Persons of Interest

by Peter Grainger

  As he had expected, there was no chance of getting a tracker fitted to the car, not on a Sunday morning. Reeve had said maybe tomorrow, if you’re really sure it’s needed, and he hadn’t pushed if after that – if he had, they might have wanted to know more, to evaluate, as they would say, this new development for themselves. He told her that Murray would be in shortly but that he was still a man short – DCI Cara Freeman frowned at that but he didn’t respond – of the four that he needed to keep a watch on the car for any length of time. She nodded and went to her briefcase at the back of the incident room.

  When he had entered, they hadn’t turned off the smart-screen or made haste to cover up the documents and diagrams on the desk but Smith had felt it – the sense that he was an intruder. Freeman was in jeans and a sweatshirt, and Harry Alexander had also cut loose; he had taken off his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. On a side-table were empty coffee cups, branded paper ones, and the packaging from take-away food that must have been eaten last night, or at least he hoped so – but there was an open bag of doughnuts as well, and he could smell that those had been brought in this morning. And so, being an intruder, he stayed close to the doorway, not able to see all of the image on the smart-screen but able to see enough to recognize that it was an aerial shot of Kings Lake docks. There wasn’t a single one of those wharves that he hadn’t walked along over the years.

  Smith stood at ease, waiting for Reeve to come back to him and looking at nothing in particular – the Army could teach you to do that. Harry Alexander offered him a doughnut and he declined; that brought another silence, so that the refusal itself felt like an act of insurrection. DCI Freeman busied herself with a folder on the main table. The air-conditioning sighed, and then the screen went blank but no-one touched anything to make it come on again. When Reeve made her way back towards him, the relief was palpable.

  ‘Have you asked Sergeant Wilson if he can put in any time today?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Why not, DC?’

  ‘It’s not my place, ma’am. He’s not part of my team – he has his own team.’

  The implication that this was her responsibility was not wrong, but she looked at him as if he was punishing her for something, and the thought occurred to him that he might be. He didn’t feel good about that but he felt worse about the time that was being wasted, and the fact that Mike Dunn was still out there on his own.

  ‘I’ll ring him now. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything. Will you be in your office?’

  Neatly dismissed, then. He didn’t often feel annoyed these days, and when he did it was usually at himself for making mistakes that experience had taught him to avoid rather than at the foolishness or carelessness of others. As he went down the stairs, he tried to fit the present situation into that scenario – he must be looking at this in the wrong way.

  His mobile rang and he thought, Mike Dunn, they’re moving and we’ve missed it. Opening the phone he saw a mobile number and underneath it the message “Number not recognized”. He let it ring until he was back in his office with the door closed; then he pressed “Accept” and waited. The voice said hello three times and then he realized who it was.

  ‘Mr Routh, what can I do for you? Someone double-parked and stopping you getting to church?’

  ‘That is Smith, yeah?’

  ‘It is. I have to say, Stuart, that when I gave you that card I imagined that you’d roll it up and poke into the end of a spliff.’

  ‘I never touch the stuff. Look, we’ve got to talk.’

  ‘Have we? I don’t feel the compelling urge unless you’ve got something useful to say this time.’

  ‘Not on the phone. The jetty down at The Saltings, you must know it.’

  ‘Yes... But I don’t know why I’d want to be standing down there with you, even though it is a lovely morning. Who else is turning up?’

  ‘No-one else. You don’t bring anyone, not even just sitting in the car. Drive yourself. And no wires or any of that crap, alright?’

  The door opened – it was Alison Reeve. He said ‘Just a moment’ into the phone and then looked at her.

  She said. ‘John’s doing it. He’s phoning Mike Dunn and they’ll arrange how to meet up.’

  Smith thanked her, his hand over the phone as if it was an old-fashioned mouthpiece, and waited.

  Reeve said, ‘Is everything OK? Upstairs just now, you seemed...’

  ‘Preoccupied, ma’am.’

  She didn’t want to go any further with it, and closed the door. He should have told her who was on the phone and what he had been asked to do but there was enough static in the air as it was, and absolutely no chance that Stuart Routh would talk to anyone but himself or John Murray. Why had Routh called him rather than Murray? That was interesting, too. It was decision time.

  ‘When, Stuart?’

  ‘Half an hour. Park in the village and walk out to the end of the jetty. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  The call ended there. Routh was seriously wound up about something, and that meant it would be worth the risk. Smith began to write a note to leave on his desk, and then remembered his earlier visitor. Instead, he sent a text to Murray explaining where he was going and why – at least that way they would know where to start dragging the river.

  The Saltings has a charm but one not quite all of its own, for there are still similar places on that part of the coastline, protected once by their isolation and the single-track roads that lead into them, and now by the taste and money of those who have retired there or who have bought up the tiny flint and sandstone cottages as weekend retreats. The creek that winds down into The Wash runs inland for a few miles, forcing the road from Kings Lake into a wide loop – from the little quay at the The Saltings, the town is just visible on the southern horizon but it takes a good twenty minutes to reach it by car from Lake Central police station.

