‘You don’t like it, do you? Look how nervous you are just pulling out of the carpark.’
‘How do you mean?’ he said, a mini-roundabout just then demanding his attention.
She was too canny though not to have noticed,
‘I haven’t seen you drive before, not all the way back from Nottingham; where most men would have jumped at the chance to have a blast along those motorways, and in a nice car like this.’
He couldn’t argue regarding the car — the police by necessity rode well.
‘You trust her,’ continued Isobel. ‘You and your Sergeant, you have something unspoken. That’s good, it’s nice. You let her drive you, where most men would see it as belittling. I like it though. I’d like to drive for you too.’
It was some determination that he fought down the urge to pull up and swap sides, ‘It’s not so much that I don’t like driving, as that I’m just not very good at it.’
‘And your Sergeant is so good. And she is pretty, and that’s another thing most men would jump at.’
‘Isobel…’
‘Don’t be coy, Inspector. You’re a man like any other. She has that lovely red hair. I wish my hair was that straight.’
And so Isobel burbled, as along the familiar streets and carriageways they drove, his confidence growing with every uneventful mile; while conceding that he was still a long way from controlling the car with the confidence Cornelia displayed — and which he suspected, licensed or otherwise, Isobel would have proved equally capable of — an ease and ability at the wheel that a lifetime as a rally driver might provide.
‘And I am sorry I said those things to you,’ she added. ‘You know, back at the station. I can get like that sometimes, when I feel cornered.’
‘You heard the policemen talking about the video?’
‘I knew you’d see me on the hotel film, see us leaving together.’
‘And was that such an awful thing for us to see?’
‘I don’t know, I was confused. You can blame my childhood if you like.’
Grey almost spluttered, ‘You had a great childhood! Your parents loved you.’
‘You don’t know the half of it, Inspector.’
‘Well your dad loves you, I know that much. And don’t tell me I don’t know it, the times I spoke to him after you went missing. Don’t say he didn’t care. Doug Semple is a good man.’
‘Oh, I don’t dispute that, Inspector. But you have so much still to learn.’
She had withdrawn slightly and sulkily, Grey realising he had snapped at her.
‘I drive you mad, don’t I? I don’t mean to. I can be horrible, I know I can. I used to drive Stephen wild.’
‘No, it’s me. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day.’
After a pause, in better spirits she said, ‘You know I was so happy to see you again. I was sat in the services cafe, not sure what to do, what sort of person to look for, or what I had to offer in return… when I saw you and your friend go past. You had a map, you looked like you were orienteering.’ She burst out laughing so hard she almost cried, but this was no return to her earlier sobbing, her big eyes soon rubbed dry by the sleeves of her sweater, the cuffs pulled down until they covered her hands. At last he saw her true face, and it brought him joy.
Upon nearing the centre of the town, on Isobel’s direction they left the A-road behind, speeding past the fringes of the suburbs, before slingshotting out into wilds of leafy lanes and glimpsed big houses. The Aubreys live somewhere out this way, Grey caught himself thinking, but they were in London, weren’t they? It couldn’t be Alex Aubrey she was taking him to see. And a moment’s furious logic reminded Grey that it couldn’t have been Alex Aubrey booking into the hotel as Mr Smith, not when he was still at the office with Thomas on Tuesday morning.
Grey had to confess that, beyond that one fact, he knew little about the area they were heading into; this not being a road he had recently traversed or which offered any immediate indication of where it would lead. When they were still going this way a full five minutes later, past increasingly isolated places hidden behind hedgerows, Grey’s natural instincts for spotting mischief making were beginning to sound their bells.
As if with foxes ears, she sensed his barely voiced doubts,
‘It isn’t far now I promise you, Inspector. It gets a little narrower along here, a few twists and turns. Don’t worry though, I used to manage it easy.’
‘You’ve driven down here?’ he asked. ‘When?’ The question came out as a rebuke, even before his mind had decided to be offended.
‘Oh, way back, before I left.’
He went to say more, but realised she could easily have been seventeen by then.
‘Don’t be such a policeman about it, Inspector. I wasn’t doing anything dangerous. He was always with me, and he trusted me with his car. It’s just up here, in fact this is the very last…’
Her words broke off, as around that final turn came a vehicle wide enough itself to fill the space between the banks of hedgerow lining the road. Somehow Grey had their own car safely in an overtaking bay, as the vast royal blue form swept by like something from a more aristocratic age.
‘It’s a Jaguar,’ advised Isobel, guessing Grey’s interest. ‘A Mark Ten, nineteen sixty-five — beautiful isn’t it? Hell, we’ll have to try and catch him up now, but he drives so quickly. It’s a powerful car. They don’t make them like that any more.’
‘You mean, that’s..?’
‘Yes, that’s him. Oh where would he be going?’
‘And that’s the car you and he..?’
‘Yes, that’s what I learnt in. Don’t worry, Inspector, he has a lot of land, I wasn’t unleashed on the Queen’s highway right away.’
‘Jaguar or not, when we catch him I’m doing him for dangerous driving.’
As they sat there stalled, Grey wondered, ‘You know, I’ve seen that car before…’
‘Indeed, you might well have.’
‘…or rather, someone else has seen it.’
Getting his breath back he re-stared the ignition, and using both the overtaking space they were beached on and the driveway from which the behemoth had emerged, they were soon turned around and heading back the way they had just came.
‘He can’t know of the crime scene yet,’ Grey thought aloud, ‘and so that only leaves one place that anyone in this town would be travelling to so urgently today.’
‘I guess so,’ conceded Isobel, a coyness in her tone.
‘But let me drive,’ she added. ‘I know these roads better than you. We’ll get there sooner. Trust me, it will be fine.’
‘I don’t know how you get away with it,’ he uttered, not even considering her wish.
‘Oh, Inspector, I’ve been getting away with things all my life.’
Chapter 31 — Racing Through the Lanes
Required by the situation to apply a certain urgency to their journey, Grey was surprised to find himself swooping through the impossibly tight confines of wooded lanes, and what at times seemed little more than asphalt tractor tracks, with something approaching elan. They were soon heading pell-mell back in the general direction of town.
And then it came to him — a local figure who might fit the hotel description; who had associations with the plant, the Club, with Thomas Long himself, indeed with both the missing people’s families; a man who had dropped out of civic life of late, and who Grey guessed could well afford to hide away in rich seclusion tending classic cars.
Again she sensed his thoughts,
‘Don’t ask me, Inspector, don’t make me say it out loud.’
But the Inspector was too busy thinking these new developments through at the same time as keeping them
