‘They can smell it on us. And if they know I’m an officer,’ she gestured with her hands to her clothes, and then to his suit, ‘then imagine how obvious are you?’
She bid they all be silent, and let them through the yard and into the kitchen of one of the small houses in the terraced row. The room was old-fashioned but tidy and furnished, and had a pan of warm milk heating on the stove. ‘That’s Nash’s favourite,’ she said with a smile. ‘Go on up, they’re in the back bedroom.’
The house bore all the signs, Grey thought, of having been a family home until quite recently. Not a rich household, but a clean one, one that looked after its belongings, treated things with respect. As they rose from the narrow steep staircase, running in it’s own cavity through the middle of the house, and then from the small landing into what had evidently been a boy’s bedroom, Grey thought: this isn’t too different to the room I had when I was his age, this boy, whoever he was. Beside a poster of a current superstar footballer however, was a dog-eared low-scale map of streets and houses covered in pins and markers. And sat below this on the bed was Nash with an expensive white laptop on his knee.
‘Quite a find this, eh? The family relocated six months ago, and we moved in before the Council had even cleared the house. I can’t tell you what a joy it is to work from such a premises — you ought to see some of the dumps we’ve had in the past! I promise you, Inspector, when you’ve been lying on your belly on a damp disused warehouse floor, trying to hold a telephoto lens steady for eight hours… well, the thought of a cosy back bedroom becomes ever more appealing. And I’m not getting any younger — it’ll have to be a desk job soon, and leave all this to a younger man.’
‘You’d be bored within a week.’ This was Sergeant Pullman, arriving with two steaming mugs of cocoa, which she shoved into their visitors’ hands. ‘Keeps the chill out,’ she said, before disappearing to fetch two more for herself and Nash.
‘She’s right of course. I have the office I always dreamed of, custom furniture, a souvenir from every holiday I’ve ever been on… and yet I don’t spend half as long there as I could. Why would you want to be in the map-room pushing markers around when you could be in the trenches though, eh Inspector?’
‘I prefer the street-level myself.’ The drink burnt the tip of Grey’s tongue.
‘Of course, that’s because of who we are, and why we joined the force. We have enquiring minds. We didn’t join to hog a desk, we aren’t a branch of the Civil Service. We are not that kind of person, we are inquisitive, which is why you are already wondering why I brought you here, when I previously wished for you to be as little involved in this end of things as possible. Lead the way will you, Gill.’
The returning Sergeant Pullman led them silently from the lit bedroom, Nash closing the door behind them, and across the landing, which Grey noticed had no bulb in the light socket. On entering the front bedroom they discovered the room had not a door but a velvet curtain. It struck Cori as they moved through it as being like the curtain of a stage or, more accurately, of a fortune-teller’s booth at a funfair.
Parting the veil led them into the room, where not only was there no source of light but every surface seemed to be made matt black, rending the space a mysterious pool of shadows and looming unidentifiable shapes.
One of these shapes moved, and spoke to them, ‘No change, boss.’
‘Sullivan, these are the detectives from Southney, the ones who know Isobel.’
‘Good to meet you.’ Sullivan stuck out a black-gloved hand which Grey could hardly find to shake.
‘Sullivan is leading our surveillance.’ Nash was talking very quietly. ‘Show them, Tom.’
‘She’s in view now.’
Invisible hands moved Grey by his shoulders into a position to see through a pair of binoculars, its lenses focused like a laser-beam, burning right into the living room of a flat he imagined must have been at least fifty yards away, and perhaps a floor or two above the room he was in. He judged the low block he was staring at to be perhaps a street or two further back than the houses opposite them on the terraced street.
‘You’ll have as good a view here, if you want to see as well.’
Cori gave a little yelp as the gloved hands reached for her and placed her beside Grey and behind a high- powered camera.
‘Forgive his brusqueness,’ said Nash, ‘too long spent in darkened rooms can de-sensitise a man.’
The fellow in the close-fitting modern equivalent of a cloak made a few small adjustments to the lens, and suddenly the view was as clear for Cori as for her colleague. The pair of them side by side, as if watching a small stage through opera glasses, saw through a large picture window the interior of a modern apartment. Rather starker than the still-furnished rooms of the former home they were at that moment squatting in, the walls of this other residence seemed bare white, but for a series of dramatic prints hung in series across the back wall. It was a huge single pane they looked through — wouldn’t be allowed today thought Grey, he guessing the squat block dating from the Sixties — which gave him the impression of their watching the room through a giant television screen, and meant the officers could see everything that occurred within it, almost as if through a transparent wall.
‘Is that Isobel?’ asked Cori, shocked, as a figure walked into the room holding a glass of juice. Female, small, in only a nightdress or what could have been a large tee-shirt. Her hair was blonde, thick and short, and bearing none of the purple traces Chad at the record shop had mentioned her sporting in her Southney days.
Grey was stunned — there she was at last, the object of all of his endeavours nearly three years ago. In two days he had gone from not knowing if she were alive or dead, to learning of her phone calls, to seeing candid camera shots of her; and now to finally seeing her with his own eyes, albeit assisted by technology. ‘Southney’s Snowdrop,’ he whispered so quietly that only Cori heard.
But something wasn’t right, and both were sensing it. As she moved toward the sofa — that like the other items in the room looked both new and expensive — Isobel seemed to fall as much as sit down upon its ample leather frame.
‘She isn’t well, is she,’ spoke Grey.
‘And is that blood on her face?’ called out Cori, as she watched this dot of a woman, weak as a lamb, bring the drink to her lips with a titanic effort. She replaced the glass on the table, beside the shiny pebble of a phone, which she then lifted as if it were a lead bar; this was the phone they had of course already heard so much about. ‘She’s making a call,’ announced Cori.
‘What’s she’s saying?’ asked Grey.
‘We can’t hear the calls themselves,’ answered the mysterious Sullivan from yet another viewing post. ‘But the phone company send us the numbers called and answered.’
‘She’s probably trying to call an ambulance.’ Cori was getting anxious now. ‘Did you see what happened to her? Was it Carman?’
‘No,’ answered Nash from somewhere at the back of the room.
‘It wasn’t Carman? Then who..?’
‘No, I mean she isn’t calling an ambulance. Of course it could have been Carman.’
‘Did you see him do it?’
‘Not this time; but they have had fights before.’
‘So,’ Cori asked dumbfounded, ‘ with all these cameras… have you got footage of him hitting her? I mean, if you have it recorded then we can…’
‘We could do, yes.’
‘Then why not..?’
‘Because we want to put him away for longer than he’d get for knocking his girlfriend about.’
She was stunned to silence.
Grey took a step back in the conversation, ‘But how do you know she isn’t calling an ambulance?’
‘Because she hasn’t made a call in two days; or received one for that matter.’
‘Is that how long it’s been since she was hurt? When they fought?’
‘If they fought. Yes, two nights ago.’
‘Two nights ago? She’s been like that..?’ Grey fumed at this, almost lost for words himself now. ‘And where’s he, for that matter?’
Nash shot back, ‘Surveillance isn’t watching someone twentyfour-seven, Inspector. You monitor people, learn their manner and ways. We don’t know where Stephen Carman is every minute of the day.’
‘Do you know where he is this minute?’
The Chief Inspector didn’t reply; the Inspector thrilled for the accuracy of his off-the-cuff remark. Grey imagining Nash glaring at him across the darkness.
