Cornelia arrived early to join Grey in his vigil, she having left her own curtains open to be woken by the sun. They looked in through the observation window to see that Isobel herself was stirring. The day promised to be another bright one. The Ward Sister’s only condition had been that Isobel be allowed to wake in her own time, the nurses not having needed to sedate her.
‘She’s an early riser, like me,’ said Grey; who even on his days off was always up and alert way too early, keen to get going with things, and never able to enjoy a lie-in. The flip-side of this was that, though he was often called to stay up late for work, and could do so if required, he was never very much use on social occasions after about nine in the evening.
‘Do you think she’ll want to come with us?’ asked Cori.
‘I had thought of that,’ Grey pondered. ‘I think if she wants to go back to the flat we have to tell her of the operation, everything we know, no matter what condition she is in. We have to convince her that Carman is as good as arrested the moment he shows his face, and that she is with us for her own protection.’
‘If she still loves him she might want to go back there regardless,’ Cori sighed. ‘I’ve seen that mentality before.’
‘Stand by your man?’
‘Exactly.’
There was a shuffling of the starched bedclothes as Isobel woke; first with a slow stretching movement, and then with a start, as she began to remember who she was – and wonder where she was.
‘We have to get in quickly, the Ward Sister told me last night,’ recalled Grey. ‘A strange bed in a strange room – if you don’t fill them in with what’s happened to them they can get flare up in all kinds if ways, especially after a trauma.’
As if in answer to her colleague’s repeated advice, the current Ward Sister, Grey’s confidant having ended her shift some hours ago, flew past them into the room, a nurse following soon after bearing a cup of tea. Instructions, Grey realised, had obviously been relayed.
‘Wait here,’ the nurse instructed the detectives as she exited, the drink having been left on the table by the bed. After a minute’s confab with the patient at her bedside, the new Ward Sister gestured with a beckoning motion for the officers to enter.
Grey felt a lurching sensation in his stomach as gingerly he entered the room; a similar feeling perhaps to that experienced by a fan upon being beckoned into the backstage area of a musician or celebrity? He couldn’t quite place it. He had in his professional life occasionally met politicians and other dignitaries, but this was not that same mix of nerves and the urgent reminding to yourself of to whom it was that you were speaking.
Being with her last night, holding her almost unconscious in the back of the ambulance as they sped here, was one thing; but now Isobel was fully alert, and fixing him in her eye as they walked to her bedside.
‘I’ll let the Inspector explain,’ concluded the Sister, as she withdrew to keep a watchful eye on them from the corridor.
‘You’re from back home,’ were her first words to him. ‘I remember you on the telly, back when I...’ Her voice was only slightly groggy, her eyes wide awake.
‘Yes, I was,’ he answered. ‘Inspector Rase, and this is Sergeant Smith.’
But Cori’s introduction proved unnecessary for Isobel, ‘Yes, I remember you from last night. Thank you for helping me.’
Cori smiled at this as she sat beside Grey at the bedside; but she would hold back, allowing them their conversation.
‘When I saw you on the news, back then,’ continued Isobel. ‘When you went on TV looking for me, standing on the green outside the library; it reminded me of home.’
‘You saw that?’ asked Grey before he could check himself.
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, as if it would have been absurd to have thought otherwise, as if she wouldn’t have seen the broadcasts like everybody else. ‘I heard what you said. I knew we weren’t coming back though.’ She said this quietly, Cori noticed, pre-empting perhaps the Inspector’s disappointment.
Grey knew enough, from having worked with missing persons agencies on similar cases, not to judge a person once found for not having gotten in touch during the weeks or months or years of their disappearance – it was one of those things that in the end result brought no one any benefit. You could have called though. People were worried, he wanted to say. But he swallowed hard.
As if hearing his thoughts, she explained, ‘I wanted to get in touch, when I saw it on the news those first weeks, over and over. But... well, what was all the fuss about anyway? I left a note, didn’t I? I wasn’t a kid. I made a choice to go.’
He couldn’t argue with her logic, nor did he chose to argue the technicality of her being just weeks short of her eighteenth birthday at the time; but neither could another part of him let it go entirely, ‘But your parents...’ he spluttered despite himself.
‘My parents! If you knew one percent of what happened with me and them...’
The issue now broached, Grey went on, ‘Well, I did get to know them, and they cared very...’ Cori had placed a hand on his arm, silencing him, bringing him back from the edge of losing all trust with Isobel at all.
‘So, how did I end up here?’ asked the young woman. ‘How did you?’
‘Well, it’s complicated,’ Cori took over. She’s a nice kid, she found herself thinking. How did she get in such a mess? ‘In the first place you’re here because you were found unconscious in your flat.’
‘Yeah, I don’t remember much about that.’ Isobel smiled ironically as she spoke, ‘I don’t think I was feeling too hot. The nurse just now said something about delayed concussion?’
