A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Whether I knew who would be doing the interview. I said it would most likely be a couple of CID officers. But…’

  Smith said, ‘But what, Charlie? You don’t have to worry – you’re among friends. I think.’

  ‘Well, I had the feeling he was after a name. When he asked who’d be interviewing him, I think that’s what he wanted. A name.’

  It was a little odd, if Charlie was right. Harrison had no record, had had no contact with the police in an apparently blameless life. Obviously, he might know someone on the force in another way – socially perhaps, it does happen. Smith looked around at the others and found that they had considered it and moved on. Except for John Murray – John Murray was frowning and scratching the side of his chin absent-mindedly. And that, believe it or not, wasn’t a good sign.

  At four o’clock, everyone involved in the investigation assembled in the office, to be told by Detective Superintendent Allen that from tomorrow morning, a team from the Regional Serious Crimes Unit would be assisting in the search for Zoe Johnson. Detective Chief Inspector Reeve remained as the senior investigating officer, of course, but this would significantly strengthen the inquiry. Allen reminded them that the outcome of the last joint operation had been hugely successful, making national headlines, and there was every reason to think – and to expect – that those levels of cooperation and integrated teamwork would continue.

  Alison Reeve handled it well, her expression giving not a trace of the irritation she must be feeling, and when she took over the briefing she said all the right things about welcoming the additional investment of time and expertise. But in Smith’s long experience, this was a first. Specialist units like RSCU don’t get involved in anything until there is actually a crime – and in this case, there isn’t, not for certain. Smith himself had voiced the opinion that something bad had happened to the missing girl but there was no clear evidence to support it. Her simply being missing was not evidence of that. And then he said to himself, well, not that we have seen. Maybe there is something that someone else has seen. Maybe we haven’t been told the whole story yet. Who can you trust nowadays?

  Smith left the station at six o’clock that evening. Plenty of the others were still there, including Terek, marshalling files and notes and databases before the specialist officers arrived in the morning. They had been told there would be another briefing for both teams at nine sharp, but it was Smith’s guess that Freeman’s lot would arrive before that, like inspectors trying to catch you unawares, making a point.

  Two weeks tomorrow and it would be over – none of this would mean much then. The Lake streets in which he had spent so much time over so many years were dark and dank after several days of rain, but at least that had stopped for now. As he drove, he passed turnings into other streets and roads, and these were turnings into memories of cases he had pursued down them; names and places came back in succession, doors that had been knocked upon, vehicles that had been followed, arrests that had been made. It isn’t until you look back that you see it, the scale of it – the vast, seething, calculating, arguing mass of humanity that lives in any town, all of them with the same small handful of aims and desires in life. What do we want? Things? Someone to care? Someone to believe in us and think that we matter? Or just a place in the sun?

  Dear me. Pull yourself together, man. It’s not the end of the world, just the end of a job, and probably not before time…

  But the mood had not entirely left him. There was no post today. That wasn’t unusual when he thought about it, and post itself would become a thing of the past in his lifetime, probably. But there was a flier from a local estate agent inviting him to put his house on the market. They had a number of buyers looking to move into this very street. Smith walked back out through the still open front door and looked up and down Old Road, Millfield, in the December night – a number of buyers? Could that conceivably be true? There were worse places, of course, and it was a part of the town which had ‘improved’ since he and Sheila bought the house many years ago. No doubt that was part of the reason why.

  He had only a vague idea what the house might be worth but knew then in some odd, intuitive way, as had happened several times lately, that he would soon find out. He would not go on living here after he had retired, not for long. The place was too large and he didn’t need all this space, the heating bills were higher than they needed to be, just to keep himself warm – but that wasn’t the essence of the insight, those were simply the justifications. This was the home of the old life and the old love, but now change is coming. And change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Take the train north from Cambridge and you are struck every time by the extraordinary flatness of the land. The city was built on the last of the southern chalk hills, and for a thousand years it must have viewed the great marshes and fens beyond with suspicion and not a little fear. Even in Vermuyden’s time, as the Dutchman employed his engineering genius to begin the draining of these last wild places, there were native men who resisted the change, who murdered his labourers, and who became known as ‘fen tigers’ because of that ferocity. The old way of life – the reed-cutting, turf-digging, fishing and wildfowling existence on the great meres and swamps between the city and The Wash – died hard and took many with it as it did so.

  Jo Evison looked through the reflections on the carriage window and out into the darkness – and there was a lot of darkness. Here and there a distant village had its streetlights and a few houses clustered around them, as if the lights had come first and the dwellings had been attracted like moths, but between these hamlets, at this time of night, there was emptiness. She had made the journey in the daytime too, of course, and knew that in reality there were vast, level fields of wheat, oilseed rape, sugar beet and potatoes, but now, with the light all but gone, the water might suddenly have risen again, and if it had, one would not know. This is how dark it must have been before electricity, before diesel pumps, before windmills.

