A Private Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  It was absurd. Smith got to his feet and nodded to the officer in charge. Dr Ann Glover seemed a little taken aback. After looking at both of them, she said to Smith, ‘I think you could show a little more appreciation of what Marco has tried to do today. This is not easy for him.’

  Smith said, ‘Really? I’d say what he’s doing is the easiest thing in the world for him.’

  ‘Re-engaging with society is not easy. He is showing a willingness to-’

  ‘Thank you, officer – we’re done here.’

  Andretti had enjoyed that, the exchange of words between them. He stood up himself, gave the woman a look that said well, I did my best, and then said to Smith, ‘I hope you have a long and happy retirement, detective sergeant.’

  Still his Achilles heel, perhaps, the need to demonstrate his cleverness, to have it admired. Smith’s face was expressionless as Andretti turned away, followed by the scowling woman and the second prison officer. But when they were at the door, Smith found himself saying something he had not expected.

  ‘Andretti?’

  The smug grey eyes again, and a look that said, you see, you need me, we are inseparable, aren’t we?

  Smith said, ‘Do something useful with this. Tell me about the others. Juliet Richardson wasn’t the first – we both know that. There are other families that deserve some peace.’

  Every eye was watching Andretti then. He looked at Smith for a long time before he said, ‘I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.’

  When they had gone, the air seemed to seep back into the room, and Smith felt himself relax a little. He blew out his cheeks and looked at the remaining officer, who nodded and then spoke.

  ‘Short and sweet!’

  ‘Not short enough for me.’

  ‘The story is you’re the man who put him in here.’

  ‘Well, yes and no. One of many…’

  ‘Bloody good job, whoever did! I’ve met some creepy ones in my time but he’s something else. He plays people, gets inside their heads. That ‘Doctor’ Glover? But I expect you already know all that.’

  The corridor was silent. The others had gone, and the officer seemed willing to talk. This might be more useful than the meeting with Andretti. Smith said, ‘Perhaps she specialises in the therapy bit, rather than the psycho – maybe she leaves that to other people to sort out. Do you have much to do with him?’

  There were three silver stripes on the epaulettes, which, if Smith recollected it accurately, made him a Principal Officer.

  ‘Yes, unfortunately. He’s on my wing.’

  ‘Rule 43?’

  The officer took a long and thoughtful look at Smith, and then went to the door which had been left open and closed it. Better and better.

  ‘No. You perhaps already know how it works, but these days Rule 43 is pretty much reserved for the paedos. The word on Andretti is that it wasn’t sexual, so he doesn’t need protection because the victims weren’t kids. It’s an upside-down world in here, sergeant.’

  ‘Tell me where the world is the right way up and I’ll go and live there. You must be Principal Officer West, then.’

  A laugh and wry look before, ‘No. I’m Custodial Manager West these days. We changed our labels again a while back.’

  ‘Everybody wants to be a manager! Is Andretti a loner in here?’

  ‘No. He’s got a little cadre, three or four of them. Plus the good doctor, of course. And a couple of the assistant governor grades take an interest in him. He knows how to play his celebrity alright. Today was typical – he was just pissing you about, wasn’t he?’

  It would be easy to say too much – on the other hand, he needed to say enough to keep Custodial Manager West on board for a few more minutes.

  ‘I think so. It got a bit personal between the two of us, and I don’t think he ever got over me. I have this effect on some of our clientele. Still, fancy him dragging me a hundred miles up here just to do that.’

  But another part of that highly compartmentalised mind was saying, if only, if only that’s all he was doing, just pissing me about. Because something he said makes me think that he wasn’t, not at all. Either that or this last case is being haunted by a succession of ever more grotesque coincidences.

  West said, ‘He seemed to think you’re about to retire, anyway. Maybe that was the reason.’

  ‘And I am, in a few days. I’m just wondering whether…’

  Custodial Manager West must have had at least twenty years in the service. He could probably read unfinished sentences and quizzical looks as well as most experienced interviewing detectives.

