Add to that the confusion of what the call from Mr Foy had led him to learn of the state of the company’s finances; the men already calling at the office — and calling after him in the street! — for their payslips; and the not inconsequential fact, it occurred to Grey, that the lad’s own father was one of the men who wouldn’t be getting paid.
A perfect storm. No wonder he ran away, thought Grey, who wasn’t sure if he were him that he wouldn’t have done the same! Home and work were both becoming impossible, unbearable — how could anyone hold such a secret? So, Grey wondered, where does someone with no friends, or at least none that anyone knows of, go when things get tough? And where too had he been the evening before, neither Gail Marsh nor Chris Barnes seeing him at the office on Monday much after five; yet Thomas not getting home till nine?
Still though, Grey couldn’t imagine his quarry staying away for very long before coming home and sobbing it all out to his mother, or even to Gail Marsh, who seemed to fill a similar role among his workmates. Grey knew it was his job to figure this stuff out, yet so sidetracked had they been by developments at the plant, and so sparse any evidence of the lad’s whereabouts, that in terms of Thomas the day had brought hardly any real progress. But the groundwork had been laid, they knew his launch-pad, just not where he had launched himself to. Posters would be printed, regional campaigns mounted. Tomorrow would be dedicated to him.
His thoughts turned to his other missing person’s cases, those people lost, and sometimes found. He allowed this for just a short while though, before cutting off the memories, so rich were they with melancholia and deep, deep sorrow, that an officer could lose themselves if they were not careful.
His own road of slightly-past-their-best Seventies maisonettes approached. His final thought though, leading on from those emotional musings was one of hope, and also praise for his own team and their fellow detectives up and down the land: for it was nice, he felt, that somewhere somebody cared, and might do so for us if we vanished from our own lives; the disappeared like Thomas Long not allowed to just fall through the cracks.
Savouring the smell of food he was carrying, he found he was also savouring the prospect of the parcelled pint to go with it. Good old Bill — it would be a good end to the evening after all. While tomorrow, he decided as he locked the door behind him, would just have to remain another day.
Chapter 8 — Television
Thursday
No sooner had the Inspector arrived at the station that morning, than he was ushered away to the television crew who were awaiting him. Any later and the station would have had to inquire after his whereabouts, which would have been embarrassing all around.
‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ the Inspector had assured them to general disbelief, while the Superintendent conceded that any discussion they needed to have over recent developments would wait until after the broadcast. Much like that conversation in prospect, Grey wasn’t sure that the televised interview, which he had been doing his best not to think about since hearing of it the previous evening, was going to go entirely as he would have liked.
Southney was too small for a broadcasting station of its own, bar a local radio network forever threatened with cuts, it having not yet yielded completely to twenty-four hour a day banality and chart hits — whatever had happened to cultural pluralism, lamented Grey. And so for a story involving the town to get onto the local television news, involved a journalist and crew in a satellite truck setting up in the town centre. This would immediately gain the attention of the entire district, who would come to watch and hopefully appear on screen in the crowd behind the action; and so be able to tell their friends and workmates for days on end how they had ‘been on television the other night’.
The truck and its crew hailed from one of the cities that circled Southney, they all being just far enough away to require a special journey to be made there, or visa versa; and that was just the way the locals liked it. Acting as something like an unofficial regional capital, this largest of the area’s population centres tended to dominate the local headlines, if only through having the largest concentration of businesses, hospitals, universities, and other institutions prone to the calamitous effects of, on the one hand the increasingly competitive global marketplace, and on the other chronic recession-led Government underfunding. As Alfie had pointed out, if they haven’t got you one way they’ve got you the other; and so Grey would think himself when watching these sometimes doom-laden lead stories.
It was these necessarily serious headlines, negotiated with stern faces before the hosts could get on with telling the more inspiring tales of children overcoming illnesses and locals running their own Post Offices, that led Grey to not watch the show as often as he ought — it was after all vital for the regional knowledge that formed the backdrop of so much of their work. And this Grey pondered, as the producer’s assistant ushered him out to the green square of parkland at the centre of what you might call the town’s civic hub. The green was flanked on one side by a Sixties brutalist (though none the less loved for that) library building, and on its adjacent side by the rather more respectably Victorian Council House/Chamber of Commerce. The police station — polite, conservative, post-War — was on the third side, the fourth occupied with offices.
His interview was primed to make the morning news and be repeated on each subsequent bulletin throughout the day, and was rolling before he knew it,
‘Thank you, Carol,’ began the brightly-toothed and bushy-haired man Grey was being moved off-camera toward. ‘I’m here at Southney Police Station; and yes, as you say police here are becoming increasingly worried about the disappearance of local man Thomas Long. Here to talk with us about this very worrying case in some more detail is Inspector Rase. Inspector, hello, thank you for joining us…’
The camera, live and broadcasting and ready to gobble him up, swung smoothly in Grey’s direction. He had been here before of course, and always thought the same panicked thought at this point: Is this it, so suddenly, just like that? No intermediate state between life and live? But of course this was a one-shot deal, the camera either rolling or not rolling — what preparation could there be? And that he could not adjust to this as readily as the toothsome man only served to confirm that, however his police career panned out, there was no move into true crime broadcasting to follow it.
Grey mumbled some greeting as the interviewed confidently continued, ‘Now, Inspector, what can you tell us, about the missing man?’
‘Well,’ Grey launched into his short speech, a brief description of Thomas Long, edited down to only the essential details, all the better for those few details to lodge in the minds of viewers. His own mind was racing, as he told himself: this will all be over in twenty seconds, just keep thinking straight, talk slower than you think you need to, form sentences.
‘I think we have a picture of him appearing on the screen now,’ the reporter interjected, as viewers across several counties saw Mrs Long’s digitally cropped family portrait, ‘So what can you tell us about the circumstances of the disappearance?’
‘Well, Thomas Long left work around five pm as usual on Tuesday of this week.’
‘His place of work being Aubrey Electricals?’
‘Yes. An unconfirmed sighting places him at the bus stops on the High Street a short while after this. Now this is a busy street, especially at that time of day, so we are hoping there might be a number of people who recall seeing him then, or indeed at any time since.’
‘And this was on Tuesday?’
‘Yes, and as of yet we have no trace of him movements since then, hence our appeal to the public for their assistance.’
‘And you can see the number to call appearing on screen now, and also the email address for local police enquiries; and you can also email us at the program’s usual address and we will forward on your information to the police. Now Inspector, speaking to your team, I believe it is the nature of the disappearance that is causing you most concern?’
‘Yes. From talking with his family and those that work with him, we know that Thomas Long is a man of habit and familiar routine. He is thoughtful and hard working, but not at all impulsive, and someone whom just upping and leaving would seem completely out of character. He is also I believe a conscientious man, and so to stay away for two days without informing his family of his whereabouts leaves us very concerned for his wellbeing.’
‘Indeed. So Inspector, in conclusion is their anything you would like say to our viewers out there watching
