The meeting with the Superintendent on his return did not go well, inasmuch as for all Grey had to impart it did not make his superior happy. The glumness radiating from the other side of the desk was as much due to the broader implications of what the Inspector had had to tell his boss, as to the lack of resolution in either of the two incidents he had been changed with investigating: Thomas Long had not been found, and Alex Aubrey’s attacker was at large; but there were also shadows on the horizon, shadows in the shape of looming factories and of large groups of unhappy men. Preparations must be made.
‘So you think this could be more than a simple missing person’s case?’ asked the Super. Grey had been making the case for the disappearance of Thomas Long to be made a priority, and authorising overtime where needed.
‘Sir, I think if the factory fails then this will be big for the whole town. What it all has to do with Thomas, I don’t know. But there is more to learn, I’m sure.’
‘Then I suppose I’ll just have to patient,’ lamented the Super. ‘And what do we know about the factoryman Dunn?’
‘Nothing on our files, we’re checking the national computer,’ Grey reported back the results of his team’s enquiries. ‘His house was empty and there was no car outside.’
‘And do you fancy he’s involved?’
‘Well, according to the timesheet and his supervisor, he was back with his baguette within a quarter of an hour, finishing his shift without incident; so I don’t know what he could have managed to do in that short time, even if he did catch up with Thomas.’
‘Well, unless he’s skipped town one of the patrols will turn him up.’
‘Yes, there are a few people I wouldn’t mind a word with in this case.’ Grey thought he’d chance his arm here, ‘I don’t imagine, sir, you being friends with the Aubreys and all...’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know when they’ll be back in town any more than yourself. Though I am sure that if Alex told his staff he will be back tomorrow, and there is such important work to be done there, then he will be good to his word. I did ring them, when I heard about his injuries. I left a message on their answerphone. Just out of sympathy you know, nothing professional.’
Grey revelled in these details of the boss’s personal life, a side of him so rarely glimpsed. He also knew the message could have been waiting on their phone when he was there scouting around the garden, no more likely to have been picked up by anyone in that empty house now as then.
‘He hasn’t reported the windows or the injury, you know.’
‘Well he is very busy. I’m sure if he wants it followed up he’ll be in touch.’
Was it just Grey, or did he detect in the Super’s voice a slight sadness at his friend’s having left so suddenly and at such a moment, when his officers could have so used his assistance? Perhaps a darker feeling lurked there too, of the Aubreys not having played above board, of them being mixed up in something unsavoury, disappointing, unedifying. Yes, Grey decided, the Super must be worried, not just for his friend’s wellbeing but also his reputation.
‘How did it go?’ asked Cori, as he returned to the office.
‘He’s worried about the factory. Thank you for finding all that out on Dunn though.’
‘No problem, sir.’
The catching up of paperwork – finally clearing the backlog after the conference – and writing up his initial findings of today, took Grey long past the time a man occupied in more routine tasks might have been released back to the bosom of his family. He didn’t sense his day was over though. Where next? The bank, he considered.
It wasn’t far to walk, just a stretch of the legs across the Town Square and along the High Street. It didn’t seem right so warm a day drawing in so early though, he not the first to wonder how long this Indian summer could last? For it was already dark at getting on for seven o’clock, dusk encroaching enough that as he neared the bank he could see the lights on inside. Upon arriving he found himself at a loss as to how to get in, the doors of a bank once locked never normally needing to be opened until the next morn; indeed quite the opposite. Nor was there a bell, or any justification for customers to disturb those who may be inside once the stated hours of opening were passed. The building exuded security, the imperviousness of stone, its chiselled edifice stating in slow, steady tones, do not fear, your money is safe within these chambers.
The door though soon swung open, its heavy form in the hands of the tireless Mr Foy, in this instance fulfilling the manager’s role of keeper of the keys. He ushered the Inspector through behind the teller’s protected desks and up the stairs, toward the office that overlooked the street and shops below.
