*****
‘Help me out here, Grey,’ asked the Superintendent as his detectives arrived at his office and sat down. ‘My own staff are asking me what this pair are guilty of, and I don’t know myself.’
‘Nor do I exactly,’ answered the Inspector, lowering himself onto the sofa. ‘I just know neither of them are innocent.’
‘So what do we know?’
‘We know that Isobel had arranged to meet Anthony at the hotel on Tuesday,’ answered Cori. ‘Although she was shaky on the details of how they planned to get her away from Carman.’
‘And I have a theory about Thomas,’ added Grey. ‘I think Carman followed Isobel down here, but didn’t know why she came. Now we know how fiercely he guarded her, and we can guess how he would have reacted if he thought she had another man.’
‘So Carman thought Thomas was the other man?’ Rose was perplexed.
‘Perhaps not; but Aubrey did tell me Isobel brought Carman to his house once, and that he made sure he gave himself a good nose around – casing the joint, Aubrey thought. I reckon Carman clocked the car that day, and that was what he recognised Tuesday evening.’
‘When Thomas was standing next to it,’ Cori recalled.
‘So you’ve got to ask,’ Grey summed up. ‘If Carman didn’t know their secret, if Isobel had only introduced Aubrey to him as a family friend or whatever, but one she was obviously very fond of...’
‘...then Carman may well have asked why was she sneaking off now to meet him at a hotel?’ concluded Rose.
‘It’s a fair question.’
‘So it wasn’t about Thomas at all?’
‘No, Carman probably only called out to Thomas to find out what the bloody hell was going on. But Thomas was a bag of nerves by this point – don’t forget, he’d already had Larry Dunn shouting after him down the High Street that afternoon. I reckon he tried to dodge Carman’s questions too, only this time he didn’t have a bus to dash onto.’
‘So Carman chased him for answers...’
‘...and we saw what that led to.’
‘And all this because Isobel wanted to get away from her bullying boyfriend,’ lamented Rose.
‘But she didn’t did she,’ said Cori with a start. ‘I only mean she didn’t get away – we found her back in Nottingham.’
‘And you say Carman had followed her down here,’ asked Rose. ‘So did he also come by train?’
‘No, by car,’ answered Cori, ‘and five hours later.’
‘So how did Carman know where she was?’
Grey had been listening to them picking holes in his idea, ‘Okay, okay, we’ll just have to call it a theory in progress; but I’m sure I’m right about Thomas, and it’s still the best we’ve got.’
Rose sat back in his chair, ‘Well I’ll tell you what I think: I think that we have a working idea of what happened to Thomas, perhaps the best we’ll have. But it’s a theory that neither Isobel or Aubrey can confirm as they weren’t there, and which if anything only tells us that they weren’t involved. In fact, were they guilty of any more than planning a secret meeting? I have to say Grey, I don’t see that the pair have committed a crime here.’
‘There is more to learn sir, I’m sure of it. Just let me go at them once more.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you have another hour, but soon we’re going to need to have something concrete to pin on them. Get back at Isobel, try another angle, catch her off guard.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve just the thing, a little detail Aubrey shared with me.’