Shaken from his rooftop reverie, Grey fumbled for the mobile and killed the quite horrible ringtone he hadn’t the technical nous nor time to learn to change.
‘Inspector.’ It was Nash, though with none of the joviality of earlier, indeed Grey thought he sounded worried. ‘I called my office first, I hoped you might have still been there. I wonder, are you yet very far out of town?’
Grey scanned for signs of direction. ‘It looks as though we’re coming upon the motorway interchange now.’
‘Good, so I’ve caught you just in time.’
‘Do you want us to turn back?’ asked Grey (Cori quickly indicating and turning the car around upon his nod.) ‘We’ll be back at the station in ten minutes.’
By now she had the car pulled up at the grass verge at the opposite side of the road.
‘No, don’t come into the station,’ instructed Nash. ‘Do you have a Sat Nav?’
‘Yes,’ answered Grey and put the phone onto speaker.
‘Then look for Paul Street, and enter it from the Lean Street end, go carefully once you get there, no blue lights or tyre screeching. Just drive slowly and someone will meet you.’
With that Grey signed off, Cori beside him tapping at her little screen.
‘Well, we won’t be getting back for Newsnight,’ he said resignedly.
‘Found it, here we go,’ she said, the car, like most modern ones, firing up with a barely perceptible rumble from somewhere beneath the plush upholstery.
‘Used to be like starting a biplane,’ he said absently, hardly expecting her to listen.
‘Sorry?’
‘I was babbling – about how when I was young, starting a car you’d be jamming the key, the little motor whinnying, it might have taken three or four goes. Half the time you’d need a jump start, or someone’d have to get out and push.’
‘Oh, right,’ she said half-listening, polite even with her attention on the Sat Nav, its whispered voice directing her along unfamiliar roads.
He couldn’t do that, Grey considered as he watched her, his thoughts drifting off-topic a moment: give someone his attention while focusing on something else. He felt tired now – going back into town like this was a mistake; working so late was a mistake. And yet he knew it was only the soothing rumble of the road and the comfort of the ultra-soft seats lulling him into this state – he would be fine as soon as they got to wherever Nash was bidding them.
Cori turned a corner, as the small directional machine showed a pattern of interconnecting roads upon its flashing screen. A female voice – so soft and gentle as to be able to offer the most frustrating traffic updates without incurring the driver’s wrath – advised them they had reached their destination. Satellite navigation, Grey mused, looking up at the sky for the twinkling star that would guide them along the next stage of their investigation.
‘I think we’re at the junction he mentioned,’ said Cori.
Grey perked up. ‘Nash said to go slow when we near.’
‘Well, one more corner to turn and we’re on Paul Street.’
So close to sleep a moment ago, Grey felt as though he had just woken. He now peered around the corner as the car moved slowly round it, and onto a narrow straight road of terraces. Dignified, Victorian, he thought of the buildings, even while scanning the pavements for some sign of where to stop and not go too far.
And then suddenly – was that a figure? Something like a shadow ran up beside them, emerging from they knew not where, to tap upon the driver’s-side window as gently as if wearing velvet gloves. The window slid down electronically, and a young woman’s face became clear beneath a hood. Before Grey could say, Not interested, thank you, and bid Cori re-raise the window, the woman asked,
‘Inspector Rase?’
He hardly nodded before she continued,
‘Sergeant Pullman, Drugs Squad. Pull up quietly, and come with me.’ They exited, closing the doors softly, and joined her on the barely lit pavement. It was so dark they could hardly make out their guide against the brick wall.
‘Could we find a better place to park?’ asked Cori, less car-proud than mindful of needing a vehicle to get home in that evening.
‘Don’t worry, there’s not many kids along this street at night. They know to stay away,’ said Sergeant Pullman mysteriously. ‘And those suits aren’t the best.’ She joked, ‘People will think you’re tax inspectors, or maybe Vernon’s pools?’
‘You don’t look old enough to remember the pools,’ answered Grey perhaps a bit too loudly.
‘My dad used to play them every Saturday. Come on, stay close, there’s no street lamp here.’
‘Why not?’ asked Cori to no response, as they followed her through a narrow arch-roofed alleyway built through the terrace block.
They emerged into an unkempt back garden, hardly more than a paved square with some bins and a short washing line. Through a gate almost off its hinges, they came into a service road that ran along behind the houses. They turned to walk along it, a barren strip of tarmac between rows of similar little yards on either side. At one back gate a woman lifted the lid off her bin with a clang, to empty into it the charred remnants of her frying pan. As they passed she glared at the strangers – perhaps the glare, Grey surmised, of someone used to strange characters and odd goings on after dark, but which she tolerated and had learnt not to ask questions of.