‘Ah, hello Inspector,’ Keith Pitt greeted, he seeming even in the manager’s office to have taken charge of things somewhat, young Gareth eager beside him, while Mr Foy upon returning hung at the back of his own room (bless him, Grey thought) looking scared half to death.
He quickly voiced his disquiet, ‘I must say, Inspector, going into others’ accounts in this manner is most irregular, even with your Superintendent’s assurances. I have insisted on certain limits though, even in such... pressing circumstances: I must insist any request for access to the Aubrey’s personal accounts will require their personal permission.’
‘Thank you for all your help, Mr Foy,’ Grey attempted to mollify him. ‘The Superintendent and I are most grateful for your and the bank’s assistance.’ Before reassuring, ‘I don’t however see any need to delve into their personal dealings as of yet.’
‘Well I am glad of that,’ muttered the man. Grey wondered if he always seemed so small, or only when frightened?
‘All our actions here will, I am sure, prove to have been justified as a part of our enquiries. I only want to know what Thomas Long found out about the finances on Monday and Tuesday, not the finances per se.’
‘That’s my job,’ added Keith Pitt chirpily.
Foy put to bed for now, Grey turned to the two men at the desk, ‘So what can you tell me?’
‘Well,’ began Keith Pitt, ‘Mr Foy has graciously allowed us access to the statements of the main income account of Aubrey Electricals.’
‘This is the account their bills and costs come out of,’ added Gareth equally cheerfully. Keith Pitt and his apprentice, the Inspector noted with some humour, hardly sharing the bank manager’s concerns for data protection, and loving every detail of Alex Aubrey’s business life uncovered.
‘Yes,’ continued Keith Pitt,’ and to be honest, Mr Foy, I am not sure we would need to see very much more than you have already graciously permitted us to, even if we requested it. It is a very simple tale, Inspector: of the company’s costs remaining much the same, while the income available to cover them went slowly down. It really is a tragic tale. Come here and look.’
Grey noticed the manager wince at this, the consultant playing fast and loose with the information he had been gracious enough to release, bringing a physical reaction with the thought of another set of uncleared eyes gobbling up information from their closely guarded, password-protected computer screens.
‘You can see, Inspector,’ Keith Pitt instructed while the officer craned to look over his shoulder, ‘certain bills recurring from month to month, the amounts virtually the same, and funds released for their payment at the same dates and times. These will I expect turn out to be for materials, electricity and utilities, fixed overheads.
‘And set against that, although it takes a little more looking, you can trace the balance month on month after each of these big bills leaves the account. And I see, Inspector, that though the costs remain the same, the money left at the end of each month – or rather, what is left of the overdraft – is ever less. Not a dramatic fall, but a consistent one. There is a pattern.’
‘So,’ Grey dared surmise, ‘this is a situation building up over many months?’
‘Oh yes, at least as far back as Mr Foy has kindly permitted us to look. I wonder, Inspector, were you expecting something rather more dramatic?’
>
Grey wasn’t sure what he expected, but caught the drift. ‘Foul play you mean? I had no reason to suspect. Did you?’
‘Well, you’d be surprised. I’ve seen some dodgy dealing in my time.’
Mr Foy grimaced again, as if an attack on people who may have been his customers was an attack on him.
‘But in this case,’ continued Keith Pitt less dramatically, ‘there has been no cataclysmic failing of the firm’s finances, nor anything illicit as far as I can see – simply a company losing a bit more money each month; and at a remarkably consistent rate too, although that is perhaps not surprising when their earnings come from long-term contracts.
‘But,’ he concluded with a flourish, ‘you could have plotted this decline on a flipchart many months ago.’
Grey’s thoughts, though not yet his gaze, turned directly to the man almost cowering at the back of the room, unsure as to what degree Keith Pitt was alluding that it was Mr Foy who should have spotted this pattern. After all, weren’t Aubrey’s one of the biggest accounts on his books? Didn’t he have a responsibility here?
‘So.’ Grey wanted the picture clear in his head with all its implications. ‘If the finances were heading south at such a regular rate, then Aubrey, if not also Thomas Long, would have known this was coming this month?’
