Late of the Payroll
Constable Ravinder Chohan would make Sergeant from this he was certain, as he stood outside the front gates of Aubrey Electricals, Superintendent Rose only hours earlier taking him off regular duties and assigning him this detail. And the speed of events since lunchtime had only accelerated that belief, there being an urgency about his boss’s request which lent itself to the idea that a real situation was developing, and making the prospect of the kind of intense disturbance at which he could really demonstrate his skills all the more likely. Just imagine the overtime, he thought; which as ever in his mind was as important for the Brownie points it would earn him with the wife as for the bulge it would give to his pay packet.
Whether it was mercenary to think in such terms when faced with a situation as potentially disastrous to the town as this one, well, that consideration was not at the forefront of his mind. Someone had to do it, he thought, and it was not his fault that he had made himself the best available at it. No, on this point he was settled: the courses he had been on, and the experience he had gathered, both for this force and helping out at incidents elsewhere, had left him the natural choice for the job of managing any disturbance. And so having wasting no time in phoning the wife (for who would not want to start claiming the rewards of their good fortune from the outset?) he had dropped his regular duties and headed over to the plant with a spring in his step.
Friday would be the key day, the Super had told him: the day when the money would be missing from the workers’ bank accounts. As he was told this, Ravi realised he was being taken into the circle of confidence previously occupied only by those at the very heart of investigations: the Superintendent, the Inspector, Sergeant Smith and Sarah their trusted, tactful aide. And now he, a mere Constable (though not for much longer, he hoped) had been permitted, indeed invited, to come up from the servants’ quarters and dine at the top table.
That there had been secrets to reveal had been obvious, a metaphorical Do Not Disturb sign over the Super’s door for days now. And like most, he had heard the rumours from the plant. Indeed his wife’s brother was on the day shift there – and frankly, after a hard day of pounding the streets and keeping the townsfolk safe, to come home and find the brother-in-law sat there, eating at his table and pulling at his wife’s heartstrings, was becoming as much as he could bear.
Nor was it becoming an uncommon occurrence; he always there before Ravi got home, and talking as if the future was already up in the air, wondering aloud – and with no small dose of self-pity – how if Aubrey’s went to the dogs they would ever be able to manage? Ravi had never been able to avoid the impression that these hand-wringing sessions were timed to start just he came in, and trap him as a captive audience as he ate. They were less a veiled reminded of family loyalties than a shaking of the collection tin – as if they were rolling in clover raising three kids on a Constable’s wage! – and he would say this to the wife, once her brother had finally left to spend some time with his own family whose wellbeing he seemed so worried for.
He reflected with a chuckle, that there was a certain humour in the way his wife and he, on these evenings would go about their routines of getting his tea out of the oven and later watching the national news, while paying only occasional-lip service to their chattering relation and his detailed plight. And then this afternoon the Superintendent had called Ravi into his office, and confirmed all of his brother-in-law’s worst fears: The balloon is going up. All hands to the pump. And he had inferred very much from the handshake he was offered, and the look of mutual understanding the Super had bored into his very soul.
The first part of his special duty was to stand guard that afternoon, a time at which precisely nothing was expected to occur, but then you never knew with a situation like this one... Show your face, have them get used to you being there, he had been told; in other words, case the joint for tomorrow.
And if he was lucky get brought a cup of tea by the receptionist. As it turned out, she seemed to have spent half her afternoon stood at the door with him. It being a quiet time he didn’t mind her asking him about his job, and what he did, and what life was like in the police force; if he was married, if his wife found it difficult, ‘you know, when you’re out on duty all hours?’ Ravi’s assurance that his wife hardly missed him when he wasn’t there was answered by playful derision, ‘Oh, I’m sure she misses you very much! I know I would do if I had such a strong man about the place.’ More questions followed: on how many officers there were at their station, and the types of jobs they did? She told him of the detectives’ visit yesterday, they having come to ask about her missing colleague Thomas; and how another man had now vanished, after some silly upset on the factory floor. And the detectives, did he work with them at all, that pretty redheaded girl she had met yesterday, and the Inspector? Did they ever work together?