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  Smith seemed a little surprised but if you had asked him to write down what he wanted the officer to say, the answer would have been those very words.

  ‘I’m assuming you go into our friend’s cell from time to time?’

  ‘All too often. Why?’

  ‘Does he listen to music?’

  ‘Andretti? Now you’ve asked me something. Twenty inmates on that wing…’

  A distant bell began to ring but West didn’t respond, so it must be something routine. Smith watched and waited.

  ‘Yes, he’s got a mini sound system and headphones, that’s all we allow. CDs and that on a shelf above his table.’

  Smith took out the Alwych and respectfully tore out the back page. From his inside jacket pocket, he produced a pencil.

  He said, ‘No need to make a special visit’ – knowing naturally that the officer would almost certainly do that very thing – ‘but the next time you’re in there, have a look for anything by this lot. And I’m also writing down a phone number – that’s me. If there is anything, I’d like to know. If you’re uncomfortable with this, chuck the paper in the bin as soon as I’m gone, but… Anyway, no names, no pack drill and all that.’

  West took the small sheet of paper, folded it and pushed it into the breast pocket of his uniform. Then he said he would presume Smith did not want a tour of the facility and escorted him to the exit of Long Hill. A tour? No thank you, thought Smith again, as he made his way to the car. There are a few things about this job I will not miss, and these places are most certainly among them.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  At four thirty on the afternoon of Friday the 23rd of December, Harris appeared at the back door of the house, crossed the intervening space and went into the garage. Ten minutes later, one could see him stocking up the van for the evening’s business. This took another ten minutes, by which time the first street lamps had come on in the road outside his house. Harris then went back inside, and Smith knew that at five thirty the lights inside the house would be extinguished before Harris locked it and went to his van. He would sit in the cab for two minutes, busying himself with small things, like a pilot before take-off, and then the van’s headlights would come on, and Harris would take the same route into and around Kings Lake as he had taken on the previous two nights – and the same as three nights before that when Murray and Mike Dunn had been watching him.

  The Rolex had been chosen in honour of this, his final day, and he watched the seconds elapse as five o’clock approached. That would be the end of his shift, and if he had been on duty here in an official sense, he could start the motor and go home, literally job done. Tonight, if he hadn’t managed to postpone the thing last Wednesday, there would have been drinks and a bit of a do down at The Lighterman’s Arms, but he’d argued convincingly enough that it was too close to Christmas, that people had better things to be doing on such a date and that he would prefer something on a Saturday in January when everyone who wanted to could attend and have a drink – ‘All four of them’, he’d said in the office, and even Wilson had made a comment that wasn’t unfriendly.

  Another thirty minutes to wait for Harris – about a minute for every year he had done in the service. How many hours in those years had been spent doing this? Watching someone, waiting for them to make a move. As a senior officer, as the senior officer on a case, i
t doesn’t happen so much, obviously, but he’d never minded it, never complained like some did. It gives you time to think, has a certain Zen-like quality if you do it properly. You can reduce yourself to a pair of eyes, nothing more.

  Two minutes past five. Legally he was a policeman until midnight, at which point he might turn into a pumpkin. He certainly would turn into plain David Conrad Smith. He could still use the initials DC but they wouldn’t mean anything much anymore. Sitting here now was a mild form of madness, naturally, but you see things through to the end, don’t you? What’s the alternative? And besides, last night, following Harris, for the first time he had the feeling that Harris knew he was being watched. Nothing specific had changed but sometimes the subject’s behaviour, or even just their manner, alters – they seem to be giving a performance. They don’t look at you but you know that they know you are there again. If all this was somehow personal, if Zoe Johnson’s disappearance had been aimed directly at him – an idea that had not become any more rational for being present in his head for several days now – then Harris becoming aware of Smith parked in the turning sixty yards from his front door might be a significant moment.