‘More likely Aubrey than Long, depending on what his role entails, how much responsibility he is given. But yes,’ continued Keith Pitt, ‘with the rate of decline so shallow, and payroll being a variable cost at the best of times – what with temporary staff, overtime, family leave, other absences – then they may have hoped for a couple more months yet before things became critical.’
‘Or,’ Grey speculated aloud, the look of approval in Pitt’s eyes suggesting he was on the right track, ‘Aubrey may have been counting his lucky stars that this hadn’t happened already?’
‘Quite right, Inspector. The analogy would be of an aircraft looping ever lower over a mountaintop, itself covered in an ever-changing thickness of snow. You couldn’t say which swoop would bring calamity, only that it became more certain each time.’
Grey could not put it off any longer. However badly he felt for the bank manger – who was suffering something terrible at the hands of strangers within his own office, their unspoken judgement of his handing of the firm’s affairs implied in every portentous word – there was information needed, and only he could give it,
‘Mr Foy,’ Grey turned to him. ‘I wonder, had you spotted this situation developing? And did you speak to anyone at Aubrey’s office about it? Did Thomas Long know how bad it was?’
‘I can assure you,’ the bank manager quivered with indignation, ‘that any conversations I had with Mr Aubrey or his staff were of the highest confidentiality.’
‘But, we don’t care about the accounts, only if Thomas Long...’
‘Sir, I must insist, I can tell you no more presently!’
These weren’t merely words to end a conversation, but a psychological point in a man’s life. Realising Mr Foy had slipped into denial, and that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with him this evening, Grey tried another tack, turning from the man whose office this was to the one who now held the authority,
‘How is this going to work, Mr Pitt?’
The financial consultant spoke quickly and with experience, ‘It could go several ways, Inspector. My favoured solution, for the company’s sake, is to go through these monthly bills and find a friendly creditor, who if we encourage them to appeal to the court to appoint an Administrator, might fend off less happier creditors who want to appoint a Receiver. And none of us want that.’
‘You don’t have the authority,’ snapped the bank manager.
‘Then find me Aubrey, or another director of the firm,’ Pitt calmly retorted. ‘Tell them to appoint the Administrator. Mr Foy, there are only secretaries left in that office!’
‘Does your instruction by Mrs Marsh stretch to this?’ asked Grey.
‘We’ll soon find out. I’ll speak to her tomorrow, we’ll look into it then.’
Upon hearing these words, he sensed that was that for today, ‘All right then, thank you Mr Foy. I’ll let you get home now. Come on fellows, we’ve kept our man long enough. I presume, Mr Foy, you will be available to contact here tomorrow morning?’
The man nodded meekly, as Grey and the others (for young Gareth had been listening with fascination) filed out quietly from the room. They were almost at the stairs, waiting for their unhappy host to follow them down, to unbolt the door and release them to the empty shopping street, when he called from behind them in a voice as self-defensive as it was explanatory,
‘I told Alex, over and over. I told him that something had to be done. He would laugh off my fears, telling me there was something in the pipeline, money coming from somewhere, new business partners. And then each month – nothing. There comes a point, gentlemen, with even the most valued and loyal customer, where a bank manager has to consider...’
‘Foreclosing?’ Keith Pitt completed the sentence, the word being too obscene for Mr Foy to contemplate leaving his lips, the very antithesis of everything a bank manager tries to achieve in his professional life. He continued,
‘For Aubrey Electricals to have... gone that way, and at my hand! And with it meaning so much to the town! How could I have walked along the street, looked people in the eye? It would have represented my professional failure as much as Alex’s.
‘“It will be fine, it will be fine,” Alex kept telling me. “I’m working on it as we speak.”’ He shook his head, ‘He and his father have been such good customers, for as long as I have been at the branch. And he was a friend too, and a Clubman, and I’m sure you appreciate what that means, gentlemen.
Gentlemen, in plural? Grey looked at Keith Pitt, who answered his querying look,
‘I’m on the list for consideration, hoping to make it in the autumn selection.’
