No sooner had Grey made his way back down to the holding cells, than the Custody Sergeant grabbed his ear,
‘Inspector! We’ve been hoping to see you along this way. Mr Dunn has been especially waiting, haven’t you Mr Dunn?’ He said this quite loud enough for his words to travel along the antiseptic-scrubbed tile corridor, and on through the letterbox-slot opening in Larry Dunn’s cell door. The Custody Sergeant’s voice on such occasions was of that special tone, trained into policemen for dealing with recalcitrant charges and rowdy scenes, and similar to that of teachers facing troublesome classrooms – it was the voice of obvious and unquestioned authority, that at its sounding rendered all argument and rival claims to anyone’s attention in the vicinity null and void.
‘We can’t hold him for long,’ he continued in a quieter voice, to the Inspector alone.
‘Don’t worry. Do we have an interview room free?’
‘Everything all right?’
‘Just dandy. He’s been fed?’
The Sergeant nodded in confirmation; and two minutes later, with a copy of Dunn’s statement in his hand, and a duty Constable (held back, at least for now, from the picket line pressgangers’ clutches) stood at the door, Grey at last faced Larry Dunn across an interview room table, the automated tape machine silenced by the Inspector the moment it clicked into life. The man glowered at him from across the table.
‘You’ve had breakfast?’ asked Grey, simply for something to start with.
‘Shouldn’t you be recording this?’
‘Only if we were charging you. As it is I’m only here to tell you you are free to go.’
‘You’ve kept me here all night to tell me that?’
‘I’d say you’ve got off lightly, wouldn’t you?’
Perhaps sensing silence would be his best way of having the interview over soonest, Larry Dunn held his tongue; as Grey continued also in a different vein,
‘I did mean to speak to you sooner. Sorry you had to stay overnight. If I could have gotten here yesterday... well.
‘The fact is though, Mr Dunn, that no crime has been reported, no allegations made against you. The only witnesses to anything amiss occurring at the Aubrey house were the couple themselves and whoever may have hurled a piece of their rockery through the window at them while they ate their breakfast; and if none of them will come forward... well, what kind of case do we have?
‘Nor is it any more than speculation how any alleged attacker got all the way out to their house and back twice over; for it would be quite a hike from town. Even if I had the time to go through traffic camera footage, and two nights running found a vehicle matching yours heading out in that direction... and mere hours after personally witnessing its driver intoxicated...’
‘Okay, okay, I get it,’ Dunn squirmed.
‘Though you see what I’m saying here?’ concluded Grey. ‘Count yourself lucky. Don’t ever try me again.’
Grey could have said more: of how cowardly an act it had been, lying in wait for someone like that, catching them off guard while eating... and a manual man against an office worker to boot, when they had always physical advantage... but he knew to say all this would have been unproductive.
Larry Dunn was no fool, he knew that for Alex Aubrey to make a complaint would require him coming back to town... and that might not be happening anytime soon. Dunn had understood the words, and understood he was free, but something rooted him to his seat,
‘So what about Thomas then?’ he at last responded. ‘Have you found him?’
‘We’re working on it. You know, you’re still almost the last person to see him.’
‘At the bus stops?’
‘Yes, although at least we know now where he was going, and that he got there; which at least confirms what you told us.’ Grey patted the statement Dunn had given his colleagues during his stay.
‘Oh, your theory that I hadn’t waylaid him?’ offered Dunn with a snort.
‘Something extraordinary happened to Thomas that night. You wouldn’t believe the questions we have to ask of people sometimes.’
At liberty to leave, Dunn instead took the opportunity to talk, Grey finding he was quite happy to listen. The man began,
‘You know, when I saw Thomas in town, he looked rattled, fit to burst – you know the way really straight-laced guys are when they get pushed? You or me, finding out what Thomas did, would shout the place down, get on the phone, put our fist through something. But those kind of guys… their lives are too ordered, they follow the rules, they want someone to protect them – the boss, the law, I don’t know. They don’t ever cut loose, it’s like they’re powerless.’
‘Impotent.’
‘Yeah,’ he chuckled, ‘if you like. Aubrey screwed him over though, left him there to sort that mess out. He knew the well was dry.’ At this Dunn leaned in to whisper, ‘That was half the reason I did it. Not just for myself, but the way he’d screwed all of us.’ He pushed his chair back to leave, ‘I hope the lad’s okay, Inspector.’
‘Yes, so do I,’ Grey found himself replying, as with an unexpected hand on the detective’s shoulder, Larry Dunn passed him as he left the room and walked the short way to freedom.
‘Now go and protest if you must,’ called Grey after Dunn, ‘but trust one who knows – the money is not there, no matter what pressure you put them under.’
‘Are you telling me we didn’t get paid, Inspector?’ he called back with irony.
‘But then you knew that already,’ whispered Grey to himself. ‘Thomas Long had told your mate, you were the first ones to know.’
‘So we’re not charging him with anything?’ asked the Constable upon Grey’s own eventual rising to exit the room. He happened to have been one of the three who had pinned Dunn to the factory floor during yesterday’s scuffling bid for freedom.
‘No son, he did for Aubrey all right, but he will never bring charges.’
‘Other things on his mind?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder, the trouble this is all going to cause people. They wanted you for the picket?’
‘Yes, sir. If you don’t need me any more?’
‘Is this your first crowd scene?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You remember your training?
‘Every bit of it, sir.’
‘Just remember then – be spat at, be sworn at, don’t ever raise your truncheon.’
Grey released the lad to his first proper large-scale operation, while recalling his own: Too young for the miner’s strike, a trainee during the Poll Tax disputes, he had first formed a line as a very young Constable, at, of all places, a music festival; one of the first paying, legal dance music events of the early Nineties, the Acid House raves of recent years having petered out in a low miasma of law changes, drug busts and general bad vibes.
It was being held quite legally, in a disused airfield some miles away, employing local labourers, a scaffold stage and – crucially – a rented concert public address system; which, as it neared the headline set of the evening, suffered a massive and irreparable power cut – in fact a man was burnt when the generator and the van it was in exploded. And so the organisers, who were probably the same who had been running the old illegal raves until quite recently, paused only to call in the police before disappearing into the surrounding countryside; and leaving it for the force to tend to thirty thousand colourfully dressed people, who were now being asked, and by the very officers they still viewed with suspicion from those earlier lawless days, to leave in an orderly fashion the field they had but a short while ago paid a not insignificant sum to enter. It had taken eighteen hours.
Chapter 27 – Canteen Confrontational