A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  The decision that Reeve and Freeman had taken not to reveal the full truth about Harrison’s identity was, Smith thought, probably correct – equally, it probably could not be maintained for very long. Secrets are difficult to keep at the best of times; in a building full of people trained to uncover them on a daily basis, it’s virtually impossible. He spent an idle minute or two speculating about how the truth might out, but that was all. It wouldn’t come from him.

  An hour later and Waters had discovered the source of the newsprint in the letter Smith had received. They didn’t have the necessary software at Lake but they did at Norwich, and Waters knew the right officer to approach to get this done quickly; already he had built the informal support network that Smith had told him about from day one. It would have been good to be here in the office on the day that Waters got his first stripes but no doubt he, Smith, would receive a text message on the big day, or maybe an email.

  The anonymous note wasn’t being seen as significant in the search for Zoe Johnson, and there was no reason why it ought to be, but the individual letters had all been cut from the front page of the Lake Daily News for Thursday the 7th of December, and the headline story on that day had been about the missing girl – “Where Is She?”. As Waters watched, Smith wrote that headline out on a fresh piece of A4, and then underneath he copied down the words that had been sent to him in the letter. With a pencil, he circled each letter in the headline that had been used in the anonymous message; the “Is” had been used in its entirety, along with all three e’s and the S of “She”. Every letter in the headline that could have been used to create the message had been, and the rest had been taken from the strapline and sub-headings of the same story. There were other stories on the front page but the font sizes were slightly different – there was no doubt that all the letters came from the one story. Waters had found a copy in the canteen and it was now spread out on Smith’s desk. It was easy to see that other stories could have provided the necessary letters but none of them had been used.

  Waters said, ‘That’s a bit odd. If you were randomly cutting out letters to make up a message, you probably wouldn’t pick them all from one story, would you?’

  Smith said, ‘I’m going to assume you’re using “you” as the indefinite pronoun, otherwise you’re making an assumption as well – that I’m someone who might have experience of sending such missives. Or even the inclination to do so. But no, one could argue that with all these other letters available, the writer made a deliberate choice to use the ones he did.’

  ‘Or she…’

  ‘Yes, keep me up to the equality mark right to the end. It’s just as likely to be from a woman as a man.’

  Then Smith frowned and looked at his watch.

  Waters said, ‘Is it time for another coffee already?’

  ‘No. The paper came out on the 7th and the letter was on my doormat when I got home Friday evening. That’s not much more than twenty-four hours. John, what time does the Lake Daily go on sale?’

  Murray looked up from his screen.

  ‘Around lunchtime or just after, I think. It’s more of an evening paper these days. Why?’

  ‘I’ll explain in a minute. Chris, find out what time the last collections are from postboxes on a Thursday. What’s the latest anyone can post something in Lake and get it delivered the next day?’

  As Waters got back to his own desk, Terek came into the office, talking with Terry Christopher, and Smith thought, good God, I hadn’t thought of that – it’s a match made in heaven. The two of them stood by Terek’s desk, Terek doing most of the talking and both of them sometimes looking around as he did so. The detective inspector was naming names if Smith wasn’t much mistaken and explaining where the assembled detectives – most of Wilson’s team were also present – fitted into the set-up here at Lake Central. Reeve and Freeman had held a meeting first thing and now the new arrangements were about to be put in place.

  Terek got everyone’s attention and began to speak, with Christopher to his right one step behind, unsmiling, trying to suggest that this investigation had just stepped up a notch or two. Paul Harrison would be visited at his home address within the hour. DCI Freeman would lead, DI Terek himself would accompany her, and Detectives Murray and Butler would also be in attendance, the intention being to ask Harrison whether he would object to a search of his property. John Murray was too far away for a word, so Smith said it to himself – he will not object, he’ll be entirely cooperative.

  Harrison would be brought back to the station where he would be interviewed again, in the light of new information that had come to hand; no one asked what this information was, and Smith would have been annoyed if any of his team had done so. Nevertheless, this could only be the fact that Harrison’s past had been uncovered – that at the age of just eighteen he had been interviewed during the investigations into the murders committed by his cousin, that he himself had been spoken to by Hunston police more recently about complaints made by the parents of young girls, and that Harrison had openly admitted that Zoe Johnson had been in his burger van the night she disappeared. And when you put it all together like that, Smith… Reeve and Freeman must have done so. Surely Harrison was now at least a person of some interest.

  Chris Waters was to meet up and liaise with his opposite number on the RSCU team, re-examining Zoe’s social media history. Other jobs were handed out – John Wilson would take a new detective out to meet poor Mehmet Sadik, and there was a female officer, Detective Marta Dabrowski, also from Regional Serious Crimes, who had experience of interviewing witnesses with, as Terek put it, “complex personality issues”. She would go to see Stephen Sweeney with DCI Reeve later this morning. Everything was being revisited – did Reeve feel as if her homework was being marked?