‘A mere formality, Mr Pitt,’ confirmed Foy. ‘I am on the panel. I suppose I shouldn’t really be talking about it outside the Club,’ he continued, ‘but then, so many of our secrets have been thrown out on the line for all to hear tonight, so what’s the harm of one more?’
Chatting over Club business seemed to have cheered the bank manager up; and it struck Grey he uttered that last line with something approaching sarcastic irony. The cheek! But it also struck him that there really was nothing more to be said, that the man’s tragedy was only matched by his reserve, and how boring would Macbeth had been if told with understatement? Either way, young Gareth was enjoying the exchanges like a boy being allowed to stay up and listen in on adult conversation.
With that the three men left, leaving only the manager, a broken man, reputation soon to be stripped from him, behind to lock up, while pondering the calamity apparent before him.
Grey himself pondered as he walked: How long do you feed the goose before you decide it isn’t going to lay a golden egg? Foy had kept feeding and feeding, and no gold was glimmering amongst the hay on that barnyard floor. Whether or not he lost his job over such a bad investment – would his bosses even judge he had done anything wrong? – the man Grey had seen that evening would never manage another bank. He had early retirement written all over him. And how much tougher would it be for any enterprise dealing with what was bound to be a younger, harder replacement? Grey could only be thankful he wasn’t himself a businessperson in these straightened times.
It was still not time for turning in though, thought Graham Rase, at getting on for eight thirty in the evening. He was hot-footing it to the one building, bar the twenty-four hour garage on the edge of town, that had a light burning any time of day or night. The face he nodded to behind the desk in the foyer had changed with the starting of the night shift, as had most of those in the office. He let himself through the security doors and along to the mess room, where the officers and support staff his Sergeant and he worked with were based.
He was greeted though by one face still there
from earlier, that of their administrative support officer Sarah Cobb. She had headphones on and was typing furiously as she smiled across at him,
‘Just transcribing the interview with Mrs Long,’ she said, reminding Grey he really ought to get around to reading that tomorrow, not that there could be very much of interest that Cori hadn’t already summarised for him.
Sarah turned to her notes, and quickly ran through the few developments there had been since he was last here: how they had tried Thomas Long’s mobile number, but that it seemed to be ringing out unanswered; meanwhile there were still no signs of life at Larry Dunn’s house, nor any sightings of his Land Rover, despite all officers being on the lookout; and finally, that a televised press conference, and an interview with the Inspector for the local news network, had been arranged for first thing in the morning.
Grey pondered these not particularly inspiring facts at the same time as admiring Sarah’s dedication in staying behind to help, what with so much happening today on top of her usual duties,
‘Thank you for this, I hope you didn’t have anything exciting planned for this evening,’ he asked with genuine concern for her young social life.
‘Oh, nothing special, just a drink with a girlfriend. I can still get there for nine.’ He had noticed this before, the young not even getting ready to go out until his evening would be half over; especially on a Friday, they arriving in town at ten and even eleven o’clock. He blamed the licensing laws and the surfeit of energy you carry at that age – just wait till you hit thirty, he thought, when you’ll hardly want to get up off the sofa after coming home from work. But then he felt sad, for he remembered something else, for hadn’t she recently been..?
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered as he asked, ‘I was seeing someone, but we broke up.’ Again she startled him, this time by smiling at such sad news. How did women do that, he asked himself, talk of death and illness and break-ups with beaming faces? There was some instinct in them, he decided, wanting even at their unhappiest moments to reassure the world they were okay, and not leave anyone obliged to have to feel pity for them. Men wouldn’t do this, he reflected, they would want the pity, want the world mourning their bad luck. The poet was right, he thought, women are really much nicer than men.
‘He has an offer of a job in Cambridge,’ she continued momentarily. ‘And, well I don’t know, but I felt he took it a bit too much for granted that where he led I would follow.’
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ Grey found himself speaking before thinking. ‘Just go with him, don’t worry about this place.’
The young woman was taken aback; but her quick-returning smile let Grey know he hadn’t overstepped any mark, ‘Sir, you’re my boss. You’re not supposed to tell me things like that!’
