to go on. ‘It seems so.’
‘They’ve found the plastic glass panel in the bushes,’ continued Rose, ‘almost in tact they tell me. Very old though, brittle, and those frames up there look thin. I don’t think it would have taken too much effort to pop one of those windows out.’
‘No, not very much effort at all.’
‘Certainly hard to prove intent though, any more than there being a bit of pushing and shoving.’
‘Well, we’ve only scanned the film as of yet.’
‘And you only see the fellow from behind, you say?’ Rose’s tone was sympathetic. ‘And we never see the actual moments of Tom being pushed, of the window giving way, of him falling? Do we even have a clear enough image to prove it was Carman?’
‘Sarah still has film to go through,’ Grey repeated, but at that point neither man thought it very likely this would find the proof they needed.
‘And we don’t know why they were fighting? Or even how they knew each other?’
‘But in the photos… I swear he looked in for the kill.’ Grey could not rid the CCTV image from his mind, the shot of Carman, shoulders haunched, arms readied at his sides… this would have been the moment Thomas had just vanished from in front of him, Grey realised. Nor would Carman have seen anything had he leaned out into the night to try and see where he had fallen. ‘I wonder what goes through your mind at such a moment?’
‘And all this happening above a motorway, with a thousand methods of escape,’ lamented Rose. ‘At least we can tell Nash now why his chief suspect chose to disappear himself. We can issue an APB.’
But Grey was less hopeful, ‘If Nash’s operation doesn’t unearth him in the next few days then we never will.’
‘You mean he’ll have used his criminal contacts?’
‘Import and export are his stock and trade — it might not be too hard for him to hitch a ride with the next boat out. But I think it’s more likely his drug buddies will get to him before us, at least those Nash hasn’t already rolled up. A major sting, and Carman disappears two days before the operation? It makes him look as guilty as hell.’
‘Ironic, when that’s the one thing he didn’t do!’
‘Irony or not, the best we can hope for is Carman turning up dead somewhere.’
Rose gasped at the emptiness of it all, summed up in his Inspector’s final sentence. Yet his role required he prod his finger into the Inspector’s pain a little deeper yet,
‘I know this isn’t the best time to bring it up, but we’ve already had a phone call from a missing person’s charity. Dare I ask?’
‘Isobel?’ The Inspector paused. ‘I’m afraid she panicked and ran.’
‘Not surprising though,’ Rose pondered. ‘I’ve seen it before with kids younger than her — you bust a gut in finding them, and then as soon as you’ve got them back to their parents they’re off again. It’s something in the blood.
‘Anyway,’ Rose pulled his coat around him, ready to brave the rain again, ‘I should get back to town, check up on them there. Get off home, Grey,’ he said. ‘Cornelia too. You’ve hardly slept for two days.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Over the other side, speaking to the services manager last I heard.’
‘How’s the protest looking?’ asked Grey, as he threw away his plastic cup and waited in vain for a break in the weather.
‘It’s turned into a stand off: the workers want to go in and the administrators won’t let them; and the longer it goes on the more convinced the men are that they’ve already lost their jobs.
‘How long will it go on?’
‘Until the new electricity contract is secured, and the men are insured to return — it really does come down to such things as this.’
Grey would be off soon himself, as he gave the rain another minute to abate before leaving the shelter to its cones and traffic signs. As he stood there another officer joined him for cover, though like Grey his clothes were already soaked through. Grey knew from the station that he was a talker, and they spent a minute or two passing the time of day. Grey sensed though that the man was not there by accident; and sure enough, after a while he came round to what it was he wanted to get off his chest,
‘Sir, I heard Isobel was at the station this morning?’
‘You weren’t there yourself?’
‘No, I’m meant to be on leave. I drove all the way to Wales yesterday morning, and all the back last night. The girlfriend’s livid. I’ve had to leave her there. I was recalled for special duties at Aubrey’s, but was called over here at the last minute. So, is it true, that she’s back in town?’
Grey nodded, even as he inwardly groaned at the prospect at having to explain the circumstances of her subsequent departure. But before he could begin, the Constable continued,
‘It’s just…’
Grey felt a confession coming, and readied himself to be forgiving.
‘Well, you know how even now we still get sightings: that this person’s seen Isobel on holiday, or that person saw her in a shop? We had one this week.’
The man looked sheepish, and no wonder, as the Inspector had not been made aware of this.
‘Well, I ask you,’ he continued, ‘after three years missing why would Isobel Semple pick this week to show up at Southney train station?’
Grey felt his stomach hitting the floor. ‘Where’s the report? Forget this, go back to the station and get it for me. I need to know the date and time.’
‘Oh, I can tell you that. It was early afternoon, around two o’clock the lady said, while she was out shopping. And she came to see us the next day, which was my last day, so the lady saw her on Tuesday.’
‘And was she coming or going?’
‘She saw Isobel at the entrance arch, before she vanished into the crowd of other shoppers. She said she was sure it was Isobel — she used to see her walking to school past her house, you see — but it wasn’t until she’d spoken to her friend the next morning that she felt bold enough to come and tell us.’
‘This lady keeps wise counsel.’
‘She was a lovely old girl, we gave her a cup of tea. She said she knew it sounded fanciful, but she hoped she was being helpful.’
‘She was being helpful.’ Grey’s mind was racing way past this odd encounter at the train station. ‘She was being incredibly helpful.’
‘Sir?’
‘I take it you took her name? Then send her a bunch of flowers out of petty cash.’
‘So it was Isobel then?’
‘It could have been.’
We thought about telling you, but it’s been so long now; and we’ve had so much else going on. Have I done wrong, sir? I know I should have mentioned it…’
‘Not to worry, son,’ he placed a fatherly hand on the lad’s shoulder. ‘You might have told me just in the nick of time.’
As he approached the wretched structure a services employee was putting up a sign, to the effect that for the time being the bridge would be unavailable to motorists. The man in the fast food van would be happy, Grey considered, for if nothing else his sales of his coffee and hot dogs would be up, people keen to share in the warmth of grill and boiler.
He lifted the blue tape and jogged up the stairs, before moving on toward where forensic officers were examining the tunnel down which a hundred people must have passed by since Tuesday evening.
‘Anything obvious?’ he asked without looking too closely, it seeing, despite the attention being aid by his colleagues, somehow inappropriate for himself to gawp and gasp over the crime scene.
‘Might be a bit of skin snagged on the window frame, sir,’ one of them said without turning from his task.
‘Excellent.’ Grey hadn’t expected there to be much here, not that he had checked very thoroughly himself before dashing down the stairs. ‘Make sure you check it against Stephen Carman’s DNA on record,’ he offered
