content with having their man.
Aubrey did claim though that Carman had arrived unexpectedly, had tried to take his girlfriend back, and that his death had occurred as the two men had fought over her. With evidence from the hospital of Isobel’s injuries from abuse, a good defence team would argue Aubrey only wished to save his battered daughter, to get her far away from a man who, as it would surely be noted, had already caused another’s death that night. Grey guessed at five years.
The statement contained a further detail: that under a pretext Anthony had visited the plant early the next morning hoping to see Thomas there, he still worried after his friend hadn’t turned up for their meeting the previous evening. Here he overheard a secretary on the phone and almost crying, as she spoke with Mrs Long about her son not coming home. It was the fear of something else having happened that night that had put all travel plans on hold, Isobel driven back to Nottingham that morning before she was missed… and of course knowing her boyfriend wouldn’t be there.
Grey read all this in the statement but could not comment now, his part here played. Instead he thought only as a storyteller, rounding off the narrative for himself, a story none may wish to hear but which needed telling.
This was a rehearsal for the report he would soon have to write, and then the richer, more personal account he would return to at home. A secret even from Rose and Cornelia, the books kept locked in his study, they were somewhere safe to record all he felt of each case, where he could keep the secrets held from the official record, and where he might even try to make sense of the people he came across, the currents and eddies that drove them.
On the day the suspects were to be moved, Grey turned to see Isobel’s brief approaching,
‘I advised against it, Inspector, but my client has asked I give you this.’
Grey read the note,
Whatever I am charged with, thank you and your Sergeant for saving me.
He turned it over and wrote, regretting it ever after,
When you asked us if we’d arrested Stephen? That was the finest lie I’ve ever been told.
Later that day it came back,
I was so happy that morning in the hospital, I’ve never felt so safe.
He didn’t respond.
Whether Anthony Aubrey’s words to the protestors had had any affect that Friday afternoon, by then the protest was running out of steam, the men heading home or to the pub. At the Young Prince Hal, Bill Blunt took no pleasure in the record takings made that day, and this despite the house standing several rounds. For he knew the same men might be back soon with no money, and that this would be when his charity would really be tested. In his mind an unofficial fund was already being ring-fenced from these excess takings, and in the end even this might not be enough.
Whether the men thought of it in the same terms as Larry Dunn had that first night, they were mourning a way of life as much as their jobs and the wages they might be losing. And their wives would mourn them in more practical ways, when the children needed shoes or the roof began leaking. There were isolated protest, but nothing on the same scale. And when a week later the factory doors were opened, it was seen as a victory and celebrated on the evening news.
A month later, all existing contracts honoured was when it bit, with all but a third of the workforce losing permanent employment. It was commonly agreed though that without Wuthertons even this many might not have been kept on. Philip Long was not among them though, his job lost along with those of his apprentices, their skills no longer required by the smaller and more hi-tec assembly line, the plant building things for other companies now, no longer under their own name. Philip was though amongst those taken on by the distribution warehouse next door; a part of a scheme for local businesses to recruit who they could from the new surplus workforce.
Cornelia and Grey had found all this out when they visited the Longs. Not on that initial harrowing meeting, required to deliver the bone-shattering news; but on subsequent occasions to offer updates and check how the couple were holding up; all a part of the semi-official network of support the police offered to those they met in the course of their work and whose lives had been cast asunder.
By the third meeting, her husband now back in employment — ‘It’s the best thing though, isn’t it, for a man to keep busy.’ — Lilian Long, they agreed afterward in the car, was back to how they imagined her old self to be, though perhaps more reflective, and glad of the chance to talk of Thomas,
‘He was such a kind boy, Inspector,’ she would say as often as the conversation allowed, the love she bore for him evident in every word. ‘It would be just like him to be so troubled when he knew his workmates would lose their pay. He was the worst in the world to have to learn that. He would want to do something about it, you see, to put it right, even if there was nothing he could do. Poor Thomas, poor Thomas.’
And she had shown no vengeful glee, as the more bloodthirsty of the town had done, when the Carman case coming to trial bought the whole story into the news; specifically the fact that her son’s killer had had his own life ended.
Grey avoided the Semples and the Aubreys as best as he could, he sick to the teeth with all of them by the end. Whether Isobel ever met her parents again he didn’t know, by which he meant her legal parents, Doug and Christine. The latter was not seen in town, or at least not by anyone Grey knew, she presumably still living wherever she had holed up since leaving her husband. Grey did find himself face to face with Doug once more though: in the Prince Hal one lunchtime, talking with Bill. He turned around and there he was, just arriving at the bar. They issued greetings, no more, no less, no sentiments shared. The man had his drink poured, and removed himself to a table. He was always a queer one, Doug Semple, thought Grey, he one to often use that word in its older sense.
As for the Aubreys, the factory and land still in their name, the new production line was at least paying their debts off at a trickle. Anthony had what some termed ‘a good trial’, getting off with no more of a sentence than Grey’s most miserable prediction. There were rumours he was out now, but had never dared return. Meanwhile Alex declared bankruptcy, and kept a similar distance. There were rumours of a new firm in his wife’s name.
Whether Anthony held his son responsible for his fall was unknown; and if Superintendent Rose knew any more than this from his past connections with the family, he wasn’t saying. The town themselves seemed glad though to have it over with; and so it was with little sadness when the firm whose work the factory staff were now doing placed their own huge sign over the Aubrey “A”.
And finally there was Isobel, who with a scene-stealing performance in court — that not only secured her a non-custodial punishment, but was widely muted to have contributed to Anthony’s low sentence — regained in the public eye some of the infamy of her vanishing. A national newspaper offered her a sum for her story, a men’s quarterly magazine offering an entirely different type of publication. But she took neither of these offers, and after who knew what kind of reconciliation with herself and her history, took off again, but this time alone and with her own money — for with Carman dying before he could be a part of Nash’s case, the property in the couple’s flat was released to her, and promptly sold for several thousand pounds.
The detectives were not to encounter her again before her leaving, only receiving a letter sent to the station, and addressed to ‘the two officers who rescued me,’ that with its little envelope and neat handwriting might have been a child’s thank you note to an aunt for their Christmas present. At least until they read it’s contents: In it she confided the fact that during their time in Nottingham Stephen Carman had routinely forced himself upon her, and that this had been given in secret evidence to her domestic abuse support officer. She had also been left with double vision in one eye after one of his earlier beatings.
Grey would remember that odd Friday in her company a long while, marvelling at just how well she had held up through it, how bright-eyed and clear-minded she had seemed — and when there was so much that she had been holding back. She had had to rest afterwards, she wrote; as had he, those manic hours requiring a week of half-shifts and twelve-hour sleeps to get over. Beyond that though, he was far from sure of what he ought to feel about her now. It was the nature of the thing though, the sense of urgency they had felt, he and Cori pursuing the case to its conclusion; as Isobel fought for her life.
But when Grey thought of the case in the years that followed, it would be Lilian Long he chiefly recalled, speaking of her son with such love in her musical voice, Poor Thomas, poor Thomas.
