In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Whoever was in charge did the whole let’s-keep-him-waiting-make-him-sweat-thing for a little over ten minutes. This surely showed at the very least a lack of respect for his own professional status, and he was in no doubt that whoever he was waiting for would know all about that; the alternative – that he had been randomly pulled out for inspection by a Customs and Excise girl who resembled a Miss World contestant, and her pet gorilla – did not deserve serious consideration. What he did begin to consider was whether any of this had anything to do with Lorcan Quinn.

  The man who finally opened the door was younger than he had expected. Younger, and, like the girl, casually dressed in expensive jeans and one of those annoying sweat-shirts that claim the wearer has some sort of affinity with a famous American university. Medium height and medium build, unremarkable except for the eyes, which were quick and busy – eyes that appraised Smith in the moment before he reached the desk, put the unmarked wallet file down upon it and took one of the facing chairs.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Colgate.’

  ‘Good morning.’

  It was a game, the whole name thing – Smith sensed that immediately, even before the man smiled at his response. It would be interesting to see whether his interlocutor gave his own name and position now; he should if he was playing by the rules.

  ‘I believe that you have been in Belfast for a few days.’

  ‘As the ferry set sail from there less than an hour ago, that’s a reasonable deduction.’

  He has a nice smile though, I’ll say that for him. These customs officers are obviously happy in their work. Smith nodded some encouragement and smiled himself, inviting the youngster to have another go.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what’s in the case?’

  Smith looked down at it for some seconds, frowning, and then back at whoever he was.

  ‘It’s a guitar.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He looked again and frowned again.

  ‘As sure as I can be. It’s very guitar-shaped…’

  ‘I ask because if one simply accepts an item of luggage at the gates of a terminal without thoroughly checking the contents, one could – well, one could be carrying anything across a border.’

  ‘I suppose one could.’

  He looked down at it for a third time and then said, ‘But my money’s still on it being a guitar. That looks like the safest bet to me.’

  ‘I suppose we ought to check at some point.’

  ‘Be my guest. But if you wanted a go, it’ll be at least thirty years out of tune.’

  Smith didn’t want to sit in here all day – he had given the fellow an opening, a free pawn to move things forward.

  ‘Was this your first visit to Belfast?’

  A better question than it first appeared – this was more like it. As Christopher Colgate, of course, the answer would be yes; in either of his other two identities, the answer was no. In view of that, and in view of the fact that he was vaguely annoyed with himself because he had clearly walked into a trip wire at some point – or through a laser beam or whatever they have these days – there was only one answer that he could possibly give.

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Would you care to explain?’

  He would and he did. It was a simplified and somewhat sanitised version of the truth that named no names other than his own. He acknowledged that in travelling under an assumed name in this way he had possibly committed some sort of offence; on the other hand, as the passport involved had been given to him by Her Majesty’s own government, it might be an awkward one to bring to court. At the end, the man briefly lifted the flap of the file, read something and closed it again.

  ‘Well, thank you for saving us a little time, Mr Smith. Or would you prefer “David”?’

  ‘My colleagues call me DC.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And so your visit had absolutely nothing to do with the purchase of coffins?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Is that what you are looking into – evasion of duty on funeral goods?’

  A longer pause this time. Smith considered the possibilities; was the man, despite his calm, a little inexperienced and showing off with the comment about the nickname and the coffins? Both were completely unnecessary unless the intention was to make the interviewee understand that he had been thoroughly observed since his arrival in Belfast, and that his history before that had been equally thoroughly researched. But Smith already understood that now, just as he understood that these people were no more Customs and Excise personnel than his own grandmother had been.

  ‘I think on reflection that I will address you as Detective Sergeant – that might help focus both our minds. You have been good enough to be reasonably open about what you have been doing here, and so, to save time, I will return the favour. Do you believe that you have been successful in finding the remains of Mr O’Neill?’

  Again, Smith had not given him that name. It looked very much as if they were playing Texas Hold’em now.

  ‘We won’t know for certain for a day or two at least but that is my belief.’

  ‘And one of the ways in which you accomplished this was, in your own words, through “looking up a few old acquaintances”. It is these acquaintances that are of some interest to me.’

  The preliminaries were over at last. His best guess was some leafy offshoot of Military Intelligence, section 5, though it was a misnomer these days – they would not be reporting back to the armed forces and had not done so since the end of the Cold War.

  ‘Anyone in particular?’

  The man inched up his sleeve and checked his watch before he answered. Two things impressed Smith at that moment; it was a nice, precise touch, and the watch was, like his own, a Rolex, though a much more modern version. Le Carre could have written this bit.

  ‘A little under forty eight hours ago, you met with a member of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly. I’d like you to tell me what you talked about.’

  Chapter Twenty Two

  ‘I’m sure you would!’

  The laughter was brief but genuine, and the security man looked as if he was inclined to join in.

  ‘I don’t need all the details, Detective Sergeant. The political situation in the province is a complex and evolving one-’

  ‘They usually are, political situations.’