  The train was crowded before it pulled out of the city but she had left the university in time to get a seat by the window. Friday afternoon, she realised, and the daily return migration of commuters begins a little earlier than usual. Then she thought about the time that she would arrive in Kings Lake and was struck by another, more personal realisation – to meet her at 17.20 as he had promised, Smith would need to leave his office no later than 17.00. For him, she guessed, that might not happen very often, and he was doing so on her account.

  The train was on a gradual bend and looking to the north, she could see the Lantern Tower of the great cathedral at Ely, the ship of the fens, illuminated by floodlights and apparently suspended over the tiny, ancient city. Our light in the darkness, oh Lord… Our electric light in the darkness. She smiled at the thought, but it’s not silly – the truth remains that we should still be a little afraid of the dark. Not creatures now, not wolves or bears or sabre-toothed tigers, we’ve dealt with all those, but there are people out there one would rather not meet when the lights have gone out. Looking at the matter professionally for a moment, Jo Evison wondered whether anyone had ever researched the numbers of murders that take place after dark as opposed to when the sun is shining down upon us.

  But her thoughts soon came back to the detective sergeant leaving the office right on time. Friday today, and in two weeks he would leave that building – she had never seen it but had a mental picture nonetheless – for the final time. It was too late for him to change his mind now. At Ely, lots of passengers left the train and no more got onto it; there was a sense of more space but she watched the people idly, her thoughts still occupied by Smith. How odd that her own work, the next book, should have brought them together. She could still picture him waiting in the pub that first Saturday morning. He’d been reading something on a single sheet of paper and when he went to the bar to fetch her coffee, she had glanced at it and realised it was personal, something written to Smith by a man who, she l
ater discovered, was about to end his life. It was a suicide note. She could even remember the man’s name – Ralph Greenwood.

  And in that half an hour, before he took her out into the dunes of the Norfolk coast where Andretti’s victims had been found more than a decade ago, as he talked about Ralph Greenwood and the moral and legal and human complexities that surrounded the criminal offence of assisted suicide, as she challenged him just for the fun of it – because she didn’t really disagree with him – she knew that her life had changed. These things just happen, even to women in their forties, it seemed – you cannot see them coming, and if you could you’d probably run away most of the time. But you can’t, and then it’s too late, thank goodness.

  North of Littleport, the fenlands become flatter and emptier, if such a thing is possible. In a few more minutes she would arrive at King Lake. She would spend the weekend with him, and they would talk about killers and victims and investigations, but in between there would be time for other things. Maybe a walk up on the coast, somewhere away from the places with those associations for him. She remembered the last time they had been up there in winter, that same first afternoon when it had snowed. She remembered it because she would never forget it. Maybe it would snow again this winter, if the rain ever properly stopped.

  At the station, taking down her small travelling bag from the luggage rack, she had the moment of doubt that always comes – he might have been delayed by a case, he might even have forgotten she was coming. She checked her mobile for a message before she walked towards the carriage door, but there was nothing. So she stepped down onto the platform and saw him straight away – he seemed to have guessed exactly where she would be sitting on the train.

  Smith smiled and came towards her, and in those few yards she thought, how do we do it now, how do we greet each other? Where are we in this? He said hello and reached out a hand but it was only for her bag. She let him take it, and then he asked if she had had a good journey.

  The traffic in Kings Lake was so bad that at this rate the journey from the station to Smith’s home would take as long as that from Cambridge to the station. Jo asked him questions about the case, the missing girl, not unaware that of all the things he might have been involved in at the end of his career, this particular one was the most ironic for both of them. Most of the morning, he told her, had been about bringing the new team up to speed on what the old team had worked on since Tuesday, and nothing much had been achieved today, as far as he could tell.

  Jo said, ‘And your new DCI? How has she taken it?’

  ‘Difficult to say. We haven’t really spoken about it.’

  She watched as he left a space for another car to move into the queue from a sidestreet – the driver behind beeped a horn in annoyance. Smith’s eyes were on the rear-view mirror for several long seconds, and she wondered whether, in these situations, he would ever get out and deal with it directly – the sort of thing it’s useful to know about a man. She guessed that under certain circumstances, he might. Then they began to crawl forward again.

  She said, ‘Oh. I thought the two of you were close. We are talking about the woman who used to be in your team, yes?’

  ‘Alison Reeve – yes, that’s her. We’re still friends but it’s awkward now. I think we’re avoiding each other so she doesn’t have to ask what I think and I don’t have to tell her. When your days are numbered, your opinions should come with a health warning.’

  She couldn’t detect any bitterness in that, just acceptance, and if so, that was a good thing. After a time, she said, ‘And what about the girl herself? If you’d rather not talk about it, say so. I haven’t forgotten that two sorts do the job – those who take it home and those who don’t.’

  She knew perfectly well which sort he was, but it was only fair to give him the opportunity to make an exception tonight.

  He said, ‘Zoe Johnson, fourteen. Disappeared last Monday, late evening, after being out on the streets when she should have been going to bed because it was school the next day. Several witnesses, some of whom spoke to her – all men. Some of them don’t have anyone who can corroborate their story. She buys a burger and then goes into the night without leaving a trace that we can find, as yet.’

