can we have paramedics and local bobbies all over the flat, finding Carman’s trade samples and replica firearms and God-knows what else.’
The Southney officers had been listening to all this like friends on a double-date with a warring couple. Now Nash addressed them directly, albeit obliquely,
‘What was that line in Shakespeare, about forcing the moment to its crisis?’
‘That was Eliot,’ Grey corrected, his English A Level serving him well. ‘It was over a woman.’
‘Well, isn’t this?’ Nash mused, as Cori dodged past him in the doorway and back to her viewing post. ‘I wonder if we aren’t approaching our own moment of crisis? Carman hasn’t come back; and Isobel is getting no better. Perhaps the situation is resolving itself, a way of action becoming clear?’
Nevertheless, they remained in paralysed silence; before Cori came back into the hallway, addressing Grey, ‘Sir, she’s in a bad way. She’s half on the floor, and doesn’t look as though she can get up.’
None answered; and as the silence on the landing continued, so Cori’s moral incomprehension was reaching new levels. She spoke again, quietly and calmly, her words directed solely to her Inspector. ‘Sir, do I have permission to go and take Isobel to hospital?’
The whole room waited on his answer.
‘I should have let you go half an hour ago.’
The moment the first sounds left his lips several things occurred concurrently: Cori striding purposefully for the stairs, with Grey instinctively moving after her to cover her path, as Nash’s instinct led him in that direction also. Sergeant’s Pullman and Sullivan also appeared on the landing then, drawn from the viewing room by the commotion. This left Grey an inch away from falling backwards down the steep stairwell, and facing the three Nottingham officers. They stood like this for only a few moments, but long enough for Cori to have exited the house, and be finding her way now through the yards and alleyways leading back onto the narrow street.
Nash backed away first, Grey not having anywhere to back away to, bar a reverse attempt at the darkened stairs. As the Chief turned, for the first time in Grey’s presence, he produced a soft pack of cigarettes and offered one.
‘I won’t, thank you,’ said Grey, refusing the offer while appreciating the gesture.
‘Very sensible,’ said Nash calmly as he lit up and enjoyed the first drags. ‘These fellows don’t either,’ he gestured to his team. ‘I think we bring kids up too healthily these days. Everyone needs one vice, don’t you think, Inspector? Best it be something not too noxious. I wonder what yours may be?’
Grey scanned this for irony or insult, but in the end decided it was merely an honest question. But by that time Nash was thinking aloud again,
‘Stuart,’ he began, addressing Sullivan, ‘I wonder if you couldn’t get back on to Central. Suggest six am tomorrow. I think they should be able to have everybody in place by then?’
‘I should think so, sir’ he said leaving for the darkened bedroom, casting one last indecipherable look in Grey’s direction.
‘He blames you for all this,’ explained Nash after Sullivan had gone, ‘because Carman vanished in your town. He fears he has got away. While at the same time, like all of us, the prospect of action after months of restraint does vivify the soul. I expect,’ he smiled ruefully, ‘that you are detective enough to guess from the instruction I just gave, that we plan to roll up the rest of the network, or what is left of it?’
‘A clean break, sir.’ This was Sergeant Pullman, still stood by them.
‘Yes, Gill. It will be good to have it over with.’ Grey noticed genuine weariness as Nash said this.
‘And best to get Isi out of the way before it all starts.’
‘Quite right,’ Nash agreed. ‘Better all around.’
‘A shame to miss out on Carman though,’ she added.
‘You really didn’t like him, did you,’ asked her boss rhetorically. ‘You’ve had to swallow a lot, coming straight from the beat, to having to sit on your hands and watch them two slug it out up there.’
‘I hope he turns up dead.’
Grey was startled by this, but Nash took it in his stride,
‘Still, I have a good feeling. If we can mobilise tomorrow morning, then we will have acted quickly. Carman always was a ducker and a diver — it will have taken a couple of days for his cronies to be getting worried by his absence. There was always more to this operation than watching this one flat, this one man. There are other players involved; and Scar was always punching above his weight, straining at the limits of influence, trying to convince them he could be a major player too.
‘To have left it any longer though,’ he cautioned, ‘even one more day, and some very serious figures might have gone ghost; leaving us watching a string of empty flats and vacated rooms.’
At which point Sullivan reappeared, he and Nash soon talking in the corner of the landing, lost in muttered discussions of people and places and targets.
‘I guess it’s on then,’ Gill Pullman observed as Grey turned to leave.
‘He called us back here to take Isobel off his hands,’ reasoned the Inspector, ‘to make the decision for him.’
‘Maybe,’ she agreed. ‘I’m just glad she’s going to be safe. Look after her.’
Wishing each other well he left, only for Nash to follow after him as he walked down the stairs, and saying as they reached the back yard,
‘If you ever catch up with him, Inspector remember this: the only person Stephen Carman hates more than the police is himself, for letting himself get caught those two times when he was younger. Even though he got off with possession each time, I think having his collar felt, his photo taken, fed his famous paranoia; which was already there way before he had any run-ins with us. It makes him harder to trace as he covers his tracks so well, and leaves him prone to flee at the first sign of trouble, imagined or otherwise.
‘But of course, you’ll be more worried about Isobel right at this moment. Well, she’s your baby now,’ concluded Nash. ‘She’s what you came for, so take her. Get her home to her mother, it’s the best thing for her.’
‘She never got on with her mother.’
‘Then just get her cleaned up, and out of town, tonight… Oh, and Inspector, keep watching the news won’t you — and when you see the pictures of our men taking down doors and bringing out Carman’s associates with their faces blurred — well, then you and the rest of the world will see what all of this was for.’
As with that Nash turned and walked into the house; Grey turning the other way and walking from the yard.
Chapter 20 — The Intervention
As soon as Cornelia had found her way onto the street, she realised two things: that she wasn’t entirely sure how to get to the building she had only seen through a telephoto lens, and that once there she would be faced with the task of attempting to help someone whose whole way of life involved holding the forces of law and order in contempt. The first of these issues resolved itself upon her running to the end of the narrow terraced street, and seeing, just a short way along the next thoroughfare, a familiar-looking three-storey block looming up in front of her. She even fancied she could pick out which window was Isobel’s, but would worry about that when she got there. A third thought then occurred to her, which was that she would have done better to have headed the other way to start with and have picked up the car; but it was too late by then, as she neared the front door.
The first obstacle was the intercom lock. She scanned the few names tattily listed — as if Carman would have advertised himself? Would the top floor flats have higher numbers, she wondered, as she moved to the bottom of the list? One of the highest numbers had a blank space by its bell, but pressing it got no response — hardly surprising she thought, if it was Isobel answering. She pressed another by it, and a woman’s voice sounded. Forget the undercover operation, Cori thought as she spoke,
‘Hello, this is Sergeant Smith, I’m a police officer. I was hoping you could let me in please. I need to access a flat on the top floor. We need to help someone inside.’ A plea to the lady’s better nature worked wonders — always much better than ordering the public around, Cori had found — and the door clanked open without delay. The woman who had opened it was stood by her open door on the third floor corridor by the time Cori had ran up