  ‘And the shifts in power sometimes have implications. As I say, I don’t need a lot of details but I was hoping that you might be able to at least confirm something for me.’

  ‘What, exactly?’

  Back to the folder, holding it open this time and angled so that nothing could be read from Smith’s side of the desk.

  ‘Last Friday morning in Kings Lake Central police station, your computer terminal was used to access a file relating to an incident that took place in Belfast exactly the same number of years ago as you say this guitar is out of tune. That’s…odd. I would like to know whether the contents of that file were referred to in any way during your conversation with the elected member.’

  So, that was one of the face-down cards that Smith had not been able to see or predict. It was a good one, and his mind was already moving quickly forward, assessing the dangers for the person he had almost inadvertently involved. The security man looked up, still with a pleasant expression, and waiting, probably giving him a head-start, that was all. He would not be far behind, and so it proved.

  ‘Detective Sergeant, I know that you were in Belfast last Friday morning. Someone accessed that file on your behalf – it is impossible to accept that by some coincidence another person in Kings Lake accessed it while you just happened to be in Belfast. Impossible to accept unless there was some sort of relevant investigation going on over in Kings Lake. But there isn’t – I have checked. You are here on personal business.’

  Smith didn’t answer. It is best, often, not to answer when no question has been asked. How many times had he sat across from smart people who understood that perfectly well?

  ‘As I say, pe
rsonal business, your own business, and something that you are perfectly entitled to engage in. However, as you know, you are not entitled to use your access to the ACRO database in pursuit of such personal business. If you have allowed or encouraged another officer to access the database using your own security, you have committed an offence. So has the officer who did it on your behalf. I don’t have a list of the names of people on duty in Kings Lake that morning as yet, but I can have it easily enough. I imagine it would have been a member of your own team, so that will narrow it down. He – or she – is potentially in serious trouble.’

  That must be his main play. They would have examined Smith’s own record and realised that he didn’t have much to lose but his pension. He might be vulnerable, though, through his junior officers and colleagues – who might have said such a thing, had they been asked? Or had this rather sharp young man worked that out for himself? He probably had the list of names already; the “or she” gave that away.

  ‘Sergeant, you’re thinking to yourself, so what? We’ve all done it, it’s a slap on the wrist. And it is, unless they’ve had a phone call from someone like me. Then it isn’t.’

  ‘Someone like you? I think we’re past the moment at which you should have told me exactly who or what someone like you is. Please forgive the grammar.’

  ‘Understandable under the circumstances, sergeant. But do you mean you have forgotten us? You do not already know? You surprise me. I accept that I am eminently forgettable – even if you had seen me before – but my colleague surely is not. It is an extra hurdle that she has to overcome in her career. Fortunately, she has many other qualities.’

  A man that he had not seen but should have remembered, and a girl that he had seen and should not have forgotten… Her face looking at him from the car that had trapped his own against the kerb, wagging a finger when he tried to pull away, her phone to her ear and then her expression changing when he told Waters to back off, to let Hanna Subic go so that these people could not find Petar Subic through her.

  ‘Dominic Fox.’

  ‘I’d like to say at your service but it would hardly be appropriate. However, I am pleased to meet you at last, Detective Sergeant Smith. You’ll be wondering already, why me again, how has fate been so cruel? That’s easily explained. When Christopher Colgate left England, all sorts of bells and whistles went off, I expect. I wasn’t involved then, obviously. But when it was discovered who Mr Colgate actually was and that name went into the system, mine came out with it. It was put to me that as I already had the experience of working with you, so to speak, we might be able to resume where we left off. Things worked out last time.’

  He likes the sound of his own voice, thought Smith, and a good thing too – it had given him time to think. Serena Butler was in a little danger but that was all. Yes she was in the office last Friday and yes she was a member of his team but that would only ever be circumstantial – it could never be proved that she had accessed the database. Thank goodness he had had the foresight to give her his own log-on details. She only had to follow the three golden rules to remain in the clear, if not entirely beyond suspicion – deny, deny, deny. Even if someone spoke to her today before he could do so, she would have the sense to say nothing. Serena was a survivor. They didn’t have much else, and he made a point of not looking too worried. Mr Fox would have to show the rest of his hand.

  Smith said, ‘Things worked out, did they? Captain Jonathan Hamilton got to die in peace somewhere, I imagine. He didn’t deserve that. One of my young detectives got a broken nose and he didn’t deserve that. Petar Subic spent several months in prison… I’m sure you get the picture.’

  ‘It’s my job to look at the bigger picture, sergeant.’

  Smith thought, a more sensitive man than me might see that as a little patronising. He wasn’t going to make this any easier or any more difficult than it had to be, and so he simply shrugged and waited. To his credit, Fox understood immediately.

