Late of the Payroll
The Inspector’s thoughts were interrupted after only a few minutes by another knock at the door, which had at least been long enough for Sergeant Smith to confirm that the Aubreys were neither back at the plant or answering the phone at home.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ began Sarah Cobb, ‘but we’ve already had a few responses to the news appeal; and there are a couple I think you’ll want to see.’
Back in the mess room telephones were indeed ringing and voices chattering, as Sarah led them to the computer screen where the calls were being collated,
‘Most of them are goodwill,’ she summarised, ‘people who knew him telling us what a good lad he was; some even offering character statements if needed. Others are strangers offering help and support. But those aside, we have two sightings of him on the High Street on or shortly after five on Tuesday. One is a possible, another a definite – a woman who works in the Council building, who sees him at her stop every night, although she didn’t know his name before. However, she says she saw him standing at a different stop that night, and that he caught a different bus.’
‘She’s certain he caught a bus?’
‘Yes, she saw him queuing and getting on from across the road, while she was walking down to their usual stop.’
‘Which one? Where would it go?’
‘The Fourteen,’ answered Sarah, a timetable already procured and being unfolded on the adjoining desk. ‘It twists and turns a bit at first, before heading out along the A-road.’
‘We need to speak to her.’
‘A Constable’s already on their way to the Council House to take a statement.’
‘And the bus driver – we need to know if he recognises him, and where he got off.’
‘It’s always tricky with drivers,’ Cori observed, ‘they see a hundred faces a day.’
‘We might not need to, though,’ said Sarah eagerly. ‘We’ve had another call, that sort of leads on from these.’
‘Oh?’
‘A receptionist at the Havahostel thinks she might have seen him at the motorway services, at around seven o’clock that evening.’
The Inspector and his Sergeant were soon on their way over. The hotel belonged to an area to the east of the town itself, known rather inelegantly as the Corridor; it being the kind of nowhere development that gathered around motorway interchanges and service stations as ancient settlements once had around Roman forts.
The town of Southney, not warranting a freeway of its own, instead made do with an A-road linking to the one that passed nearest. This left them well connected, but without the traffic and pollution of a thunderous six-laner on their doorstep. It also, if they were honest, left them well served among the Corridor’s subsequent developments for carpet warehouses, electronics superstores, multiscreen cinema, and the various other establishments that spring up in such unrestricted hinterlands, well away from planning-conscious town centres.
Upon arriving, Grey pondered on this nameless place (nameless for the Corridor was a name of convenience and not of love). Farms and fields until fifty years ago, no history here at all, he wondered what it must be like to work here, to spend your time in this place without roots or cultural narrative, too far away even to reach the town centre on your lunch hour.
Last chance to fill up before Nottingham! – the sign had once read. The Sixties motorway cafe had long gone, replaced by a clean modern restaurant, though the covered footbridge linking the carparks on both sides remained. The last building before the sliproad was an utterly anonymous block called a Havahostel; existing solely, it seemed to Grey, to serve the owners of the Audis and BMWs that flocked around it, and which came to rest in the complex’s unrepresentatively large parking lots.
Just at the factory yesterday, Grey remembered he had been to this hotel before – though only in a professional capacity, it being, with their nearness to the motorway and helpful distance from the town, an excellent place for jaded businessfolk to meet prostitutes or ‘adult’ contacts ferried in from other places.
The building itself, even from the foyer gave Grey the creeps, the area around the front desk smaller than you’d imagine, and leading off along narrow corridors with dark carpets and off-white walls. He moved to the desk quickly and without wishing to absorb too much of the ambiance; which to him was the echo of plasterboard walls, the smell of paint not fully dried, and the spirit of a building no one owned or lived in or cared for.
‘Hello,’ announced Cori to the woman at the hotel reception, ‘is it Maria?’
‘Yes, hello,’ she answered brightly.
‘I’m Sergeant Smith and this is Inspector Rase. You called earlier, to report seeing...’
‘Inspector, can I offer my deepest apologies to you.’ Another woman had appeared behind Grey and was addressing him before he had had a chance to turn around.
‘Cathleen Hackett,’ she introduced herself, ‘the manager of the hotel.’ She was in her forties he thought, and well turned out. ‘Imagine how I felt when I saw your broadcast this morning, and to be told of this poor young man, lost to his family, your officers doing all they could to find him – and then to learn that two whole days ago he had been seen right outside our very establishment; and that we had had the knowledge you had been seeking the whole time!’
‘Well, we’re not sure yet...’
‘Oh, my receptionist confirmed it, when she saw his picture on the news – the flatscreens in the guests’ lounge carry the international channels, you understand; but we keep a smaller set in the staffroom. She was adamant it was him!’
The receptionist was barely given chance to nod along in agreement to all this, as her boss carried the narrative. Cori showed Maria a photo of Thomas, who confirmed it was him.
‘So what now, Inspector?’ asked the manager. ‘How can I help?’
‘Ms...’
‘Mrs.’
