There was a pregnant pause over the line before, upon a nod from Rose, Grey voiced their tentative approval.
‘Then pray, continue…’ bid the Nottingham detective.
‘Well,’ resumed Grey warily, after listening to all that, ‘Firstly, we are looking for a man called Thomas Long — twenty-four, a Southney resident, no record — who was last seen on the outskirts of town on Tuesday evening; seen outside that particular Havahostel indeed, although this was some hours after the call was made.’
‘Yes, we caught this on the wire. I believe you’ve made a televised appeal? I’m afraid his name means nothing to us, Inspector.’
‘Well, not to worry. It was always a long shot.’
‘The thrill of the chase though, eh? There’s nothing like it.’ The man here began a kind of reverie, ‘I envy you, chasing white rabbits down holes, not sure what little door he might have ran through. It rather takes the thrill out of it when, like us, you’ve been sitting on your prey for eight months, only waiting for one of them to say or do something incriminating near enough for one of your microphones to capture it; It is a long wait for that magic moment, when you finally burst in through the front door, and see the look on their faces when you tell them that they’ve been watched all this time.
‘But, you’re saying Thomas Long is clean?’ Nash summed up in efficient fashion. ‘Are we absolutely sure about that?’
‘Certain.’ Superintendent Rose shook the others by answering so directly. ‘I’ve never come across a cleaner lad in my life, or a better family. He works for a living, goes home for his tea every night. I’m not having him suspected of anything. Now, what we need to know from you, Chief Inspector, is what your drug dealer has to do with Thomas Long — if anything. And for that matter,’ he glanced at Grey as he asked this, as if somehow blaming him for the absurd directions the investigation was taking, ‘what he has to do with Isobel Semple?’
Grey had known his superior had been frustrated, what with the whole Aubrey affair, but not that his upset had spilled over into this particular case.
‘Sorry Superintendent,’ asked Nash. ‘What was that name again?’
Less heated now, and realising he needed to offer the beguiled narcotics officer something by way of explanation, Rose answered, ‘Well, since this morning’s enquiries in the Thomas Long case, it has come to light that Carman may have been involved in another matter we’re investigating.’
Grey took over, ‘Just in the last couple of hours, we have had someone confirm Carman as being a witness in the disappearance of a local girl called Isobel Semple, nearly three years ago now.’
‘Witness? In what way?’ Nash seemed eager to assist, no matter how he had been spoken to.
‘He was a friend, or boyfriend,’ explained Grey. ‘He never came forward.’
‘Isi?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Blond hair, slim, pale, about twenty? That’s his girlfriend, he calls her Isi.’
The Superintendent, listening to this exchange, jumped as if from an electrical shock; while elsewhere the room was still with the breath of revelation.
The penny had dropped for Nash, ‘She came from your town, didn’t she. I remember it being in the papers of course; but she didn’t come on our radar till long after all the fuss over her disappearance had died down. I knew there had been a connection to Southney somewhere. We did check missing persons at the time; she had always been a likely contender for being Isi — though hard to check without asking her, and obviously we couldn’t do that if we’re tailing the pair of them.
‘And to be blunt,’ continued Nash, ‘she was never at the centre of our enquiries. Whatever Carman is up to, she may well know about it, but he doesn’t involved her — and I am afraid we have rather bigger fish to fry… Sorry, are you still there?’ He hadn’t noticed at first that no one else had spoken for a while.
‘Chief Inspector Nash,’ answered Rose slowly. ‘You do realise that you have just solved the most famous case our town has known in recent times?’
‘Well, sorry about that,’ he said mock-apologetically. ‘I’m sure I can’t take any of the credit. You know,’ he continued over the speaker, ‘it was probably she who answered the phone yesterday, she who this Mr Smith spoke to. The phone is in Carman’s name, but the couple share it. I don’t suppose you know either, who it was who called her on it the day before? Late Monday evening this would have been? They’ve called her a few times actually: an odd number, some kind of mobile device we think; it’s proving tricky to trace.’
But the Southney detectives were still agog. Nash continued,
‘Hmm, this does though create exactly the kind of situation I mentioned earlier. For you’re going to want to and come and speak to her now, aren’t you; and you’ll believe that her family ought to know she’s been found, and all manner of other considerations; and at a time when any interference in the couple’s day to day routine could be critical.’
‘How long are you expecting your operation to go on?’ asked Grey, still not quite aligned to the new reality.
There was a telling silence at the end of the line. ‘Well these things are always open ended, the timescale under constant revision.’
This would have sounded like classic obscuration, but for the note of tension Grey, who often read too much into these things, sensed behind the Chief Inspector’s words.
‘The critical moment though does seem to be drawing in,’ resumed Nash. ‘I suppose,’ he added, suddenly brightening, ‘that it is a good thing that you are only approaching us now. Lucky really, or she could have been caught up in this for months yet.’
‘We hadn’t known Carman’s real name until today though,’ (This was Cori, who had been listening intently.) ‘and so we hadn’t traced him before.’
‘No, he’s slippery like that.’
‘Oh? So what’s he like?’
Nash considered his answer, ‘Stephen Carman is a pureblooded criminal, Sergeant, make no mistake. He harms lives, and does bad things to people he doesn’t think could complain: addicts, other criminals, those outside the law. It is my avowed intention to bring him and those he works with down. However, this is not easy, for he is also a canny and careful individual: very wary, very good antennae, and a vivid — almost paranoid — sense of trouble on the horizon.
‘Not to put to fine a point on it, Sergeant, but when he was in your town he was probably already dealing drugs. But something will have made him nervous, and he left with his girl. You’ll probably find someone like him on your own files. An officer will have spotted him, started piecing together his movements, his routines, his patterns of behaviour: where he went, who he met there. Never his real name though, or, as you say, you would have been in touch long before now. Nor would a physical description have been much help, for he’s not the most distinctive of individuals. You might recognise him if you saw him again, but he would be hard to describe with any conviction. He uses his anonymity.’
‘Then it’s a good job we got the clue of the phone call,’ said Cori with relief.
‘Yes, and only then because he has that flashy phone of his listed in his own name, allowing us to trace it.’
‘Why does he do that then?’ asked Grey.
‘Because it won’t work without it.’
‘Then why is he using that phone?’
‘Because he’s an idiot,’ answered Nash with a chuckle, knowing full-well he was contradicting his earlier character-assessment of Carman.
‘I don’t get it.’ Grey was confused by all this.
‘I would suppose,’ began Cori in speculative clarification for her Inspector, ‘that the couple wanted the street cred of having one of the latest internet-enabled devices, even while knowing it wouldn’t work without setting up an account with the service operator.’
‘What a clever Sergeant you have there, Inspector.’ Nash concurred, ‘With this particular phone you’re buying a monthly mobile broadband subscription, paid for by Direct Debit — it just won’t work otherwise. And you can’t do that without giving your name and bank details. Stephen Carman: ultra-cautious, as I say, but for this one moment when he lets his ego get the better of him, not wishing to be seen with anything but the newest and best and most expensive smart phone. He has a lot of other luxury items too — you ought to see their flat. But that is all paid for
