Persons of Interest

by Peter Grainger

  Each time she wobbled, Smith nodded and simply waited, sometimes saying something that to Waters seemed almost trite but which, nevertheless, seemed enough to calm her down so that she could continue. Another car had arrived and stopped in the middle of the road. Some men got out, two or three of them, and one of them hit Cameron Routh. Then they were dragging him back towards their car. Tina had gone across the road, leaving Sophie on the pavement outside the club. Tina got hold of one of the men, kicking and scratching him. They pushed her away two or three times but she kept going back, and then suddenly she too had disappeared inside the car, which was driven quickly away.

  Smith said, ‘What did Sophie do then?’

  ‘She phoned me. I went down there myself, I got next door to take me while his wife looked after the kids. I asked people about it, there was still a few standing about but no-one knew anything, or wanted to say. They all said it was over in a flash.’

  ‘And then what happened, afterwards?’

  There had to be something afterwards, of course, something that brought her brother into it; Waters could see that, but he could not imagine at that point what it might be. Could Smith?

  ‘I got a phone call on the Sunday afternoon. It was a bloke. He said that she wouldn’t come to any harm so long as we kept quiet – no police, he said. More than once he said that. That’s why I don’t want you here. If they’re watching? They said she’d come home as long as I just didn’t do nothing at all.’

  ‘But you did do something. You did more than one thing, didn’t you? It’s understandable, Sandra. You couldn’t just do nothing.’

  They had come to it again, the thing that had broken her down a few minutes before.

  ‘I lost it with this bloke on the phone.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said that they’d picked on the wrong people. I said if any harm came to her, we could find out who they were...’

  ‘You mentioned your brother? That’s who you meant when you said that, isn’t it?’

  She couldn’t say the words but the guilt in her eyes told them that it was so. Waters began to see it then, dimly, the scale of the picture on the puzzle that Smith was piecing together. It was immense.

  Smith said, ‘Did you give them his name, or tell them where he was?’

  ‘No.’

  But her look and the space that formed after the single syllable told them that she understood – they could find out the name, find out where he was, Lucky Everett, because they had the girl.

  Then Smith had become business-like. She had hired Diver and Diver because she had become desperate, but they had found nothing? Yes. She had heard nothing since? There was nothing else she should have told them? No. How could they reach Sophie Williams? At every question there was still the reluctance to say more, partly in fear for her daughter and partly simply because they were who they were – but her resistance could gain no traction against Smith’s systematic and thorough questioning. Thirty minutes after having the door slammed in his face, he seemed to be in complete control of the situation.

  Waters watched, no longer in surprise, as Smith got up from the table with the mugs, went over to the sink and rinsed them out. What would he, Waters, do next, if he was the one taking the decisions? He had no idea, other than that it would not involve going on into the town and continuing the intelligence-gathering routine – he was certain that they would now be returning to the station, and not at a leisurely pace.

  But Smith had not quite done here.

  Now he had the tea towel in his hands, drying the mugs and looking out through the kitchen window, doing the looking-away-from-her thing again as he spoke.

  ‘Sandra – I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see your brother again. But you know why he asked for that visiting order, don’t you? He had something for you, didn’t he?’

  She had turned to face him but Smith did not look away from the window, though he must have seen the movement.

  ‘The thing is that I know what it was, what he had for you. And because I know that, I also know there is something that you haven’t told me yet. There has to be, otherwise what he had for you doesn’t make a lot of sense, not to me, at any rate. Now, I know I’m getting past it but my young colleague there is as sharp as a tack, and he’ll have seen this as well, and probably before me.’

  She looked at him then, and Waters uttered a silent prayer that he would not be asked to explain this remarkable insight – he felt about as sharp as a pair of plastic scissors.

  Smith said quietly, ‘It was something to do with the police, Sandra. And I do understand why you haven’t told me this yet...’

  Smith had turned to look at her then, and he saw what Waters could see – a mixture of astonishment and fear. She looked back at them both in turn, and she even looked at the open kitchen door, as if she was contemplating making a dash for it, but the reality was that she had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

  Smith spoke again – ‘So who was it? The man on the phone?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Stuart Routh came to see me on the Monday morning.’

  ‘That was Monday the 4th, the Monday after she was taken?’ and when she nodded he signalled to Waters to write that down. But how on earth had Smith retained all the dates already when he had as yet written nothing himself?

  ‘Good. Go on. What did Mr Routh have to say?’

  ‘It was me did most of the talking. I said to him that this was too serious to be messing about. Whatever he was mixed up in, their lives weren’t worth it, not my daughter’s and not his brother’s – we should go to the police.’

  ‘And what did he have to say to that?’

  ‘He just laughed and said there was no effing point, not when this lot have got them stitched up as well. He said he would sort it out himself.’

  ‘When he said “them stitched up”, what did you think he meant?’

  She looked momentarily mystified – how could the same man who had found the one thing she had wanted to conceal and got her to say it be, at the same time, so stupid?

