up for good had already begun. Now he had a sudden desire to smoke, after three days without one.

  Murray said, ‘The outside’s cleaner than the inside,’ and it was true – the vehicle had recently been washed and waxed, as the rain standing in taut droplets on the bonnet clearly testified. ‘He takes good care of it for an old runabout.’

  Smith said, ‘Yes. Well, as you say, he keeps the outside of it nice. You can ask him about that in a minute. He’s watching us from the back door.’

  Murray crouched his six feet and several inches down then, examining the front bumper more thoroughly. From the back door, Vince would see, too, that a conversation was taking place between the two detectives, and what could he assume but that this conversation was about that very bumper? Had he been closer, he would have heard that the talk was about how long it would take him to intervene and ask them what they thought they were doing, and the answer was about another fifteen seconds.

  ‘Sorry, gentlemen. That one’s not for sale! And you lot mostly buy Range Rovers anyway.’

  It was a jovial, jokey greeting. Pretending that he didn’t recognise or remember them would be crass on Vince’s part, and the humour was intended to show them that he had no reason to be fearful of them. But there was a lack of surprise, a complete lack of it, and Smith thought then that Vince had been expecting them. Someone had told him that the police were on their way.

  ‘Hello, Mr Vince. You’ll remember me from last week – we spoke in The Queens Arms. This is Detective Constable Murray, also from Kings Lake Central police station. We’d like a few minutes of your time.’

  ‘Right. Well, anything I can do to help…’

  ‘When I say, we’d like a few minutes, I’m not being entirely honest, Mr Vince. One of those clichés, isn’t it? We’re going to need more than a few minutes to sort this out, I’m afraid. Are you happy to answer some questions here, or would you rather go to the station at Kings Lake?’

  ‘The police station? You’re making this sound a bit serious, sergeant! Will I need my solicitor?’

  Vince was still being good-humoured and approachable, and Smith saw no reason not to respond in kind as he said, ‘Well, Mr Vince, that’s one of the things we’re here to establish, isn’t it?’

  Chapter Thirty Five

  ‘…and that’s when we threw the bastard out. He was making threats but we never saw him again. Or at least, I didn’t. Mark and Johnny would have told me if they had. He never came back to The Queens Arms.’

  Smith said, ‘This took place on the 17th of July?’

  Vince nodded and then Smith said, ‘At what time?’

  ‘Early evening. Julie comes into the bar to have a chat and just say hello sometimes. She never has more than the one drink. This bloke had been hanging around since the day before, on and off, waiting to see her and say what he had to say.’

  They were sitting in Vince’s office, which was essentially a scaled up model of the inside of the Hilux. The desk was covered with bills and invoices, receipts for parts deliveries, copies of failed MOT notices and all the other detritus of the motor trade. Outside, in the work bays, Smith had already seen new vehicles brought in to be worked on, and none of the mechanics had taken a break yet. That wasn’t typical, in his experience; either Peter Vince paid exceptionally well or he was a tough boss, despite his continuing geniality with the two detectives.

  Murray said, ‘You’ve told us you didn’t hear what Sokoloff originally said to Miss Shapiro. What sort of threats did he make when you were chucking him out? What did he say?’

  Smith took a closer look at Vince as he answered the question. In height, he was between Smith himself and Murray – about five ten or eleven in his socks. Thin, some would say gaunt, but with heavy bones and large hands that had been using tools since his teens. Smith guessed that if the younger mechanics couldn’t loosen a nut, the boss could still go out and show them how it was done. And if, Smith concluded, I found him standing on my doorstep, waving a monkey wrench in my face, I might feel somewhat intimidated.

  ‘It was still all directed at Julie. About all the lies she was telling and how if she knew what was good for her, she’d pack it in. All to do with her past, because of who she is.’

  Smith said, ‘So you and Mr Fisher and Mark Williams between you told Sokoloff to leave the pub, and as far as you’re concerned, he did and he never came back. And the only reason that you never told us any of this when we first spoke to you on…’ with a glance into his notebook, ‘the 14th was that Mark Williams asked you not to say anything about it because his aunt hates any publicity. Is that right?’

  There was no discernible note of sarcasm – the simple statement had been enough to harden Vince’s expression a little, and the nod he gave was a grudging one.

  ‘Who else was in the bar that night in July?’

  ‘Might have been a guest or two… Look, it was months ago. I can’t remember if there was anyone else, to be honest. If there was, they didn’t have anything to do with it.’

  ‘What about…’ and then Smith made a point of turning over pages in his notebook, ‘what about Mr Crick? He’s been in the bar on every one of my visits so far. Was Mr Crick in the bar?’

  ‘Tally? Probably! But I can’t see you getting much sense out of the old soak even if he was, if you know what I mean.’

