A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  But then, when Smith had left them, Terek was asking him how he wanted to handle the coming interview, asking him, not telling, and Waters had the feeling that the new DI – he still seemed new though he’d been in post since September – was not only aware of Waters’ ambition but actively encouraging it. Not that Smith had ever done otherwise, but this was for real now, the interview he was about to conduct, about to lead. It would be recorded for posterity. It might even help to find Zoe Johnson.

  Terek got a message on his phone.

  ‘Right, Chris, he’s here, Mr Harrison. Twenty minutes early – Sergeant Hills is bringing him up to Interview One. It makes a change to have someone who actively wants to help, doesn’t it? Are you ready?’

  Murray said, ‘You don’t fancy him for it, DC?’

  They were talking about Stephen Sweeney, the three of them in the office – Wilson had everyone else out again, now doing the buses and the train station. What remained of Team Smith was doing the administration once more.

  Smith said, ‘Not really. I can accept that he has a thing for Zoe, and that when you have his issues, it’s even more complicated than usual. But you’ve got to look at the practical problems. Let’s say he did do her some harm… No, let’s be completely brutal and say he attacked Zoe and killed her. This would have happened in the playpark or along the old railway, right? Well, it’s been searched thoroughly and she isn’t there. Which means, if he did it, he’s moved her body, taken it somewhere else. How? He doesn’t have any sort of vehicle, and he’d hardly use public transport. Did he carry her back through the streets and hide her at home? Not impossible, but not very likely either. And we know from Mrs Sweeney what time he got home – it’s not a big window in which to move and hide a body, is it?’

  John Murray and Serena Butler considered these points – when you’re not out gathering new stuff, all you can do is re-process what you’ve already got. It’s frustrating but not always a waste of time; plenty of cases have been solved sitting around a sergeant’s desk.

  Murray said, ‘We know what time Mrs Sweeney says he got home.’

  Serena nodded and said, ‘Mrs Sweeney will have been protecting him all his life. It becomes a reflex, I should think. You can’t entirely rule it out, that she knows more than she told us.’

  All true, all perfectly reasonable, and Smith told them so. As more time passed, it was likely that senior officers would decide to go back over everything, and that might include a search of the Sweeney’s home, and that specialist interview for which Smith had just prepared the foundations. All true, all perfectly reasonable and all completely wrong, he was certain of it, but there comes a point – apparently after about thirty years in the job – at which you give up trying to explain to others how you know things like that. And you also know the effect of such a search on the lives of the Sweeneys as the neighbours watch the police going over their home, looking for the missing girl – the nods and knowing glances that will never be forgotten even though nothing was ever found. There is, always, someone to say “No smoke without fire…”

  They talked through the rest of it as they worked, in the same speculative, unhurried way. Smith took a call from Wilson, a call meant for Terek, saying that nothing had been found yet to indicate that Zoe had used any form of public transport that evening. After that, Smith looked at his watch and realised that Waters and Terek had been interviewing Paul Harrison for more than an hour.

  ‘He was thorough, measured, kept a good professional distance and at the same time he managed to gain the witness’s trust. An excellent job, Chris.’

  Waters wasn’t entirely comfortable with this, not in front of the three people who had been his senior team members for the past couple of years. Serena was giving him a warm and encouraging smile but he knew what was coming as soon as Terek was out of earshot, and Smith would not have missed that remark about professional distance, oh no – there would be something soon about whether that only applied to the young men that Waters interviewed in the course of his inquiries.

  Terek went on, ‘Anyway, Mr Harrison is the man who sold the burger to Zoe last Monday evening. He was completely open about this, and made no attempt to hide the fact that she had taken shelter inside the van when it began to rain heavily. She was in there for no more than ten minutes he says, and we should be able to find the two or three other customers who saw her sitting there. He remembers her making a joke to someone about maybe getting a part-time job in the business, and she took the money for one sale and put it into the till. When it stopped raining so hard, she left the van, and Mr Harrison remembers that she crossed back over the road towards the kebab shop before turning left. He thinks the shop was still open at that point – he said the lights were still on. We need to check whether Sadik turns the lights off when he locks up, but… DC, you know the place. Would turning left have taken her back towards the old railway? If anyone had followed her, that’s where they might have been waiting, isn’t it?’

  Well, turning left would have taken her back towards the railway, and right past the point where Smith himself had been standing in the rain on Tuesday evening – and it was true, said Smith, that if anyone had followed her and not wanted to be seen, that’s about as far as they would have gone. But what about Harrison? What time had he left The Crescent and where did he go after that?

  It might have seemed to some that he, Smith, was checking up that the proper questions – that is, the ones he would have asked – had been asked, but not so. He wanted to know. Paul Harrison was the key witness now, the last person to see Zoe Johnson – and you always have to stop yourself saying or even thinking ‘alive’ in these moments – and that means that Harrison himself, though perhaps guilty of nothing but being in the right place at the wrong time, had to be put under the investigative microscope.