  Four minutes past – time for a Polo mint. Not any more rational, but did that make it irrational? He thought back to last Sunday afternoon, when after forty-eight hours thinking it through he had called John Murray, and Murray had said ‘Come over for tea. It’s just the three of us, and they’d both love to see the God parent, DC.’

  William David Murray could walk now. He had stood at his mother’s knee and stared at the man who had come to tea. This man had been here a few times before. He looked at you a lot but didn’t get hold of you or make the usual noises. William shook the rattle once more, the silver rattle with the ivory handle, his favourite toy, and they all smiled again, and William’s mother said, ‘He loves it, DC, he won’t let it out of his sight!’

  They had eaten tea, William in his high chair the centre of attention, and then Maggie put him to bed. Smith waited until she was back with them because he had always valued her opinion and because, being away from it all for eighteen months now, she would probably offer the most objective view of the matter of anyone that he knew.

  Smith had said, ‘This Zoe Johnson-Paolo Harris thing – I need to know if I’ve finally lost the plot. If I have, the timing would be excellent.’

  Murray poured more tea from the pot and said, ‘Take us through it from the beginning, as you see it. What have you got?’

  He did as he was told, right from the beginning. Zoe was as normal a kid as you’re going to find on the Dockmills, or just about anywhere else these days. There was nothing in her family or personal history to make her an obvious victim, or at least nothing the investigations had discovered. Going out when she’d been told to babysit her brothers and sisters seemed to be about as awkward as Zoe ever got, and the story they had been told, that she had hoped to meet a friend at the playpark, all checked out – she hadn’t set off to meet a boy. Zoe was pretty enough and of an age when men had begun to notice her. And men had noticed her that night but they had all been questioned and nothing of concern had come up until Paul Harrison appeared on the scene.

  Maggie said, ‘How were you rating Harrison as a suspect before you found out who he used to be?’

  This was a significant question, and Smith hesitated and glanced at Murray.

  Maggie added, ‘I mean you personally, DC – not the official version.’

  ‘Number one, he was the last person seen with her, and that puts you on the list, whoever you are. Second, inviting her into the van is way too friendly, however hard it was raining. No man in his right mind would do that these days, would he? Third, we discover that the Hunston police had spoken to him informally a while ago because a parent had complained that he was getting over-friendly with their daughter when she went to buy a hot-dog one Friday night. I know that doesn’t count as previous, but this is all before we discover the truth about his family tree.’

  Maggie said, ‘And it was your friend Jo who put you onto that?’

  Smith nodded and wasn’t surprised to get back, ‘Mm. Be nice to meet her sometime, DC.’

  ‘So then we start to take a proper look at Harris. When Waters first found him, he was more than willing to come into the station – Harris, not Waters. Fair enough, some people are cooperative, not everybody hates us. But when he comes in, he meets Charlie Hills, and on the way up he asks Charlie who is going to be interviewing him. Charlie is definite about this; he believes that Harris was asking for a name. Why? To my knowledge, there was and still is only one copper in Kings Lake whom Harris had met before, whose name he might know, and that’s me. Because when we were tying up the case against Andretti, we interviewed Harris. I did. Andretti’s alibi for disposing of Megan Griffith’s body was watertight – he made sure of it. Someone had to have helped him, and I was convinced it was his cousin, Paolo Harris.’

  Maggie said, ‘You were convinced?’

  ‘I still am, Maggie, only more so since I’ve seen Harris again. He put Megan Griffiths into the dunes.’

  A little respectful silence grew after the saying of her name, the fourth girl murdered by Marco Andretti, but all three of them must have known, as experienced detectives, how this might sound and look to an impartial observer; policemen can and do become obsessed with the ones who get away. Smith even had an Alwych notebook dedicated to them, on the second shelf above his desk.