  ‘The police.’

  ‘The Kings Lake police?’

  ‘I don’t know – I suppose so. There aren’t any other sort round here, are there?’

  Smith said, ‘And you mentioned that in your letter to Lionel, which you must have written on the same day more or less, because he got it on the Wednesday. He wrote back to you saying what?’

  Waters saw that they were at that point again, the point at which she could not avoid the weight and the pain of her responsibility. He made ready to reach for the kitchen roll.

  ‘He said he’d look into it, he’d ask around.’

  Smith nodded then and looked, strangely, a little weary for a moment, as if the whole business had been somewhat predictable after all. He stood up and told Sandra Fellowes what to do, which was basically to do nothing but wait, to call him, Smith, if she heard anything. They would need to speak to her again, but they would be discreet, though it was unlikely that she was being watched, not after three weeks. The people who had threatened her would, sadly, have assumed that she had learned her lesson.

  She didn’t cry again, but in the hallway, before Smith opened the door, she spoke to him.

  ‘You said you knew what he had for me.’

  She wanted something, wanted every last little fragment that belonged to her dead brother, of course.

  Smith said, ‘Yes, I did.’

  She waited, patiently. He was a very odd sort of policeman but she thought that he would tell her this thing.

  ‘It was a phone number. He did look into it. It was pretty clever of him to get it.’

  Incredibly, she managed a smile at that.

  ‘A phone number. Do you know whose it was?’

  ‘Yes. It was mine.’

  She stared at him, disbelieving, and then looked up at Waters. He nodded and said that it was true. Apart from pouring the tea, he thought that that was the first useful thing he had
done all morning.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘My God, Smith.’

  It was an interesting exclamation, and one open to a number of interpretations, as Smith himself would have happily pointed out in different company. Waters looked round the room, at the pictures that hung on the walls, mostly photographs – Detective Superintendent Allen with friends on a golf course, Detective Superintendent Allen holding a fish, Detective Superintendent Allen wearing a full evening suit accompanied by a short, serious-looking woman in a shiny dress who could only be his wife.

  It was Waters’ first official visit to the Superintendent’s room. His presence had been questioned, quietly but not quietly enough, by the said superintendent – Waters had not heard Alison Reeve’s justification for it but he could guess what it had been; it was the fact that he had been present when a serious allegation had been made concerning an officer or officers at Kings Lake Central. Waters was a part of that now whether they liked it or not.

  Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman and Detective Inspector Alison Reeve were also present now – extra chairs had been sent for – and they both waited for the superintendent to say more. He was obviously going to say more.

  ‘Even by your standards, this is a sodding mess, isn’t it? What is it they say? Chaos has made its masterpiece?’

  ‘I think it’s confusion, sir.’

  ‘Confusion? That’s an understatement if ever I heard one!’

  ‘No, sir. It’s the quotation – “Confusion now has made his masterpiece”. It’s from ‘Macbeth’, sir.’

  Allen glanced round at the assembled officers; there was something a little wild about his eyes.

  ‘Well, Macbeth was right, wasn’t he? It’s what he would say if he was confronted with all this!’

  ‘It was actually MacDuff who said it, sir.’

  ‘I don’t give a f- ... a fig who said it, Smith. We’re not here for a literary criticism seminar, are we? We are one week into a major operation involving God knows how many men – sorry, officers -’ with an apologetic glance towards Freeman and Reeve, ‘at God knows what cost, and now you’ve thrown a spanner into the works. It’s not a spanner – it’s a whole box of them, it’s a whole tool-box, it’s a ...’

  Allen seemed to be struggling for the image that would complete his group of three but no-one offered to assist, not even Smith. The superintendent took a breath and composed himself – there were ladies present, after all.

  ‘Smith, how on earth did you end up questioning a woman who is a material witness in another force’s murder investigation? In case you haven’t realized it yet, the key phrase in that question is “another force’s”.’

  Smith said, ‘Thank you, sir. It’s helpful to have it made as clear as that. It all goes back to the phone number thing last weekend.’

  ‘Good grief. Is it really less than a week since I was called in here to sort that out? It’s starting to feel like an eternity.’

  ‘Tempus fugit, sir.’

  ‘Eh? More Shakespeare? I’m not over-fond of all these quotations. They really don’t help in situations like this.’

  Waters was watching DCI Cara Freeman’s face as she followed the exchanges; surprise was competing with amusement, it seemed, and it was a pretty even contest so far.

  Allen said, ‘Look, we’ve got to get a handle on all this. Smith, have you been interfering in that investigation or have you actually been communicating with Huntingdon?’

  Waters saw no movement in Smith but he knew there would have been an inward stiffening at that; if asked for name, Smith would not give it, not here and now. It was a dangerous moment.

  Smith said, ‘I’ve kept in touch with someone, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s one small relief. Next, do you believe what this Fellowes woman has told you about her daughter and one of the Routh boys? Have they really been kidnapped? It sounds absurd when I say it, to be honest.’