‘Don’t worry about the locals,’ said Sergeant Pullman as they turned to enter another yard, on the same side but much further along than the one they had emerged through, ‘they don’t like coppers in the neighbourhood, but they like having a dealer even less. I think we make them feel safe, although they’d never admit it,’ she added with a grin.
‘So,’ Grey looked down at her hooded top and combat trousers, ‘they know that you’re a..?’
‘They can smell it on us. And if they know I’m an officer,’ she gestured with her hands to her clothes, and then to his suit, ‘then imagine how obvious are you?’
She bid they all be silent, and let them through the yard and into the kitchen of one of the small houses in the terraced row. The room was old-fashioned but tidy and furnished. A pan of warm milk was heating on the stove. ‘That’s Nash’s favourite,’ she said with a smile. ‘Go on up, they’re in the back bedroom.’
The house bore all the signs, Grey thought, of having been a family home until quite recently. Not a rich household, but a clean one, one that looked after its belongings, treated things with respect. As they rose from the narrow steep staircase, running in its own cavity through the middle of the house, and then from the small landing into what had evidently been a boy’s bedroom, Grey thought: this isn’t too different to the room I had when I was his age, this boy, whoever he was. Beside a poster of a current superstar footballer however, was a dog-eared low-scale map of streets and houses covered in pins and markers. And sat below this on the bed was Nash with an expensive white laptop on his knee.
‘Quite a find this, eh? The family relocated six months ago, and we moved in before the Council had even cleared the house. I can’t tell you what a joy it is to work from such a premises – you ought to see some of the dumps we’ve had in the past! I promise you, Inspector, when you’ve been lying on your belly on a damp disused warehouse floor, trying to hold a telephoto lens steady for eight hours... well, the thought of a cosy back bedroom becomes ever more appealing. And I’m not getting any younger – it’ll have to be a desk job soon, and leave all this to a younger man.’
‘You’d be bored within a week.’ This was Sergeant Pullman, arriving with two steaming mugs of cocoa, which she shoved into their visitors’ hands. ‘Keeps the chill out,’ she said, before disappearing to fetch two more for herself and Nash.
‘She’s right of course. I have the office I always dreamed of, custom furniture, a souvenir from every holiday I’ve ever been on... and yet I don’t spend half as long there as I could. Why would you want to be in the map-room pushing markers around when you could be in the trenches though, eh
Inspector?’
‘I prefer the street-level myself.’ The drink burnt the tip of Grey’s tongue.
‘Of course, that’s because of who we are, and why we joined the force. We have enquiring minds. We didn’t join to hog a desk, we aren’t a branch of the Civil Service. We are not that kind of person, we are inquisitive, which is why you are already wondering why I brought you here, when I previously wished for you to be as little involved in this end of things as possible. Lead the way will you, Gill.’
The returning Sergeant Pullman led them silently from the lit bedroom, Nash closing the door behind them, and across the landing, which Grey noticed had no bulb in the light socket. On entering the front bedroom they discovered the room had not a door but a velvet curtain. It struck Cori as they moved through it as being like the curtain of a stage or, more accurately, of a fortune-teller’s booth at a funfair.
Parting the veil led them into the room, where not only was there no source of light but every surface seemed to be made matt black, rendering the space a mysterious pool of shadows and looming unidentifiable shapes.
One of these shapes moved, and spoke to them, ‘No change, boss.’
‘Sullivan, these are the detectives from Southney, the ones who know Isobel.’
‘Good to meet you.’ Sullivan stuck out a black-gloved hand which Grey could hardly find to shake.
‘Sullivan is leading our surveillance.’ Nash was talking very quietly. ‘Show them, Tom.’
‘She’s in view now.’
Invisible hands moved Grey by his shoulders into a position to see through a pair of binoculars, its lenses focused like a laser-beam, burning right into the living room of a flat he imagined must have been at least fifty yards away, and perhaps a floor or two above the room he was in. He judged the low block he was staring at to be perhaps a street or two further back than the houses opposite them on the terraced street.
‘You’ll have as good a view here, if you want to see as well.’
Cori gave a little yelp as the gloved hands reached for her and placed her beside Grey and behind a high-powered camera.
