Persons of Interest

by Peter Grainger

  Smith put up a hand, bringing that to a halt.

  ‘No. Absolutely not. It’s impractical if you need to follow and communicate. Then there are evidential issues, assuming whatever this is ever gets anywhere near a courtroom. Lastly, and most importantly, it’s too risky. These are nasty people. We all think we’ve met nasty people before but it’s likely that some of us haven’t yet – and I’m not trying to be patronising there, just for a change. No solo efforts from anyone.’

  Because that tone was so rarely heard, its impact could seem to be disproportionate – Waters and Butler glanced at each other and then got busy at their desks but the look that passed between Murray and Smith was not without a trace of amusement.

  Finally he could get on with some planning; how to fit everything in and make the best of the day that remained. Yes, he would pay another visit to Mrs Fellowes, but before he did so, a little more spadework was required. As it involved schools, Waters was the best choice, first because he could remember what they were like, second, because he had previous for getting information out of them, and third, because if Smith turned up it was likely that he would have to give his famous drugs talk to sixth formers again – that had finally begun to die a death and he did not want to risk bringing it all back to life, even though it annoyed Superintendent Allen even more than it did himself.

  ‘Chris – remember that school secretary you used to chat up when we were looking at Hanna Subic?’

  ‘Chat up? She was at least fifty, DC.’

  ‘Now then. There’s a lot to be said for the older...’

  Serena Butler was watching, listening and waiting, probably ready to take feminist revenge for the terrible slight of not being allowed to put herself in mortal danger.

  ‘...person to be treated with more respect. Give her a ring. We’ve got three big secondaries in Lake, so it’s a one in three chance that the Fellowes girl goes there. Keep it very general, as she’s an actual pupil, not one who’s left like the last one. If we need details, we’ll have to go in and stand in front of the headmaster. Or mistress.’

  Butler was still watching.

  Waters said, ‘Actually, it’s a one in two chance – Lake Community is twice the size of the others. And it’s principal, these days, not headmaster or mistress.’

  ‘Oh, good. As soon as you’ve finished correcting my maths and my vocabulary, give her a ring.’

  ‘Do we have a name?’

  John Murray was listening as well now, curiosity aroused.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fellowes.’

  ‘Ah, right. Sorry.’

  Waters began to look for the number in his phone and Murray continued to stare until he received a look from Smith that meant ‘Tell you later’. Busy, busy, just like the old days... He forced his mind to focus on the tattooed man, Bridges, a most welcome addition to the Kings Lake scene, adding a dash of colour to the criminal community. What was a Londoner like that doing up here? Why was he some sort of sergeant to imported Albanian muscle? Who thought that Kings Lake was worth the bother, and again, why? More immediately, if he was drinking in The Wrestlers and seemed to know some people, then he was presumably living not so far away. How could they find out where?

  His phone signalled a new message. He expected it to be something additional from Nigel Hinton but what he read was Still not heard, so now I have to assume you are going to be charged after all. I know some excellent barristers... Jo Evison – she had said that she wanted to talk and he had forgotten to send her a good time to ring. He sent back Sorry, not a minute to think at the moment. I’ll be home tonight, after six, closed the phone and began to write down the questions that were forming in his mind about Duncan Bridges and the whole RSCU thing; it was funny but Cara Freeman had got her own way – he had ended up working for her after all, if only temporarily.

  This time he managed a full five minutes before the thing began to ring. John Murray peered over his screen and shook his head, as if to say, my pregnant wife doesn’t make my phone ring as often as yours. Smith did not recognize the number but took it anyway.

  ‘Is that Sergeant DC Smith?’

  ‘Yes. Who is this, please?’

  ‘This is someone who wants to know what your problem is.’

  Eyebrows raised, he held the phone a few inches away from his ear and looked at it in surprise – a rather posh, cross-sounding lady. Was it Jo Evison gone mad?

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I think you heard me the first time.’

  ‘Right, well, as to my problem, the problem is that I’ve got lots of them. Are we talking personal, professional, practical or philosophical? How long have you got? An exchange of emails might be more cost effective.’

  ‘Yes, I expect you would prefer that to dealing with me face to face.’

  ‘I think this is voice to voice, but don’t let that put you off.’

  A pause and he listened hard – the sound of a phone, a landline ringing in the background, a door closing.

  ‘I’d like to know why you feel the need to make attacks on what is a perfectly legitimate, fully licensed business. Do you see us as some sort of a threat?’

  ‘Good afternoon, Ms Diver. I’d be happy for you to pop in here and have a word face to face about all this. Our car park is fully insured.’

  All three were watching and listening now, and Waters in particular was making no attempt to hide the fact.

  ‘Your car park? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you seemed to be having a little difficulty parking yesterday afternoon, and that’s an expensive vehicle in which to make a mistake – I just wanted you to know that we’re fully covered here under the Public Services Liability Act.’

  There was another short pause while she worked it out. Serena Butler was asking Waters if he knew what this was about.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Public Ser-’

  ‘My God! Have you been following me? That’s outrageous! I want to make a formal complaint.’

