remember something, and then it doesn’t ever come back to you.’
He was getting snappy, and she was interrupting his cogitation. She remained facing forward and concentrated on the road.
He grumbled on a while, she catching references to ‘old wife’s tales’ and ‘bad advice.’ Before it resumed, the droning of the name… ‘S Carman, S Carman…’
Oh, hurry up and remember it, Cori wanted to snap at him, his murmuring making the journey tense.
‘Where do I know that name from?’ The spell was broken by his phone ringing, ‘Yes?’ he barked down the line, it still on speaker and so probably sounding even louder to whoever was on the other end.
‘Sir, it’s Sarah. Sorry for calling back so quickly.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just a bit more info — a Stephen Carman did go to the Southney School: he’s listed there in the early two- thousands, but no record of any exams taken.’
‘Thomas Long was also there then,’ added Cori, taking no pride in her hunch proving right.
‘Two among hundreds,’ muttered Grey; before asking Sarah, ‘Describe him to me again, what it says on the file, what he looks like.’
‘Well, just under six foot, white, pale complexion, brown-blond hair…’
‘Go on.’
‘Average height, average everything, no distinguishing features.’
‘No distinguishing features. That’s it.’
‘If you put it that way, sir,’ said Sarah quizzically.
He turned to Cori, ‘Stop the car will you, I need to think.’
The Sergeant was thrown off guard, but recalled enough of her advanced driver training to have them safely up against the storm guttering in seconds. As she felt the tug of the seatbelt across her, it brought the adrenalin rush of a brush with danger; a road not quite stepped into, a slipping foot finding new grip.
‘Sarah, can you print his photo off?’ asked Grey, his forgetful ennui replaced by a sharp focus, that left Cori beside him in the car startled and relieved — whatever had been forgotten had been remembered.
‘We’ll need to come in right away and get a copy.’
‘Well, I can email it to you? Send it to your phone?’
‘Yes, thank you, please do that right away.’ He rang off and sat, head forward and facing down. ‘Where are we in town?’ he asked.
‘Well, not far from the High Street…’ Cori began to answer, before realising he was asking himself, cogitating again.
‘Where can we go? Where is the nearest?’
Cori sat still, awaiting the instruction that was bound to follow as soon as he had worked out whatever it was that he had on his mind.
‘Her dad’ll be at the plant, but I don’t want to go back there if we can help it. He probably wouldn’t know anyway. Where was the mother?’
He was asking these questions of himself, Cori knew, but who were these people he was talking about now?
‘Her friends will all have finished school… It will have to be the plant, although I didn’t see him there yesterday. Odd that, now I think about it. In fact before all this he was probably the last person I went to see there. But would be know her friends..?’
‘Sir, what are you thinking? Can I help?’ Let me in, Cori wanted to shout! This abstract musing was excruciating, every nerve in her alive to the thrill of the chase after being wakened so abruptly by the sudden stop.
‘Yes!’ he at last shouted, slapping his palm across the dashboard with a force she feared might set off the passenger airbag, ‘The High Street. We’re nearly there.’
‘You want me to drive to the High Street?’ asked Cori, already putting the car back into gear.
‘Yes, yes. Post haste!’
A two minute drive at the slowest of times, they were already approaching the parade of shops along the town’s main road before she was able to ask, ‘So, what’s this all about, sir?’
‘If it works I’ll tell you,’ was his only response, a look of both boyish glee and wild panic barely contained in his flashing eyes. His phone was pinging just then as the message came, bringing the picture up on its screen. Cori only hoped nothing got in their way along their short journey to hinder and frustrate whatever it was he was so eager for.
‘Here we go, pull up here, just outside the record shop.’
She did so, and the Inspector was out of the car before they were even still at the kerbside. Pulling on the handbrake, Cori raced after him; just in time to see him holding up the phone’s backlit glass screen at the startled fellow behind the counter, the bell above the door still clanging as he asked him,
‘Is this him? Is this Scar?’
It took a second for the man to gather himself and get his breath back to answer. ‘How… how have you managed to find him, after all this time?’
‘Is this him?’ Grey implored of the wide-eyed shopkeeper.
‘Yes,’ he answered finally. ‘Yes, that was Isobel’s boyfriend.’
Chapter 11 — A Chat with Chad
Waiting only for the man behind the counter to make them all a cup of tea, and for Cori to park the car somewhere less obstructive to the public going about their business; the three of them sat down in a nook that, though small in itself, took up around a third of the floorspace of the shop, at least in Grey’s estimation.
Cori would have concurred with him, approaching Chad’s Classics more observantly the second time of entering; she being a buyer of music over the Internet, and so never herself a patron. She expected an estate agent might have classed it a boutique store, and with this status owing more to scale than exclusivity, it comprising little more than a window-shelf display and counter with a walkway between, a record-racked area at one end, and a small seated area at the other. And it was on these seats where the three now gathered.
She noticed how the man made no effort to shut the shop or put a sign out; also how well he and the Inspector seemed to know each, to the degree that Grey’s arrival was seen instantly as something important, and requiring of putting aside the concerns of his business for an hour.
‘This is Sergeant Cornelia Smith,’ he introduced. ‘And Cori, I don’t know if you know..?’
‘No I don’t, sorry.’
‘Chad Glazier, of Chad’s Classics.’
The two shook hands, Chad enquiring of her, ‘I don’t think I spoke to you before?’
‘No,’ answered Grey on her behalf, turning to her, ‘I think you would have been on maternity leave at the time?’
‘Oh, you have children? How old?’ asked Chad, surprising Cori, it usually being the women you met who wanted to know baby names and exchange photos.
‘Yes, Brooke and Connor. She’s three, Connor will be five soon.’ As she spoke she fished out of her bag the keyfob photo of them both she kept for only these occasions. Chad took it and looked with genuine warmth. ‘Do you have any of your own then?’ she asked.
‘Yes, a little boy, Charlie,’ he answered, opening his wallet to show his photo in return. ‘Well, maybe not so little now — he’ll be eight in a couple of weeks.’
‘They grow up so soon, don’t they?’
‘And it’s worse when you don’t live with them. Every time you see them they’re bigger.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ started Cori.
‘It’s okay. His mother and I split up.’ Chad spoke almost apologetically. ‘It was a bit stressful there for a while, but we get on much better now.’
‘Well, that is good.’ There seemed little else to say, she suddenly feeling a little sad. ‘So,’ resumed the