  Wasn’t he now putting John and Maggie into a difficult position, making them listen to the ravings of their old, soon-to-be former, sergeant? He had smiled, ready to pack this in, when an odd, disembodied sound materialised in the room – the sound of the silver rattle heard over the baby-monitoring speaker. There were smiles, and Murray said, ‘Then you got the letter. Tell Maggie about the letter.’

  ‘Harrison was interviewed on the Thursday morning. When I get home on Friday evening there’s a letter waiting, an anonymous letter, like something out of a bad episode of “Poirot”. It’s a message more than a letter, just two sentences made up using bits of newspaper headlines, but I recognised it from the words. It said “The game has commenced. Is it a mystery to you?” There’s a song by Dire Straits that begins “It’s a mystery to me, the game commences, for the usual fee, plus expenses”. That’s too much of a coincidence to be one, Maggie. I mean, that someone would write those words without knowing the song.’

  Maggie Henderson wasn’t a detective anymore. She had embraced motherhood with a passion, she had put on a little weight and she looked positively serene about it all, but for these few minutes, for him, she was her old self.

  ‘I’d have to agree. What’s the title of the song?’

  ‘Private Investigations.’

  ‘Huh!’ with a smile, because she could see it and others could not or would not. Then she went on ‘John’s told me some of it already. Chris found out which newspaper had been used. The Lake Daily?’

  ‘Yes. When we studied it, it was obvious that whoever wrote the note to me had used only the headlines from the Zoe Johnson story, when the paper reported the search of the playpark and the old railway. The letters were present in plenty of other places in the paper – that tells me that the ones used were chosen deliberately. This had to have been constructed on the Thursday afternoon, the same day we interviewed Harris, to reach me in the post by the Friday afternoon. And everyone these days knows that everything can be traced, don’t they? Whoever wrote it and sent it knew that we’d discover which paper and which headlines had been used. It’s deliberate, as I said – some sort of a wind-up.’

  Maggie looked at John Murray before she said, ‘A game. The game has commenced… How did Jo connect it to Harris? Was she staying at your place?’

  One must hand it to women – they will have it out of you in their relentless way. Smith’s theory was that it’s evolutionary, the pursuit of the knowledge of who is with whom in the changing kaleidoscope of relationships – vital knowledge i
n maintaining the social hierarchy of the tribe. So he simply said yes, she was staying at his place that Friday night, and he didn’t bother with the “But…” Then he told them about how Jo had come across the name Paolo Harris before, when she was doing the initial research for her book about the Ice-cream Murders and Marco Andretti. Harris and Harrison – she had wondered, and that had been enough.

  Maggie said, ‘She used to be a DI, didn’t she, in the Met?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmm. And is she still going to write this book?’

  There was, he thought, the faintest note of disapproval in the question, and he wasn’t sure why.

  ‘As far as I know.’

  And a little more disapproval in the following pause, before she said, ‘So then you went to see the recording and you recognised him straight away. What were your impressions of him, in the recording?’

  ‘Too good to be true. Open, friendly, concerned about the girl, keen to help with the inquiries. He was different in the second interview on the Tuesday, when everyone knew who he used to be. Then he was more arrogant and starting to make noises about harassment. It all had a familiar ring to it by then.’

  Maggie sat back and drank some tea, taking a time out. She looked at the baby monitor but there was silence now, or perhaps just a quiet, distant breathing sound. It was difficult to be sure.

  John said, ‘So what happened on Friday, when you went to see Andretti?’

  Smith took them through it step by step, saying he wasn’t surprised that it all seemed pointless as far as the investigation was concerned; Andretti was an opportunist as well as a planner, and he had spotted the chance to get Smith in front of him so that he could show off in front of the left-leaning governors and the psychotherapists who seem to be running the prison system. It was all over in a few minutes, but Andretti had said one thing, one phrase that struck him as odd, as out of place.

  Maggie said, ‘What was it?’

  ‘He said, “Still trying to dig up the dirt?” He meant with regard to the original investigation, when we were trying to get Harris into the frame as well.’