  The briefing came to an end and Smith’s name hadn’t been mentioned. Then Terek was heading towards him, with Terry Christopher the obligatory one step behind. Terek said, ‘Right, DC, I think you know Sergeant Christopher.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far, sir, but yes, we’ve met.’

  There was nothing to be read on Christopher’s face except maybe a trace of satisfaction that he was here to witness Smith about to be told what to do. But it was only maybe and it’s too easy to project our own prejudices onto the minds of others.

  Terek said, ‘Good. Anyway, it’s been noted this morning that we still have some loose ends to tie up concerning Zoe Johnson. Roy Green, the mother’s boyfriend hasn’t been spoken to in person yet, and obviously he should be. Could you get that done today? Chris has all the contact details.’

  Which looked at in one way was Terek saying, go and see one of our most junior detectives and he’ll tell you where to go. But Terek was a by-the-book sort, bright enough but not exactly intuitive where people’s feeling were concerned. He ought to make at least Detective Superintendent.

  ‘Will do. Who’s going with me?’

  ‘Oh. On your own, DC. As I said, tying up loose ends. Obviously, if you come up with anything while you’re talking to Green, then…’

  Detective Sergeant Christopher was smiling then.

  There are several sound operational reasons why detectives invariably operate in pairs. One is that the situation “one man’s word against another’s” is avoided, the not unreasonable assumption being that two policemen would have to collude if they were to lie about what an interviewee had said or done, and the odds on that taking place are small. Of course, if the person to be interviewed really is seen as nothing more than a loose end, a t to be crossed, an i to be dotted, you don’t need to send two officers, one will do. But that one would not normally be a detective sergeant, and that’s probably why DS Terry Christopher had looked amused when Smith was given his orders.

  The A47 that takes you towards Peterborough from Kings Lake crosses the north-western part of the great fens that were drained to create the most fertile farmland in Britain. But because it was once mostly water, there was a price to be paid when the wat
er was pumped away, and the price was in the landscape that was left behind. If the meaning of the word is, as one dictionary suggests, “all the features of an area of land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal”, there is a problem. Aesthetic appeal? The single feature of this landscape is its flatness. Here and there the ground will rise for a metre or two and that place will call itself a hill, but this is a mockery of the word. And because here was once all water and fen, the rivers that drain into the Wash never carved themselves a course – no bends or even gentle meanders to please the eye, just straight, man-made channels, functional and featureless too. Fields stretch away needle-fine to horizons and sometimes there isn’t a single tree to be seen, just the reeds lining the ditches between them, dead now as the year’s turning ends and midwinter draws on.

  Yet for all its faults, Smith had never despised this place. See it at sunset or in the light of an autumn dawn – the peat takes on a strange purple hue, and the feathery, wind-blown seedheads of the reeds catch fire in the low-angled rays of the sun. Stop in any gateway and hear the songs of a dozen skylarks on a May morning. Be here in October and see a thousand white gulls against a vast, dark sky, wheeling behind the plough as the earth is turned ready for the next sowing.

  He might as well be having these thoughts as any about the job. His eyes came back to the road ahead. There’s a film, isn’t there, a raunchy movie as they say, called “91/2 weeks”? Looking at his watch, it was clear that he had nine and a half days left, and these were not likely to be awarded an X certificate or even the ‘adult content’ warning. He’d been sent out of the office, probably at Cara Freeman’s suggestion, so that he was as far away as possible when Paul Harrison was brought into the building. First Terek had tried to shut him out of the case as a liability, then he’d argued his way back in, and now a teenager with too many letters in front of her name had sent him to Outer Mongolia for the afternoon.

  Breathe and smile, Smith, breathe and smile. This too shall pass. All manner of things shall be well. He pressed the switch for the radio but found only an inane Christmas song, even on Radio 4 – he turned it off again without giving them a chance to explain themselves. On the skyline, he could make out the low, squat tower of Peterborough cathedral. Yes, all manner of things… One could only hope that wherever she was now, Zoe Johnson had found some sort of peace.

  ‘I wondered how long it was going to be before one of you turned up.’

  ‘You were expecting to be interviewed, then, Mr Green. Why was that, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  Roy Green was a thin, wiry man with close-set eyes and a shock of steel-grey hair cut close to his skull – Smith didn’t have many preconceptions about what a delivery driver ought to look like but Green didn’t meet any of the few he did have. They were standing in the fleet manager’s office which had been temporarily vacated for Smith’s visit.

  ‘Common sense, isn’t it? Teenaged girl goes missing, you’d speak to the mother’s boyfriend. Why’s it taken you a week?’

  Why indeed? Smith had looked at what they had on Green a few days ago and not considered him a priority but it wasn’t his call – if he had been in charge, the man would have been spoken to before today.

  ‘You have a point, Mr Green, but obviously if you have anything specific to tell us about Zoe, there’s never been anything to prevent you getting in touch with us. Is there anything we should know, Mr Green?’

  ‘Roy. Mr Green sounds like you’re trying to sell me a new suit. No, nothing specific. It’s just… Well, her mum’s slowly going round the bend. I don’t know what to say half the time.’

