‘Well, you know how even now we still get sightings: that this person’s seen Isobel on holiday, or that person saw her in a shop? We had one this week.’
The man looked sheepish, and no wonder, as the Inspector had not been made aware of this.
‘Well, I ask you,’ he continued, ‘after three years missing why would Isobel Semple pick this week to show up at Southney train station?’
Grey felt his stomach hitting the floor. ‘Where’s the report? Forget this, go back to the station and get it for me. I need to know the date and time.’
‘Oh, I can tell you that. It was early afternoon, around two o’clock the lady said, while she was out shopping. And she came to see us the next day, which was my last day, so the lady saw her on Tuesday.’
‘And was she coming or going?’
‘She saw Isobel at the entrance arch, before she vanished into the crowd of other shoppers. She said she was sure it was Isobel — she used to see her walking to school past her house, you see — but it wasn’t until she’d spoken to her friend the next morning that she felt bold enough to come and tell us.’
‘This lady keeps wise counsel.’
‘She was a lovely old girl, we gave her a cup of tea. She said she knew it sounded fanciful, but she hoped she was being helpful.’
‘She was being helpful.’ Grey’s mind was racing way past this odd encounter at the train station. ‘She was being incredibly helpful.’
‘Sir?’
‘I take it you took her name? Then send her a bunch of flowers out of petty cash.’
‘So it was Isobel then?’
‘It could have been.’
We thought about telling you, but it’s been so long now; and we’ve had so much else going on. Have I done wrong, sir? I know I should have mentioned it…’
‘Not to worry, son,’ he placed a fatherly hand on the lad’s shoulder. ‘You might have told me just in the nick of time.’
As he approached the wretched structure a services employee was putting up a sign, to the effect that for the time being the bridge would be unavailable to motorists. The man in the fast food van would be happy, Grey considered, for if nothing else his sales of his coffee and hot dogs would be up, people keen to share in the warmth of grill and boiler.
He lifted the blue tape and jogged up the stairs, before moving on toward where forensic officers were examining the tunnel down which a hundred people must have passed by since Tuesday evening.
‘Anything obvious?’ he asked without looking too closely, it seeing, despite the attention being aid by his colleagues, somehow inappropriate for himself to gawp and gasp over the crime scene.
‘Might be a bit of skin snagged on the window frame, sir,’ one of them said without turning from his task.
‘Excellent.’ Grey hadn’t expected there to be much here, not that he had checked very thoroughly himself before dashing down the stairs. ‘Make sure you check it against Stephen Carman’s DNA on record,’ he offered needlessly, while thinking it more likely to have been left by Long.
‘Will do, sir,’ answered the man politely, respecting the Inspector’s enough to not mind his telling him the rudiments of his job.
Grey found Cori talking to the couple serving at the services shop. Upon seeing him, the Sergeant broke off and met him in the foyer,
‘Hello boss, are you all right?’
He had no vanity in front of her, not when they trusted each other so implicitly, not when they had shared so much. Few couples are as close, he had thought on many occasions. And so he did again now, finding himself standing there, jacketless, shirt stuck to his back, hair a matted tangle plastered to his scalp, trousers caught and torn at the ankle. And yet her first thought, he noticed, was not to chide him for his appearance, nor look around to see who might be seeing her stood with such a embarrassing specimen, but instead simply to enquire after his well being. He took it back and revised his observation: this was better than any couple he had ever been a part of. Yet she of course was in a marriage, this was secondary for her.
She cut short his reverie, ‘Sir, I’ve finally got to speak to Josie, the receptionist.’
‘Of course, she was back on duty today.’
‘I’ve managed to wrangle permission from Mrs Hackett for her to leave her post awhile, and go through the CCTV records to try and find the footage of Mr Smith booking in; but in the meantime she gave me a description: he was white, late middle aged — in his sixties she guessed but could even have been older — white haired and heavily built. And that’s not all sir… he had a visitor, who arrived that day and then left with him when he checked out at about eight in the evening: a young woman, who was white, blonde, petite, in her early twenties Josie thought, but it was hard to tell as she was wearing glasses and a headscarf. She was “very smartly dressed” as Josie described her.
‘So,’ Cori ventured, closing her notebook, ‘it has to be her, doesn’t it?’
Grey took a deep intake of breath, ‘Isobel was at the train station at two pm that day — I’ve only just found out. The desk didn’t tell us, they thought it was a crank sighting.’
‘Oh my. So she came to town by train,’ Cori summarised, ‘found her way to the services somehow, and then met with Mr Smith?’
‘And this after receiving the call from Smith that morning telling her where to meet him. They checked out at eight, you say?’
Cori nodded.
‘So why,’ Grey considered, ‘was she not back in Nottingham until the following morning?’
‘And do you think they knew that Thomas was already… even before they had checked out of the room?’
‘Anything from the shop staff?’ he remembered to ask, as they crossed the same carpark he hoped soon never to have to set foot on again.
‘The girl there now is the one who served me yesterday; and she was there Tuesday evening. The counter does look out toward the bridge, but she doesn’t remember anything out of the ordinary, no men dashing past. She said the shifts can be long, and they read the magazines to stay awake.’
‘I don’t envy that job.’
‘Her boyfriend works there too, she said, but often doing different hours. She can’t bear the early hours shift herself though, so some weeks they hardly see each other.
‘Why can’t they synchronise?’
‘He gets more for working those hours. People do what they have to.’
‘Well I hope they pay him properly for it. Imagine being here at three or four in the morning, hardly a customers for hours, while she’s alone in bed — the poor devils.
‘Anyway,’ Grey changed tack, ‘Rose says we can knock off. We can’t know any more while they are gathering evidence over there.’
‘What about Mrs Long?’ asked Cori. ‘We need to tell her soon.’
‘Yes,’ the Inspector placed a hand on her arm, ‘but not till we have the body tidied up. What do you want to do now?’
‘I might go back to the hotel, see if Josie has found Smith’s picture yet. And I think you have an appointment…’ Cori nudged Grey, and nodded in the direction of her car and the figure stood beside it.
Chapter 30 — Meeting Women in Carparks
‘Here, take the keys if you need them. I’ll get a lift back.’ Cori turned toward the buildings, while Grey found the car, wet and gleaming in the white light of an opaque sky.
‘What do you want now, Isobel?’
‘I want to say sorry.’
‘Come on, let’s get out of the rain,’ he said, no sooner unlocking the doors with the key than her small and spritely form had jumped in beside him. Once both were sat inside he didn’t know how to address her, what to ask or what to say.
‘I can’t believe I’ve got you to myself,’ began Isobel. ‘You and your pretty Sergeant seem inseparable; like peas in a pod my dad would say.’
‘She’s still busy — there’s a lot going on.’
‘You’ve found something important then. Is it to do with the lad you’re looking for?’
She asked with sensitivity, but Grey didn’t know how to answer her, instead saying,