Chapter 3 Cleaning up the mess
Detective Chief Inspector Charles Smith, or ‘Charlie’ to his friends, family and Amaryllis, was in a state bordering on despair as he left the Queen of Scots and walked round to the car with Constable Burnett, his driver for the afternoon.
A serious crime investigation was all he and his officers needed, just when he had signed off half of them for the holidays and overtime was very unlikely to be agreed even if it had been popular with the officers who were left manning the station over Christmas. What was even more annoying was that he had put forward this very argument to the Superintendent only three weeks ago, when decisions about staffing over the holidays were being made at a higher level, and just before Inspector Forrester had booked a last-minute holiday in Cuba.
Normally the crime rate fell in a spell of cold weather, as most of the casual thieves and habitual burglars went into hibernation. He didn’t blame them: they could easily freeze to death hanging around outside houses at night waiting for their chance to break in. There were always one or two, of course, who thought they needed the money to pay for ‘Christmas’. He could almost see the quotes suspended in the air above them when they spoke.
Charlie Smith thought people’s feelings of entitlement to ‘Christmas’ were way out of control these days. He blamed the media and the parents. They were the usual scapegoats for almost everything that went wrong in society. But to him the search for scapegoats wasn’t nearly as important as actually catching the criminals and locking them up. If they knew there was a good chance they’d be locked up, they might think twice about doing anything bad in the first place. That was what kept him going.
He knew that he and his colleagues were only there to clean up the mess. Theirs wasn’t a noble quest for truth, or at least not most of the time. It was a constant struggle to stop these people from interfering with the activities of the more or less silent majority, who were usually law-abiding because it was less trouble to abide by society’s rules, not because of any moral conviction that they had to be ‘good’.
Charlie Smith was a little on the cynical side. He told himself that he hadn’t been born cynical, but circumstances had thrust cynicism upon him.
Quite often when something like this happened around Pitkirtly he found Amaryllis Peebles and Christopher Wilson mixed up in it somehow, and this case was no exception. But even with his previous experience of them, he found it hard to believe either of them, even Amaryllis, would take part in an armed robbery, and particularly one which left wounded people scattered around randomly in an icy car park. In this case he was worried rather than irritated by their involvement. Despite his reassuring words to Christopher, he thought that if the robber imagined the man could identify him, then Christopher could well be in danger. On the other hand, it seemed fairly likely that the robbery had been committed not by local mobsters - who had become very thin on the ground anyway in the aftermath of the Petrelli case - but by a gang from outside, perhaps even from Edinburgh or Glasgow. So they could be long gone by now and with no intention of ever coming back.
‘But why choose Pitkirtly?’ he mused aloud as they got in the car. ‘The pickings here won’t be that great compared to somewhere in Edinburgh. Or even Dunfermline.’
‘Local connection, sir?’ said the younger officer, skidding slightly as he pulled away on the seafront road.
‘Hmm,’ said Charlie Smith. ‘I thought we’d seen off most of the local lot. Unless,’ he added, having had an unwelcome idea, ‘it’s a new lot in town. Just starting up. Inexperienced, so more likely to shoot without thinking it through. Or maybe Liam Johnstone’s gone feral.’
‘Could be nasty,’ said the young officer, increasing the windscreen-wiper speed to try and clear the thickening snow.
‘It already is nasty, Constable Burnett.’
Charlie tucked his chin down into his scarf and mused on this all the way back to the police station. Someone had built a snowman in the car park. Well, not actually a snowman. It was evidently meant to be a pig. Very funny, I must say, he reflected, blaming the parents yet again.
‘Do you like the pig?’ said the desk sergeant, grinning, as they went into the building. ‘Took me half the morning to get the head looking right.’
‘I don’t think it’s that funny,’ said Charlie. ‘Any more news in?’
‘They would have called you, sir,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘Even if you didn’t have your mobile on, they would have tried the radio.’
‘Sergeant Whitefield back?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
Charlie sensed the sergeant wanted to say something else.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing, sir. Well, there is something.’
‘For God’s sake, I’m not that frightening!’ said Charlie, raising his voice. Constable Burnett took a step back away from him, and the desk sergeant winced. ‘Just tell me,’ he added in a subdued tone.
‘There’s more snow forecast, sir. A blizzard. We could get power lines coming down, and we’ll definitely have roads blocked by morning. One or two of us were wondering - but I can see this isn’t a good time -’
‘What are you talking about, Sergeant McDonald?’
‘Should we get in some extra food in case we get stuck here over Christmas? A turkey, trimmings, sprouts, Christmas pudding?’
‘Only if we can microwave it all, Sergeant. I doubt very much if any of us will have time to stand over a hot cooker on Christmas morning peeling sprouts. Even if the cooker in the kitchen would cope with it all, which I doubt. I’ve been asking for a new one for about eighteen months. It’s a wonder the gas board haven’t condemned that one.’
‘And another thing.’ Charlie Smith was on a roll now. ‘We’ve got our hands full already with this serious incident in town, and the roads are like ice-rinks. We’ll have a spate of RTAs tonight and then we’ll have to spend most of the next few days looking for damn-fool drivers who think their journeys are essential and then get stuck in drifts all up and down the main road. If we don’t have to get a search and rescue helicopter in I’ll be very surprised.’
