The Rags of Time

by Peter Grainger

  The forensics work was more crisply written up than usual, and the bullet points that Smith normally did for himself were already present in the conclusion. The only blood present on the back of the shovel belonged to Mark Randall. It had dried and aged to a state consistent with the date of the attack that killed him - in other words, it was about three weeks old - but more interestingly, it had probably been left exposed to the open air for most or all of that time. Further supporting evidence of this was the spots of rust on the metal surfaces; these were tiny and generally circular, implying that they were present as a result of condensation forming on the shovel overnight and then drying during the day. In view of the weather over the period of time in question, such a process was more likely to have occurred out of doors than inside a building.

  The left thumb print was found low down on the wooden shaft; a photograph with an arrow showed exactly where. Most of the shaft and all of the handle appeared to have been thoroughly wiped clean of any other prints. Smith paused there and read that over several times, and each time he did so, the frown seemed to deepen a little. The final significant detail in the report was that a small number of fibres had been caught under a splinter inside the loop of the handle – the forensic technician ventured to suggest (must be a cousin of Olive Markham, thought Smith) that the positioning of these fibres might suggest that they were from whatever had been used to wipe the handle, and that such wiping might have been done in order to remove evidence. Either that, Smith concluded, or we’re also looking for a passer-by with OCD as well.

  He went back into the report and found again the section that concerned the fibres. Further specialised testing would be needed if the police felt that it was required but the laboratory in Norwich could go so far as to say that these were of a natural material, wool being the most likely, and that they had been dyed a dark brown – the colouring on the fibres being too uniform to have occurred in nature, whatever their specific origin.

  The internal phone buzzed on his desk. It was DI Reeve reminding him that he should be down in the recording suite watching the live feed from the interview room where they were about to speak to Brian Davis. Smith got up, said nothing to Waters or Butler and walked down to the room where another young, uniformed woman that he did not know was checking that everything was operating as it should be before he sat down to watch. She said good morning to him, and he answered vaguely, one might almost say distractedly; she knew who he was, of course, but she wondered whether he always went around with such a frown as that above those clear blue eyes.

  Smith watched and listened intently. This was a video that might be shown to a jury if Brian Davis was put on trial, and he tried to see it through the eyes of twelve ordinary people; video recording of such interviews had not been begun for that purpose but it had increasingly become used for it, another nice demonstration of the law of unintended consequences. It had not been carried out often in Smith’s time as a senior investigating officer but he still had far more experience of preparing evidence for courtrooms than a typical sergeant, and more than DI Reeve had yet acquired herself. No doubt that was one of the reasons that she had him sitting here now. One of them – because Reeve had read the forensic report as well, and her mind must be going over the same questions as his own.

  The questions began and he put those thoughts aside for a moment. Davis was a nondescript man. Passing him in the street, if you noticed him at all, you would not imagine, from anything you could see, that he was some sort of throwback to a time when the natural world not only fed us but was our principal source of entertainment. The face was on the thin side but tanned by the sun or the wind, and he had sideburns, something else that was, when one thought about it, entirely out of kilter with the times in which he found himself marooned, and Smith thought, what makes a man what he is? Has Davis consciously chosen to do the things for which others condemn him? If, for example, I had been brought up in a family and a culture that maintained those ‘traditions’, how would I feel about other people who told me that I must stop because they didn’t like it? Nothing is straightforward when you start delving into it, Smith…

  Reeve took the lead and Wilson kept the written record – not that he had much to do in that department. Smith leaned closer to the screen and focused on Davis’s expression, thinking that it was a pity you could not zoom these things in; this was alright but he really needed to be in the room and in the suspect’s face, so to speak. And he also began to think that he might have been mistaken about Brian K Davis. When you are looking at pixels rather than pores it’s difficult to be sure but Davis’s wall of silence might turn out to be a cliff-top of terror – after five minutes of friendly but methodical questioning and a clear hint that serious matters were under investigation, Davis looked paler and sweatier, and Smith’s considered, scientific conclusion was this – I think he’s bloody petrified.

  The important question now was why. Davis had been arrested several times before, he had been interviewed, charged, tried and convicted, so none of that was new to him. He associated with some tough and lawless types – certain kinds of travellers, people who never had a job but always had a four-by-four, men with vans who did jobs for cash, the sort who live up lanes and never pay taxes – and being pulled in like this should be par for the course as far as Brian Davis was concerned. OK, he had yet to do any time, but if he did so now for badger-baiting or hare-coursing, it would only be a sentence of a few months at most, and more likely a matter of weeks. No – something else has got him frightened; Smith leaned in closer, his nose now inches from the screen, as if he might be able to smell the fear. Because you can, when you’re in the room and not stuck behind a twelve-inch screen.

  Reeve ended the first interview, her job done, and then she and Wilson came into the recording room, which was so small that if John Murray had been on the case they would have had to meet elsewhere. Wilson said, ‘He’s scared shitless!’

  Smith said, ‘I hope so – I hate it when it goes the other way.’

