‘No answer on her mobile number – why don’t people have proper phones anymore?’ Grey cursed, before gathering himself to intone a standard answerphone message to Josie, the off-duty receptionist.
‘I told you,’ Cori sighed, ‘I’ve left a note for her at the hotel.’
‘But she could tell us now who this Mr Smith was that booked in.’
‘Well if you do leave a message be nice – odds are working at that place she’s from overseas, and might not think of the police in the same way we do.’
His invitation for Josie to call back left, Grey made another call – to Sarah Cobb, asking for the file on Stephen Carman, she promising to call back ASAP.
‘There’ll be other clues, boss,’ offered Cori brightly, she noting his listlessness, all the while displaying that skill he so admired in her and others, of holding a conversation and thinking of other things while controlling an automobile past all obstacles and at some considerable speed. ‘Something will turn up.’
‘What we need though is for him to turn up; Thomas. Not for more half-clues like these – all dead ends and delays, each leading us precisely nowhere.’
They spoke only sporadically as she drove them back to town,
‘I saw the bank manager last night,’ he said as much to distract himself as anything. ‘I think he’s on his way to a breakdown.’
‘That bad?’ asked Cori.
‘I only hope his part in this mess is over before it gets to him too badly.’
‘Poor fellow.’
‘Oh, I’ve seen it before, with these respectable types who get into difficulties. Once they come unwound it’s hard to ever wind them back up as tightly.’ He took no pleasure in his grim foretelling.
‘Is he married?’ asked Cori.
‘No idea. You’d imagine so.’
‘I hope his family are all right.’ She found herself visualising the Foys: the kids who looked up to their father; the wife who cooked his meals and worried when he worried, who knew when he was bringing troubles home from the office. Even as a professional herself, and leaving her young family’s matters – both figuratively and actually – at home each day, Cori still felt great sympathy for her imagined Mrs Foy, the homemaker her own mother was and she herself chose not to be.
The Inspector’s phone rang to break their contemplation, it being Sarah with the results of the trace. Grey switched the phone to speaker:
‘Well, I checked for Stephen Carman on the Police National Computer,’ started Sarah, ‘and a Stephen Carman has a record: two minor drug offences in the last two years, the latest six months ago, tried at Nottingham Crown Court. He was sentenced to three months, suspended, for possession.’
‘Nottingham, where the phonecall trace was requested from,’ Grey mused, the confirmation of details soothing him. ‘So we’d assume the same man. What is there on file for him?’
‘Details are scant, sir. I’ll get onto their records for the full story. But it does say he’s twenty-three years old, Caucasian, five feet eight, with brown-blond hair, no distinguishing features. The photo shows him pretty pale. Not a great looker, I have to say; a bit of a meanie to be honest.’
‘Those photos wash people out; you’re never looking your best when you’re being arrested. What was his first offence?’
‘Just a caution, for drugs also, almost served now.’
‘So there could be other earlier cautions already served... He doesn’t sound like a major player.’
‘Okay. Thank you, Sarah. I wonder if he has any link to Southney, or to Thomas Long? Could you have a look for me? I’ll speak to you when we’re back.’
‘School, maybe?’ Cori piped in. ‘They wouldn’t be too far apart.’
‘Yes, that’s a start.’
‘Okay, sir,’ and with that Sarah rung off to take up her new line of enquiry.
‘Are we expecting to find a link?’ Cori cautioned. ‘Just because there was a call from the hotel, what, nine hours before Thomas was seen there?’
He gave out a deep breath, ‘You’re right of course, but what else have we got to go on? And I know that name.’ Even as he said the words though, Grey couldn’t imagine what could involve two such disparate figures: the quiet local lad who never stayed out at night, and the city troublemaker with previous convictions. In their job they lived for clues, longed for them; but this morning’s random pieces of information seemed to be arriving not to clarify those factors already known but rather to throw their investigations off along wilder tangents.
‘Stephen Carman, Stephen Carman – where do I know that name from?’
Cori began to hear Grey repeat it with monotony, chant-like, as if his mind had snagged on something...
‘What’s caught you, boss?’ asked Cori hopefully, knowing he probably wasn’t even able to tell her.
But Grey was still intoning, ‘Stephen Carman, S Carman, Stephen C, S Car... Oh, there’s something in that name, something telling. What the bloody hell is it?’
‘Stop thinking about it and it will come to you; it’s the best way when you’re trying to remember something,’ she advised, keeping an eye out for traffic as they neared the town centre.
