— just wait till you hit thirty, he thought, when you’ll hardly want to get up of 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 Aubrey’s 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…