  Reeve said, ‘Definitely something there…’

  They looked at each other but only one of them was the senior investigating officer, and after a moment she said, ‘We really need to search his place, don’t we?’

  The two men nodded and waited for her to say the rest. These are the tough calls, the ones where you earn your money as an SIO. Reeve was not afraid to take her time and think it through in front of them but her words, when they came, showed the pressure nevertheless.

  ‘God! Why is it always on an effing Friday?’

  She meant that if they arrested Davis now in connection with a serious offence, a senior officer would be able to authorise an immediate search warrant; it was unlikely that they could complete the process of getting one through a magistrate today. But if they arrested Davis, they then had twenty four hours – unless an extension could be won – before they must either charge him or release him. She looked at her watch. That would mean lots of people in for a Friday night and at least half of a Saturday – briefing the weekend shift as well as overtime, disrupted family lives, broken dates. If the search found nothing incriminating, would they have enough to charge him? Wilson gave his answer to the unspoken question.

  ‘Ma’am, he’s given us no explanation of where he was on the 17th of June.’

  Smith said, ‘No, nor any other night, come to that.’

  Wilson ignored him and kept his eyes on DI Reeve as he continued, ‘And we’ve got his prints on what we now know is the murder weapon. He’s got a nice long record for things that a jury will be disgusted at – violence towards animals. He must hang around with some nasty types. I’d say we’ve got enough to be going on with, ma’am.’

  Reeve looked at Smith and waited.

  ‘Can’t argue with the print but it’s on a shovel which has been on some sort of journey that I can’t explain at all. First it’s not there and then it is.’

  Reeve looked back at Wilson.

  ‘Either that or
we just admit that it was there and we missed it first time around. Uniform can carry the can for that – the main thing is that we can tie the murder weapon to a bloke that no jury in the land is going to like.’

  Smith said, ‘But I don’t think we did miss it – I don’t think it was there until the night before last.’

  Wilson said, ‘His prints are still all over it.’

  ‘No, they’re not. There’s one thumb print low down on the shaft; the rest has been wiped clean. I can’t explain that either.’

  It was between the two of them now, and Reeve watched like an umpire in a grudge match.

  Wilson said, ‘How many prints do you want? He’s an evil bastard who goes about after dark committing offences that an animal-loving jury will despise. You told us yourself that your farmer friend said there’d been badger-digging going on right where Randall’s body was found. Now we’ve got a badger-digger’s shovel with Randall’s blood on it. Opportunity or what? Jesus Christ, Smith – they say you were something but at this rate you’d struggle to convict Charlie Peace of burglary!’

  Smith showed no outward reaction at all. After a pause, he said, ‘Opportunity I’ll give you, assuming that Davis doesn’t come up with a solid alibi when he does begin to talk – which he will, sooner or later. Now you give me a motive.’

  Wilson paused now.

  ‘Who knows? Anything could have gone on out there after dark…’

  ‘Who knows? What sort of an answer is that to the QC defending Davis? Because it will be a QC if you charge him with murder or manslaughter. Somebody does know exactly what happened and our job is to find them and then charge the right person, rather than the obvious person or the first person that comes along to whom we think we can make it stick. It might be Davis, the right person, but what I’m saying is that this is not watertight. Never mind my record, John – you’ve been in the job a while yourself. That print only means that Davis handled the shovel at some point. It doesn’t prove that he killed anyone with it, let alone a perfect stranger. My two are looking for connections between Randall or Stone and Davis, and I’ll bet a month’s salary they won’t find one other than that they all enjoy a bit of digging after dark.’

  Wilson was silent and Smith looked at Reeve – there was one more thing that he must say.

  ‘For myself, ma’am, I cannot in all conscience go along with the idea that the shovel was missed during the search. I don’t believe that it was. We looked at the way it lay there, and the grass around it and under it. I’d say it hadn’t been there more than a few hours. Assuming for the moment that it was not Davis who put it there - and why would he do such a thing? - we then have to accept that at least one other person is involved. As to that person’s motives, I have no idea; when I meet him or her, that will be my first question.’

  Wilson was shaking his head now, and Alison Reeve was watching the video screen; the live link had been left on and the image of Davis was there, motionless, arms folded, staring. Smith wondered whether, if Wilson had not been present, she would have asked him what he would do in these circumstances.

  Then she said, ‘Thank you both. I need to speak with Superintendent Allen – I’ll get back to you shortly. DC, you’re right about other people. From what little I know, it takes at least two men to dig out badgers, so if Davis was there, he wasn’t alone. Your teams should have lists of acquaintances by now, so let’s have those ready for discussion. My office in twenty minutes, please.’

  And what would he have done in these circumstances? He thought about it as he made his way back to Waters and Butler. Keep Davis hanging around for a while longer, offer him tea and biscuits and let him think that the offences they were investigating, though serious, were still those with which he was familiar – maybe Lord de Ramsey’s pet hare had been accidentally coursed to death or something equally tragic. Do not disclose the shovel, do not disclose the thumbprint. Do not arrest. Davis has a wife, three children and a lot of dogs at home in Gaultways – he won’t do a runner, especially if he’s given a lift back from the station and a sham apology. There was no way he’d leave all those things behind, especially the dogs. What we need here is time to figure this out. We need Waters to come up with six ridiculous ideas, one of which might not be a million miles from the truth. That’s what he would do in these circumstances. He was also pretty certain that Davis might be under arrest within the hour.

