‘Isobel, for your own information, you really ought to know that when you gave your details to the Desk Sergeant earlier, he will be passing them on to the missing persons agencies who have you on their files. Now the first thing they are going to do is contact your parents to tell them you have been reported here. I know this has all been rather landed on you… and I don’t know how you left things with them.’
‘No, that’s fine. It’s a relief really. But I don’t have to see them right away?’
‘Oh no, that is entirely your discretion.’
‘Good. It might all be a bit too much, you know?’
The way she spoke was so reasonable, so calm, so understanding of her predicament, that in hindsight Grey would wonder if he hadn’t let his guard down a little?
‘Now, you can stay here for the day: there’s all the food you can eat, and my office is empty. You’ve got the TV up there, and the sofa’s big enough to sleep on… and I’m sure between us we can find you a bed for the night. But over the next couple of days…’
‘Well, actually I was thinking about this on the way down,’ Cori startled them by saying, before quietening her voice, ‘I don’t know if this is how you choose to think about yourself,’ she was speaking directly to Isobel, ‘but as someone who has experienced violence in the home, and now finds herself homeless… Well, you may qualify for a place.’
‘A refuge?’
‘It’s more of a hostel, for women and their children, when they’ve nowhere else to go.’
Isobel took the suggestion on board, as again Grey marvelled at her apparent acceptance of reduced circumstances.
‘Anyway, there’ll be a support officer along soon,’ concluded Cori, ‘and you can ask them. We don’t have a permanent one here, but the Desk Sergeant will have been in touch.’
Grey wanted to suggest she call her mum or dad, and ask if they could take her in. But he had no idea how they lived now they were parted, if either had a spare room; and besides that would involve opening up the whole can of worms of what was going on within the family at the time Isobel left, and which even after speaking with her parents he had never gotten to the bottom of. Could it be the worst thing in the world though for her to get in touch, build some bridges, and maybe spend a bit of time with one of them? He kept his thoughts to himself.
‘But it’s my choice, what I do?’ She asked them.
‘Yes, entirely,’ confirmed Grey.
‘Right, can I get anyone a drink?’ asked Cori. But at that moment the lady at the counter called to tell Isobel her pie was ready, they having prepared dessert for her especially early.
As Isobel got up to collect it, Cornelia asked Grey of any developments.
‘Sarah found Thomas on the carpark CCTV,’ he whispered across the table. ‘It looks like he was chased off by Carman.’ We need to get over there.’
‘Carman? But what will we do with..?’
At that moment Isobel returned, steaming bowl in hand, and apparently as engrossed in her meal as before; but after sitting down she left her food untouched, instead after a minute asking,
‘So what am I really here for?’
‘Sorry?’ answered Grey.
‘Could you make it any more obvious you were talking about me?’ She looked up now, Cori noting terror in her eyes.
The next scene happened so quickly Grey could barely credit it as real, it bearing the hallmarks of a dream, the place and people took from memory but thrown all out of context. The change in Isobel was rapid and startling.
‘I wonder why you’ve really got me here at all?’ she continued quickly, ‘All this talk about parents and hostels, pretending you care… and then the moments my back’s turned you’re whispering. You’re all whispering!’ She turned her glare on the officers sat at the other table, she talking loud enough now to have already caught their attention.
‘But no one’s talking about you, Isobel,’ Grey implored. ‘We were discussing something completely different.’
‘You think you’re clever? I dodged you for three whole years!’ She moving to stand now, Cori and Grey rising with her, the three still absurdly close to each other around the tiny hygienic table.
‘You want to trap me, but I’m not letting you. I’m getting out of here!’
As she darted for the door Grey went to block her, placing his hands on her arms for a moment, before realising he had no right to and withdrawing them. However for those few seconds her eyes bored right into his, all guards down, defences stripped, as if he could see into her very soul; and all he saw was blind terror.
‘You can’t go out there,’ counselled Cori. ‘Please don’t go out yet. You’ll be recognised the moment you step out of the door! At least let the paper report the news, prepare the town a bit.’
‘The town?’ she almost laughed. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to get away from this place, and I hope after today never to see it again.’
‘But… your mother,’ was all Grey could stammer, his earlier hopes for a family reconciliation finding incoherent expression.
‘Then you’ll have to tell her how you found me and lost me again.’
As parting shots went, it was a good one, holing him below the waterline and leaving her free to leave without reply. Yet as Isobel left she shot Grey one last fearful glance; which he would later wonder if it hadn’t been a last hope of hers for him to try and keep her there, a final desperate plea to be called back in.
But Grey’s inner turmoil was reaching the surface; and as he sat back down in his chair the feelings inside him were already mutating from pure shock into massive personal insult; and finally a shame that he was thinking this was all about him, his feelings, and that she — and even the town at large — we’re not the real losers in this maddening arrangement.
‘We can get after her sir,’ Cori pleaded, rooted to the spot and somehow needing Grey’s permission to move.
‘She’s a witness,’ was all he found he could say. ‘She gave her statement, she’s free to go.’
Not Larry Dunn, nor Chief Inspector Nash, nor Superintendent Rose when he had a mood on; not all the men on the factory floor as he had marched one of their number off past them on two separate occasions now; none of these, nor any of all the criminals and troublemakers and fellow officers he had ever crossed swords with, had, he thought, ever left him feeling as threatened as this woman had just managed with those last few words.
It was the chill he felt along his spine that did it, he decided (as delicious a feeling as it was terrifying, he would later be happy to inwardly admit) — as wasn’t this what it was to come across someone exceptional, who moved you in ways you hadn’t quite known before? But at that moment in time he had been frozen to ice. He paused from moving a muscle for fear that something would shatter.
‘She got me absolutely right,’ Grey mumbled. He had had a minute to think now, and coherent thoughts — or at least they seemed so to him — were forming, ‘She knew how long we’d been searching, how much her coming home would mean to people. And she followed this up with meanest little words she could find to spit at me.’
‘I don’t think she was thinking that deeply,’ Cori tried to counsel. ‘She just looked scared to me, panicking over something.’
But the Inspector continued, ‘ Am I your prize, Inspector? Isobel was saying to me, The trophy you were going to carry off? She understood my pride, and she nailed it to the wall…’
Cori knew Grey loved her like his own family, would do all he could to protect her from the dangers of the job, and held her opinion often higher than his own (indeed she would often pause before offering suggestions for fear that they could well end up being the course of action taken). And yet here, in this utterly inappropriate and thankfully near-deserted canteen, she, Cornelia Smith, Sergeant of the Southney Station, acknowledged to herself that she was powerless, with no influence at all over the Inspector. For she saw that something special had occurred here, a meeting — or clashing — of minds that had found each other on some higher level, Isobel’s disappearance and Grey’s searching for her connecting them beyond the realms of investigative propriety or police procedure. This was a discussion on the essence of life, and how theirs had become intertwined; or that was at least how the Inspector saw it, supposed Cori.
Thankfully just then, one of the two uniformed officers who had been sitting at the far table in embarrassed silence the whole time, got up and approached the table, saying sheepishly,
