‘We can’t do that,’ Ravi shouted back over waving and bobbing heads. ‘If we open the gates again now they’ll rush us!’
The Constable looked on in dismay, as this man he so respected seemed to be getting things so spectacularly wrong. Ravi gave leave for one burly copper to push out in the direction of the Inspector’s car, while holding his mate back by his epaulets from leaving his position at the gates. It was probably the pressure getting to him, Ravi thought, he having heard over the radio of the kind of day the Inspector had been having. But what was he doing here now? Right now there seemed little they could do to assist him.
The crowd surged and moved, the undefended vehicle becoming the target of all the men’s frustrations, a raft jostled on a pea-green sea. There was a pop and shatter as a side-mirror went, its glass ground under steel-capped boots. Grey was pinned behind the car door, as almost in his face loud calls were made:
‘Rase, you knew about this on Wednesday!’
‘Why’d you arrest Larry Dunn?’ asked another.
A third followed with a bellowed and inaccurate, ‘Let him out!’ the recently freed man probably amongst the throng as he spoke.
An officer working his way toward them called through the din, ‘Please get back in the car, sir. Reverse back onto the road.’ Grey would have bridled at such instruction, were he not rather feeling he was fighting for his life. This isn’t going to work, he thought, while knowing that to get back into the car would be to lose the situation for good.
And then the passenger door opened, and not Sergeant Smith but a slighter, blonder woman emerged into common view, standing on the open door sill to rise just above the heads bobbing all around her. So the police radio chatter had been true, Ravi realised, and he smiled — more in gladness at his colleagues’ success, than for the return of this girl whom he had always had a sneaky feeling hadn’t been quite the angel she had been advertised. He chuckled to himself: it was turning out to be one hell of a day.
‘I told you I’d seen her!’ shouted the workman who had seen Isobel in the car that morning, at last vindicated after half a day of mockery from his colleagues.
Grey would later wonder whether Isobel, after the scene at the police carpark, knew the effect her popping her head up at that moment might have had? Or was this simply a headstrong woman frustrated with their lack of forward motion? He couldn’t believe though that she would have been completely unaware of her own power.
‘Let us in, please, it’s important,’ she asked the men; but her voice so dominant in one-on-one situations, was small and weak and hardly audible in such conditions.
No, any effect she wrought here today would be down to her appearance, the fact she was actually there at all. That her very presence would hold its shock-value for a few hours yet, at least until the Southney Sports had caught up and published news of her return, Grey knew. Nor could he deny the usefulness of her ability to command the attention of whole groups of people (nor that she herself wouldn’t felt a certain electricity at these moments).
The inverse of the effect though must have been horrible: when caught alone, anonymous, trying to be just another person — such as when she was cornered on the bus earlier, or recognised by the old lady in town on Tuesday. Which was an odd effect, he thought — good in crowds, bad in person — the complete opposite in fact of how most felt in their personal relations.
This would fade though, her story would be told, and soon lead to no more than smiles across the aisle as townsfolk met her buying beans in the supermarket.
‘It’s Isobel,’ muttered the crowd, ‘Isobel Semple.’ Grey watched her deploying herself as if a nuclear weapon, this scene-changing woman. He meanwhile began to feel so embarrassed, shameless, like a carnival shyster: You thought she was missing, but now she’s back, now present amongst us, come see! and that it was these melodramatics that might save them, his own efforts foundering, brought a sense of failure.
By now even the men furthest away had spotted who it was and had gained their mates attention; as the name once plastered on noticeboards, and across newspaper headlines, and called by searchers in the woods was called out once more, the news of her reappearance murmured through the crowd like the sighting of a saint.
Before another voice called her name, intensely and with purpose, ‘Isobel!’
‘Dad!’ she called back, as there amid the throng was Doug Semple, laying eyes on his daughter for the first time in nearly three years.
They said no more than that, names all they could manage, the fact of having seeing each other enough for each for now to bear. Around them the protestors, spotting something important was occurring, something emotional and within the family, were keen to make space and let them do what they needed to, each going shy as men can do when faced with others feelings.
At this point Grey did a thing for which he would later feel quite bad, but which was really unavoidable: he took advantage of this lull to gesture for Ravi to re-open the wooden doors. For he had no idea how long the stillness might last, even thinking that to speak to the men to thank them might risk breaking the spell. He found his way back into his seat, still clutching the top of the car door under his arms like a boy half-way over a fence, until both of his feet were back in the footwell.
As the car was fired up, so Isobel clambered back in also, though without breaking eye-contact with Doug Semple until the very last moment. Grey wondered if she was as glad as he to be back within the car’s protective shell, not knowing that her only thought at that moment was the hope that that shared look with her father had conveyed all she had intended it to.
Grey recalled then another face he may have just glimpsed in the turmoil: Philip Long, the dead man’s father. He would be speaking to him again soon, but not just now; as with a solemnity that would have shocked anyone here a minute or two ago, the ways parted and the car drove very slowly forwards.
Chapter 33 — Within the Citadel
Once through, there was barely room for Grey to park and leave space for the large doors to be swung shut behind them. The big Jaguar filled the aisle of the squashed courtyard, the modern Audis and Mercedes of the administrators going nowhere soon.
As the doors were being closed, Grey heard from behind them the resumption of the earlier disturbance from the men, but with nothing like the same urgency. The brick archway Isobel and he were stood in now resounded mainly to the clatter of the doors themselves being re-secured.
Yet however complex the issues being discussed outside, within the shaded archway Grey felt calm and secure, assured that though the world was in chaos there were still barriers behind which small pools of stillness could exist. For what was civilisation if not the making of a space for thought and contemplation? But he couldn’t help thinking of the protesters. ‘Poor devils,’ he heard himself saying, ‘what’s a working man without work? If he can’t provide for his family?’
‘Easy,’ Isobel chided, ‘you’re beginning to sound like an episode of Newsnight. You are still with us, Inspector? Haven’t we got things to do?’ She stood beside him, returning him to his surroundings — perhaps events were finally getting to him? If his senses required further gathering though he would have to contemplate on the hoof, for there was still much to sort out.
‘Inspector!’ called Shauna Reece, stood at the door within the arch that led to her reception, ‘And Isobel Semple, Southney’s Snowdrop.’ In an act of female solidarity as powerful as the brotherhood enacted outside, Shauna took the hands of the woman she had never met and had only known before through posters and appeals, and smiled with a warmth that couldn’t be faked. ‘So the Inspector found you?’ she asked rhetorically, her warm gaze turning to Grey.
‘He did indeed,’ Isobel replied happily, Grey considering that whatever Isobel thought about this concern others felt for her, she seemed to leave the people expressing it feeling good about themselves, and this was a kindness. Not that she cared how she spoke to him.
‘How come you are here?’ asked Grey of Shauna. ‘Didn’t you get caught up in all the trouble?’
‘I just turned up for work as usual. Mr Wutherton had asked me to do extra hours, so I was here before the men came. And we have power in the office, so there’s no problem there.
‘So much to do!’ continued Shauna as she led them through, ‘so many calls to answer since the news broke.
