‘So sum up for me: is there the slightest link between the two enquiries?’
Grey struggled to come up with any but the most obvious connections, ‘Both their fathers worked at Aubrey’s; both attended the same school, but in different years, though Thomas and Carman’s years would be closer.’
‘And what about at the Havahostel?’
‘Only that the call was made that morning, and Thomas seen there that evening.’
‘Quite a gap though…’
‘Well, we don’t know when Smith was there till — they could easily have been in the room still at seven pm.’
‘So do we know when Smith checked in, checked out? Do we know anything about them?’
‘Well, the receptionist will be back first thing…’
‘You know, I’m not sure you’ve handled the hotel angle at all well.’
‘Sir, we leant quite a bit from…’
‘It sounds like you were only there ten minutes.’
‘Well the phones were ringing when we left here; we hoped there’d be other leads waiting to be chased…’
‘You didn’t speak to anyone else at the scene, anyone who might have seen him.’
‘There’s someone doing that right now.’
‘Either way, I want you back up there before you leave for Nottingham.’
‘We have learnt some new facts though, sir,’ Grey pleaded in mitigation. ‘We know it’s likely Smith was calling Isobel and not Carman.’
‘But that still has nothing to do with Thomas Long! We really have no other leads on him after the hotel sighting?’
‘No, sir. And Sarah would have interrupted us if anything had come in while we’ve been here speaking.’
‘So where did Thomas go? Use your experience, break it down for me.’
‘My best guess?’ Grey hated having to speculate so openly. ‘Well, the sightings we have point to someone waiting at a different busstop than usual after work, and from there heading directly to the services; where, and here we must be judicious, he appeared to be waiting for someone, to have an appointment to keep with whoever owned that distinctive, possibly an older, car he was seen standing by — there really seems no other reason for him to be stood where he was. Now, in any other case…’
‘You would think he had planned to meet someone and go away with them?’
‘But not Thomas. I don’t believe that is how his mind works. He is inward-looking, not outward. I think he would believe his problems, if they could be solved at all, would be solved by his family and close colleagues, here in town: his mother, Gail Marsh. He would turn to them, not run away.’
‘Even if his family and colleagues were the problem: this secret he was keeping from his father and the other workmen, knowing none of them would get paid? He’s hardly Cassandra, but even so, it must have been tormenting.’
‘Agreed, sir. Agreed. Yet I still don’t buy it. You asked my honest opinion, and there it is.’
‘You know, Grey,’ said Rose quietly after him as he and Cori had risen to leave the room, ‘About Isobeclass="underline" if we do confirm she’s living up there, then we may have a problem down the line, about telling her parents that she’s found. If she is a part of Nash’s undercover operation…’
‘That had occurred to me too, sir.’
‘I just mean, if it’s playing on your mind like it is on mine… Look, I know things are a mess at the moment, what with everything that’s going on. But, you’re doing a good job here. I don’t know who else I’d trust to run things on the ground.’
Astonished with the praise, Grey could only stand a moment, before thanking Rose quickly and turning from the office.
Back in the mess room phones were still ringing, if not quite as frequently as before. When just at that moment, among the various call being answered and callers imparting information, one particular phone rang, the caller offering one particular fact…
Chapter 15 — Larry Dunn Returns
Constable Ravinder Chohan would make Sergeant from this he was certain, as he stood outside the front gates of Aubrey Electricals, Superintendent Rose only hours earlier taking him off regular duties and assigning him this detail. And the speed of events since lunchtime had only accelerated that belief, there being an urgency about his boss’ request which lent itself to the idea that a real situation was developing, and making the prospect of the kind of intense disturbance at which he could really demonstrate his skills all the more likely. Just imagine the overtime, he thought; which as ever in his mind was as important for the Brownie points it would earn him with the wife as for the bulge it would give to his pay packet.
Whether it was mercenary to think in such terms when faced with a situation as potentially disastrous to the town as this one, well, that consideration was not at the forefront of his mind. Someone had to do it, he thought, and it was not his fault that he had made himself the best available at it. No, on this point he was settled: the courses he had been on, and the experience he had gathered, both for this force and helping out at incidents elsewhere, had left him the natural choice for the job of managing any disturbance. And so having wasting no time in phoning the wife (for who would not want to start claiming the rewards of their good fortune from the outset?) he had dropped his regular duties and headed over to the plant with a spring in his step.
Friday would be the key day, the Super had told him: the day when the money would be missing from the workers’ bank accounts. As he was told this, Ravi realised he was being taken into the circle of confidence previously occupied only by those at the very heart of investigations: the Superintendent, the Inspector, Sergeant Smith and Sarah their trusted, tactful aide. And now he, a mere Constable (though not for much longer, he hoped) had been permitted, indeed invited, to come up from the servants’ quarters and dine at the top table.
That there had been secrets to reveal had been obvious, a metaphorical Do Not Disturb sign over the Super’s door for days now. And like most, he had heard the rumours from the plant. Indeed his wife’s brother was on the day shift there — and frankly, after a hard day of pounding the streets and keeping the townsfolk safe, to come home and find the brother-in-law sat there, eating at his table and pulling at his wife’s heartstrings, was becoming as much as he could bear.
Nor was it becoming an uncommon occurrence; he always there before Ravi got home, and talking as if the future was already up in the air, wondering aloud — and with no small dose of self-pity — how if Aubrey’s went to the dogs they would ever be able to manage? Ravi had never been able to avoid the impression that these hand-wringing sessions were timed to start just he came in, and trap him as a captive audience as he ate. They were less a veiled reminded of family loyalties than a shaking of the collection tin — as if they were rolling in clover raising three kids on a Constable’s wage! — and he would say this to the wife, once her brother had finally left to spend some time with his own family whose wellbeing he seemed so worried for.
He reflected with a chuckle, that there was a certain humour in the way his wife and he, on these evenings would go about their routines of getting his tea out of the oven and later watching the national news, while paying only occasional-lip service to their chattering relation and his detailed plight. And then this afternoon the Superintendent had called Ravi into his office, and confirmed all of his brother-in-law’s worst fears: The balloon is going up. All hands to the pump. And he had inferred very much from the handshake he was offered, and the look of mutual understanding the Super had bored into his very soul.
The first part of his special duty was to stand guard that afternoon, a time at which precisely nothing was expected to occur, but then you never knew with a situation like this one… Show your face, have them get used to you being there, he had been told; in other words, case the joint for tomorrow.
And if he was lucky get brought a cup of tea by the receptionist. As it turned out, she seemed to have spent half her afternoon stood at the door with him. It being a quiet time he didn’t mind her asking him about his job, and what he did, and what life was like in the police force; if he was married, if his wife found it difficult, ‘you know, when your out on duty all hours?’ Ravi’s assurance that his wife hardly missed him when he wasn’t there was answered by playful derision, ‘Oh, I’m sure she misses you very much! I know I would do if I had such a strong man about the place.’ More questions followed: on how many officers there were at their station, and the types of jobs they did? She told him of the detectives’ visit yesterday, they having come to ask about her missing colleague Thomas; and how another man had now vanished, after some silly upset on the factory floor. And the detectives, did he work with them at all, that pretty redheaded girl she had met yesterday, and the Inspector? Did they ever work together?