  Waters said, ‘Harrison left at a little after ten o’clock. We didn’t show him the CCTV that John found but it’s probably his van – there wasn’t anyone else parked up selling anything nearby. We could show him that, get him to confirm it if there’s any doubt.’

  Eyes looked at Smith but it was Terek who said, ‘We could but it’s not necessary at this point. Harrison was quite open with us. He left at a few minutes after ten, as Chris said, and went into town. He parked on the market place to catch the pubs and clubs as he called it, most of which close at around eleven on weekday nights. He says he did some more business but not much. He packed up about an hour later and went home.’

  ‘And where is home?’

  That abruptness was easily mistaken for all sorts of other things, of course. John Murray knew these were the moments when Smith, unconsciously, slipped back into DCI mode, and Serena Butler and Chris Waters had worked with him for long enough to know it was nothing personal, but for Terek… Well, Detective Inspector Terek hadn’t known him nearly long enough to understand what was going on here.

  Waters said, ‘Snettingham,’ and Terek started to say, ‘It’s a small village on the Hunston…’

  Smith said, ‘Is he married? A partner? Children?’

  Terek put up a hand.

  ‘We haven’t had time to complete a full check on Harrison, DC, but we will, rest assured. As I said before, he came across as quite open – he didn’t react negatively when Chris said quite rightly that we might be in touch with further questions as things move forward. Has everything been sorted for Stephen Sweeney? I want to take that to DCI Reeve this morning.’

  It had been done neatly enough, and all felt it in different ways. Yes, said Smith, everything is being sorted. He even managed a smile.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Simon Terek could have said, why not go and watch the recording for yourself DC, but he had not forgotten the final interview that landed him this job. There had been some very senior officers from county involved during the day, but it was Detective Superintendent Allen who had made it clear – ‘We’re looking for someone to run a very tight ship in terms of resourcing and allocation, S
imon – very tight.’

  He meant money, naturally – they would appoint whoever showed the best understanding of the financial constraints that every force in the land was suffering in the age of austerity. Terek had convinced them that he was such a person, and so when the thought occurred that Smith could go and watch the interview with Harrison, so did an awareness of what an hour and a half of a detective sergeant’s time was worth. That was not the only consideration, however. The rest of the team had to realise that not everything needed checking by Smith – and that Smith’s opinion was not the only one that counted. There is a hierarchy for a reason, Terek reminded himself, and I am the detective inspector; in my view, the interview went well. It was productive and Christopher Waters showed promise; he’s new enough and young enough to adapt to another way of doing things. My way of doing things.

  And so he had not said to Smith, go and see for yourself, and Smith had not asked. Terek took Waters with him to brief the DCI on the Harrison interview, and Smith returned to his desk and the records for Stephen Sweeney. That was all done in thirty minutes, but then Wilson’s team began arriving back, with nothing to show from their visits to Lake’s bus companies and the railway station. All these places had cameras now, and the initial checks had been made on-site – no one resembling Zoe Johnson had travelled around or left Kings Lake on public transport last Monday evening. The companies had been told to make copies and not to delete the originals but as far as Wilson was concerned this was a dead-end, and Smith didn’t disagree.

  Smith updated the newcomers on the interview with Paul Harrison, and there was some general talk about what that might add to the inquiry, before Wilson directed his people back to their desks to write up the morning’s work before new orders and directions arrived from upstairs. But as they did so, it was Wilson who remained behind, with something on his mind – it wasn’t difficult to see when this near-mythical event was taking place.

  Wilson said to Smith, ‘Have you watched that interview?’

  ‘No. I don’t think anyone else has seen it yet. Why?’

  Wilson looked at him and then at Murray, shrugged as if it was after all a matter of little importance, and half turned away – but he couldn’t quite leave it there, whatever it was. He turned to face them again.

  ‘Dunno. He sounds like a useful witness, Harrison. But he came straight out and told them the girl had been in his van? Just told them up front?’

  Smith said, ‘So it would seem. As I say, I’ve not been invited to the premiere yet. What’s bothering you about that?’

  But he knew the answer, and so did Murray, who was nodding – they, Smith and Murray, had talked this over fifteen minutes ago. Here were the three most experienced detectives in Kings Lake, three of the most experienced in the county, and John Wilson, though he was at times a bully and a thug, was not a fool. Something about their expressions told Wilson that the other two had got there before him, but he said it anyway.

  ‘It’s not bothering me exactly but… Well, if we get down to the nitty gritty on this, he’s just accounted for that girl’s DNA being in his bloody van, hasn’t he?’

  Three nights, soon to be three days as well, since Zoe Johnson went missing. These moments come in every case, every inquiry that is not resolved quickly, and it was clear to all that this one had passed the point of a quick resolution. It isn’t a moment when one senses things are drifting – they still had people to find and things that might be leads to follow – but the initial intensity and excitement had gone. Their purpose was unchanged but the plan needed to change because everything obvious had been done, and Zoe was still missing.

  An indirect consequence seemed to be that Terek had deserted his second desk in the main office in favour of the proper one in his own office several doors away. As a result, there was more talk than there had been recently, but not of the idle variety; Serena Butler had picked up on Wilson’s comment and she came back to it more than once.

