Grey had no feelings here beyond the fact that life, even when faced with the huge full-stop that lay before him, kept on going; that he in his ripped clothes, Cori up on the bridge, the traffic powering past, and all the world around them were somehow still existing, were carrying on. That time could not be stopped, even by such an horrific ending as he now lay witness to, was the sum of his philosophy — at that moment he had no brighter or more optimistic thought than this.
Humans could end themselves, even end each other, but could never end life. And so what option did that leave any of us who might think to try to do so, but to get back up, and feeling slightly silly for thinking we could ever face life down, go back to whatever we were doing before, resume our paths laid out, our habits encoded? Sometimes his bleakness shocked even himself.
Ignoring every letter of the police code, kneeling now beside the body, he got his suit jacket off and placed it over Thomas Long’s head and shoulders, just as the clouds broke and the real rain began.
‘I hope you were happy,’ he said, as the first fat drops fell to darken the jacket’s fabric.
Chapter 29 — Rose Attends
An hour later, in the shelter of a three-sided hut used for storing traffic cones and road warning signs, stood Superintendent Rose. He had on a waxed jacket, still dripping with rain from the short walk from his car to this vantage point. From here he watched the gallant effort of the few Constables he could spare — aided brilliantly by two pairs of motorway patrolmen, arriving in their Range Rovers after picking up the call — as they sealed off the tunnel, and in the drowning rain erected the familiar white forensics tent, beneath which he knew nothing good ever occurred. Nearby, sheltering by their own van, scenes of crime officers were dressing up in head-to-foot overalls, preparing to scour the tunnel and the ground around the body for clues. Across the carpark a takeaway van was parked, its warm hatch thrown open invitingly, as if its very purpose were in offering golden light and hot steam to the dismal afternoon, and was finding some takers.
Beside Rose in the shelter was Grey, a blanket around his shoulders, his shirt soaked to his skin. He had been like this when, mid-downpour, the first of the officers to hear the call had found kneeling beside the body, as if to guard against it being washed away in the flood.
‘I don’t want the family knowing until he’s fit to be identified,’ offered Rose needlessly, just for something to say. ‘We can spare them the wait at the mortuary at least.’ The reciting of procedure and tradecraft could be comforting at such moments, in this case both to the Superintendent and his listener. They had been talking in this vein for five or ten minutes now.
‘So, he’s been out here for over two days,’ asked the Superintendent rhetorically, getting the chain of events right in his head. ‘They fought, you say, and the window gave way?’
‘We’ll never know for certain,’ Grey intoned robotically, his body deprived of sleep and food and even the will to go on. ‘It seems so.’
‘They’ve found the plastic glass panel in the bushes,’ continued Rose, ‘almost in tact they tell me. Very old though, brittle, and those frames up there look thin. I don’t think it would have taken too much effort to pop one of those windows out.’
‘No, not very much effort at all.’
‘Certainly hard to prove intent though, any more than there being a bit of pushing and shoving.’
‘Well, we’ve only scanned the film as of yet.’
‘And you only see the fellow from behind, you say?’ Rose’s tone was sympathetic. ‘And we never see the actual moments of Tom being pushed, of the window giving way, of him falling? Do we even have a clear enough image to prove it was Carman?’
‘Sarah still has film to go through,’ Grey repeated, but at that point neither man thought it very likely this would find the proof they needed.
‘And we don’t know why they were fighting? Or even how they knew each other?’
‘But in the photos… I swear he looked in for the kill.’ Grey could not rid the CCTV image from his mind, the shot of Carman, shoulders haunched, arms readied at his sides… this would have been the moment Thomas had just vanished from in front of him, Grey realised. Nor would Carman have seen anything had he leaned out into the night to try and see where he had fallen. ‘I wonder what goes through your mind at such a moment?’
‘And all this happening above a motorway, with a thousand methods of escape,’ lamented Rose. ‘At least we can tell Nash now why his chief suspect chose to disappear himself. We can issue an APB.’
But Grey was less hopeful, ‘If Nash’s operation doesn’t unearth him in the next few days then we never will.’
‘You mean he’ll have used his criminal contacts?’
‘Import and export are his stock and trade — it might not be too hard for him to hitch a ride with the next boat out. But I think it’s more likely his drug buddies will get to him before us, at least those Nash hasn’t already rolled up. A major sting, and Carman disappears two days before the operation? It makes him look as guilty as hell.’
‘Ironic, when that’s the one thing he didn’t do!’
‘Irony or not, the best we can hope for is Carman turning up dead somewhere.’
Rose gasped at the emptiness of it all, summed up in his Inspector’s final sentence. Yet his role required he prod his finger into the Inspector’s pain a little deeper yet,
‘I know this isn’t the best time to bring it up, but we’ve already had a phone call from a missing person’s charity. Dare I ask?’
‘Isobel?’ The Inspector paused. ‘I’m afraid she panicked and ran.’
‘Not surprising though,’ Rose pondered. ‘I’ve seen it before with kids younger than her — you bust a gut in finding them, and then as soon as you’ve got them back to their parents they’re off again. It’s something in the blood.
‘Anyway,’ Rose pulled his coat around him, ready to brave the rain again, ‘I should get back to town, check up on them there. Get off home, Grey,’ he said. ‘Cornelia too. You’ve hardly slept for two days.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Over the other side, speaking to the services manager last I heard.’
‘How’s the protest looking?’ asked Grey, as he threw away his plastic cup and waited in vain for a break in the weather.
‘It’s turned into a stand off: the workers want to go in and the administrators won’t let them; and the longer it goes on the more convinced the men are that they’ve already lost their jobs.
‘How long will it go on?’
‘Until the new electricity contract is secured, and the men are insured to return — it really does come down to such things as this.’
Grey would be off soon himself, as he gave the rain another minute to abate before leaving the shelter to its cones and traffic signs. As he stood there another officer joined him for cover, though like Grey his clothes were already soaked through. Grey knew from the station that he was a talker, and they spent a minute or two passing the time of day. Grey sensed though that the man was not there by accident; and sure enough, after a while he came round to what it was he wanted to get off his chest,
‘Sir, I heard Isobel was at the station this morning?’
‘You weren’t there yourself?’
‘No, I’m meant to be on leave. I drove all the way to Wales yesterday morning, and all the back last night. The girlfriend’s livid. I’ve had to leave her there. I was recalled for special duties at Aubrey’s, but was called over here at the last minute. So, is it true, that she’s back in town?’
Grey nodded, even as he inwardly groaned at the prospect at having to explain the circumstances of her subsequent departure. But before he could begin, the Constable continued,
‘It’s just…’
Grey felt a confession coming, and readied himself to be forgiving.