  Sure enough, Waters and Butler had found no hint of a connection between Randall or Stone and Brian Davis; they hadn’t even gone to the same secondary schools. The list of Davis’s contacts through his various activities was already a dozen names long and it was likely that one or two more would be added by Wilson’s team; that meant a huge amount of work to be done today and tomorrow. They needed a short-cut. Without going into the delightful inter-personal details, Smith gave them a run-down of the conversations that he had just been having – team members kept in the dark grow tall, thin and pale and Waters was already lanky enough. It was Waters who then said, ‘What about the Wildlife Crime Unit? Has anyone spoken to them yet?’

  Smith gave him his most suspicious look and said, ‘Hold on.’

  He walked round to his own desk and studied the current piece of scrap paper that he was recycling – and there it was, neatly written halfway down the page among other notes, the initials WCU followed by a question mark. He looked up at Waters and said, ‘Have you been copying my homework?’

  ‘No, DC.’

  As a result of the year and a bit he had already spent working as a policeman, Waters was a much better liar than he used to be, and his face was giving nothing away now. Smith turned to Serena Butler.

  ‘Has he been at my desk this morning while I was out of the room, even for a split-second?’

  ‘No, DC.’

  Serena, of course, was in a different league as far as dissimulation was concerned; she had been in serious scrapes of her own and he would not be forgetting her performance at the Velvet Club in a hurry. But he thought she was telling the truth now.

  ‘Fair enough, then. We’ll call it a lucky guess. It’s on my to-do list, as you can see.’

  He held it up for their inspection and admiration.

  ‘Hopefully it’s still Ted Greene. If it isn’t, it’s probably another dead-end, to be honest.’

  The Wildlife Crime Unit sounds more impressive than it is – this is true of most specialist units, to be fair, unless they involve black uniforms and guns. Ted Greene was the WCU and had been for as many years at least as Charlie Hills had been a desk sergeant. Sometimes, if there was a major incident involving a deer, Ted Greene would have the loan of a WPC for a day or two but then it would be back to him answering the telephone queries from concerned bird-watchers and riding reassuringly around the countryside in his van. Despite all this, it was still Ted who answered the phone five minutes later.

  The two of them spent another five minutes catching up before Smith came on to the business in hand. And oh yes, Ted knew all about Brian Davis – in fact, he said to Smith, sometimes Brian Davis seemed to be the centre of his universe. Last year there had even been a rumour of some cock-fighting in the Wisbech area, something that had not occurred in the fens, as far as he knew, for at least half a century – and Davis’s name had been mentioned.

  Smith said, ‘He’s a charmer alright, Ted. But we’ve got him sweating a bit at the moment. And it’s not about cock-fighting.’

  Greene was too old a hand to ask what it was about – he simply asked what it was he could do to help, and Smith told him. The answer that he received surprised him a little.

  Greene said, ‘There hasn’t been a lot of badger-digging reported since the convictions two years ago – that put some of them off. I can give you a few of the old names but you’d be better off talking to one of my sources, for want of a better word, DC.’

  ‘Who’s that, Ted?’

  ‘Wilf Baxter.’

  ‘Hold on, Ted.’

  Smith motioned to Serena t
o come round and look at the name he had just written down; she was quick and understood what he wanted, returning to her own desk and running a finger down the list of names that they had already compiled. She looked up then and shook her head.

  ‘Not a name that we’ve come up with, Ted.’

  ‘No, and you won’t do. Wilf’s too fly by half, but he owes me – I won’t say how but he does, and big-time. He tends to know what’s going on. I’m in court today DC but I can get him to talk to you if you want. He’s only out at Threeways. I’d need to ring him now, warn him that you were coming, though…’

  Smith said yes, and took down the address. Sometimes the momentum just picks up and you go with it – and the last thing he needed was another meeting with John Wilson in five minutes’ time. He thanked Ted Greene and received one more useful word of advice.

  ‘DC – you’ll have to play it by ear a bit. The Baxters have been there for years but they’re still travellers. You know what I mean.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Smith had proposed sending Serena Butler to the meeting in DI Reeve’s office, the detective inspector had hesitated for a moment – was that because she really needed him there or because Detective Sergeant John Wilson might perceive this as some sort of a slight? He didn’t ask that question, of course, but simply said that he might have a lead on Brian Davis’s cronies which might save them a lot of leg-work and time; plenty of ‘mights’ in there because he had no intention of making any promises or even raising any expectations. It was up to her, and if she wanted him there, he would have delayed the visit to Wilf Baxter without further comment. As for Butler, she was overdue some increased responsibility and although no-one else had mentioned it yet, it was time she was thinking about re-applying for the sergeant’s exam, especially if a post became vacant at Kings Lake in the near future.