Late of the Payroll
‘No rest for the wicked,’ murmured Grey to himself, as jogging back upstairs, he headed to the canteen to find Isobel eating greedily, Cori sat beside her with a notepad, taking notes of her words between mouthfuls. The room was empty but for a couple of officers talking at another table. Again he saw, like when he watched her sleeping in the hospital, how at moments like these Isobel had a girlish simplicity about her; she now displaying the pleasure a hungry child takes in their food. Yet the moment he sat down she looked up; and without missing a beat asked him between mouthfuls,
‘So what do you need me to do now? What are the necessary procedures?’ Other questions followed as casually as you like, her knife and fork working at the food automatically.
She looked straight at the Inspector as he answered to say how there were no necessary procedures as such, she not having committed any crime, at least none they were investigating; but how he was glad of having her statement as a witness in the Long case, no matter how little light she could shed.
‘It really is very little, I’m afraid. I haven’t a clue who called us from the hotel,’ she offered, before changing the subject quickly, ‘So, what will happen with my things in the flat? And there’s also our... I mean, not all our money was...’
‘I’d think even your personal accounts would be seized,’ advised Grey, ‘at least until after the court case. You might also need to be interviewed by Nottingham police.’
These last reports seemed to sadden her, noted Grey, she perhaps having earmarked some part of their joint assets as an aid in launching into whatever she did next in life. Perhaps they were part-legitimate, he mused, earned by herself somehow? But he doubted it. He also noticed a certain fear about her, sparked by even the most oblique reference to Stephen Carman and the life they shared. This was betrayed by her big eyes, so expressive that not even her iron control could stop them hiding everything authentic she was feeling. God, he must have given her a rough time, he thought.
Isobel, eating less hurriedly now, no longer like an animal worried of where its next meal may come from, sat rocking her feet beneath the chair; while each officer passing through the almost deserted dining room, like their colleagues in the carpark before them, gazed on her with a mixture of amazement at seeing her in the flesh, joined with a look of near-parental love – she was their missing girl, and they were all her family.
Grey didn’t want to rush her – she was after all still a patient in their care, her horrid night not too far behind her. But time was pressing, and there were things that needed saying,
‘Isobel, for your own information, you really ought to know that when you gave your details to the Desk Sergeant earlier, he will be passing them on to the missing persons agencies who have you on their files. Now the first thing they are going to do is contact your parents to tell them you have been reported here. I know this has all been rather landed on you... and I don’t know how you left things with them.’
‘No, that’s fine. It’s a relief really. But I don’t have to see them right away?’
‘Oh no, that is entirely your discretion.’
‘Good. It might all be a bit too much, you know?’
The way she spoke was so reasonable, so calm, so understanding of her predicament, that in hindsight Grey would wonder if he hadn’t let his guard down a little?
‘Now, you can stay here for the day: there’s all the food you can eat, and my office is empty. You’ve got the TV up there, and the sofa’s big enough to sleep on... and I’m sure between us we can find you a bed for the night. But over the next couple of days...’
‘Well, actually I was thinking about this on the way down,’ Cori startled them by saying, before quietening her voice, ‘I don’t know if this is how you choose to think about yourself,’ she was speaking directly to Isobel, ‘but as someone who has experienced violence in the home, and now finds herself homeless... Well, you may qualify for a place.’
‘A refuge?’
‘It’s more of a hostel, for women and their children, when they’ve nowhere else to go.’
Isobel took the suggestion on board, as again Grey marvelled at her apparent acceptance of reduced circumstances.
‘Anyway, there’ll be a support officer along soon,’ concluded Cori, ‘and you can ask them. We don’t have a permanent one here, but the Desk Sergeant will have been in touch.’
Grey wanted to suggest she call her mum or dad, and ask if they could take her in. But he had no idea how they lived now they were parted, if either had a spare room; and besides that would involve opening up the whole can of worms of what was going on within the family at the time Isobel left, and which even after speaking with her parents he had never gotten to the bottom of. Could it be the worst thing in the world though for her to get in touch, build some bridges, and maybe spend a bit of time with one of them? He kept his thoughts to himself.
‘But it’s my choice, what I do?’ She asked them.
‘Yes, entirely,’ confirmed Grey.
‘Right, can I get anyone a drink?’ asked Cori. But at that moment the lady at the counter called to tell Isobel her pie was ready, they having prepared dessert for her especially early.
As Isobel got up to collect it, Cornelia asked Grey of any developments.
‘Sarah found Thomas on the carpark CCTV,’ he whispered across the table. ‘It looks like he was chased off by Carman.’ We need to get over there.’
‘Carman? But what will we do with..?’
At that moment Isobel returned, steaming bowl in hand, and apparently as engrossed in her meal as before; but after sitting down she left her food untouched, instead after a minute asking,
‘So what am I really here for?’
‘Sorry?’ answered Grey.
‘Could you make it any more obvious you were talking about me?’ She looked up now, Cori noting terror in her eyes.
The next scene happened so quickly Grey could barely credit it as real, it bearing the hallmarks of a dream, the place and people taken from memory but thrown all out of context. The change in Isobel was rapid and startling.
‘I wonder why you’ve really got me here at all?’ she continued quickly, ‘All this talk about parents and hostels, pretending you care... and then the moments my back’s turned you’re whispering. You’re all whispering!’ She turned her glare on the officers sat at the other table, she talking loud enough now to have already caught their attention.
‘But no one’s talking about you, Isobel,’ Grey implored. ‘We were discussing something completely different.’
‘You think you’re clever? I dodged you for three whole years!’ She moving to stand now, Cori and Grey rising with her, the three still absurdly close to each other around the tiny hygienic table.
‘You want to trap me, but I’m not letting you. I’m getting out of here!’