‘Mrs Hackett.’ Grey was at a loss of how to instruct her. He appreciated her assistance, but didn’t like the way the woman was taking over things, information rushing in too quickly and not in the order he would have liked. ‘Maria,’ he turned to the woman behind the desk, ‘you saw Thomas Long in the carpark somewhere? Was it near these cars, parked just outside?’ She followed his gaze through the doors and nodded in eager agreement. ‘Then perhaps, Mrs Hackett, you could take one of the photos the Sergeant has there, and ask your staff if any of them saw him there, then or at any other time?’
‘Yes, I can see how important that would be.’
‘It really could be vital. And then we’ll come and speak to you properly, once we have confirmed some details with Maria here.’
‘You clearly have your methods, Inspector,’ she said, as taking a photo from Cori, she headed off toward the staff room.
Cori had the feeling Kathleen Hackett could be a real headache to her staff of cleaners and cooks, they likely to be foreign, and hardly well paid. ‘So,’ resumed the Sergeant, no longer hindered by the manager’s presence, ‘Maria, tell us about your sighting of Thomas.’
In the pauses between handing or taking keys from guests, the receptionist told them in her sweet Italian accent what little she knew, she looking at the photo the whole time, ‘I was due to start at seven. The shifts are always changing here,’ she whispered as if fearing her manager Mrs Hackett hearing from the other room, ‘so I was only just on time. And as I came across the carpark, I saw a man standing there, this man,’ she pointed at the picture.
‘Where was he?’
‘Just outside, by the parked cars. He made me jump at first, as there was only us two there. But I could see the hotel doors, so kept on walking. And it was nothing, he stayed there.’
‘He stayed there? For how long?’
‘Well, as soon as I got in I hung my coat up in the staff room, and then came back out here to start my shift; and he was still there.’
‘And did you look for him again?’
‘Yes, a few minutes later; but he had gone by then.’
‘So he would h
ave left there between around seven and..?’
‘Ten minutes past.’
‘Thank you. And you didn’t see anyone else out here, talking to him, or a car picking him up?’
She shook her head.
‘I wonder, Maria,’ began Grey, who had been listening to all this, ‘if I could ask you to step outside a minute, and show us the exact spot?’
‘Mrs Hackett wouldn’t like me leaving my duties.’
‘It’s okay, she knows you’re helping us, it will just be for a moment,’ he encouraged, as ushering her out into the shock September sunshine, the trio walked the ten or so yards to where the services carpark met the paved walkway that fronted the hotel.
‘Now, if you go with the Sergeant to where you were walking when you saw him, and then tell me exactly where to stand.’
‘It’s not the same though,’ she said as Grey moved to the spot she indicated, ‘it’s not the same now. It was dark then.’
‘But you think this was where he stood?’ Grey found himself between two cars, the kind of place you would only normally stand if you were getting in or out of either vehicle.
‘And he didn’t move, he wasn’t getting in or out?’
‘No, I told you, just standing. But I remember it now,’ she started excitedly, her memory obviously jogged by being here even in such differing conditions. ‘The car in front of you was not there.’
‘This parking bay was empty?’
‘Yes, like I say, there was no car. And the other car, the one behind you, it was odd. Big, and shiny.’
‘What, silver?’
‘No, just small parts of it were silver.’
‘Oh, chrome? You mean the doorhandles? And the lights?’
‘Yes, and around the windows. It was an old car I think.’
‘Did you see what colour it was?’
‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘It was too dark.’
Seeing the brooding figure of her manager through the hotel doors, Grey thanked Maria and released her back to her ‘duties’. As she headed back Cori took a call on her mobile,
‘It’s the office. I’ll just be a minute,’ she called back to Grey, who remained standing in this same spot awhile, pondering under the burning sun.
‘Oh God,’ Grey cursed, once he and Cori were on their way back to the station. ‘I forgot to check back with Mrs Hackett.’
‘It’s okay, I saw her when I went back in,’ she answered to his relief. ‘None of the other staff there today recognise Thomas from the photo.’
‘What was that all about?’ he asked her, having been too absorbed in thought at the time to pay much attention to her return to the building.
‘The Desk Sergeant rang: someone had mentioned to him that we were at the hotel, and he remembered he had had a routine request to do with the place, sitting on his desk since yesterday. He asked if I could take a look.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Not sure. Apparently the drugs squad in Nottingham wanted us to trace a call made from the hotel two days ago to a suspect they are tailing.’
‘Two days ago. Tuesday?’
‘Yes, but just after ten in the morning; when Thomas wasn’t seen here till seven at night.’
‘Anyone we know?’
‘Well, the call was made to a mobile phone in the name of Stephen Carman. Maria has just told me the room the call was made from was booked in the name of a Mr Smith.’
‘Not very original,’ uttered the Inspector.
‘I know,’ answered Sergeant Smith, ‘I’m not sure any hotel receptionist we have ever checked in with has thought my husband and I were actually married. The other receptionist was on the desk that day, Josie. But she visits her mother on Thursdays, so I’ve left a message for her to call me tomorrow when she’s back in the office.’
‘Stephen Carman though..?’
‘There’s nothing on him in our files boss. The Desk Sergeant had already checked.’
Nonetheless, Grey mulled over the name as they drove.
Chapter 10 – Revelation on the Road