failed salvage plan? Grey wondered how true a picture of his finances Alex Aubrey had painted for this presumed investor?
The club, it was becoming clear to Grey, was clearly the base from where Alex Aubrey chose to run his empire. Getting ever closer now to the current moment, he found his again, listed as meeting a Yamamoto San. This latest meeting had been the one that had kept him from the office on Monday afternoon, when Thomas was having such a torrid time with the payroll and pouring his heart out to Chris Barnes. And there, later on that same evening, was that ubiquitous name again — Aubrey — meeting a Mr T. Long.
Grey run his finger leftward along the line, zeroing in on the meeting’s date and time, his other hand fishing for notepad and pen. ‘Tuesday, seven thirteen,’ he spoke as he wrote, also jotting down the other encounters that had caught his eye. So Thomas was here between leaving the office and going home that last evening. What that meant Grey couldn’t yet fathom; but there were yet more lines to go through, and so he hoped he might get ever luckier.
And there it was, almost the next line down, Aubrey’s name yet again, on Tuesday of this week, at eleven thirty in the morning. The guest’s name, Mr K. Philpot, meant nothing to Grey, though he noted it anyway, more interested in the fact that this seemed to confirm that Aubrey would have had a chance to talk to Thomas at the office earlier that morning, as Gail Marsh had conformed he had to Cori.
And that was that, with nothing notable listed for Wednesday, and there yet to be a guest here today. The Inspector leaned back in the armchair, and tried to get the sequence of events right in his head; but realised he needed Cori and her knowledge, gleaned from Gail Marsh, of all that had been happening in the Aubrey office those two days.
Knowing that copying or taking the heavy book from the room would be out of the question, the Inspector placed it back on the table, and rose to go and find Parris. Grey came upon him in the kitchen, sleeves rolled, food being taken out of Tupperware boxes. The room was out of bounds for all but staff, but Grey felt the intrusion hardly mattered along the access he had already been granted.
‘Inspector. Are you finished with the book?’ asked Parris upon seeing him, already wiping his hands. ‘I should put it back out. There might be lunchtime guests who need it.’
But Grey held him at the door, ‘Mr Parris, you brought me here to see a certain name, didn’t you? And the person who signed then in?’
‘Yes,’ he answered bleakly.
‘Then thank you. I know how much it pains you to break a member’s confidentiality.’
‘Will you need to come back? In a professional capacity, I mean?’
‘I don’t know yet. I hope not.’ And with that Grey was off, and back out into the busy High Street.
As he walked, a thought snagged at his subconscious: would an international businessman — if that was who Yamamoto San was? — or the leader of a national electronics retail firm, really deign to leave behind the capitals of Europe and Asia, to travel to a meeting in their town? Such a prospect seemed ridiculous now; yet even in Grey’s own lifetime Aubrey’s had been one of Britain’s biggest electrical producers, kettles and toasters across the land bearing that name. It wasn’t impossible, was it, for this town and its activities to still hold some sway?
Urgent though it was to get back, armed now with all this new information, there was still the call he had initially planned to come into town to make; and so half way back along the short road of only modest shops, at least on city terms, that nonetheless served the town as High Street, bathed this lunchtime in golden sunlight, Grey spotted the sign he remembered being around here somewhere, an arrow pointing down a side road; and turning along that narrow lane saw, above the first door you came to, another notice identical: IT CONSULTANTS — Printers, PCs, Laptops, Software, Data Processing, Digital Image Transfer.
That last service listed reminded Grey of a stash of old cine film he kept meaning to ask someone to put on disk for him. Cori had shown him the same service advertised on the Internet, after he shared his wish with her. Perhaps when all this was over he might be able to get it done at last.
And stood there just off the busy street, no longer rushed along by the flow of humanity, the memory cheered him, he realising afresh just how he valued his professional relationship with Sergeant Smith: she someone he could talk to, who knew about the cases, already in his confidence and trustable with secrets. And that was half the problem, he reasoned, why he had never taken his chances with women and remained unmarried: for when you were on a case it was all you wanted to talk about, the key to all your strongest feelings. And how selfish it was to expect someone not personally involved to understand that, to accept only what was left of your attention.
Sometimes, I swear, I think you enjoying talking to criminals more than you do talking to me… So the last one had said; as if anyone dealing with some of the lowlife he encountered didn’t wish they never had to again.
And then the thought struck him, that his subconscious was playing a trick on him, and that the woman reciting these lines in his mind was not the one who had originally spoken them, but rather a new face, that of someone he had seen somewhere recently. And how wooden the words sounded in her mouth, how unconvincing the feelings surrounding them. If only he could remember…
But at that point, the door beneath the sign opened, and a jovial voice boomed out along the lane, ‘Inspector, I thought it was you! Are you all right? I saw you standing out here. Were you looking for me?’
Grey, embarrassed to have been caught in his reverie, and fearing he resembled one rather lost and confused, was nonetheless glad to see Keith Pitt.
‘I’m just going to the Post Office, if you’re heading this way.’ Grey fell in beside him for the short walk. ‘Forms to send by courier,’ Pitt raised the bundle of post in his hand. ‘And I’m afraid there’ll be rather a lot more paperwork coming my way over the next few days.’
‘So, you’ve arranged for the administrators..?’
‘It was my duty, as a financial consultant.’ The man said this almost in his own defence, Grey sensing he took no pleasure from it.
‘So you found someone to… what was it again?’
‘We needed a creditor of Aubrey’s to ask the court to appoint an administrator, before the firm got wound up and the machines started being taken away for scrap. The energy company seemed a good bet. They have a two- year contract they want honouring after all, and it wouldn’t benefit them if the gates were locked tomorrow — they want someone there paying for their product for as long as possible.’
‘And they went for it?’
‘They didn’t take much encouragement, in fact they got the ball rolling first thing this morning.’
‘So Aubrey’s will be okay?’
‘They’re not out of the woods yet, I’m afraid. Wuthertons are the appointed firm — have you heard of them? Pretty strict in my experience. They’ll get you back on your feet, but do whatever it takes to get you there. Don’t be surprised if there are job cuts, changing work patterns. Scaling back in all kinds of ways.’
‘The workers won’t like it,’ lamented Grey.
‘No, I fear there’ll be trouble: you can’t expect someone who’s been doing their job, day in day out, to be happy to bear the consequences of their bosses not having been doing theirs. There will always be an edge of irreasonability in such scenes.
‘You know, it is the worst part of our job, Inspector,’ continued Keith Pitt, ‘when the best advice you can offer your client is for them to pass on control of their affairs to others; that efforts at turning things around have become a chase after shadows… Well, in such a circumstance you are not a professional, if you do not tell the person paying you for your expertise and experience that that experience is calling for the chase to be called off. I’m sorry, that’s a terribly inappropriate metaphor isn’t it, given the circumstances.’
It took Grey a moment to get Pitt’s reference, ‘Oh, no. Not at all.’
‘So, there have been developments in the Long case?’
‘Developments yes, progress no.’
‘I’ve seen how upset the women are at the office.
‘Of course.’
Pitt paused a moment before saying, ‘I believe it can often be a cry for help, running away, that they hope someone will care enough to come and look for them? Sorry, ignore my amateur theorising.’
‘Don’t worry. Half the time I don’t think they want to be found.’
‘Well, people are a funny sort, Inspector. I suppose we don’t always know who needs finding until we try.’