‘Sorry no,’ he had had to admit to her evident disappointment, the Inspector and he moving in quiet different circles he explained, their work far from always overlapping; but he painted in what details he could.
And then, going in to answer a ringing phone, catch up on chores and make another drink for them both, she came out moments later – to tell him that the man who hadn’t been back since the Inspector’s visit yesterday was there right now, was busy at his post. Up to speed in an instant after his lazy afternoon, Ravi’s radio soon crackled back and forth, the instruction: hold tight, and further details would soon be following.
The sun was sinking now over the industrial buildings, the wall Ravi leant on still warm, as the car arrived at pace to park roughly before him. It had been only ten minutes since calling the news through, during which time only a couple of workers had left the building for a furtive smoke. Don’t let anyone leave, he had been instructed. It had not been a hard detail.
‘Any trouble?’ asked Grey, bounding out of the car, as usual leaving Cori to lock it.
‘None at all, sir,’ answered Ravi, as a squad car pulled up also, two male officers emerging.
‘Head around the sides,’ Grey instructed them. ‘Cover the doors. You’re sure you haven’t seen our man leave?’ he asked, turning back to Ravi. ‘What’s he doing in there?’
‘Doing his job apparently, as if nothing had happened.’ (Grey listened, stunned.) ‘In fact he could have been there for hours, as far as anyone knows.’
‘And no one spotted him before now?’
‘Well,’ Cori reasoned aloud, ‘where’s the best place to hide a man in green overalls?’
‘Right then, come with me.’
‘Yes, sir. We’re going in now,’ Ravi breathed into the cracking receiver on his chest.
‘Hello, Inspector,’ called Shauna Reece gaily from her desk as they entered reception, a ringing phone having brought her in just as they arrived.
‘Madam,’ answered Grey curtly, but only by way of having matters pressing on his mind.
‘I’d only just noticed he was back. I’m sorry I hadn’t called you earlier.’
‘Thank you. It’s more than anyone else did.’
‘It’s loyalty I think... amongst the men.’
‘Could you swipe this door again, please?’ He asked as politely as he could while this wound up.
She did so quickly and silently, in tune with his mood, releasing the three officers onto the thundering factory floor. Refusing again the ear mufflers offered in the receptionist’s outstretched hand, Grey strode in the direction he remembered Chris Barnes’s machine to be. Chris’s colleague Larry Dunn, seeing the officers almost the moment they saw him, bolted off in one direction, only to be faced by one of the auxiliary Constables entering by the side door; before turning the other way, where Ravi now ran fully at him. Dashing erratically in a third direction between two pounding presses, Dunn caught a colleague on the shoulder and sent them both to the floor beneath a hail of greasy tools, the metallic clatter still echoing as the lines of turning machines powered down to silence. This all took place in the space of maybe twenty seconds.
‘You could
do yourself an industrial injury there,’ said Grey, stood above the sprawling figures, somehow neither injured from the falling ironmongery. Green-suited colleagues helping up the innocent party seemed not sure of who to look at in the most accusing manner, as the three uniformed Constables gathered up a rather less grateful figure. And all this occurring under the gaze of several hundred men baffled or angry by the officers’ now repeated visitations. Chris Barnes yesterday, Larry Dunn today – who were the police going to turn up to take away tomorrow? All work had stopped, the room was stunned to silence.
...or silence bar the muttering Larry Dunn, now being manhandled to the door, his random outbursts bubbling down to more sensical pronouncements as they reached the reception,
‘What are you bothering with me for?‘ he thundered. ‘Aubrey’s gone! He’s not coming back, they stopped work to tell us so. It’s in the paper, for God’s sake! Wuthertons run this place now – for as long as that lasts.’