  Smith was not surprised to see no-one standing on the jetty when he arrived. In Routh’s position he would have done the same – park up somewhere nearby and watch to see that Smith was doing as he had been told. It might even have been from here that Stuart Routh had phoned – that way he could be certain that nobody else had been invited. As to why Routh was behaving like this, that was not so obvious.

  From the end of the jetty, he could see that the tide was flowing strongly, and when he looked down into the water the long streamers of green weed that grew from the stone walls were waving in the current. It reminded him of the sea wall at Pinehills, of Jo Evison catching their tea and of the fact that he had not yet had time to call her or even to reply to her text. Something had turned up, something odd, she had said.

  Stuart Routh appeared on the quay, walking quickly as if to make up for lost time. Smith took out the packet of cigarettes and lit one, grateful for something to do – anyone who pretends that these situations are not a little tense is at least a fool and probably a liar. One thing he had noticed – the less you smoke, the more enjoyable it becomes.

  ‘What the effing hell are you people doing?’

  ‘Yes, I was just thinking myself what a beautiful morning it is, Stuart...’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about the bloody weather, Smith. I said what the effing hell are you people doing?’

  Routh was standing a few feet away, on the landward side of the jetty and already he had looked back twice at the Sunday morning sleepiness of the hamlet. On the saltmarsh to the north were the minute figures of two dog-walkers – no-one else was in sight at that moment. A solitary gull was hanging effortlessly over the water, not far from them and no doubt imagining that the prospects of an easy breakfast had just improved; Smith half turned to look at it and thought, I reckon that’s another Lesser Black-backed one, and then he wondered why Jo Evison’s boyfriend had emigrated to Australia. The tension had gone, and he felt no need to answer Routh’s questions.

  ‘Stuart, it’s Sunday but beli
eve it or not, I’m busy. If you’ve got anything useful to say, say it.’

  Routh looked even worse than before – pale, drawn, unshaven. He stared at the cigarette Smith was smoking and then took out a packet of his own. When Smith didn’t offer him a light, he searched through his pockets for a lighter, and when he lit it, his hands were trembling.

  ‘About an hour ago, I got a phone call. I hadn’t heard from them in a while. They’re telling me that someone’s got the police involved, that you lot are sniffing round.’

  ‘Anything specific? What I mean is, in their, in your line of work, it can’t come as a complete shock, can it?’

  ‘He didn’t go into details but someone was arrested last night. He said there are too many people asking too many questions.’

  Arrested? It was possible that RSCU were carrying out operations that were not being shared with the poor bloody infantry, of course, but he had had no sense of any significant developments when he was in the incident room, at about the time Routh had received his phone call. There was Katherine Diver – but she had been taken in for elbowing the innocent, not for anything directly related to the investigation. At least, not as far as he could see... Strange possibilities began to materialize, if a thought can in any sense be material. She had said, hadn’t she, “I’m not stupid”? Was he missing something here, after all? The Divers themselves had only been in town for a few months, about the same time as Mr Tattoo and his Albanian muscles. It was ridiculous but... And then he remembered that they had a leak anyway, and it was all too complicated to sort out here and now.

  ‘I take it they were making threats?’

  ‘These bastards don’t make threats, they make promises. He said if it was anything to do with me, you lot turning up, then Cam would suffer.’

  ‘What exactly did he say about that? Come on, Stuart. You know I’m all about the details.’

  ‘He said that if they thought it was me talking, he’ll be coming home in pieces.’

  ‘Did he say anything about the girl?’

  ‘No, but I don’t suppose it would be any different for her, not after what she’ll have seen and heard in the past three weeks.’

  Smith drew on the cigarette and all his experience as he studied the man in front of him – this all looked and sounded genuine.

  ‘We’re talking about ‘him’ and ‘he’. Do you know who it was who phoned this morning?’

  This was the line, of course. If Routh stepped over it, he was a material witness, one who could be asked to stand up in the courtroom and point the finger at some of those involved. Simultaneously he would be admitting his own guilt in other criminal matters, and no British police officer can promise anyone in that position that further charges will not follow. Routh had never sat in a lecture room and learned this but he could see the line as clearly as Smith, and that explained his silence.

  ‘Stuart, we’re running out of time. When I said I was busy, I wasn’t having a laugh – I’m busy on all this business. I’m going to take a punt here and say that the man who called you today was a heavily-illustrated sort of bloke that you’ve met before. You can just nod or shake your head if you’re still feeling paranoid but no-one’s filming us and I’m not wearing a wire. A wire? Really? We’ve all been watching too much TV.’

  It took another four or five seconds and then Routh nodded. Useful. DCI Freeman had told them that the Routh brothers had been involved with whatever was happening before relations turned sour, and Smith now thought that must be true. If so, it meant that in a future case, Routh was more than a material witness – he was a key one.

  ‘Stuart. How much do you want him back?’

  Routh flinched at the question, in pain and angry enough to lash out.

  ‘Because that’s what this might come down to. So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and it’s up to you, then. One – do you believe that Cam and Tina are still alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So do I. Two – do you know where they are? It’s not a daft question; maybe you do but you’re too scared to go after them. So do you know?’

