‘True,’ concurred Grey. ‘There’ll be a dozen lonely truck drivers here this minute just dreaming of a pick-up like her. They’d have her away in two seconds’
‘She hadn’t guessed the phone was being monitored,’ noted Cori.
‘No, not for all her canniness. Have you heard the way she’s bluffing, claiming not to know who was calling?’
‘I saw her eyes flicker for a moment, in the driver’s mirror, when you were asking her…’
‘And in those seconds she judged for certain how much we knew. You know, when I was her age,’ he mused, ‘or younger maybe, before I joined the force; well, you might laugh at this, but I would never have even thought of lying to a policeman. It would have just seemed wrong, like…’ he struggled for a simile, ‘like when you see footballers not singing the national anthem.’
‘You do make me laugh.’ Cori chuckled, ‘But I should I go in now. I don’t want to leave her too much longer.’
Grey, left alone for maybe only three or four minutes, nevertheless made some startling assumptions. His mind worked best on what he termed his ‘cardinal points’, facts and theories that though perhaps unprovable, could not to his mind be reasonably disputed. And there seemed several here: firstly, that Isobel felt no love for Stephen Carman, indeed was more concerned for her own skin than wishing to remain to find her missing boyfriend or offer him any support if arrested.
Whatever manner of relationship — and of three years standing no less — Isobel had had with Carman; whether she had ever, even at the start perhaps, imagined she had loved him; and taking into account whatever material benefits being with him bought her — the nice flat, the sense of power that comes of being with a man who strides about controlling other people’s lives… Whatever all that meant to her, and whatever she was prepared to put up with from him when his combustible mixture bubbled over; the moment that they hit a rock in the road, the second that her accurate and calculating mind decided the game was all up, she was now leaving him and all of it behind without a backward glance.
No, not for all the luxury of their lifestyle and the power such a couple presumably held in their world, did she seem to suffer any sentiment for the life she was leaving this morning with no more than a holdall full of clothes. And this seemed to bode a deeper truth: that the story of her life, revised in light of new evidence, seemed to be — that she had ran away from her parents and friends, and couldn’t give a damn; that (as they now knew) she had seen the town she had left crying out for news of her, and couldn’t give a damn; that the man she ran away with had endangered lives as his stock in trade, and she sat down to watch her flatscreen television with him and couldn’t give a damn; and now she seemed to have cut him loose also… and seemed again not to be giving a damn.
‘Who is this woman we’re driving home?’ he wondered aloud. What startled him also was how easily this cynicism sat alongside both the simple joy of having found her, and the idealised image of Southney’s Snowdrop the townsfolk held and to which he had to some degree shared.
And there was a further feeling; not a cardinal point as such for it was moving, changing, unprovable in his mind. But it was clearly understood by Grey that Isobel reeked of guilt, though of what he was unable at present to say.
Cori jogged briskly between the slow-moving cars toward the main door of the services complex, slowing to assume as casual air as possible as she entered. She had already seen Isobel come this way from the car. The door to the Ladies was not far from the shop, and so, past the shelves of confectionaries, she moved to the stand nearest the checkouts, from where she could glance at the covers of the lifestyle magazines while keeping one eye on the door beyond the foyer.
‘Keeping tabs on me?’ asked Isobel, appearing from nowhere.
‘Chocolate,’ answered Cori, holding up the bar she had yet to pay for. ‘Want anything?’
‘Cherry Coke. Thanks.’
Keeping up the little girl act, Cori considered, as she fetched the drink and paid for the items, thankfully able from the windows by the till to have a view of the carpark, and of that head of blonde hair bobbing back over to their vehicle.
The conversation once travel resumed was thin stuff, Grey zoning out and leaving Cori to offer Isobel an edited account of local developments, of how town had may have changed at all these three years, and the troubles expected at the plant.
‘I hope my dad’s job is safe,’ she replied, with an honesty Cori credited as genuine.
Chapter 23 — Southney
They found the Southney turnoff about eight thirty, the day still clear and warm but not quite as bright as it had been for over a week now. None of them said a word as they came onto the sliproad, and passed so closely the Havahostel at which so much of the business linking the three of them rested. The short drive along the Corridor was uneventful enough, yet Grey felt a growing sense of expectation. It was though as they passed from the rural landscape of the A road to the built up surrounds of the town, that he began to notice signs, stirrings.
It was something in the nature of the knots of men, all in their green overalls; who would probably have been meeting to walk into work at about this time anyway, but who looked more numerous today, more concentrated into groups, their faces as they caught his passing gaze bearing what he sensed to be a seriousness and a desire for something needing to be done. Grey was certain something was afoot as they neared the High Street, and he saw the queue of similarly clad fellows at the first cashpoint they would have come to walking in from this side of town, the men displaying stoical intent in their grim holding of the line outside the bank. Stood just to the side of the queue, a couple of others were talking with strong body language and jutting hand motions, perhaps already having had confirmed to them by the hole in the wall what it would confirm to the others in time; confirm what Grey and Keith Pitt and indeed Thomas Long had known all week: that the money owed for this month’s labours would not be present in their accounts this morning as it ought to be.
In the few seconds that they in the passing car were witness to the scene, the two men who had already had their financial fortunes told seemed to argue, in the way only long-standing friends could without falling out over it; one deciding to stay at the bank, the other joining the growing movement of men not wanting or needing to check their accounts, and so walking past them on toward the plant.
‘He must have Direct Debits due,’ said Cori of the one who had stayed behind. ‘My guess is he’s waiting for the bank to open, while his mate would rather argue it out at work.’
‘Poor sods,’ muttered Grey, as the timebomb set for payday began its slow detonation. He had known this would happen, that the knowledge thus far private must become public — and of all the possible outcomes, it was always something like the one unfolding around them now that had been the most likely.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Isobel from the back seat. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s the trouble at Aubrey’s,’ answered Grey. ‘They’re not able to pay the workers today.’
‘Of course. It’s the last Friday in the month.’
‘Your dad works there, doesn’t he,’ asked Grey, he having half-missed the earlier conversation.
‘Yeah, we lived by his paydays. Mum worked there too, before she had me. That’s where they met.’
‘You know, she never mentioned that, in all the times I spoke to her,’ noted Grey.
‘After I’d left, you mean?’
‘Yes, after you left.’
‘I used to love his paydays. Dad always used to treat me,’ she reminisced; before bursting out, ‘Ha! Chad’s Classics!’ upon spotting her old haunt as they drove along the row of shops. ‘He fancied me rotten you know, Chad, and I wasn’t very kind to him.’
‘You’ll hit a lot of memories like that,’ said Cori smiling through the mirror.
As they reached the far end of the High Street, the men in green seemed to be yet more numerous, the junction at the dogleg in the road that led on to the plant seeming a rallying point for the disenfranchised. Grey wondered if some group instinct taught them to gather together before approaching their adversaries?
It was at this junction though that Cori had to wait to turn right across the flow of morning traffic, in order to arrive at the station a short distance along the minor road. As they waited by the crowd, one of the men assembled