  ‘The bottom line, then. This is all about a missing document, nothing more. The pathologist’s report on the body of Aidan Quinn is a public document, available to anyone who makes a Freedom of Information request. That’s ironic, isn’t it? There was no need to go through ACRO at all, though obviously that was much quicker and you didn’t have a lot of time. The document that is not available to anyone at the moment, publicly or privately, is the account of how Aidan Quinn actually died. The British Army captain who was working undercover wrote as a part of his de-briefing a full and no doubt very detailed account of what happened the night that he shot and killed Aidan Quinn. At the time it was practice to give the soldier involved his own copy – something that we would no longer do, I should point out. May I ask whether you still have that copy?’

  ‘You may, and the answer is yes. What’s happened to the original?’

  For the very first time, Dominic Fox looked a little uncomfortable, as if he had personally mislaid the thing.

  ‘We know that the statement existed because certain other documents make reference to it but the statement itself seems to have been lost.’

  ‘Have you checked the waste paper bins? We used to have this cleaner at the station who could not stand anything left on a desk overnight – we found some right villains in recycling the next morning.’

  ‘I’ll send a memo round as soon as we’re done here, thank you sergeant.’

  ‘You’re saying it was lost for obvious reasons, Mr Fox, but what you mean is that someone removed it at some point in the last thirty years. Do you do inventories? When was the last time it was recorded as present? Presumably you have made a list of the people who might have a motive for having it removed? It can’t be a very long list.’

  Fox was steady enough under fire.

  ‘If we were to hold an investigation, sergeant, I’m sure we could do worse than put you in charge of it. Let’s move on. Did you refer to the statement that you made back then when you were speaking to Mr Quinn on Sunday? Was that the subject of your conversation? It’s difficult for me to imagine what else the two of you might have to talk about.’

  ‘You want the bottom line? Yes it was discussed. Up until last Friday, I had no idea what had happened to Aidan Quinn’s body after I left it. When they took you out of Northern Ireland in those times, they really took you out. No contacts allowed, no newspapers, no television or radio for several weeks, and after that you only went back to ‘normality’ in stages. Do you know how many of us the IRA still managed to find?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Several. Quinn might have wondered before whether I knew the truth but now he knows that I do.’

  Fox was pleased, as well he should be, but that might lower his guard a little.

  Fox said, ‘If the member of the assembly felt threatened by this knowledge, that might put you in a difficult position, Sergeant Smith.’

  ‘You mean he might make another attempt to murder me? You know about the others, I assume?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe. But he understands that the document to which you are referring is in a safe place, as far as he is concerned, until or unless I have an unfortunate accident. I’m surprised he didn’t offer to arrange some private health insurance for me as an added precaution, to be honest.’

  Fox was piecing it together pretty well, and Smith wondered how far he might have risen up the ranks of the police service if he had not been diverted from it after his star turns at Hendon. Alison Reeve knew something about that and he would ask her at the appropriate moment.

  ‘I see, sergeant. You did a deal. He offered you some assistance in finding Mr O’Neill and in return you look after a highly embarrassing and potentially incriminating document on his behalf. That’s very enterprising. Though some might see it as blackmail.’

  ‘I see it as restorative justice. I like to keep up with all the modern ideas.’

  ‘The document might be safer in our hands, sergeant.’

  ‘But I’m not sure that I would b
e. Before you ask, it’s with a solicitor. Not my regular will-maker chap, so you needn’t go bothering him – it’s with someone doing just that one-off job for me, and impossible to trace. That’s where it is staying for the foreseeable future.’

  None of this was true, of course; it was in the box in his attic, but it would be true quite soon. The document was his own property and he could think of no legal means by which they could force him to hand it over. They were almost done here unless he was to be charged with posing as a coffin dealer or with smuggling used musical instruments out of Ireland.

  Smith said, ‘So all that remains really is for me to ask myself why you are so keen to get hold of the copy. I lost interest in Irish politics when they started trying to blow my head off thirty years ago, so it’s unlikely that I would be trying to influence Mr Quinn’s voting behaviour in any way. I suppose somebody else might, if they got hold of it… It would make a decent story in a Sunday newspaper, the secret officer’s report alongside the coroner’s, and as you heard me make a similar point to Captain Hamilton a couple of years ago, that might be what’s bothering you, though you know from my bank statements that I don’t need the money.’

  Dominic Fox was doing his job properly at this point, not interrupting, allowing the interviewee to talk his way into an unintended revelation or two – Smith liked to see someone doing their job properly.

  He continued, ‘It’s possible that you want to use it to make a point or two to Mr Quinn yourselves, of course, and equally possible that you want to prevent a third party from making such points. The assembly is a bit like a fireworks factory at the best of times, isn’t it? Doesn’t need much of a spark to set it all off again.’

  ‘I thought you had lost interest in Irish politics, sergeant.’

  ‘And finally, for now, because I’m sure I’ll be thinking about this for weeks to come, you might just be trying your hardest to keep Mr Quinn safe and warm. It’s possible that you already own him. There must have been plenty of other stuff that has crawled out of the woodwork over the years…’