  Smith stared into the notebook long enough for Vince to begin wondering what else might be written in there. John Murray rested his own heavy gaze on Peter Vince, and the sounds from the workshop beyond the window began to intrude a little.

  ‘Yes. I think I know what you mean. Thank you for your cooperation.’

  As had been intended, Peter Vince took that as a sign that the interview had come to an end. He stood and began to say that if they ever needed any work doing, Vince’s hourly rate was very comp-

  ‘And now, sir, if you don’t mind, we’d like to go through the events of Saturday the 10th of this month. This wasn’t months ago, just a week or so, and hopefully you’ll be able to recall things in a little more detail. Tell us about your movements that day before you went over to The Queens Arms. You could begin by letting
us know which vehicle you were using.’

  Peter Vince sat down again. Smith saw him glance at the little black notebook which was still held open by his left thumb. Vince would be wondering what else was written in there, and he, Vince, had already seen them examining the Hilux. At the very least he would be wondering why they had done so, and at the very worst, he knew perfectly well why. Which was it?

  Smith said, ‘In your own time. There’s no hurry.’

  When they were back in the car, Smith said, ‘Well? Before we went in I asked you what you were thinking. And now?’

  Murray had seen Peter Vince appear in one of the repair bays a moment ago. He had seemed to be talking to the mechanic who was working there but Murray had watched and waited, and sure enough, after a few seconds Vince had looked out and across the road to where the two detectives were sitting in their car.

  Murray said, ‘If I was running the show, he’d be a suspect rather than a person of interest. We now know that he drove the Hilux to The Queens Arms the Saturday before last, and it’s a vehicle of the type that was probably used to run down Sokoloff. OK, I know there are other makes that could have been used, but according to Charlie’s son it was a Hilux parked outside the Royal Victoria very early on Sunday morning. Sokoloff was staying there, and all his stuff disappeared sometime between Saturday evening and Sunday after breakfast. Peter Vince is local and likely to know his way in and out of somewhere like the Victoria.’

  ‘Very good – not least because we’re thinking along the same lines. Not a shred of evidence yet, either. Anything else?’

  ‘Peter Vince could easily get a vehicle to disappear. There was a six-ton recovery truck with a winch parked in his yard. Also, one of his best mates has lots of boats and he happened to be in the pub on both occasions as well.’

  ‘I wonder if Mr Fisher has any boats in the creek at Overy. We need to find that out… What else?’

  ‘I got the impression that Vince wouldn’t be easily intimidated. I could see him deciding to have a go.’

  Peter Vince had his back to them now, watching a mechanic at work as if he had forgotten that the police were there, but he had not, and both detectives knew it. The garage man might be something of a hard-case but he was no professional villain, and the investigation would be bothering him much more than he had shown so far.

  Murray said, ‘What about you?’

  Smith took out another Polo mint to distract him from the continuing desire for a cigarette, offered the packet to Murray and then put it back into the glove compartment.

  ‘Why would Sokoloff go back two months later? If these three - Williams, Fisher and Vince – had thrown him out of The Queens Arms last July, why go back on his own? Assuming he was on his own, of course. But anyway, why would Frankie Jacobs have sent the same messenger back to get shot all over again? That bit doesn’t make sense to me.

  ‘Another thing. Why would Sokoloff be sitting outside the pub? We’re supposed to believe that none of them saw him or spoke to him, they didn’t even know he was there. You could say he was planning to set fire to the place in view of the earlier threat, but if he was, he’d hardly be sitting outside in the car park for all to see, even though nobody did, until they called last orders, would he?’

  With John Murray, one sometimes had the sense that he had decided a long time ago that life would be simpler if he treated every question as a rhetorical one. Smith was used to it, naturally, but there might be some interestingly one-sided conversations with Detective Inspector Terek in the not-too-distant future.

  ‘And another, another thing – those tyres on the Mercedes. If they were slashed – and I’m inclined to believe that bit – who did that? We’ve got at least three blokes inside the pub with a grievance against the Merc’s owner, but they don’t know he’s out there, and then a random person comes along and just happens to do in all the tyres? And then the Mercedes itself just disappears into the ether? No, John, I’m not buying it and you can stop trying to persuade me otherwise.’

  Murray nearly smiled, folded his arms and leaned back in the seat, as if they had just been told to put Peter Vince’s garage under twenty four hour surveillance, starting right now. After a few more seconds, he said, ‘Nothing from the DI?’

  Smith had already checked his phone. It said that there was one bar of signal but he doubted whether that was true – nevertheless, there were no messages or missed calls showing.

  ‘No. We’ll head back to Lake and see what they got.’