  There were two blue plastic chairs in amongst the debris of a busy transport office. Smith indicated one to Roy Green and took the other himself – simple things like that can take some of the tension out of a situation. Green was wearing a black T shirt with the company logo – NKA in bright gold letters – and Smith remembered Waters telling him that the manager had said Green was one of his best employees.

  ‘Alright, Roy. These are horrible situations, no getting away from that. It’s hard to find the right words, for anyone involved.’

  ‘You dealt with stuff like this before, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Green had slumped a little in the chair, and now they had got past his initial irritation, he looked tired. Was he staying at the Johnsons’? No-one would be getting much sleep.

  ‘So what d’you think’s happened to her? Where the bloody hell is she? It’s been a week now.’

  There are protocols for this as for everything else – do not disclose anything which could enable the witness to construct a story, or anything which might prejudice the investigation. Be reassuring but bland, kindly but suitably vague. And as with all protocols, sometimes Smith followed them and sometimes he didn’t. Some would say he followed them only when it suited him, and that was probably true.

  ‘Roy, in a moment I’m going to have to ask you a couple of questions about your relationship with Zoe. I’ll just be doing the job I have to do. I need you to be honest about that, so I’m prepared to be honest with you now, if you want. Do you want my honest assessment of the situation as it stands?’

  Green didn’t answer immediately. The detective in front of him was getting on a bit, sitting up straight in the old-fashioned way, with his jacket and tie and cavalry twill trousers, a little black notebook at the ready in his left hand and a fixed, earnest look in his eyes.

  ‘Alright, tell me straight. What d’you think?’

  ‘It isn’t all bad, then. If this had been an attack and she had been badly hurt or worse, we’d almost certainly have found her by now, after a week. It’s possible that she’s been taken far away, but it isn’t at all likely, in my experience. Her story and her picture have been circulated to all police forces, so if anyone had been found – and I mean a body, Roy – we would have heard about it.’

  ‘So… What else might have happened?’

  The policeman nodded and continued, ‘I don’t think she’s run away, either. I’ve heard nothing that makes me think that, but obviously it’s one of the matters I needed to talk to you about. How was she at home the last time you saw her?’

  Somehow it had become a conversation rather than an interview.

  ‘Normal. She was having a moan because Penny had asked her to do a bit of baby-sitting so we could go out, but that was all. Nothing out of the ordinary. No sign that she planned to go out anyway. I still can’t believe that Maureen idiot next door let her go, agreed to keep an eye on the kids an’ that…’

  Smith left a space there. A landline on the desk began to ring and they both looked at it before a voice cursed in another office nearby and then the phone was silent again.

  Smith said, ‘Roy, I have to ask – did you ever spend time alone with Zoe?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe a few seconds if her mum had gone into the kitchen or something, but not the way you mean. Penny and me have only been seein’ each other seriously for a few weeks. I didn’t want to hurry things, with the kids an’ that. Didn’t want to be over-friendly.’

  B for Believe no one is the second letter in the detective’s alphabet, but Smith’s instincts were telling him that Roy Green was an honest and probably a decent man as well.

  ‘Any talk of a boyfriend at all?’

  ‘No, not to me. She’d reached that age – you know, you can tell the way they start fussing over how they look and what to wear, but I don’t think she’d actually got serious with anyone. Like I say, I wouldn’t know for sure.’

  ‘Fair enough. If you don’t mind me asking, Roy, have you got any of your own?’

  ‘Kids? Yeah, a daughter. Divorced. Don’t see her as much as I’d like.’

  ‘How old is your daughter?’

  ‘Coming up for twelve. I brought her round once, introduced her an’ that. She and Zoe seemed to get on…’

  Smith has heard enough. He stood up and Roy Green followed suit. Then the driver scratched his head and
said, ‘So, if you don’t think she’s been, you know – and you don’t think she’s run off, what does that leave?’

  It was a reasonable question.

  ‘It leaves us with an odd one, I’d say. You have to assume that she might be being held against her will somewhere.’

  ‘Abducted?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a possibility.’

  Green’s eyes widened a little as he thought through the idea.

  ‘That could be worse, couldn’t it? If some pervert’s got hold of her?’

  Smith put out a hand, the palm towards Green, as if he could restrain the man’s anger and outrage at the thought with a gesture.

  ‘Best to leave the “ifs” to us, Roy. There are lots of good people doing nothing all day but searching for Zoe. You’ve got enough to worry about with her mum, I’d say. Thanks for talking to me.’

  They had reached the door before Smith said, ‘But if that’s what happened – if Zoe was abducted, how would she handle it, Roy? Maybe you don’t know her well enough, but… Just a thought.’

  ‘I… That’s hard to say, isn’t it? Fourteen?’

  ‘Sorry. Not fair to-’

  ‘No, you’re alright. Zoe’s not daft. I read her school report for last year. Teachers said she was under-achieving, she could do stuff if she put her mind to it. And strong-willed, like goin’ out that night… I don’t know whether this is good or bad but I reckon she’d put up a fight.’