  ‘No, no effing idea. I was just going along with it until you turned up. I swear, if anything happens to him, it’s not just those bastards I’ll kill. If you-’

  ‘If I what, Stuart? It’s not my fault they’re in this mess, is it? Two youngsters, innocent victims. It wasn’t me who got involved with these people, who thought, I’m clever enough to play in the big league now, was it?’

  The anger had drained out of Routh as quickly as it had come; he looked even weaker after it, as if the gentle breeze blowing down the river might be enough to carry him out to sea like thistledown.

  ‘So my question was, how much do you want him back? We’ll keep looking now, hard, but you can walk away and hope it turns out alright. Or you can tell me something that I really need to know, something that, if I know it, might help to keep your brother alive, never mind that girl who should be taking her exams this week. Talking of people with a future, do you know Mr Pennington?’

  ‘Who? Never heard of him. What’s he got to do with any of it?’

  ‘He’s Cam’s boss at the cabinet-makers’ place.’

  ‘Oh, right. He phoned me up.’

  ‘Do you know why he phoned you up?’

  Routh was silent.

  ‘He bothered to phone up because they rate your brother. They didn’t want to lose him.’

  Routh walked to the edge of the jetty, his mouth working around the stub of the cigarette. Then he took it out and threw it into the water. It hissed and began to drift upriver with the tide. The gull swooped half-heartedly, saw its mistake and swung out again across the broadening stream.

  ‘So what’s this question – this thing you really need to know?’

  ‘It’s the thing that makes us really cross, Stuart. Never mind the drugs, the violence, the wasted resources and wasted lives – there’s a bent copper involved. If anything is guaranteed to get us off our backsides, that’s it. It’s my guess he’s been bent for a while and that you had dealings with him before he was bought by the opposition – in fact, that’s how they found him, through you.’

  Routh put his hands into his pockets and watched Smith, his expression unchanged by anything said so far.

  ‘And you can see how this affects your brother – at least I hope you can. If we start getting close, and this piece of scum passed the word along? I don’t need to draw you a picture. The best you can hope for is that they move them. The worst doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  He was there now, Routh, his toes almost touching the line, his eyes looking back at Smith. He had to back away or step over it – there was no sideways any more.

  ‘I need you to say the name, Stuart. And then I’ll need a few details. I’m all about the details.’

  Alison Reeve had not sat down, which meant that she was annoyed – or perhaps not annoyed as much as uncomfortable because she had to say something and John Murray was present now. She would rather have said what she had to say one to one – Smith knew that and she knew that he knew it, so the fact that Murray was here was deliberate on Smith’s part.

  ‘This isn’t a reprimand, DC, but I’d rather you had told me where you were going this morning. I need to say that before we take whatever you’ve found up to Harry, just in case he raises the point himself.’

  It was Harry now. Amazing how quickly some people get on first-name terms, but then, Harry was a free man these days, presumably, and Alison was looking quite fetching this morning – she hadn’t just thrown on that silk blouse and those nicely fitting jeans. Smith told himself off then for even going there when there were much more important things about to be said.

  ‘I came up but you were all quite busy this morning, and I was only going to see a concerned relative anyway, ma’am.’

  ‘A concerned relative who happens to be an important figure in the RSCU investigation.’

  ‘Yes, I see that, but I’m working on the other
bit, the one where the two young hostages are being held by the murderers. In that bit, Stuart Routh is a very concerned relative, and I felt that he needed to hear a reassuring voice. Sadly there wasn’t one available, so I went myself, ma’am.’

  The longer she allowed this to go on, the more she would feel that she was the one being reprimanded by someone who insisted on addressing her as ‘ma’am’, making the whole business infuriating and slightly absurd.

  ‘I take it that while you were reaching out to this concerned relative, something came up. That’s why you called me down, isn’t it?’

  Smith’s phone lay on the desk. He pressed the button to open it and then tapped the screen a couple of times. It began with the sound of Smith’s voice stating that it was such and such a time and that he was in such and such a place, and then there was a long pause, punctuated by occasional yelps that Murray and Reeve eventually realized was the sound of seagulls. After the pause, they began to hear the conversation that Smith had held with Stuart Routh on the jetty at The Saltings just over an hour ago.

  When she heard Smith say for the second time “I’m all about the details”, Reeve put up a hand and asked him to pause it. She looked at Murray and said, ‘I’m sorry, John, but I don’t want to burden you with this at the moment.’

  Murray got up slowly from the chair that faced Smith’s across the desk – he always looked taller than one expected when he did that – and smiled a genuine smile. It was one of the things that Smith most admired about him; he really didn’t give a toss about any of this nonsense.

  Murray said, ‘Can I get anyone a coffee? Being Sunday, I might have to make it myself, so you’ve been warned.’

  Smith said yes and Alison Reeve declined. When it was just the two of them, she said, ‘I’m assuming that Routh gave you a name.’

  ‘Yes he did.’

  ‘Did it come as a surprise?’