teacher — could stop correcting our grammar or sourcing our quotations.’
‘And Charlie? What did he like to talk about?’
She sighed, seeming to sink even further into the soft chair, ‘You couldn’t really rely on Charlie for conversation. Deep within himself I think some decision had been made that there were things he wasn’t ever going to deal with before he died, and this left a kind of resignation; but a happy one, the man was happy here. I think he loved us. Wow, Derek, how much whisky have you put in my mug?’
‘No more than normal. Sorry, a bit too much?’
Grey felt it too, though not the more usual sensation for him of one too many ales.
Rachel raised her glass, ‘Well, as we have a drink let’s toast them, our lost friends. You too, Inspector. They’re your friends now, you’re their final friend,’ she repeated from Tuesday, ‘the one who solves their mystery.’
They leaned in to clunk their earthenware mugs before falling back into the chairs,
‘I like this,’ she said, ‘I like remembering them…’ then after something of a pause, ‘I miss them,’ before, ‘Oh, look at me, how daft. I’m crying.’ She went to lift herself up and fell back in the chair. This might have struck Grey as odd, she having drank so little, had his own mind not been a bit under-speed itself.
‘Time to get someone to bed,’ said Derek, taking Rachel’s unemptied cup from her hands and putting it on the table. He lifted her beneath the arms up from the chair, and carried her the short distance to her bedroom. Grey attempted to lift himself to assist.
‘No, no, don’t trouble yourself, I’ve got her.’
As he fell back enervated against the warm leather, the Inspector’s mind struggled against its shackles, recognising what wasn’t right here even as his powers weakened. The last thing Grey saw before he blacked out was the figure of Derek Waldron, returned from the bedroom and standing over him.
Chapter 21 — Wake-up Call
Thursday
Whatever lie-in she had been allowed the previous day, Cornelia knew she would be required bright and early this morning. Arriving at the station by eight, to work on writing up their various interviews of the previous two days, she learnt that Janice the social worked had had similar instincts, she calling from her own office by a quarter past,
‘Sergeant, Esther and her mother arrived in town yesterday evening. They’re both staying at the Wheelwrights’, and are keen to get started. I’ve spoken to them both and am confident all is essentially well with them; though I fear for what we’ll be hearing in the interview. I’ve pencilled you in for nine, if that’s not too early..?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I assume your Inspector wants to take the lead on this. If you could let him know?’
But by a quarter to and still with no sign of him, she called Janice back,
‘The Inspector’s unavoidably occupied elsewhere: you can imagine how many irons we have in the fire at the moment. Would I do for the interview?’
‘Yes, you might be better actually. Still good for nine?’
‘You haven’t seen him, have you?’ Cori asked Sarah Cobb typing diligently across the desk from her; but as she asked around the station she learnt that there had been no sighting of the Inspector there that morning. She checked her phone, but there was still no reply to the voicemail and texts she had left him. Cori had no choice though: she had to leave if she was to make the appointment. It was fifteen minutes later, as the interview with Maisie and Esther was about to start — and with her own phone silenced — that the alarm broke.
The sensation was refreshing even as it was perplexing, and sudden, and wet. It was the feeling of instant rain falling on a desert statue and washing away the dust of centuries. A few seconds later, much less abstract now, it became the awareness of cold drips of water running quickly down his back beneath his shirt, and of the fabric there instantly clinging to his skin. These impressions were each specific and singular enough to bring him back to consciousness even before the flat palm of another’s hand caught his cheek; leaving his face and scalp reeling from half a dozen different simultaneous stingings and ringings.
‘Sir, sir.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ coughed Grey as he open stinging eyes to see a hand waving before his face and wondering whether to slap him again.
‘Sir, what happened to you? You were out like a light?’
His face and hair and collar were soaked. The person stood before him with the dripping glass tumbler in his other hand was a Constable, deducible even in Grey’s current state from their blue uniform over white shirt. It was morning, very bright morning, even with the drapes pulled.
‘Open those curtains.’ His senses were returning now. ‘You were on guard outside. What happened?’
‘Nothing happened, not a thing all night, sir; and then I come in here to find you and you’re out cold.’
‘What time is it?
‘Around nine, sir.’
He was still on Rachel Sowton’s sofa, ‘Oh God. Rachel…’
‘She’s in the bedroom sir, spark out.’
‘Wake her, but don’t splash any water on her.’ He went to rise to follow the Constable in there, but wasn’t much less woozier than when he’d tried to stand last night. This brought the images rushing back: making the toast to absent friends with their mugs, falling back into the chair, not being able to get up again, Rachel being carried away, the man standing over him.
‘Where’s Derek Waldron?’ he called into the room before attempting to rise again, slower this time, and managing as far as the bedroom doorframe. He found the Constable with his hand behind the sleeping woman’s head, calling her name and trying to get her to drink from a tumbler of water. Another full tumbler… the details weren’t matching up: the policeman had not been back to the kitchen en-route to fill it up,
‘Where’d you get more water from?’
‘This?’ He held up the glass. ‘It was just here on the unit.’
Grey looked back into the lounge area to see that the identical tumbler emptied with force over his sleeping form had been left on the coffee table in front of where he’d been lying. Even as he tried to figure out this weird little puzzle, Grey’s overriding sensation was that he could do with a glass of it to actually drink, after having had his share go over him.
The woman was mumbling but waking.
‘Rachel, are you all right?’ called Grey from the door.
‘Uh? What’s going on?’
Grey was imagining the worst that could have happened to her.
‘She’s waking up now, sir,’ the Constable turned to him to reply. ‘She seems fine, just sleepy. Sir, you mentioned Derek just then? Is that the fellow on the first floor?’
‘Yes, he was here with us last night. I think he might have drugged us. Leave her to me, go and see if anyone’s seen him.’
‘But sir, he’s gone. He left at six this morning, told me he had an early start today.’
‘Early start doing what?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Then get up to his room, kick the door in if you have to, see if there’s any sign of what he’s up to; otherwise get his description out, get everyone looking for him.’
‘Sir.’ The man dashed upstairs, as Grey picked up the tumbler from the coffee table and moved more steadily now to the kitchen to fill it once for himself, and then again after knocking it straight back to take in for Rachel.
‘Rachel,’ he said in a tender croak, ‘drink this as well, you’ll be dehydrated. Don’t move if you’re hurt.’ But even as he said it he saw her face was unmarked, her discomfort no worse than his own grogginess, and the bedclothes still smoothed out beneath where she’d been placed on them.