  ‘I see it but you’d have to be pretty devious, wouldn’t you, and pretty smart? To think that far ahead? Harrison doesn’t have any sort of record, nothing to suggest he’s a criminal mastermind.’

  Murray said, ‘Maybe that’s the point. You’ve heard DC say it often enough – the really clever people never get caught because they’re really clever.’

  Serena’s dark hair was longer than when she first arrived in Kings Lake, and she had developed an unconscious habit of twirling locks of it around an index finger – she was doing it now as Smith and Murray watched her thinking this over.

  ‘Even so… We’ve all seen the smart-arse who comes up with a good story after disclosure. You reckon someone would voluntarily come into the station with a plan to cover the outside chance that we might want to carry out a forensic search of his van before any disclosure?’

  Smith said, ‘Disclosure of what? There’s no evidence that Paul Harrison has done anything wrong, and all the intelligence we have – that he was one of the last people, if not the last person, to talk to her that night – fits perfectly with what he has, apparently, told us. I say “apparently” because no one here has actually seen the interview.’

  Serena was now using the lock of hair as a pointer, and she directed it at Smith.

  ‘Agreed. So a more likely explanation is that he’s a decent bloke who came forward and cooperated fully with the police as soon as he knew what was happening, isn’t it?’

  Smith said, ‘It’s an explanation. I couldn’t as yet say whether it’s more likely than the alternative.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That he’s not a decent bloke.’

  She shook her head, unconvinced, before she said, ‘Did Zoe say anything to him that might explain why she was wandering the streets at half past nine on a Monday night?’

  Smith and Murray looked at each other.

  Smith began the answer with ‘We don’t know because…’ and Murray completed it with ‘no one here has actually seen the interview.’

  Waters came into the main office and made for Smith’s desk. Serena, ever quick to sense changing dynamics and shifting allegiances, said, ‘Oh, you’re back. We thought you’d been given another office to work in.’

  Waters looked at Smith and Murray to see whether the “we” was genuine, and concluded that it was not. Then he folded his long limbs into the swivel chair that had always been a little too low for him. It was clear he had something to say.

  ‘I can’t be certain but it looks as if the search for Zoe is about to be taken over. Simon just told me that there’s a conversation going on between DCI Reeve, Superintendent Allen and DCI Freeman.’

  All eyes turned to Smith. They could not appoint a new senior investigating officer after three days, that was absurd as well as fatally damaging to Reeve, who had herself only been in post as a DCI for a couple of months. On the other hand, Cara Freeman had the new murder squad that was not a murder squad, and no murder to investigate, as yet. One would come along soon enough but if she was impatient, she might have decided to get some practice in on this case – she might even be guessing it was now quite likely to turn into the sort of investigation she had been chosen to lead. Whatever the explanation, in his experience turf wars never end well.

  He said to them, ‘One of those ours-not-to-reason-why situations. It’ll end up as a joint investigation, most likely,’ which was the right line to take as far as the troops were concerned, but which suggested he was more sanguine about the prospect than he was ever likely to feel. The two female officers had worked well together on the major cocaine bust eighteen months ago, but Cara Freeman was a force to be reckoned with, and highly ambitious – not the sort to let friendship get in the way of another step up the ladder.

  The arrival of Charlie Hills was a welcome distraction. He advanced towards team Smith waving a rolled-up newspaper like a cheerleader’s baton, a frighteningly incongruous thought for Smith, who greeted him with, ‘Have they got you delivering the Lake Daily in your spare time?�
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  ‘We’re front-page news, just thought you’d all like to see it.’

  They opened the paper on Smith’s desk. The staid, old-fashioned local rag was no more; three months ago a new young editor had arrived – from Australia of all places, confirming that the world has taken leave of its senses – and a small tidal wave of sensationalism was sweeping through these journalistic backwaters. The headline read ‘Where Is She?’ accompanied by a new picture of Zoe Johnson, one the detectives had not seen. In it, the girl was in school uniform and no more than eleven or twelve years old.

  Smith’s jaw tightened in annoyance. He knew why the editor had used it – she looked younger and more vulnerable. A handful more people might pick up a copy on the newsstand, feel a pang of sympathy or curiosity and decide to buy it, but the picture would not help in the search. It might hinder it because Zoe didn’t look like that anymore.

  The strapline was ‘Major search fails to find missing schoolgirl – police appeal for help’. Was that the best Allen could do? Smith pushed it away and the others read the rest of the story.

  Charlie said, ‘Was that chap I brought up any use?’

  Smith deflected it towards Waters, who said, ‘Yes, he remembered her from Monday night. He’s a good witness.’

  Charlie Hills nodded and said to no one in particular, ‘He certainly seemed keen to help.’

  Smith said, ‘How, Charlie?’

  ‘Just interested, I suppose.’

  Smith was watching the uniformed sergeant’s face closely; was there something more?

  Charlie said, ‘He asked me something you don’t often get asked.’

  ‘And that was?’