‘No it doesn’t: you’re just forgetting all the times you try and forget, and then forget you were even trying to remember something, and then it doesn’t ever come back to you.’
He was getting snappy, and she was interrupting his cogitation. She remained facing forward and concentrated on the road.
He grumbled on a while, she catching references to ‘old wives’ tales’ and ‘bad advice.’ Before it resumed, the droning of the name... ‘S Carman, S Carman...’
Oh, hurry up and remember it, Cori wanted to snap at him, his murmuring making the journey tense.
‘Where do I know that name from?’ The spell was broken by his phone ringing, ‘Yes?’ he barked down the line, it still on speaker and so probably sounding even louder to whoever was on the other end.
‘Sir, it’s Sarah. Sorry for calling back so quickly.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just a bit more info – a Stephen Carman did go to the Southney School: he’s listed there in the early two-thousands, but no record of any exams taken.’
‘Thomas Long was also there then,’ added Cori, taking no pride in her hunch proving right.
‘Two among hundreds,’ muttered Grey; before asking Sarah, ‘Describe him to me again, what it says on the file, what he looks like.’
‘Well, just under six foot, white, pale complexion, brown-blond hair...’
‘Go on.’
‘Average height, average everything, no distinguishing features.’
‘No distinguishing features. That’s it.’
‘If you put it that way, sir,’ said Sarah quizzically.
He turned to Cori, ‘Stop the car will you, I need to think.’
The Sergeant was thrown off guard, but recalled enough of her advanced driver training to have them safely up against the storm guttering in seconds. As she felt the tug of the seatbelt across her, it brought the adrenalin rush of a brush with danger; a road not quite stepped into, a slipping foot finding new grip.
‘Sarah, can you print off his photo?’ asked Grey, his forgetful ennui replaced by a sharp focus, that left Cori beside him in the car startled and relieved – whatever had been forgotten had been remembered.
‘We’ll need to come in right away and get a copy.’
‘Well, I can email it to you? Send it to your phone?’
‘Yes, thank you, please do that right away.’ He rang off and sat, head forward and facing down. ‘Where are we in town?’ he asked.
‘Well, not far from the High Street...’ Cori began to answer, before realising he was asking himself, cogitating again.
‘Where can we go? Where is the nearest?’
Cori sat still, awaiting the instruction that was bound to follow as soon as he had worked out whatever it was that he had on his mind.
‘Her dad’ll be at the plant, but I don’
t want to go back there if we can help it. He probably wouldn’t know anyway. Where was the mother?’
He was asking these questions of himself, Cori knew, but who were these people he was talking about now?
‘Her friends will all have finished school... It will have to be the plant, although I didn’t see him there yesterday. Odd that, now I think about it. In fact before all this he was probably the last person I went to see there. But would be know her friends..?’
‘Sir, what are you thinking? Can I help?’ Let me in, Cori wanted to shout! This abstract musing was excruciating, every nerve in her alive to the thrill of the chase after being wakened so abruptly by the sudden stop.
‘Yes!’ he at last shouted, slapping his palm across the dashboard with a force she feared might set off the passenger airbag, ‘The High Street. We’re nearly there.’
‘You want me to drive to the High Street?’ asked Cori, already putting the car back into gear.
‘Yes, yes. Post haste!’
A two minute drive at the slowest of times, they were already approaching the parade of shops along the town’s main road before she was able to ask, ‘So, what’s this all about, sir?’
‘If it works I’ll tell you,’ was his only response, a look of both boyish glee and wild panic barely contained in his flashing eyes. His phone was pinging just then as the message came, bringing the picture up on its screen. Cori only hoped nothing got in their way along their short journey to hinder and frustrate whatever it was he was so eager for.
‘Here we go, pull up here, just outside the record shop.’
She did so, and the Inspector was out of the car before they were even still at the kerbside. Pulling on the handbrake, Cori raced after him; just in time to see him holding up the phone’s backlit glass screen at the startled fellow behind the counter, the bell above the door still clanging as he asked him,
‘Is this him? Is this Scar?’
It took a second for the man to gather himself and get his breath back to answer. ‘How... how have you managed to find him, after all this time?’
‘Is this him?’ Grey implored of the wide-eyed shopkeeper.
‘Yes,’ he answered finally. ‘Yes, that was Isobel’s boyfriend.’
Chapter 11 – A Chat with Chad