‘But in broader terms, Miss Semple,’ her title sounding ridiculously formal to Cori as Grey said it, Isobel laughing as she heard it, ‘I wonder how much you knew about Stephen Carman’s... activities?’
Isobel smiled the same knowing smile, ‘Ah, so that’s what caught us? Well, we had a good run I guess. I suppose I thought people might have just stopped looking for me eventually, and that even if he did ever get caught this wouldn’t all come back to me.’ She paused a moment, then said with intent, ‘Is this where I decide how much I admit to being involved in? Wait, you said knew?’
‘Sorry?’ asked Grey.
Cori smiled to herself, for she was right: the girl was sharp. Perhaps she had had to be in a life like hers and Carman’s?
‘You asked how much I knew, not how much I know, as if it’s all over. Has something happened to him? Am I under arrest?’
Grey turned to Cori and cast her an imploring look, as if to ask how he could possibly proceed any further without telling the girl everything?
‘It’s okay,’ said Isobel, saving Grey his deliberations, ‘I can guess. You’ve got him, haven’t you? That’s why he hasn’t been back to the flat – don’t worry, I can remember that much. Did you arrest him?’
‘To the best of my knowledge, no,’ answered Grey without elaboration; for they were getting sidetracked, time was pressing, and his promise to Nash required they move soon.
He continued, ‘Miss Semple... Isobel. I hope there’s going to be a chance for us to talk some more very soon, but for now... and as it seems you knew pretty much what your boyfriend was up to...’ He struggled for the words, and eventually just came out with it,
‘For a long time now, Stephen Carman and his associates have been under observation by colleagues of ours in this city. As we speak,’ Grey looked at his watch, confident the action was already in full swing, ‘these colleagues are rounding up the gang, as a conclusion to an operation involving many men and lasting many months.’
‘You’ve been watching them all this time?’ she asked with wonder. ‘You’ve been watching us!’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘Stephen always said they’d do something like this. He saw a policeman behind every tree.’
‘There was one.’
Grey wasn’t sure if he had meant this as a joke, but it made her laugh regardless. He sensed in her
not worry, or even sadness for the life she must have known was now over; but instead there seemed only a lightness of heart, the relief of the recently liberated, for whom that rush of freedom was still fresh.
‘Now, I don’t imagine these are pleasant men that are being hunted down,’ continued Grey, ‘and although we expect our colleagues will quickly gather the ringleaders, well, there is always the risk someone could slip the net. And if they do they may come looking for Carman, or yourself. After all, you’ll both have recently vanished, just before the rest of them are arrested. It wouldn’t take a genius to add two and two and make five.’
‘They’d think we’d grassed,’ she soundly reasoned.
‘It is also not inconceivable that someone is going to get hurt in all this and end up here,’ he gestured to the ward around them.’ Again, if you remained here and someone saw you...’ He let the implications speak for themselves. ‘And that is why we are hoping to take you away from this city very soon, for a few days at least.’
‘So I’m not going to be caught up in this? And these colleagues of yours..?’
‘They may want to talk to you once the dust settles.’
‘But they won’t want to arrest me?’
‘They’ve cut you loose, to focus on the bigger players.’
‘And Stephen? You’d swear to me you haven’t already got him?’
‘I wish we had, I won’t lie to you.’
There was a pause as Isobel seemed on the verge of saying something, but held back, thinking before she spoke. Grey heard a tapping on glass, and turned to see the new Ward Sister through the door window, having gained his attention, now pointing to her nurses’ watch with its upside-down face – the need for urgency had obviously been passed on.
‘I’ll level with you, Inspector,’ Isobel at last breaking the silence. ‘Stephen has been my boyfriend for four years; and there isn’t very much he has gotten up to that I didn’t know about. They are bad men he knows, Inspector. And I don’t want to be here when it goes down. I’ll tell you anything you want, the lot, but you’ve got to level with me too. You need to tell me all about this undercover business.’
‘I promise. How quickly can you..?’
‘As soon as I’m dressed.’ she went to move and gave a small animal yelp, Grey guessed at the discovery of some bruise or injury.
‘We don’t have to go just yet, it’s still quite early.’
‘No, best to get going I think.’
‘Here, let me help you.’ Cori jumped up to the bedside. ‘I packed some clothes, but I didn’t have long, I hope I got everything.’
Grey left the room relieved: it hadn’t gone too badly, and she seemed on their side. There was little he could do right now about getting everything he was learning to make sense, and only hoped Isobel might eventually offer some clue that could help with finding Thomas, for he must be the top priority as soon as they returned.
As he stood alone in the corridor other thoughts crushed into his head, of the complications awaiting them in town: Where will she go? Who must be told? What are the procedures? He would get her to the station and speak to Rose, he was the first to need to know; and focusing on this one simple course of action relaxed Grey, and let thoughts of all else that needed to happen go and stand in line and wait their turn.
Chapter 22 – The Journey Home