‘Forgive his brusqueness,’ said Nash, ‘too long spent in darkened rooms can de-sensitise a man.’
The fellow in the close-fitting modern equivalent of a cloak made a few small adjustments to the lens, and suddenly the view was as clear for Cori as for her colleague. The pair of them side by side, as if watching a small stage through opera glasses, saw through a large picture window the interior of a modern apartment. Rather starker than the still-furnished rooms of the former home they were at that moment squatting in, the walls of this other residence seemed bare white, but for a series of dramatic prints hung in series across the back wall. It was a huge single pane they looked through – wouldn’t be allowed today thought Grey, guessing the squat block dated from the Sixties – which gave him the impression of their watching the room through a giant television screen, and meant the officers could see everything that occurred within it, almost as if through a transparent wall.
‘Is that Isobel?’ asked Cori, shocked, as a figure walked into the room holding a glass of juice. Female, small, in only a nightdress or what could have been a large tee-shirt. Her hair was blonde, thick and short, and bearing none of the purple traces Chad at the record shop had mentioned her sporting in her Southney days.
Grey was stunned – there she was at last, the object of all of his endeavours nearly three years ago. In two days he had gone from not knowing if she were alive or dead, to learning of her phone calls, to seeing candid camera shots of her; and now to finally seeing her with his own eyes, albeit assisted by technology. ‘Southney’s Snowdrop,’ he whispered so quietly that only Cori heard.
But something wasn’t right, and both were sensing it. As she moved toward the sofa – that like the other items in the room looked both new and expensive – Isobel seemed to fall as much as sit down upon its ample leather frame.
‘She isn’t well, is she,’ spoke Grey.
‘And is that blood on her face?’ called out Cori, as she watched this dot of a woman, weak as a lamb, bring the drink to her lips with a titanic effort. She replaced the glass on the table, beside the shiny pebble of a phone, which she then lifted as if it were a lead bar; this was the phone they had of course already heard so much about. ‘She’s making a call,’ announced Cori.
‘What’s she’s saying?’ asked Grey.
‘We can’t hear the calls themselves,’ answered the mysterious Sullivan from yet another viewing post. ‘But the phone company send us the numbers called and answered.’
‘She’s probably trying to call an ambulance.’ Cori was getting anxious now. ‘Did you see what happened to her? Was it Carman?’
‘No,’ answered Nash from somewhere at the back of the room.
‘It wasn’t Carman? Then who..?’
‘No, I mean she isn’t calling an ambulance. Of course it could have been Carman.’
‘Did you see him do it?’
‘Not this time; but they have had fights before.’
‘So,’ Cori asked dumbfounded, ‘ with all these cameras... have you got footage of him hitting her? I mean, if you have it recorded then we can...’
‘We could do, yes.’
‘Then why not..?’
‘Because we want to put him away for longer than he’d get for knocking his girlfriend about.’
She was stunned to silence.
Grey took a step back in the conversation, ‘But how do you know she isn’t calling an ambulance?’
‘Because she hasn’t made a call in two days; or received one for that matter.’
‘Is that how long it’s been since she was hurt? When they fought?’
‘If they fought. Yes, two nights ago.’
‘Two nights ago? She’s been like that..?’ Grey fumed at this, almost lost for words himself now. ‘And where’s he, for that matter?’
Nash shot back, ‘Surveillance isn’t watching someone twentyfour-seven, Inspector. You monitor people, learn their manner and ways. We don’t know where Stephen Carman is every minute of the day.’
‘Do you know where he is this minute?’
The Chief Inspector didn’t reply; the Inspector thrilled for the accuracy of his off-the-cuff remark. Grey imagining Nash glaring at him across the darkness.
Meanwhile, Cori adjusted to the realisation of new intel – Nash had lost his suspect. Was that was what this was all about?
‘Two nights ago,’ explained Nash. ‘Tuesday. The night Stephen Carman disappeared, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since. And there you have it, Sergeant, Inspector: the reason you are here, and the situation we hope you can begin to help us out of.’
There was an aggravation in Nash’s tone that Grey wasn’t sure was entirely warranted; as though the Southney officers were somehow responsible for the mess he was in? He tried though to process this sudden information – primarily the fact, as his mind began to grasp it, that Stephen Carman had been missing for as long as Thomas Long.
Beside him though, Cori was still transfixed by the image of suffering brought to her through the camera’s telephoto lens. ‘So how has Isobel been?’ she asked the room. ‘Have you kept watch of her?’