  ‘We could call in at The Queens Arms. Have a swift half and let Mark know what’s going on…’

  Smith started the car, and across the road Vince turned at the sound; it wasn’t easy to resist the temptation to wave goodbye.

  ‘Yes, we could, but it’s my guess that he’d know all about it before we walked through the door.’

  ‘You reckon they’re that tight? Williams, Vince and Fisher?’

  ‘Don’t you? I’m sure of a couple of things in this case, now. One of them is that we have not yet been told the truth about what went down at The Queens Arms on Saturday the 10th. Another is that the untruths we’ve been told have been worked on together, by some of the people we’ve questioned. Something that Vince just said… I need to check the recording of Williams’ interview when we get back.’

  Ninety nine out of one hundred of us would have said then, really, why is that, but Murray did not. He looked at his own phone just in case, and then settled himself for the ride back at, naturally, a steady fifty five miles an hour. John Murray was the perfect soldier – loyal, steadfast, fearless and unquestioning. It wasn’t quite clear yet where someone like that was going to fit into the new regime.

  ‘We threw the bastard out, didn’t we?’

  Smith re-wound the interview with Williams and played it again – ‘We threw the bastard out, didn’t we?’

  Murray nodded and said, ‘Word for word. I’ll give you that one, DC.’

  ‘And there’s something else. When I first went into The Queens Arms and Waters was about to bang his head on the rounders bat that Williams was waving about, he was saying something very similar – something like “Another one of you bastards, I don’t care how many of you there are!” It’s one of Mr Williams’ favourite words, especially when applied to Englishmen. Now, a brief would say it’s a common term of abuse, but to me it sounds like these two have been arranging their stories together.’

  There are times like this one when eighty per cent of a case has been constructed and yet there is not a single shred of hard evidence. Unless Fisher had made a mistake and forgotten his lines, Detective Inspector Terek would still say we don’t have enough to arrest because we don’t have enough to charge, and he would be correct. Suspicion alone, no matter how well-founded, will never lead to a conviction in the British system of jurisprudence; there must be sound and testable evidence, and they did not have any.

  They had a meeting in Terek’s room in fifteen minutes to compare notes on the interviews but it was a pound to a penny that there was nothing sensational to report about Johnny Fisher – they would have heard about it by now.

  ‘That car, John. Two tons of German metal can’t just disappear into thin air!’

  ‘I’m thinking that’s all it might be by now. Two tons of metal.’

  ‘Right… We’ve been looking for it in car parks. It might have left the county on the back of a lorry by now, but start in Norfolk. Find out which scrapyards have the facilities. See if they have any dealings with Peter Vince, first. If we can find the car and tie it back to him-’

  ‘DC?’ That’s a new line of investigation. Do I have to clear it with anyone else? If the DI asks me what I’m doing…’

  And that was the difference, of course. In the old days, a fortnight ago, Alison Reeve would have cleared any such initiative retrospectively, but now – well, now, the new detective inspector had made his feelings clear on a couple of occasions, just as the young DI Smith must have when he told his new team how
things were to be done.

  ‘You’re dead right, John. Bring it up at the next meeting and see if he wants you to run with it. We’re done here. I’ll meet you up there in ten minutes.’

  For Smith himself, however, it didn’t really matter which rules he broke in the next few weeks, as long as his pension was safe. He found Serena at her desk, and asked her to step out into the corridor. Mike Dunn was the only person who noticed.

  ‘You have a good contact at GoFone, don’t you?’

  ‘Martina.’

  ‘How good a contact is she?’

  Serena knew pretty much straight away where this one was going.

  ‘Good. We got chatting one day. Now we play squash about once a fortnight.’

  ‘Ah, squash. That’s one of the sports I’m planning to take up as soon as I retire. Within a matter of weeks, you won’t recognise this body.’

  ‘DC, I have to advise against it. You’ve already had a knee operation. Try bowls. Or get an allotment. What do you want me to ask Martina?’

  He looked around again, and it wasn’t a game. Once before, when he was in Belfast, he had involved her in an under-the-table manoeuvre and that had almost ended badly. He was not about to take that risk again, especially now.

  ‘Ask her if she would, on this single occasion, deal directly with me.’

  Serena Butler’s curiosity was now fully aroused, of course, and this always required careful handling.

  ‘Is this Sokoloff? What’s happened?’

  ‘Yes it is, and nothing’s actually happened. I want to ask your contact a couple of things off the record. If you’re not happy with that, or if you think she might not be, it’s not an issue.’

  Once you had got to know Smith, it was easy to tell when jokes were appropriate and when they were not – the problem was that some people never got to know him. But Serena Butler had, and so now all she said was, ‘I’ll ring her now, before the meeting.’