But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation Read online

  “But not you.”

  The sun was still faintly there in the south, behind them, and their two shadows lay close together on the snow, motionless, corpse-like and a little ghostly.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why are you still at it? I’m not guessing your age or anything but… The stepping down? You could have gone with honour, couldn’t you?”

  “Instead of carrying on dishonourably? Thanks!”

  She had his own trick of just waiting, patiently watching the face of the other, saying nothing.

  “I don’t know. A lack of imagination. A lack of meaningful alternatives. And I’m in love with one of the duty sergeants.”

  Jo Evison smiled but could not resist it.

  “Really? What’s her name?”

  “Charlie Hills. That’s Charlie as in Charles, by the way.”

  It might have been true but somehow she just knew that it wasn’t.

  “Let me wish the two of you all the happiness in the world!”

  Now he was smiling as well, and it was odd, incongruous, like snow by the sea. Ten years ago, standing here among the barriers, the crime scene tapes fluttering, the plastic tents, he could never have imagined returning, never have invented a scenario that would involve standing here with a strange woman in the winter, and not another soul in sight.

  “But seriously – why are you still in the job?”

  “Seriously, it probably is one of the first two reasons but… I don’t know, I might not be in it for much longer. It’s getting harder.”

  “How? You mean the bureaucracy, the interference, the politics?”

  Of course she had heard all of that before. He wondered about her own reasons for leaving so early.

  “Yes, all of that but there’s something else – it might just be me getting past it but nothing’s black and white any more, everything is grey. In my last two cases I’ve found myself going after people who I’m not convinced had wilfully done wrong. Or at least, if they had, they’d done the wrong thing for the right reasons. Crime isn’t what it used to be, a lot of the time.”

  She was following his words closely, and thinking about them.

  “You should have been in Munich – this came up. There was an American talking about the changing perceptions of crime in an age of moral relativism.”

  “Really? Probably a good thing I wasn’t – I might have arrested him just for coming up with such a title.”

  She didn’t laugh – he would have to make better jokes.

  “It’s exactly what you are talking about. And with technological, political and cultural barriers breaking down, policing is going to need a revolution, too.”

  He shrugged; it was too cold for a revolution this morning.

  “And you’re thinking of quitting at this vital moment?”

  “Someone made me an offer that I haven’t refused yet.”

  She thought and then said, “As long as it isn’t divorces…”

  She was a few feet away from him, looking down into the hollow.

  Smith had pointed and said something like “Over there” when they arrived, and since then she had stared down into it and remained silent. She might just be wondering whether this would make a good book, of course, but he doubted that, although he would have been pushed to explain why he thought that – they had not known each other much more than an hour.

  He looked away. From here the sea was visible, not far away at all, just beyond the last low dune of white. It too was empty – no inshore fishing boat after codling, no distant container vessel heading into the docks at Lake, further round the coast. Just a cold, grey-green band of colour merging at its horizon into the uniform greyness of the January sky – sea into sky, sky into sea, no difference.

  He heard her voice say “The first one?” and looked around. She was still staring into the deep hollow between the dune upon which they stood and the next.

  “Yes.”

  “Juliet Richardson. She was only sixteen, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes. The youngest.”

  She already knew their names, knew things about them, things that Smith had been trying to forget for as long as he could remember. And then she was walking towards him, closing the gap until they were side by side again.

  Smith said, “I don’t know if this has helped much.”

  “It has, and I’m really grateful. I know what it costs. It’s like losing one of your own.”

  “Is it? No kids, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Me neither.”

  The sun had finally given up – now all the dunes were a little darker under the shadow of the massing clouds above them. Out to sea, where they were both looking, the vague horizon had also disappeared – instead what appeared to be a mist had formed, a soft grey-white wall that seemed to be advancing slowly towards the land.

  A solitary gull drifted by low in front of them on the air that had begun to move east to west – a huge gull, brilliant white save for a piercingly yellow bill and an upperside as black as charcoal. Jo Evison lifted the binoculars and watched it for a moment in silence as it wheeled away without effort, without a single beat of its long, angled wings.

  “Lesser Black-back,” she said.

  “Really? Fancy that. But everyone needs a hobby.”

  “I caught it from an old boyfriend, years ago. Then he flew away as well.”

  “Did he go far?”

  “Sydney.”

  “Blimey, that’s about as far as a chap can go. You must have made quite an impression.”

  “Thanks.”

  The mist was closer, the wind was strengthening and the temperature was falling. Despite her outdoor clothing, Smith sensed her shiver a little.

  Then she said, “I’d like to do it, if it’s OK with you.”

  “The book?”

  “Yes. At least I’d like to start it off and see how it goes. It wouldn’t be yet, probably at least a year away. But only if you are on board. It doesn’t work otherwise.”

  Smith was looking out to sea a little more intently.

  “You see that mist?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not a mist, is it?”

  “No.”

  “We should be going, then.”

  “Yes.”

  But they waited in silence until the first heavy flakes began to fall around them before they turned down the slope into the dunes.

  Text copyright © 2014

  Peter Grainger

  All rights reserved

  If you have enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a short review at Amazon, where you first found it. As I do not market or promote my writing in any way, it stands or falls entirely by the reader’s opinion of it.

  Smith’s other cases can be found here:

  An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B00FN0YJ6S

  Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B00S889ZNO

  Persons of Interest: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: http://amzn.com/B0130NBIL8

  In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation

  by Peter Grainger

  Link: https://amzn.com/B01BDN5KDO

  If you would like to know more about Smith and his other cases, you could email to [email protected] Alternatively, you might like to try this:

  https://www.facebook.com/petergraingerDCSmith?skip_nax_wizard=true

  As ever, thank you for reading,

  Peter Grainger

  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 Thirteen

/>   Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One