‘I’m not your boss, Rose is all of our’s boss, and he’d be out of here himself tomorrow if they’d give him early retirement. But don’t tell anyone I told you that.’
Sarah smiled at the shared confidence,
‘Heard from Cori?’ asked Grey, the answer not greatly important perhaps, but good to keep tabs.
‘She was here herself until an hour ago, writing up her notes on the man you were interviewing at the factory.’
‘Yes, yes of course.
‘And then she said she’d pop over to see the Longs on her way home.’
‘Right, well that was good of her,’ he knowing it was well out of her way to do so. ‘Well, I’ll be off too then, if you don’t need me?’
‘That’s fine, Sir. I won’t be long here,’ answered Sarah readjusting her headset.
‘As long as you aren’t. That’s wonderful, and thank you too for doing this tonight.’
‘No problem, Sir. Goodnight.’
The letters issued briskly from her fingers as she darted through the dialogue of the interview, the sooner it was transcribed the sooner she could get on from here and on to her night of feminine conversation and alcoholic enjoyments, and if she were lucky, perhaps a fumble with someone not-intolerable-looking on the dancefloor of Bleachers, the town’s current hot spot.
‘The lucky young,’ he mumbled.
‘What was that, sir?’ she asked brightly, lifting her headphones slightly.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, embarrassed to have the words heard out loud. ‘Well, goodnight,’ and with that he was off.
He didn’t fancy a nightcap himself, for he found drink’s appeal relied on there having been a sufficient gap since the resulting grogginess of the last time. He liked to visualise a pint as fresh, cool, and clean going down; and not tainted by remembrances of dry throat, odd dreams, and on the really bad occasions that awful seasickness where his bed felt like a life-raft. Yet it was to the Prince Hal public house where he was headed,
‘Drink, Grey?’
‘Not tonight, Bill. Just showing my face. How’s your sister?’
The wellbeing of the landlord’s family assured, and the time of day passed, talk turned to the encounter of two nights before,
‘Whatever’s happening at that plant, it’s got to be bad to get ‘em in that kind of a state on a Monday night!’ Bill shook his head slowly. ‘They were in here yesterday too.’
‘Oh, I didn’t see them.’
‘No, Janice said you’d been in earlier. It was just the two of them though, Larry and Chris. That loudmouth Larry was chundering on again apparently, as aggrieved as if someone has just slapped his wife.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Grey, the job taking over.
‘Oh, we had it all again on Tuesday, Janice was telling me, how “If Aubrey takes this place down then I’m taking him down with it”. Nothing very original, I’m afraid.’
‘An unhappy man.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘They didn’t give her any trouble?’
Bill gave Grey a look of disbelief, as if any mere man could trouble his combative barmaid,
‘She told that chap Dunn that if he didn’t button his lip that instant, then she’d call Alex Aubrey to come over here and button it for him. I tell you, it may not bother her none, but I was getting a bit sick of hearing what she’d had to put up with.
‘His mate Chris will be back here in a bit actually; but he’ll be with his other mates, thank God.’
‘What other mates?’
‘His footie mates. He’s in the team. They’re playing this evening in the cup – it’s the match they postponed from last month.
‘Oh right,’ nodded Grey, he not always as up to date with team news as his friend who, due to his own bartending commitments, hardly got out to see a match himself.
The risk of bumping into Sarah Cobb, herself out later, had been Grey’s greater concern, the embarrassment it could cause her thinking she’d have to be on best behaviour in his presence – he wouldn’t want to cramp her style. But knowing Chris Barnes was imminent, he now found himself wary of running afoul of any of that knot of men encountered last time – although he felt quite sure he wouldn’t be seeing Larry Dunn! Getting into another scene with that crowd would have been simply unproductive.
‘There was a fellow from plant in here earlier, on a half-day. He said there was talk someone tried to hurt Alex Aubrey this morning.’
‘So I believe, nothing reported though.’
‘You sure you don’t want a drink?’
‘Bit too late to start perhaps.’