‘Rest assured,’ began Nash, ‘that if she had passed out or slumped over we would have been in there regardless of blowing our cover. But she’s holding it together; she’s strong. Trust me, Sergeant, when I say this is the very worst scenario we face, and we do not enjoy it one bit.’
‘She hasn’t been out of our sight,’ offered Sullivan. ‘She’s had the curtains open the whole time.’
Cori was reassured that Isobel had been under constant watch, but his statement niggled her,
‘But why would she close the curtains?’ she asked, it occurring to her that if Isobel kept them open all evening when most people had them closed, then she might not close them at all.
‘Because he doesn’t like too much daylight of a morning, does our Stephen,’ answered
Nash. ‘Or that’s our best guess anyway. He’s not too keen on bright lights in general. Of course this may all be a part of his paranoid desire to stay unseen, unnoticed, which is at the core of his professional secrecy, and part of the reason why he’s so good at what he does. But,’ the Chief Inspector pondered, ‘I do wonder if he doesn’t have some form of epilepsy, a light-sensitivity? A lot of them do, you know, troublesome lads. Dyslexia too. They suffer frustration caused by learning difficulties, embarrassment over not being able to read, things like that. It’s half the reason why they can’t concentrate in the classroom or hold regular jobs...’
‘Fascinating though this is...’ Grey interjected, as eager to have answers as his Sergeant. But Nash continued,
‘She’s often on her own up there at night. She likes to sit at the window, just looking out over the city.’
Cori was becoming as exasperated as Grey, before Nash, as if reading her thoughts resumed,
‘I know what you’re thinking, Sergeant. And yes, it does seem contrary to our avowed duty to protect the public, and the countless police initiatives to crack down on domestic violence – it is a sad but all too common aspect of this couple’s relationship. But their... spats never last very long, which is I expect why she’s still with him... which was the next thing you were going to ask me, right? Why does she stay?’
Cori wasn’t sure it was, but he continued,
‘Well, life is never that simple; and believe me, Sergeant, she gives as good as she gets. See that huge TV on the glass stand? That’s his pride and joy, but not his first... a week ago she put his silver pistol right through the screen of its immediate predecessor.’
‘He’s got a gun up there?’ called Cori. This situation was going from bad to worse.
‘Not a real one, it’s a cigarette lighter, solid silver,’ explained Nash with a smile, Cori then remembering seeing the receipt earlier, from an up-market-sounding store in town. Nash continued, ‘He doesn’t ever use it though, doesn’t smoke even, just waves it about occasionally. He’s got a bit of an Al Capone fixation, or maybe Al Pacino? I don’t know who he thinks he is, but that screen’s big enough for us to make out most of the films he watches on it: and it’s a good job DVDs don’t wear out, or he’d be buying a new copy of Scarface every other week.’
‘But all this money they have to splash around,’ Grey was still struck by the evidence of their spending. ‘I thought he was just a kid selling amphetamines?’
‘He may have been when he worked in your town. He’s moved on now, moved up in the world, or so he thinks. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. He’s not selling sweets to school kids anymore. How do you think a major-league drug dealer operates?’
‘He smashes up expensive televisions,’ started Grey, lost in the fog of the conversation.
‘She smashes...’
‘Okay, but it doesn’t really matter. Forget about the televisions – they could put an ashtray through a dozen of them each for all I care. What about Isobel? Is that a head injury?’
‘Yes, there did seem to be a cut, but the redness has faded somewhat.’
‘How... how can you just say that?’ asked Cori. Despite the gloom, Grey just knew Cori was burning with indignation beside him.
‘You think I don’t care?’ Nash jumped to his own defence. ‘I’ve been watching her alone up there, nursing that wound, for two days now.’
‘No one ever died of delayed concussion, at least that I ever heard of,’ uttered the hidden Sullivan.
Cori sat there in the darkness feeling her concerns brushed aside; but before she could say anything, somewhere in the formless space of the dark room a radio crackled, prompting Sullivan to ask Nash, ‘Can you get them out of here, sir? I’ve got to speak to Central.’
Grey hardly noticed the insult, as, with an arm around his shoulder, Nash continued to talk to him as he led him back to the dimly lit landing. In the confusion Cori had been left at her nocturnal viewing post, her eyes focused on the languid frame of Isobel Semple sprawled across the leather sofa.