As she darted for the door Grey went to block her, placing his hands on her arms for a moment, before realising he had no right to and withdrawing them. However for those few seconds her eyes bored right into his, all guards down, defences stripped, as if he could see into her very soul; and all he saw was blind terror.
‘You can’t go out there,’ counselled Cori. ‘Please don’t go out yet. You’ll be recognised the moment you step out of the door! At least let the paper report the news, prepare the town a bit.’
‘The town?’ she almost laughed. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to get away from this place, and I hope after today never to see it again.’
‘But... your mother,’ was all Grey could stammer, his earlier hopes for a family reconciliation finding incoherent expression.
‘Then you’ll have to tell her how you found me and lost me again.’
As parting shots went, it was a good one, holing him below the waterline and leaving her free to leave without reply. Yet as Isobel left she shot Grey one last fearful glance; which he would later wonder if it hadn’t been a last hope of hers for him to try and keep her there, a final desperate plea to be called back in.
r /> But Grey’s inner turmoil was reaching the surface; and as he sat back down in his chair the feelings inside him were already mutating from pure shock into massive personal insult; and finally a shame that he was thinking this was all about him, his feelings, and that she – and even the town at large – we’re not the real losers in this maddening arrangement.
‘We can get after her sir,’ Cori pleaded, rooted to the spot and somehow needing Grey’s permission to move.
‘She’s a witness,’ was all he found he could say. ‘She gave her statement, she’s free to go.’
Not Larry Dunn, nor Chief Inspector Nash, nor Superintendent Rose when he had a mood on; not all the men on the factory floor as he had marched one of their number off past them on two separate occasions now; none of these, nor any of all the criminals and troublemakers and fellow officers he had ever crossed swords with, had, he thought, ever left him feeling as threatened as this woman had just managed with those last few words.
It was the chill he felt along his spine that did it, he decided (as delicious a feeling as it was terrifying, he would later be happy to inwardly admit) – as wasn’t this what it was to come across someone exceptional, who moved you in ways you hadn’t quite known before? But at that moment in time he had been frozen to ice. He paused from moving a muscle for fear that something would shatter.
‘She got me absolutely right,’ Grey mumbled. He had had a minute to think now, and coherent thoughts – or at least they seemed so to him – were forming, ‘She knew how long we’d been searching, how much her coming home would mean to people. And she followed this up with the meanest little words she could find to spit at me.’
‘I don’t think she was thinking that deeply,’ Cori tried to counsel. ‘She just looked scared to me, panicking over something.’
But the Inspector continued, ‘Am I your prize, Inspector? Isobel was saying to me, The trophy you were going to carry off? She understood my pride, and she nailed it to the wall...’
Cori knew Grey loved her like his own family, would do all he could to protect her from the dangers of the job, and held her opinion often higher than his own (indeed she would often pause before offering suggestions for fear that they could well end up being the course of action taken). And yet here, in this utterly inappropriate and thankfully near-deserted canteen, she, Cornelia Smith, Sergeant of the Southney Station, acknowledged to herself that she was powerless, with no influence at all over the Inspector. For she saw that something special had occurred here, a meeting – or clashing – of minds that had found each other on some higher level, Isobel’s disappearance and Grey’s searching for her connecting them beyond the realms of investigative propriety or police procedure. This was a discussion on the essence of life, and how theirs had become intertwined; or that was at least how the Inspector saw it, supposed Cori.
Thankfully just then, one of the two uniformed officers who had been sitting at the far table in embarrassed silence the whole time, got up and approached the table, saying sheepishly,
‘I think it might have been us, sir, who upset her.’
‘Sorry?’ answered Grey, shaken from his thoughts.
‘Isobel. I think she overheard us talking, when she came to collect her dessert. I looked up and there she was, staring at us.’
‘Well what were you saying?’ asked Cori.
‘That’s just it, it wasn’t anything much. I was telling Phil how I’d just bumped into Sarah upstairs, and that did he know she’d been here all night going through CCTV film? She’s a good girl, that Sarah. She works hard.’
‘We know. Go on...’
‘And he asked if it had been film from the cameras at the hotel, he having heard you’d been there yesterday. And I said no, of the carpark, and how Sarah had said you were holding off looking at the hotel footage till you’d had a chance to speak to the receptionist... and then I looked up, and there was Isobel.
‘Well, we’d better get back,’ concluded the officer. ‘But we’ll be upstairs for a bit if you need us.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cori as the man and his colleague left the room. ‘So...’ she reasoned, ‘Isobel was worried we’d find something on the film from the carpark?’
‘Or from the hotel.’
‘That we’d get a picture of this Mr Smith?’
‘Or a picture of her there with him.’
‘Do you think? What were they up to then? Is it anything to do with Thomas?’
‘Lord knows.’
‘Well should we get her back, interview her?’
‘What about? We need to prove that something happened there first.’
‘But what if we then can’t find her again?’
‘Let her go, she won’t get far.’
‘But... like she said.’
‘Yes, I’m well aware of what she said. And if she kept off our radar for three years last time, it was after planning her escape and having her boyfriend’s criminal resources to rely on.’
‘Whereas this time she’s on her own and only has the clothes she’s standing up in.’
‘Now you’re thinking. The most famous face in town? She won’t get far without being spotted.’
For all the urgency of his words, what Grey did then was remain there in the empty canteen, Cori feeling obliged to sit there with him, in silence, his motives a mystery. He was in fact giving Isobel a minute to get clear, before, with a start as if waking from a daydream, and a slow hand banged on the table, he declared,
‘Come on then, Cori. For all we know there’s a body lying out there somewhere, and if there is then no one else is going to find it for us.’
Chapter 28 – The Search for Thomas