Constable Burnett muttered something about looking on the bright side, but Charlie decided to ignore it. He did feel better, at least temporarily, after his rant, but he was sorry to see that Sergeant McDonald had now gone into a huff and was banging away on the computer keyboard as if trying to batter it into submission. It didn’t do to annoy the desk sergeant. But honestly! Turkey and all the trimmings!
After sitting at his desk reviewing the statements collected so far about the robbery, and having taken some related phone calls, he decided he would have to go out again to have a word with the jeweller. It was thoroughly unpleasant having to put on his wet parka and the heavy shoes he had taken off and placed under the radiator in the hope of drying out the insides a bit. He didn’t like having to drag Constable Burnett out again either, but he couldn’t go on his own.
An hour later, staggering into the station again from the driving snow, weighed down with shopping bags and followed by a bemused Constable Burnett, he wondered if he had over-reacted. The sergeant glanced at him and said, ‘You got some sprouts after all, did you - sir?’
‘Frozen ones,’ said Charlie. ‘‘Nobody’s going to be peeling sprouts on my watch. Life’s too short.’
Sergeant McDonald abandoned his post and came through to the kitchen to see Charlie putting the food away. It only just fitted into the fridge. But evidently his efforts weren’t unappreciated, for the sergeant said, ‘Cup of tea, sir?’
‘I could murder a mug of scotch,’ muttered the chief inspector. ‘But I suppose it’ll have to be tea.’
‘There’s some tablet,’ said the sergeant. ‘Jemima Stevenson tried to bribe me with it.’
‘Did she indeed? And isn’t she Mrs Douglas now?’
‘Right enough, so she is.’
They were leaning on the reception desk, drinking tea and eating tablet when Karen Whitefield came back with a ju
nior officer.
‘Hmph! It’s all right for some!’ she said, stamping her feet on the door-mat. Huge slices of compacted snow flew across the floor.
‘Here! I’d just got that cleaned up!’ said Sergeant McDonald. ‘It’s a health and safety hazard when it gets slippy, you know.’
‘Our whole job is a health and safety hazard,’ murmured Karen, pushing back the hood of her parka.
‘Have a cup of tea,’ said the sergeant.
‘How are you getting on?’ said Charlie.
‘No sign of them,’ said Karen. ‘We think they may have been parked in that road behind the Cultural Centre. There were tyre marks from a Land Rover or something. They’ll be covered up now.’ She accepted a cup of tea. She peered at the accompanying tablet suspiciously. ‘Whose is that?’
‘Jemima Stevenson - now Mrs Douglas,’ said the sergeant. ‘Christmas treat for the boys.’
‘OK, then.’ Karen took a piece. ‘Have you spoken to the jeweller again?’ she asked Charlie.
‘Yes. He says they made him open the safe and they took everything out of it. He’s making a list.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Apparently not…’ Charlie slumped against the desk again. ‘Makes me wonder what was in that safe that made it worth taking a gun along.’
‘Guess we’ll find out when we get the list,’ said Karen. ‘Is there any news on the casualties?’
‘Two on their way to Edinburgh - if the bridge is open. Others being treated locally.’
‘What about interviewing witnesses? We’ve got a list.’ She gestured to the constable beside her. He held out his notebook.
Charlie sighed heavily. ‘There’ll be hundreds of them. We’re never going to manage to get round them all this side of Christmas.’
‘We’ll never get help from anywhere else either,’ said Karen helplessly. ‘Not with the weather…’
‘We’re all doomed,’ said the desk sergeant, shaking his head.
‘We’ve taken all the preliminary statements, though,’ said the young constable, possibly trying to cheer everyone up. Charlie stared at him critically. He was very young - the kind of officer who made people go on about policemen getting younger - and had a cherubic pink face and blue eyes. It seemed a shame he had to be the only one who remained positive in this situation.
Charlie stood up straight again, squaring his shoulders. It was up to him to take charge and start motivating his tired subordinates, although he knew when they had volunteered to work over Christmas they hadn’t expected anything like this. That was the trouble with crime. It always happened at the most inconvenient moments. Of course, in many cases criminals did this deliberately and took advantage of the inconvenience of the moments, such as the chaos caused by Christmas shoppers.
If only they were more considerate…
He coughed.
‘We’ll start the interviews tomorrow. We’ll get as many as we can to come here. Karen, you make a rota just now and start phoning them. Don’t stay on late though. We haven’t got enough in the overtime budget.’ He knew she would be glad of some time at her desk before setting off homewards in the cold. ‘Keith, you can fetch them in if they can’t make it under their own steam,’ he said to Constable Burnett. ‘Liaise with Karen. I’ll go through the jeweller’s list when we have it. Bruce, maybe you can give me a hand tomorrow with that if we don’t get too many other customers.’
‘There’s no knowing about that,’ said Sergeant McDonald darkly. ‘Christmas seems to bring out the worst in some people.’
‘Only one more shopping day to go,’ said Charlie. ‘And can somebody find out if Liam Johnstone’s in town?’