Bill reached up and took down from the top of the bar something like a milk carton, into which he artfully poured a pint from the tap, and screwed on a cap. ‘Here you go, if you fancy a tot at home.’
‘Thank you,’ Grey uttered, for the take-out, and for so much more.
These various evening appointments had knocked out his teatime plans, and so, not wishing to cook for himself, and not imagining the Club chef would greatly appreciate knocking up a plate for him at this hour, he only paused at the neon-lit Southney Sole, to pick up something he could rush home and re-warm in the microwave.
‘Don’t let them get cold,’ said
the daughter of the shopkeeper who served him, he a regular and perhaps too frequent a customer. More to the point, he thought, is our case going cold?
One part of it, by far the lesser part, the part involving Larry Dunn throwing stones at Alex Aubrey, was settled in Grey’s mind. The man must have driven there the first time – and in the state he was in! – after getting his drunken mate home, the first stone hitting during the night he recalled the glazier saying. The second one was weirder though: did he walk there that time, or get there just as quickly, only this time creeping ‘round the back of the house, and then waiting however long, until the Aubreys were at breakfast? All that remained was to pick the fellow up, which surely wasn’t going to be too hard?
But what of the other part of the case, the far greater part, the part involving the disappearance for over thirty-six hours now of Thomas Long? It seemed as though after almost a full day of enquiries they were no further forward. This wasn’t true of course, for he hadn’t even heard of Thomas Long when he arrived at work this morning; yet now he had in his mind the detailed picture those who know him had all day been painting. This was a picture he knew he must study:
Kind-natured, but quiet; good to have around, but prone to nerves; hard-working, but could be tetchy under pressure. And what a time the lad had had, his busiest week to begin with, even before the failing of his most important task; this in turn raising the spectre of the worst embarrassment of his young career – the prospect of repeating that previous errored payroll. Only this time Thomas knew the men wouldn’t be receiving the wrong amounts, but nothing at all...
Add to that the confusion of what the call from Mr Foy had led him to learn of the state of the company’s finances; the men already calling at the office – and calling after him in the street! – for their payslips; and the not inconsequential fact, it occurred to Grey, that the lad’s own father was one of the men who wouldn’t be getting paid.
A perfect storm. No wonder he ran away, thought Grey, who wasn’t sure if he were him that he wouldn’t have done the same! Home and work were both becoming impossible, unbearable – how could anyone hold such a secret? So, Grey wondered, where does someone with no friends, or at least none that anyone knows of, go when things get tough? And where too had he been the evening before, neither Gail Marsh nor Chris Barnes seeing him at the office on Monday much after five; yet Thomas not getting home till nine?
Still though, Grey couldn’t imagine his quarry staying away for very long before coming home and sobbing it all out to his mother, or even to Gail Marsh, who seemed to fill a similar role among his workmates. Grey knew it was his job to figure this stuff out, yet so sidetracked had they been by developments at the plant, and so sparse any evidence of the lad’s whereabouts, that in terms of Thomas the day had brought hardly any real progress. But the groundwork had been laid, they knew his launch-pad, just not where he had launched himself to. Posters would be printed, regional campaigns mounted. Tomorrow would be dedicated to him.
His thoughts turned to his other missing person’s cases, those people lost, and sometimes found. He allowed this for just a short while though, before cutting off the memories, so rich were they with melancholia and deep, deep sorrow, that an officer could lose themselves if they were not careful.
His own road of slightly-past-their-best Seventies maisonettes approached. His final thought though, leading on from those emotional musings was one of hope, and also praise for his own team and their fellow detectives up and down the land: for it was nice, he felt, that somewhere somebody cared, and might do so for us if we vanished from our own lives; the disappeared like Thomas Long not allowed to just fall through the cracks.
Savouring the smell of the food he was carrying, he found he was also savouring the prospect of the parcelled pint to go with it. Good old Bill – it would be a good end to the evening after all. While tomorrow, he decided as he locked the door behind him, would just have to remain another day.
Chapter 8 – Television
Thursday