  ‘I think it is true, sir. Mrs Fellowes isn’t stupid and it didn’t sound absurd when I heard what she had to say. She was genuinely distressed.’

  The eyes of the two men locked across the table, and Waters avoided looking at the two women. Several seconds passed before Allen spoke again.

  ‘DI Reeve – for DCI Freeman’s benefit, tell us about the Routh brothers.’

  There was a palpable sense of relief that the meeting was about to move on. Reeve tapped her iPad and began to speak, hardly glancing down at the notes she had made a few minutes earlier.

  ‘This is based on a conversation I had with DC John Murray this morning – he knows the situation on the ground in that part of Kings Lake better than anyone else, and anything that we decide operationally should have his input, in my opinion...’

  The three brothers had grown up in Kings Lake, in the Towers district, but the family had moved down from Scotland in the late eighties. Stuart, at thirty two, was the eldest and the dominant figure; in his teens and early twenties there had been numerous encounters with the law and he had served one short sentence for conspiracy to supply a Class A drug. Malcom Routh had a similar record but had served two sentences, both involving violence related to the family business, which for a number of years had been supplying skunk to the young people of Kings Lake. Cameron was the youngest by several years. When he was eighteen he had driven a car through the shop window of a department store in the town centre, under the influence of the large amount of alcohol consumed on his birthday – that was his only recorded offence but as he had no job that they knew of and no other obvious means of support, it was assumed that he too was a part of Routh Enterprises.

  DCI Freeman said, ‘How long have they been running their show in Lake?’

  Reeve answered – ‘About five years.’

  ‘And we’ve managed to put them away three times, and only once for a directly drugs-related offence?’

  It was clearly a royal “we’ve” – she meant “you’ve”.

  Smith looked at Superintendent Allen, and realized that he was going to say nothing in defence of his detective inspector – and so it was Smith himself who answered the question.

  ‘With respect, ma’am, we don’t set the agenda as far as priorities are concerned. When cannabis was downgraded to Class C, it had effectively been legalized in most people’s minds, including the CPS. It fell off the end of our list of priorities for five years. When it went up again to Class B in what, 2009, I don’t remember any instruction to go after the people involved again, and I certainly don’t recall any increase in funding to do that.’

  Freeman was listening. When he paused, she said, ‘Go on, sergeant.’

  ‘We can pick people up on the street easily enough, and we do - I asked for the figures this week after your meeting - but we’re encouraged to use the cannabis warning if we think it’s an ounce or less. Those warnings don’t even appear in a CRB check. What sort of message are we sending? Is it legal or isn’t it? As for the Routh boys, the only one I’ve encountered personally is Stuart. He’s hard and he’s bright, but he doesn’t, as far as we know, deal in anything other than the skunk that we only give warnings for if-’

  Freeman interrupted him.

  ‘Excuse me? DI Reeve said he was put away for conspiracy to supply Class A.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. In 2008 if my memory is correct. We’ve no evidence that he’s done that since. You could say that prison taught him a lesson – only supply substances that have effectively been decriminalised.’

  DCI Freeman allowed herself a little smile before she responded.

  ‘Fair enough. So you haven’t really gone after these people – whatever the reasons.’

  Smith looked at his two senior officers, neither of whom seemed inclined to speak.

  ‘Stuart Routh knows the town, and he knows his business. We can pick up his boys on a regular basis, and we do now and then, but they’ll never give you anything against him. He takes care of them and their families, and they know it – he’s a better safety net than social
security. You’ll never find his fingerprints on a package, and you’ll never find a package in any vehicle registered to him or his brothers. It’s a while since I was involved in it but I guarantee we’ll never get anything from his phone or his email or whatever. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘But now someone has taken him on.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. That’s the interesting bit in all this. And I imagine it’s where you come in.’

  Waters thought - and that’s it, it’s about making the connection just a split second earlier than other people. Freeman was nodding but looking away, giving herself time to think. Was she wondering what to say, or whether she should say what she was thinking?

  ‘I think it probably is, sergeant. I’ll share with you pretty much everything that we have – I don’t really have an alternative now that the whole operation may have just altered direction.’

  Superintendent Allen shifted uncomfortably in his high-backed, black leather chair.

  Freeman said, ‘We have some inside intelligence – and that’s not for public knowledge – which tells us that the people we are dealing with are not undertaking some sort of nationwide expansion programme. They are not reaching out to all major urban centres and making offers that no-one can refuse. In fact, as far as we can tell, it’s only Kings Lake. Now, although it’s a growing town, it isn’t the most obvious choice for these people to move into – and that’s what they seem to have done a few months ago. As I said, not the most obvious choice, but we do think that we know why you have been selected...’

  She clearly wanted a response, some sort of suggestion. The idea that Waters had had came to him from nowhere – it was simply the first thing that entered his mind. But he couldn’t just say it, not in this sort of company. Smith’s head turned a little towards him, the familiar frown between the eyebrows and then a slight nod.