  ‘We have procedures in place for that and I’ll explain them in just a moment. But you were not being followed, Ms Diver – you turned up at a location which is part of an ongoing investigation’ – and it might be, you never could tell – ‘and in that situation we would have been failing in our duty if we had not ascertained exactly who you were. When I arrived at your office yesterday, it was you I was hoping to speak to you, and your brother just sort of got in the way. I have to say, I think he could have handled it better.’

  Perhaps she recognized something in that – when she spoke again, Smith could sense a little more restraint.

  ‘He said that you made allegations about our qualifications and our experience.’

  ‘An allegation is a claim made without proof being offered – I don’t think that I made any such thing. I did ask about your SIA registration and I did comment on your apparent lack of experience, both of which are matters of fact and easy to prove. And before you ask, both might be germane to the investigation that we are carrying out.’

  Debatable, of course, but he was only saying that they might be.

  Katherine Diver said, ‘Sandra Fellowes has engaged us in a personal matter.’

  ‘And she has a perfect right to do so. But as you know, having recently taken the tests, you do not have the right to conceal from the police even a suspicion that a crime has been committed, should you uncover such a thing during your inquiries.’

  ‘I’m well – we are well aware of that.’

  ‘Good. Do you have any such suspicions at present?’

  He was pushing it now but she was backed up so far she was in danger of treading on her own wicket.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got my card. If you’re planning to do a lot of investigating in Lake, you might want to hang onto it. As to the complaints procedure, your best way forward would be to write to Detective Superintendent Allen. He has a couple of people who are employed fu
ll-time just to investigate the allegations against me. Failing that, you could write to your MP. He can be reached at – oh, she’s hung up.’

  All three were waiting, and there was no way out of it now – he would have to tell them. It would be best to begin at the beginning but he had no idea where that was because this thing seemed to have appeared in mid-air and out of nowhere.

  He said, ‘My latest fan. I love it when they take the trouble to get in touch personally. Anyway, once upon a time an old, old detective sergeant was walking through the dark, dark woods, when...’

  Smith parked the car some fifty or sixty yards away from his house, turned off the engine and watched the street. There was one van that he did not recognize, that he had not noticed before – a white van, probably a tradesman’s, but it had nothing painted on the side. The miniature binoculars in the dashboard would have allowed him to read the number plate but he would drive past it when he moved on to the house anyway. Apart from that one vehicle, there were only cars that he had seen before and all of them were empty; it was six thirty and the majority of them belonged to people who had arrived home from work. There was nowhere else that his house could be watched from – if anyone wanted to see him or to learn his routine, it would have to be done from here. He would wait another ten minutes, and then go home himself.

  He hadn’t told them everything, of course; there was no point in burdening anyone else with the likely reason why Everett had wanted the number of a straight copper in Kings Lake. He had made something of a joke of it but afterwards John Murray had come to him alone and said, ‘And you never knew this Everett character at all?’ When Smith confirmed it, there was an undisguised look of puzzlement on the tall man’s face – like Waters before him, he had realized that the reason why Everett had that phone number might be the key to understanding what had happened to him. Murray had thought it over some more, looked at Smith and then nodded his acceptance, but it was an acceptance that while he had been told the truth, he might not have been told the whole truth. He had worked with Smith for a number of years. If something was being held back, there would be a reason for that, too.

  So Sandra Fellowes had lied about the letter – she had said that she had not received one for at least year, and he had believed her because it was an easy assumption that Lucky Everett would not be a big reader or writer. Fair enough, he had not asked whether she had sent any letters, so that was not exactly a lie, and as far as visits were concerned, she had not lied about that either but under normal circumstances anyone holding the conversation that they had about Everett would have mentioned that they had planned to visit him, that they were actually about to visit him before he was killed. She had not mentioned it but then the circumstances surrounding the whole business were far from normal. Tomorrow is Friday – he would find the time to drive up to Roydon Hill again and confront her about it, though once again she had committed no crime as such except perhaps wasting police time because he really should be concentrating on other matters. Waters had been too late for the school secretary but he would get that done in the morning. Something to do with the girl had been bothering Sandra Fellowes and that might be why Diver and Diver were involved – there was probably no connection at all to Lionel Everett’s demise. Had he not himself told Waters that these people lived their lives in a realm called ongoing chaos?

  A fat, middle-aged man in a white boiler suit came out of one of the houses on the right-hand side of the road and climbed into the van. Moments later it shuddered into life with a puff of diesel smoke, and pulled away. Smith watched it go, shook his head a little at his own foolishness and then drove on into his own driveway.

  Jo Evison rang him at exactly seven thirty, and he wondered whether she arranged things that way in her mind – did she do things impulsively or did she think to herself, say at six forty five, I must ring Smith this evening and I will do so in forty five minutes? If the latter, why forty five? Finishing her own meal or trying to avoid his own? Or any one of a hundred other reasons... Despite the times that they had spent in each other’s company, all four of them, he acknowledged that she was a successfully private person.