  Suddenly the car was picking up speed – they were past the invisible bottleneck, and she recognised streets that were not far from Smith’s home.

  She said, ‘Oh dear…’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had been about to ask what his instincts were – whether he thought the girl had come to harm – but the expression in that single word told her all she wanted to know, and probably more. He was driving carefully but quickly, as if in some sort of hurry, and she didn’t ask any more questions on the way home.

  On the doorstep, as he put the key into the lock, Jo thought, we must look like a couple, a professional couple home from work on a Friday evening; he has collected her and now they plan to spend the weekend together as they almost invariably do. That’s how it would seem to someone passing by, someone who doesn’t know them. It would be nice if it were that simple, she thought, and maybe it could be if she dropped the idea for the book about the Andretti killings. Not as if there weren’t plenty of others to choose from – choose another murderer and another detective, and then see where this went with Smith without the thing that had brought them together and which she now suspected was keeping them apart.

  He bent down and picked up the post from the mat, and when they were both inside she closed the front door. She tried to remember how many times she had been here – it was three or four, and the house had the beginnings of familiarity now. She had been into every room except his bedroom, of course, and she knew which one was hers for the next two – or was it three – nights. They hadn’t actually discussed when she would go back this time.

  As she began to climb the stairs with her bag, he said, ‘Tea, coffee or straight onto the aperitifs?’

  ‘Oh, tea, please. Assam loose-leaf, I think.’

  He smiled because she knew his habits already, and then she turned away, knowing too that he was watching as she climbed the stairs. She made up her mind in that moment – she would tell him tonight that she wanted to drop the Andretti idea.

  When she went into the kitchen five minutes later, she found him slowly stirring the teapot with a spoon in one hand and holding some sort of letter with the other. An opened envelope lay on the work surface. He was absorbed and didn’t seem to notice her.

  She said, ‘Not bad news I hope?’

  It was some seconds before he answered.

  ‘Sorry – I’m having an Agatha Christie moment. Take a look.’

  Holding the paper between finger and thumb, seemingly being careful to handle it as little as possible, Smith placed it beside the envelope. It was a short message, constructed with individual letters cut from what seemed to be newspaper headlines. Jo read “The game has commenced. Is it a mystery to you?”

  That was all. She read it several times before she said, ‘Nothing on the back?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No. The address on the envelope is typed, which is a bit odd. Who bothers to put an envelope in a typewriter these days? How many people even own a typewriter? A first-class stamp, so probably posted yesterday.’

  ‘Can you make out where?’

  ‘It’s not clear but I think that’s a local postmark. I can find out if I have to, I suppose.’

  They looked at the letter and the envelope again, and then she said, ‘Have you ever had anything like it before?’

  ‘No, it’s a first. It’s not an exact quotation but I think I recognise it.’

  Smith picked up the silver-handled strainer and poured tea into two of the bone china cups that waited on their matching saucers – it seemed that it was Sunday-best whatever day she was here. Then, leaving the teacups, the letter and the envelope on the work surface, he said, ‘Come on.’

  In the lounge, he went to the shelves of CDs, and she watched as he ra
n a finger along the second shelf – the cases were arranged alphabetically, first by artist and then by title, which meant he had found what he was looking for in a matter of seconds.

  Jo said, ‘You think it’s a song?’

  He opened the case, took out the silver disc and pressed the on switch of the player which had its own shelf between the racks of CDs; there were hundreds of them, she realised. Then he handed the empty case to her.

  ‘As I said, it isn’t exact but it’s too close to be a coincidence.’

  She knew how he felt about coincidences. The case belonged to “Love Over Gold” by Dire Straits. Smith touched the advance button once and waited for the second track to begin; Jo looked at the case and read ‘Private Investigations’.

  Sure enough, the opening lyrics were “It’s a mystery to me, the game commences for the usual fee plus expenses”. And that was too close to be a coincidence – one word, maybe two, but “mystery’, “game” and “commenced” all occurring in the ten words of the anonymous message?

  Smith pressed pause on the player, as if he might need to listen again to be certain; whoever sent it had achieved their likely aim – they had his full attention. She said, ‘It might be nothing to do with work. One of your musical friends playing a joke? Something to do with your retirement?’

  ‘I don’t think I’m friends with anyone who’d go to that much trouble. That message is very neatly done, did you notice? They haven’t cut the individual letters out in rectangles or squares – each one is cut around precisely. That took a bit of time and concentration. It’s not a spur-of-the-moment thing for a quick laugh. And why that particular song?’

  ‘Well, Mark Knopfler. A famous guitarist. Someone who knows that you play. Someone who guessed that you’d know where the words come from, presumably.’

  He stopped the CD, took it out and replaced it in the case, before returning that to the shelf, in the proper place, naturally. Then he went back to the kitchen and studied the letter and envelope again, still not handling them anymore than was needed to turn them over a couple of times.