‘I suppose Chris Barnes called to tell you all that?’ asked Grey, recalling catching the lad’s downcast features amid the excitement.
‘I called him, not that it matters.’
‘No, Mr Dunn. What matters is that you’re the last person to have seen Thomas Long in town on the day he vanished – anything else comes second at this moment in time. Now how hard are you going to make it for us to get a statement out of you?’
‘Vanished?’
‘He hasn’t been home for two days.’
‘But I didn’t see him! Well, I saw him at the bus stop, but I didn’t speak to him.’
‘We’ll need you to tell us that at the station.’
‘I only wanted to ask him what he knew about the payroll. I did see him in the High Street; but by the time I’d got over to the bus stops he’d gone, lost in the crowd.’
‘Lost in the crowd... that’s one way to put it.’
‘He was right though, wasn’t he? What he told Chris. He saw this crisis coming.’
The man was being held more upright now, he having been almost horizontal as he was wrestled from the factory floor.
‘Yes, he was right about it,’ Grey agreed. ‘But his family haven’t seen him since.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Well, I hope for your sake that’s true,’ lamented Grey with true sadness. ‘Anyway, we’re not going to have this conversation here,’ he concluded, as with a nod of the head he instructed Ravi and the other officers to take Larry Dunn out to the waiting black maria.
‘No time for a cup of tea then?’ asked Shauna of the Inspector.
‘Alas not,’ was all he could say to her, as his people bustled out through the door like handlers of a giant eel. ‘Not ideal circumstances.’
‘Quite,’ she concurred; as nodding goodbye he left after his team.
Cori counted out some cards from her pack.
‘He’s very... at times, isn’t he,’ asked the receptionist.
‘Yes, he can be,’ smiled Cori. ‘Can you put these out for anyone who wants to call us?’
‘Another successful visit to the plant?’ offered Superintendent Rose upon their return. ‘Doing your bit for public relations? Tussling on the factory floor like Graeco-Roman wrestlers, by all accounts.’
‘We got our man, sir,’ offered Grey hopefully.
‘That you did, that you did. And we’ll soon have a statement from him; but you won’t be taking it. Remember your evening appointment?’
The Inspector did indeed remember. Rose continued, though quieter now,
‘He’s not our suspect though, is he? Dunn? We don’t think he actually..?’
‘No, I don’t think we do. He saw Thomas Long that evening, probably smashed Alex Aubrey’s windows. But beyond that...’
‘Working all Tuesday evening I believe?’
‘Yes,’ concurred the Inspector. ‘Then in the pub again, I’ve heard. Then off in the small hours to wait for the Aubrey’s to come down for breakfast, if we follow the likely chain of events.’
‘And we still haven’t had a sighting of Thomas after Tuesday evening,’ lamented Rose, as wishing Grey good luck on his travels, he turned to go to his office and brood.
Stepping outside to record another interview for the cameras, Grey updating them with news of the hotel sighting, the journalist, the same as earlier, said to him afterwards,
‘You know, Inspector. After we spoke this morning, I remembered that I had interviewed you before about a missing person. That blonde girl, Isobel Semple, the one who had been in all the papers. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, yes I think I do.’
‘Did we ever hear anything of her?’ asked the reporter with what seemed genuine concern. Fears that the man had got a jump on their latest lead instantly discounted, Grey only hoped his shaken head and brief goodnight had given nothing away.
Returning to the office to wait for her, Grey noticed on Cori’s desk the file she had that afternoon been reading, a corner of a photograph peeking out from under the cover,
‘That’s the picture of her they used in the papers,’ he said, not needing to see any more of it to recognise it, ‘the one of her young and smiling. You know,’ he offered, cryptically to any others in earshot, ‘I reckon they were lucky to take that photo when they did; because I don’t think she was ever happy in that house for one day before or after. Lord knows, I never figured that family out.’
Chapter 16 – Travelling Up