  ‘I’ve been wondering all week what had happened to you.’

  Her tone was light and amused but behind it there might be just a hint of reproach – he could not be sure.

  ‘And I’ve been wondering how you joined it up to what happened in Littlemoor. Just how well-connected are you?’

  ‘It really was just a guess. I’m a news junky – I read all the little bits and there was a mention of it on the Sunday afternoon, just a one-short-paragraph item. I thought, that’s not far away from you and it’s the kind of thing that would involve phone calls on people’s weekend off. Presumably he was someone that you knew.’

  When he began to tell her the story, she said the usual things, that he did not need to say anything about it at all, that she understood the need for confidentiality even when he pointed out that as a case it had virtually nothing to do with him – but every time that they had met, it had been to talk about violent death. It was what had brought them together in the first place, wasn’t it? He didn’t actually say that, of course, but the thought was there in his mind at least, and it was a little macabre.

  But she was fascinated by the phone number in Lucky Everett’s cell, and came back to it when he had told her not quite the whole story.

  ‘So the inmate who gave him the number didn’t know why he wanted it? Did he also give him your name, or was it just the number?’

  She had asked the pertinent questions, and now he had to decide whether to tell her everything. That he wanted to, he could acknowledge – the reason why he wanted to do so was the issue. Was it the need to have someone away from the job – and she was, in the literal sense –with whom he could share the burdens of the job? He had had that once but had managed perfectly well since. Perfectly well... So in the end, when he told her, it was, he told himself, purely for operational reasons, to see if her mind came to the same unpleasant conclusion.

  She repeated it – ‘He wanted to get in touch with a straight copper?’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘Now I can see why it’s bothering you.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Obviously. It’s all you’ve talked about for the last ten minutes.’

  ‘But – you asked me. I’ve been answering your questions!’

  ‘Yes, true, but you don’t normally go into this much detail. It’s clearly on your mind, and I can completely see why. And it’s a horrible thing to confront. How are you going to play it at Kings Lake?’

  The smile that played briefly around his mouth was a rueful one; he had the sense that he had tripped over his own conversational shoelace.

  ‘I doubt it will come to anything, to be honest. But what about you? You said you had some news. What’s bothering you?’

  She picked it up straight away and laughed, but he sensed that it was something she had almost been avoiding, that the distraction of his own story had been a welcome one for her.

  ‘Oh, yes, there is something. I was going to mention on Saturday afternoon. Events took over, I suppose.’

  ‘They do that.’

  She was searching for the words.

  ‘So, it’s about the book – or the plan. This German thing has sort of morphed into something else. A couple of guest lectures has somehow become a term’s work. They’ve asked me to commit to it from September to Christmas.’

  ‘Congratulations. As a profiler or an author?’

  ‘As a lecturer – but it’s both, really. It will raise my own profile, if that doesn’t sound too calculating, and it will give me some good connections in Europe. The money is ridiculously generous but it’s part of an initiative backed by the Konrad-Adenauer foundation. I don’t think I can turn it down.’

  ‘Why would you? I was serious about the congratulations. Well done.’

  ‘It means that I’m going to have to put other things
on hold. The Andretti book. I don’t want to start that off properly and then drop it. I’m sorry about that.’

  Smith walked to the French windows, turned the key and pushed them open. The blackbird flew up off the lawn and sat regarding him from the holly bush.

  ‘There’s no need to be. You always said that it was only a possibility, and a long way off if it happened at all. I didn’t buy a new suit ready for the launch at The Savoy.’

  ‘No, but I am sorry. And I’d sort of started getting into it, after meeting some of the parents. I’d been thinking of a lot more questions that I wanted to ask you.’

  The bird opened its bill and a few tentative notes spilled out onto the still evening air – low, soft notes to the hen bird hidden deep in the cherry laurel.

  Smith said, ‘That will all keep. Until Christmas, you said. So maybe this time next year.’

  ‘Yes. We should stay in touch.’

  ‘Definitely. I promised you a cookery lesson.’

  ‘Only if you really can catch enough fish...’

  Later, at his desk upstairs, he played over the conversation and its indefinite sense of ending. He could have made some proposal to meet again at the coast, where three of their four encounters had been, away from his home and far from hers, where they had talked without effort or simply enjoyed silence in each other’s company. He should have done so, but he had not. Still, by the sound of things she would be busy; researching, writing materials, conference phone calls, more flights to Germany would not leave much time for walking in the woods or fish and chips on the harbour wall.

  He copied the few details he had about the RSCU operation - and it was an operation now, rather than an initiative - from his working notebook into his archive copy, but only mechanically and through force of habit, adding nothing new at all. The last thing he wrote was the name of the tattooed man. Then he closed the notebooks and looked around the study. Everything was in its place, as it had been for a long time. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was half past eight. Murray and Waters would be watching something or someone. He could give them a ring, just to see; it would not be entirely unexpected, and in the end that’s why he did not do it.