‘No, I never met him.’
Bell looked towards the kitchen and then lowered his voice.
‘And if it was James being James, I take it there was a woman involved?’
Smith pursed his mouth and said nothing but that was answer enough for Bell. In the kitchen there were sounds of crockery and pouring tea.
Smith said, before she came back in, ‘It’s a good idea to get her out of this for a week or two, until the fuss dies down.’
‘Oh, it’s more than that, though she doesn’t know it yet. I’m rattling round in a great big house up there that’s all paid for, and it’s no a bad area – compared to this,’ and an arm waved round, encompassing the north eastern quarter of Kings Lake. ‘I canna believe this but we were just phoning for a taxi to get us to the station, and two firms refused the job – one said they’d come if the driver could beep his horn and stay wi’ the car, keeping the engine running! This is no place for my granddaughter, man.’
‘What time is your train?’
‘Sixteen twenty seven. We need to sup this tea and be gone, my girl,’ to Lucy as she carried the tray into the lounge that was already no longer her home, though she didn’t know it yet, and she smiled – a pretty, sad, Madonna-sort-of-smile, thought Smith, and then he felt a sadness himself at the idea of James Bell just being James Bell, never really seeing it, never really grasping what he had, drifting with the tide even before he lost his life.
The cane was not for decoration. As they made their way along the platform towards the front of the train, it tapped in a regular rhythm beside Alec Bell’s right leg – his limp, unlike Smith’s, was an old-established one, a limp that had made itself a part of the man and his character. When Smith had offered to carry the heaviest case from the car, Bell had said that he could manage, and Smith had said that he did not doubt it but the offer was still there.
Lucy Bell climbed up the step and took Leah from her grandfather. She had said very little to Smith since he arrived at the flat, and he thought, she doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to hear it, and that’s probably the best thing for her now. She looked down at him and said ‘Thank you’, and it might have been only for driving them to the station and bringing the case to the train. Then she was gone with Leah, finding a seat where he could not see her.
Smith lifted the case and pushed it into the doorway.
Alec Bell said, ‘Kind of you. Are you sure you don’t want something for your trouble? No? Well, you’ve got my number, if there’s anything. Best to speak to me first, if y’see what I mean.’
Smith nodded, first in answer to the statement, and then down at the leg and the cane.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, what happened there? Professional nosiness, for which I apologise.’
‘Aden, 1966, grenade attack. Yours?’
He was looking down at Smith’s injured knee, whose limp had not been as well concealed as its owner had imagined.
‘Close encounter with a car door, about a week ago. Who were you with?’
‘The 24th Infantry. I recovered at the time, being young and stupid, did another seven years but then the arthritis got into it. Still, I count myself one of the lucky ones. Who were you with yourself?’
It was the way in which he had asked the question, of course – who were you with? – but there is also something else, that recognition in another of service that is more than work or vocation.
‘Infantry?’
‘No.’
Alec Bell watched, waited and then accepted it. He held out his hand after passing the cane across to his left.
‘Thank you for your help, sergeant. And I mean with this whole business, not just today. It was good of you to come and see how she was.’
‘I wish I could say it’s over, but it isn’t. I’m afraid I will be in touch.’
Bell had stepped back from the door, which was about to close. Framed by it, and in the dimmer light of the corridor and the late afternoon, he looked taller and improbably like his lost son.
He said, ‘No need to apologise. You do your job – it’s what we do. What else is there?’
Smith turned away then, but when the train began to move he stopped and watched it go. All the windows were lighted and he could see some of the people behind them, all heading north, some as far as the highlands of Scotland, but of the Bell family he could see nothing. The little girl would fall asleep, and Lucy would at least close her eyes. Alec Bell would take the first and only watch, keeping guard like the old soldier that he was.
Smith watched until the end of the last carriage appeared as the train took the gradual left-hand bend away from Kings Lake but there was only a single green light on behind.
PERSONS OF INTEREST
The next case for DC Smith, available now
PERSONS OF INTEREST
In the peace and tranquillity of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith and it isn’t unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one.
What can the links be between a prisoner’s violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years? As Smith and his team begin to untangle the threads, one thing becomes clear – they are dealing with some of the most dangerous people that they have yet encountered.
Text copyright © 2013
Peter Grainger
All rights reserved
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Peter
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven