‘I think it might have been us, sir, who upset her.’
‘Sorry?’ answered Grey, shaken from his thoughts.
‘Isobel. I think she overheard us talking, when she came to collect her dessert. I looked up and there she was, staring at us.’
‘Well what were you saying?’ asked Cori.
‘That’s just it, it wasn’t anything much. I was telling Phil how I’d just bumped into Sarah upstairs, and that did he know she’d been here all night going through CCTV film? She’s a good girl, that Sarah. She work’s hard.’
‘We know. Go on…’
‘And he asked if it had been film from the cameras at the hotel, he having heard you’d been there yesterday. And I said no, of the carpark, and how Sarah had said you were holding off looking at the hotel footage till you’d had a chance to speak to the receptionist… and then I looked up, and there was Isobel.
‘Well, we’d better get back,’ concluded the officer. ‘But we’ll be upstairs for a bit if you need us.’
‘Thank you,’ said Cori as the man and his colleague left the room. ‘So…’ she reasoned, ‘Isobel was worried we’d find something on the film from the carpark?’
‘Or from the hotel.’
‘That we’d get a picture of this Mr Smith?’
‘Or a picture of her there with him.’
‘Do you think? What were they up to then? Is it anything to do with Thomas?’
‘Lord knows.’
‘Well should we get her back, interview her?’
‘What about? We need to prove that something happened there first.’
‘But what if we then can’t find her again?’
‘Let her go, she won’t get far.’
‘But… like she said.’
‘Yes, I’m well aware of what she said. And if she kept off our radar for three years last time, it was after planning her escape and having her boyfriend’s criminal resources to rely on.’
‘Whereas this time she’s on her own and only has the clothes she’s standing up in.’
‘Now you’re thinking. The most famous face in town? She won’t get far without being spotted.’
For all the urgency of his words, what Grey did then was remain there in the empty canteen, Cori feeling obliged to sit there with him, in silence, his motives a mystery. He was in fact giving Isobel a minute to get clear, before, with a start as if waking from a daydream, and a slow hand banged on the table, he declared,
‘Come on then, Cori. For all we know there’s a body lay out there somewhere, and if there is then no one else is going to find it for us.’
Chapter 28 — The Search for Thomas
Back in his office, Grey was firstly relieved to find Sarah Cobb not there, he still feeling guilty for the work she had done for him, despite having no idea she would stay to work a full night shift. He was sure though that, when he saw the request, Superintendent Rose would understand the importance of the overtime.
Secondly, he found where he had left it the ordinance survey map. It was old and dog-eared, no doubt having been knocking around the station for years. It was quite low scale, covering just the motorway junction and its sliproads and roundabouts; also the hotel, the services and their surrounds; and overlaying it in fluorescent pen were a series of arrows, dotted lines and timings, which as he studied them formed a narrative of the movements of Thomas Long and Stephen Carman on that Tuesday evening.
Cori, still shellshocked from the double-whammy of the argument she had just witnessed and the development, as announced by the Inspector, that there might now be a body to find, waited downstairs, Grey saying he had a couple of things to pick up before they left. Together they then drove from the now deserted police yard, and taking a roundabout route that avoided the town centre where the factory men had earlier congregated, they drove along small roads, past rural terraces and shut up farms, before rejoining the A-road and heading once again along the Corridor.
The journey was uneventful as the morning lost its early gleam, it remaining bright and warm but in that grey way that can keep up for days when cloud settles in a windless sky. The weather reflected the mood in the car, and little was said, bar Cori some way into the journey offering very quietly,
‘She got it right though, didn’t she, Isobel? What she said when she went?’
‘My moment of victory snatched away, you mean? Before I got to have my photo taken with our recovered runaway?’
‘It would have been nice though, eh? Just a bit of credit?’
‘Well, I may have to explain to a few people, where she went off to so soon after returning. But if a bit of embarrassment is all we have to deal with…’
Cori left it as that, although there was so much more she wanted to say. Grey too, though he was happier for now to think in silence. For Cori had been right: that Isobel had not set out to attack him personally, to bruise his ego or knock out his moral, but instead merely needed to get out of a situation she found suddenly terrifying. He had happened to be the obstacle needing to be removed.
He accepted this, so why then did he still feel so rotten? Perhaps it was another vain conceit now shown up for what it was: the idea that he, the Inspector, could keep the townsfolk feeling safe in their beds, could pull them back in when they fell off the edge of the world? Southney’s own Holden Caulfield? What a joke! Isobel’s staying unfound for three years had knocked that belief, and his not being able to keep a track of her now would knock it again — and this before he even dared to contemplate what had happened to Thomas, happening at a time when the town needed all the reassurance it could get.
But this was all fine, for he was used to these times, of operating day in, day out with no happier feeling at his core than a sense of bad faith in things, of life defaulting on its promises, but knowing that he must trudge on, that someone had to do his job.
‘It’s something for the agencies anyway,’ he offered, ‘confirmation she’s alive. Though there really will be no way to explain to her parents why she left again, or how it was I didn’t have the power to keep her.’
As they drove Grey watched the landscape as it passed them, the sky it met at the horizon hanging over them like white clay, as if to reach up to punch it would leave knuckle-marks.
‘Start at the hotel?’ asked Cori, he nodding as the quiet modern car glid again along the service road, turning off at the tarmacked lot.
‘Sarah stayed up all night you know, working this stuff out.’ Grey was pacing to and fro at the front of the hotel. ‘This is about where the big car was parked, and they went off in this direction.’
‘I wonder if the Indian summer is over?’ asked Cori as she followed the Inspector with his map.
‘So Sarah thought they must have gone down here,’ said Grey, starting for the alley that ran alongside of the building, ‘but neither are seen leaving.’
‘There’s a few planks missing in the fence along there,’ noted Cori, as reaching them, like Alice following the white rabbit through the little door, they squeezed their way in turn through battered fencing, and out into a different point along the edge of the services carpark.
After clearing the shrubs and bushes before them — one of the scenic interludes intended to break up the austerity of all this outspread tarmac — they were stood at the kerb that stopped the apron of grey from spilling out in this direction. With grim precision they found the next camera exactly where it was marked on the map, the pole rising above the parked cars and strips of box hedges.
Beside it was a smaller post, its sign now readable: Please place your litter in the bins provided. This was the post past which the ghostlike figure had been dashing. Grey moved to recreate the pose… and saw ahead of him the footbridge.
A breeze was getting up, and clouds were blowing over darker now, as Grey and Cori stood before the hideous structure. It was constructed of that old aluminium once used for school buildings. After many years bared to all weathers the metal had oxidised itself a silvery husk, and now gave the impression of being impervious to the elements.
