needlessly, while thinking it more likely to have been left by Long.
‘Will do, sir,’ answered the man politely, respecting the Inspector’s enough to not mind his telling him the rudiments of his job.
Grey found Cori talking to the couple serving at the services shop. Upon seeing him, the Sergeant broke off and met him in the foyer,
‘Hello boss, are you all right?’
He had no vanity in front of her, not when they trusted each other so implicitly, not when they had shared so much. Few couples are as close, he had thought on many occasions. And so he did again now, finding himself standing there, jacketless, shirt stuck to his back, hair a matted tangle plastered to his scalp, trousers caught and torn at the ankle. And yet her first thought, he noticed, was not to chide him for his appearance, nor look around to see who might be seeing her stood with such a embarrassing specimen, but instead simply to enquire after his well being. He took it back and revised his observation: this was better than any couple he had ever been a part of. Yet she of course was in a marriage, this was secondary for her.
She cut short his reverie, ‘Sir, I’ve finally got to speak to Josie, the receptionist.’
‘Of course, she was back on duty today.’
‘I’ve managed to wrangle permission from Mrs Hackett for her to leave her post awhile, and go through the CCTV records to try and find the footage of Mr Smith booking in; but in the meantime she gave me a description: he was white, late middle aged — in his sixties she guessed but could even have been older — white haired and heavily built. And that’s not all sir… he had a visitor, who arrived that day and then left with him when he checked out at about eight in the evening: a young woman, who was white, blonde, petite, in her early twenties Josie thought, but it was hard to tell as she was wearing glasses and a headscarf. She was “very smartly dressed” as Josie described her.
‘So,’ Cori ventured, closing her notebook, ‘it has to be her, doesn’t it?’
Grey took a deep intake of breath, ‘Isobel was at the train station at two pm that day — I’ve only just found out. The desk didn’t tell us, they thought it was a crank sighting.’
‘Oh my. So she came to town by train,’ Cori summarised, ‘found her way to the services somehow, and then met with Mr Smith?’
‘And this after receiving the call from Smith that morning telling her where to meet him. They checked out at eight, you say?’
Cori nodded.
‘So why,’ Grey considered, ‘was she not back in Nottingham until the following morning?’
‘And do you think they knew that Thomas was already… even before they had checked out of the room?’
‘Anything from the shop staff?’ he remembered to ask, as they crossed the same carpark he hoped soon never to have to set foot on again.
‘The girl there now is the one who served me yesterday; and she was there Tuesday evening. The counter does look out toward the bridge, but she doesn’t remember anything out of the ordinary, no men dashing past. She said the shifts can be long, and they read the magazines to stay awake.’
‘I don’t envy that job.’
‘Her boyfriend works there too, she said, but often doing different hours. She can’t bear the early hours shift herself though, so some weeks they hardly see each other.
‘Why can’t they synchronise?’
‘He gets more for working those hours. People do what they have to.’
‘Well I hope they pay him properly for it. Imagine being here at three or four in the morning, hardly a customers for hours, while she’s alone in bed — the poor devils.
‘Anyway,’ Grey changed tack, ‘Rose says we can knock off. We can’t know any more while they are gathering evidence over there.’
‘What about Mrs Long?’ asked Cori. ‘We need to tell her soon.’
‘Yes,’ the Inspector placed a hand on her arm, ‘but not till we have the body tidied up. What do you want to do now?’
‘I might go back to the hotel, see if Josie has found Smith’s picture yet. And I think you have an appointment…’ Cori nudged Grey, and nodded in the direction of her car and the figure stood beside it.
Chapter 30 — Meeting Women in Carparks
‘Here, take the keys if you need them. I’ll get a lift back.’ Cori turned toward the buildings, while Grey found the car, wet and gleaming in the white light of an opaque sky.
‘What do you want now, Isobel?’
‘I want to say sorry.’
‘Come on, let’s get out of the rain,’ he said, no sooner unlocking the doors with the key than her small and spritely form had jumped in beside him. Once both were sat inside he didn’t know how to address her, what to ask or what to say.
‘I can’t believe I’ve got you to myself,’ began Isobel. ‘You and your pretty Sergeant seem inseparable; like peas in a pod my dad would say.’
‘She’s still busy — there’s a lot going on.’
‘You’ve found something important then. Is it to do with the lad you’re looking for?’
She asked with sensitivity, but Grey didn’t know how to answer her, instead saying,
‘I didn’t think we were ever to see you again. You’ve come back a lifetime too early.’
She managed a smile at this, something like amity developing between them, ‘I was scared. I’m sure you can understand. As you say, there’s a lot going on. When I got out of the police station I didn’t know where to go. People started staring, recognising… so I jumped on a bus here, hoping I’d hitch a lift.’
‘Where to?’
‘I hadn’t thought that far… On the bus someone came right over to me, asking me If I was her? I shouted that I wasn’t and hid my face.’ Whether Isobel had cried at the time, she was crying now.
‘It won’t last for long — once the news is out, it won’t be as much of a shock if they see you. But it must have been a shock for you, to be back on these streets; and after… how long has it been now?’
But something in his tone gave him away, ‘You’re playing with me, Inspector. Please don’t play with me.’
He let his silence show contrition, before saying as softly as he was able, ‘In the next few days I think, we will have security camera film from the train station and the Havahostel, showing you were at these places on Tuesday. Also, we think that you were here to meet a man, who we hope soon also to identify. Now, I know you’ve had a rotten time of it…’
‘No, no, no,’ she wiped away her tears. ‘You are quite right, I haven’t told you everything. I will level with you, but can you level with me first? What have you found out there, by the footbridge? Is it Thomas?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘And so, he’s..?’
‘Yes, he is. Now, if you know anything at all about this…’
‘I swear I don’t, Inspector. I really knew so very little about him.’
‘Could your friend tell us more, Mr Smith?’
She smiled, ‘I told him he should have chosen a different name, one less obvious; but he said they didn’t care at that hotel, that they let anyone in. Oh, it is all so hard to explain.’
‘Then tell me who he is, let me ask him myself.’
‘It seems so cold to just name him, like dobbing him in. Please Inspector, don’t make me have to. Anyway,’ she announced brightly as the idea came to her, ‘I can do better, I can take you to him. I promise it isn’t very far.’
She was pushing at an open door though, and he was already starting the car.
‘I can drive you if you like,’ she offered.
‘And where on Earth would you have learnt to do that?’