On the landing Nash continued, ‘Inspector, you think I’m being heartless. I get it, I really do. We’re sitting here watching a woman in acute distress, and doing nothing. I can see how that confuses you. Her suffering appeals to your innate humanity, and especially so with her being the woman you’ve been searching for so long. Now, I’ve shared a lot of our operation with you this evening, but I fear I also have to share a few home truths. You will not enjoy them.
‘One: Isobel is not an innocent in this. She knows exactly what her partner does. She doesn’t pack his lunch and think she’s waving him off to the office each morning.
‘Two: we are not their guardian angels. We are only here to stop them doing the bad things they are doing to other people; and if as a result of our operation we see bad being done to – or amongst – the criminals themselves, well, as I say, this viewing post isn’t here to jump to their aid the moment a perpetrator comes to harm. We play a long game, Inspector, and sometimes short term kindnesses must be forgone for the greater good of the exercise.
‘Now, I’ve seen Carman commit a hundred acts against a hundred people; and I have had to step back, let it happen, and know in my bones, that I will have enough after six months to put him and other much worse people behind bars for many, many years. Think of the thousands whose lives will be the better for that.
‘Now, is there one part of what I’ve said so far that you are not on board with?’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Grey. ‘Enough of the humanitarianism. I’m prepared to credit you with doing what you’re doing here with the best intentions. But please, tell me what happened on Tuesday.’
‘Very well,’ began Nash in reserved tones, as if resigned, Grey felt, to knowing things couldn’t move on until the story had been retold to the Inspector’s satisfaction. ‘Not long after receiving the phone call from the hotel on Tuesday morning, Isobel left the flat; we thought either just to go shopping or see friends or have a coffee in town as she often does...
‘And you lost her?’
‘As I said before, surveillance isn’t tailing someone all day and all night. We don’t have the manpower for a start, and it offers too many opportunities to give ourselves away and for the subject to get suspicious. Rather, it is about establishing patterns of behaviour, knowing where someone is likely to be going, and where they are likely to next appear, and what they are likely to be doing there. You would be surprised how effective this is, how routine even criminal lives become. Where the system falls down however, is when a canny person, perhaps knowing they are being trailed, makes a one-eighty degree turn, goes right off the expected route and vanishes from the radar screen.’
‘And this is what she did?’
‘Well, all I know is that we didn’t see her again until the same time on Wednesday. And that’s not all: later on Tuesday daytime, after she had left, Carman came home; and after five minutes stormed right out again.’
‘And that was the last you saw of him?’
‘No, he seemed agitated, and so we did tail him; at least as far as to the home of another his associates we are watching, where he borrowed a car.’
‘And did you follow the car?’
‘No need. Cars are easy – the numberplate is logged every time they’re picked up on a traffic camera. The last trace was on the motorway, southbound, probably the same road you travelled northbound on to come here this evening. Our best guess was he turned off it soon after though, at least before the next camera placement; and carried on either along minor roads, or else stopped very close by, before he had travelled far enough to be picked up at traffic lights or a major junction.’
‘Somewhere like a motorway services?’
‘It was a possibility. However, we didn’t want to enlist your forces in a search, and risk revealing our interest, until, well...’ The man’s mood had darkened considerably, ‘To tell the truth, Inspector, we were hoping beyond hope that you would turn up some trace of Ca
rman at the hotel; that you could tell us that he had met someone there, maybe whoever it was who called from there earlier. Perhaps Isobel may have been there too? Who knows.’
He had only known him one evening, but Grey thought this was about as despondent as the Nottingham man was ever likely to get.
‘So how did she get hurt?’
‘We don’t know,’ Nash sat down on a small chair by the bedroom door. ‘She came back with what looked like a cut, but nothing too serious. Of course we were worried, but she seemed fine in herself, and then spent most of that day in bed. It wasn’t until the evening, when Carman still hadn’t returned, and she was up and about and looking groggy, that we worried. And then today, I have to admit, has been a bit of a nightmare.’
Grey wasn’t purposefully tormenting Nash here, it was just the run of negative answers the man was being forced to give. However, just then Sullivan emerged from the shadows, and asked for a moment alone with his boss; Nash offering Grey his apologies as the pair of them entered the boy’s bedroom and shut the door.
A moment later, free at last to break cover, Cori followed Sullivan from the lightless room to speak to her colleague in the now empty landing,
‘Sir, I didn’t mean to overhear Sullivan’s conversation.’
‘No, no.’
‘But it was a call from another officer in the field.’
‘Come and tell me outside. I need some air.’
Chapter 19 – A Moment of Decision