‘Well, I’ve seen her before…’
With the ambulance gone and doctor following it in his car, Ellie took the man from the next-door room to the Carstairs back to bed, saying to the detectives as she went,
‘It’s not that we mollycoddle them, though the families sometimes think we do; it’s that a place like this must be calmer than the world, must have less shocks.’
As he watched her help the old man inside, Grey only hoped to be so cared for in his dotage; while Rachel Sowton, her duties for now fulfilled, came to stand by the detectives as she lit a cigarette, eventually asking,
‘So who of us is next?’
‘Hopefully none of you,’ reassured Cori; though this was undone by her colleague who merely answered,
‘We don’t know.’
‘So no idea why yet either?’
But Grey answered her with a question,
‘I was told that Charlie hadn’t been back to the Hills for fifteen years.’
‘That’s right, as far as I knew.’
‘Did he ever go for walks at night?’
‘No, and that I do know.’
He pondered, ‘And it’s absurd to think he had time between being woken by tonight’s emergency and leaving to either call anyone to tell them he was coming, or receive a call from someone on the Hills asking him to come.’
‘Nor in any fit state to make or understand such a call,’ added the Duty Manager burning her cigarette down to the filter.
‘So if his decision to go there tonight was just a random impulse brought on by the shocks of these two evenings…’
‘…then no one on the Hills was expecting him,’ concluded Cori.
Rachel might have seemed alarmed at this were she not already on full alert these last twenty-four hours, further suggesting, ‘Which means that whoever it was that did that to him followed him from here?’
Grey turned to Cori, ‘I think one of us at least should stay till morning. We might need a bigger presence here by then anyway, if the regional news crews start arriving on the trail of some imagined serial killer.’
‘I have a sofa-bed in my flat I can pull out for one of you,’ offered Rachel Sowton as she snuffed her cigarette out against the doorframe.
‘I’ll stay,’ volunteered Cori. ‘It’s further for me to get home and back by morning anyway.’
But Grey demurred in accepting this arrangement, and this was noticed by Rachel stood beside the officers,
‘Ah, so you’ve learnt where I was yesterday evening? Sergeant, I fear your Inspector is concerned that it would be inappropriate for a female officer to be left with someone of my, shall we say, proclivities?’
‘Not at all,’ he blustered in response. ‘Forgive me if I took a moment to decide whether it was respectful for either of us to accept your offer.’
‘Ah, isn’t he a sweetie?’
Cori smiled, Grey continuing,
‘And I’ve no idea where you were last night, only that one of the Constables recognised you from the raid on Sophia’s last summer.’
Her indignation became real, ‘That “raid” was nothing more than some old biddy of a neighbour not liking what she thought we were getting up to in there; and nearly losing my friend her licence in the process.’
‘Well then, we must have found something when we went in,’ he said before he caught himself.
‘Not enough to get a dog stoned, Inspector; but obviously you’ve got no real criminals to catch, so go for the weirdoes, eh?
Grey didn’t know what to say to that, speaking instead a moment after to Cori, ‘Anyway, it makes more sense for it to be me staying, as you need a good sleep in your own bed: you’ve got a concentrating day ahead of you tomorrow.’
‘I have?’
‘Starting at the library’s records office, looking up the histories of Stella Mars’ and Charlie Prove’s time as Town Councillors.’
‘They were on the Council?’ asked Rachel, the woman who’d known and worked with both for fifteen years.
‘Yes, both starting in the Sixties, Charlie till he came here.’
‘And you said Stella Mars?’
‘Well that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow: seeing if our researcher has found anything out of Stella’s marriage to Samuel Mars, rumoured ex-sailor and not-altogether-wonderful husband by the sounds of it.’
‘A marriage too?’ The revelations were coming thick and fast now for Rachel. ‘I guessed she had been wed at some point. And how did you..?’
‘In an extraordinary conversation with a man who knew them years ago — and that’s not all, I think he hinted at “school gates” and “other mothers”.’
‘She had a child?’
‘If she had then Sarah will have found it out by now. I need to write all this down before I forget it.’
‘I have pens and paper, I’ll see you inside,’ said Rachel turning for her office/apartment.
‘You’ve been busy,’ said Cori as they stood outside alone now.
‘Pure luck,’ he countered, ‘and I wish the same for you tomorrow. Have a lie in, then call me once you’re there.’
But before Cori left, Grey paused her to ask one more thing,
‘What Rachel said. You knew about her inclinations — you weren’t surprised?’
‘It was just a feeling, sir. Nothing you could pin down. Well, goodnight sir.’
And there she left him, the town’s detective, and he hadn’t a clue.
In the dayroom he found a lamp had been moved for him to cast a pool of amber light over a desk bearing an A4 pad and variety of pens. As he moved to sit down before it, the Duty Manager returned to place pillows and a duvet over a nearby easy chair; she saying as she did so,
‘I’ve upset you, haven’t I?’
‘It takes a lot to upset me.’
‘Maybe if you knew that I regretted what I said the moment I’d said it?’
‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘I am upset though, about the raid on Sophia’s.’
‘Maybe after all this is over I can ask our Community Policing officers to look into it.’
‘Thank you. So what about you, seeing as we’re talking life choices?’
‘Sorry?’ he answered, caught off guard.
‘Married, girlfriend, single?’
‘Oh. Single.’
‘Well don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I don’t suppose the job helps?’
‘Possibly not.’
‘Or maybe it suits?’ she added cryptically. ‘I sometimes wonder if mine gives me an excuse not to settle down with someone? Still, better to be frustrated outside of a relationship than in it, at least then no one else gets hurt.’
‘Quite,’ he answered, not sure which of the two of them she was talking about, nor if he’d ever thought of it in exactly that way.
She went out for a minute and returned with a mug,
‘You know, Inspector, you can’t be a nice guy in a tough world and expect the rest of that world to be as nice back to you. On which note, here’s a cup of hot chocolate.’
‘Thank you.’
And with that she was gone, smiling sadly as she closed the door behind her.
