pounding presses, Dunn caught a colleague on the shoulder and sent them both to the floor beneath a hail of greasy tools, the metallic clatter still echoing as the lines of turning machines powered down to silence. This all took place in the space of maybe twenty seconds.
‘You could do yourself an industrial injury there,’ said Grey, stood above the sprawling figures, somehow neither injured from the falling ironmongery. Green-suited colleagues helping up the innocent party seemed not sure of who to look at in the most accusing manner, as the three uniformed Constables gathered up a rather less grateful figure. And all this occurring under the gaze of several hundred men baffled or angry by the officers’ now repeated visitations. Chris Barnes yesterday, Larry Dunn today — who were the police going to turn up to take away tomorrow? All work had stopped, the room was stunned to silence.
…or silence bar the muttering Larry Dunn, now being manhandled to the door, his random outbursts bubbling down to more sensical pronouncements as they reached the reception,
‘What are you bothering with me for?‘ he thundered. ‘Aubrey’s gone! He’s not coming back, they stopped work to tell us so. It’s in the paper, for God’s sake! Wuthertons run this place now — for as long as that lasts.’
‘I suppose Chris Barnes called to tell you all that?’ asked Grey, recalling catching the lad’s downcast features amid the excitement.
‘I called him, not that it matters.’
‘No, Mr Dunn. What matters is that you’re the last person to have seen Thomas Long in town on the day he vanished — anything else comes second at this moment in time. Now how hard are you going to make it for us to get a statement out of you?’
‘Vanished?’
‘He hasn’t been home for two days.’
‘But I didn’t see him! Well, I saw him at the busstop, but I didn’t speak to him.’
‘We’ll need you to tell us that at the station.’
‘I only wanted to ask him what he knew about the payroll. I did see him in the High Street; but by the time I’d got over to the busstops he’d gone, lost in the crowd.’
‘Lost in the crowd… that’s one way to put it.’
‘He was right though, wasn’t he? What he told Chris. He saw this crisis coming.’
The man was being held more upright now, he having been almost horizontal as he was wrestled from the factory floor.
‘Yes, he was right about it,’ Grey agreed. ‘But his family haven’t seen him since.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’
‘Well, I hope for your sake that’s true,’ lamented Grey with true sadness. ‘Anyway, we’re not going to have this conversation here,’ he concluded, as with a nod of the head he instructed Ravi and the other officers to take Larry Dunn out to the waiting black maria.
‘No time for a cup of tea then?’ asked Shauna of the Inspector.
‘Alas not,’ was all he could say to her, as his people bustled out through the door like handlers of a giant eel. ‘Not ideal circumstances.’
‘Quite,’ she concurred; as nodding goodbye he left after his team.
Cori counted out some cards from her pack.
‘He’s very… at times, isn’t he,’ asked the receptionist.
‘Yes, he can be,’ smiled Cori. ‘Can you put these out for anyone who wants to call us?’
‘Another successful visit to the plant?’ offered Superintendent Rose upon their return. ‘Doing your bit for public relations? Tussling on the factory floor like Graeco-Roman wrestlers, by all accounts.’
‘We got our man, sir,’ offered Grey hopefully.
‘That you did, that you did. And we’ll soon have a statement from him; but you won’t be taking it. Remember your evening appointment?’
The Inspector did indeed remember. Rose continued, though quieter now,
‘He’s not our suspect though, is he? Dunn? We don’t think he actually..?’
‘No, I don’t think we do. He saw Thomas Long that evening, probably smashed Alex Aubrey’s windows. But beyond that…’
‘Working all Tuesday evening I believe?’
‘Yes,’ concurred the Inspector. ‘Then in the pub again, I’ve heard. Then off in the small hours to wait for the Aubrey’s to come down for breakfast, if we follow the likely chain of events.’
‘And we still haven’t had a sighting of Thomas after Tuesday evening,’ lamented Rose, as wishing Grey good luck on his travels, he turned to go to his office and brood.
Stepping outside to record another interview for the cameras, Grey updating them with news of the hotel sighting, the journalist, the same as earlier, said to him afterwards,
‘You know, Inspector. After we spoke this morning, I remembered that I had interviewed you before about a missing person. That blonde girl, Isobel Semple, the one who had been in all the papers. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, yes I think I do.’
‘Did we ever hear anything of her?’ asked the reporter with what seemed genuine concern. Fears that the man had got a jump on their latest lead instantly discounted, Grey only hoped his shaken head and brief goodnight had given nothing away.
Returning to the office to wait for her, Grey noticed on Cori’s desk the file she had that afternoon been reading, a corner of a photograph peeking out from under the cover,
‘That’s the picture of her they used in the papers,’ he said, not needing to see any more of it to recognise it, ‘the one of her young and smiling. You know,’ he offered, cryptically to any others in earshot, ‘I reckon they were lucky to take that photo when they did; because I don’t think she was ever happy in that house for one day before or after. Lord knows, I never figured that family out.’
Chapter 16 — Travelling Up
‘He’ll have to wait,’ Grey considered of Larry Dunn, muttering as they boarded Cori’s car, they having barely stopped off to drop the man back at the station before hitting the road again. Any questions Grey was keen to ask of him would have to wait — someone else would be taking his statement. The Inspector was keen to get going, if only so Cornelia might be back home before her young family were all asleep, making this the second such evening in a row.
Cori was just as keen, having assured the Inspector that they had everything they needed for the trip to Nottingham. As for him, she had long ago come to the conclusion that there seemed little the Inspector required in life that could not be found in the pockets of his suit jacket. She started up and pulled away from the station.
They had one call to make on their journey though before leaving town; and so at the very turning onto the motorway they would soon take to head northward, they instead pulled into the services carpark.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Cori of the Constable they found near the services shop, she being one of those dispatched to ask those working in the area if they remembered seeing anyone waiting near here at seven thirty on Tuesday evening.
‘It’s been difficult, Sarge,’ she began. ‘The shop and restaurant staff are on rotation, so half of them there that night aren’t here to ask. I’ve left messages for them to call, but…’ They all knew how low the return rates for such requests were: people had all kinds of reasons for not wanting to call the police. ‘It was dark by then too,’ she continued, ‘and though seven pm isn’t their busiest time, there are people coming and going at all hours — I think the workers here get into the habit of not noticing, of letting people drift past them.’
‘And we’re never going to track down all the drivers who happened to be parked here at that time either,’ lamented the Inspector. ‘They’re hardly going to have been paying much attention themselves.’ The Constable was right, he thought: this was a place people stopped at on their way to somewhere else, no one’s final destination, nowhere for anyone to get excited over or even recollect very clearly.
‘We might find some of the drivers, sir, if they stop here at the same time every evening. We could put signs up,’ she suggested helpfully, ‘like we do after an accident: Was anyone here at this time..? Did anyone see anything..? ’
