‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ began Grey. ‘Yes it is. We asked at the Havahostel this morning: your call was placed from a room booked in the name of Smith. The receptionist who dealt with the tenant is uncontactable till the morning. We will of course pass on anything she can tell us.’
‘Then thank you, Inspector. But you also made your own enquiries into Stephen Carman? We have a flag against his name on the Police National Computer,’ explained Nash. ‘It reports when anyone views his file.’
‘Yes. Well, I don’t really know where to start. The thing is, there could be links with two of our open cases.’
‘Just the two?’ Nash chuckled.
‘Well, neither link might prove to mean very much,’ offered Grey apologetically.
‘I’d still be glad to know as much about them as you’re able to share. However, I must say this before we go on, if you’ll permit me to offer just a few words of caution.’ At this point Nash’s jovial manner fell away like a passing fancy,
‘It might be taken as read, but worth stating nonetheless, that for Stephen Carman to have been flagged in this way means he is an active suspect in our own investigations. Very active, if you catch my meaning. Of what he is suspected, I would rather say as little as possible — suffice it to say that if you have looked up his record, then you will know that Carman has some slight convictions for drug offences; so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch for you to deduce what we might be tracking him in relation to.
‘Please let me reiterate just how very important he is to our enquiries. These may very well be undercover enquiries, and so you’ll appreciate how keen I was to get in touch with you and set our relationship off on the right foot; nip things in the bud, so to speak, before anything gets jeopardised.
‘Which isn’t to say that we won’t do everything we can to help you; indeed we would welcome an honest exchange of whatever information we each can share. I must insist though, that the extent of any actions resulting from our exchange be dictated by the needs of our investigation. Is that amenable?’
There was a pregnant pause over the line before, upon a nod from Rose, Grey voiced their tentative approval.
‘Then pray, continue…’ bid the Nottingham detective.
‘Well,’ resumed Grey warily, after listening to all that, ‘Firstly, we are looking for a man called Thomas Long — twenty-four, a Southney resident, no record — who was last seen on the outskirts of town on Tuesday evening; seen outside that particular Havahostel indeed, although this was some hours after the call was made.’
‘Yes, we caught this on the wire. I believe you’ve made a televised appeal? I’m afraid his name means nothing to us, Inspector.’
‘Well, not to worry. It was always a long shot.’
‘The thrill of the chase though, eh? There’s nothing like it.’ The man here began a kind of reverie, ‘I envy you, chasing white rabbits down holes, not sure what little door he might have ran through. It rather takes the thrill out of it when, like us, you’ve been sitting on your prey for eight months, only waiting for one of them to say or do something incriminating near enough for one of your microphones to capture it; It is a long wait for that magic moment, when you finally burst in through the front door, and see the look on their faces when you tell them that they’ve been watched all this time.
‘But, you’re saying Thomas Long is clean?’ Nash summed up in efficient fashion. ‘Are we absolutely sure about that?’
‘Certain.’ Superintendent Rose shook the others by answering so directly. ‘I’ve never come across a cleaner lad in my life, or a better family. He works for a living, goes home for his tea every night. I’m not having him suspected of anything. Now, what we need to know from you, Chief Inspector, is what your drug dealer has to do with Thomas Long — if anything. And for that matter,’ he glanced at Grey as he asked this, as if somehow blaming him for the absurd directions the investigation was taking, ‘what he has to do with Isobel Semple?’
Grey had known his superior had been frustrated, what with the whole Aubrey affair, but not that his upset had spilled over into this particular case.
‘Sorry Superintendent,’ asked Nash. ‘What was that name again?’
Less heated now, and realising he needed to offer the beguiled narcotics officer something by way of explanation, Rose answered, ‘Well, since this morning’s enquiries in the Thomas Long case, it has come to light that Carman may have been involved in another matter we’re investigating.’
Grey took over, ‘Just in the last couple of hours, we have had someone confirm Carman as being a witness in the disappearance of a local girl called Isobel Semple, nearly three years ago now.’
‘Witness? In what way?’ Nash seemed eager to assist, no matter how he had been spoken to.
‘He was a friend, or boyfriend,’ explained Grey. ‘He never came forward.’
‘Isi?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Blond hair, slim, pale, about twenty? That’s his girlfriend, he calls her Isi.’
The Superintendent, listening to this exchange, jumped as if from an electrical shock; while elsewhere the room was still with the breath of revelation.
The penny had dropped for Nash, ‘She came from your town, didn’t she. I remember it being in the papers of course; but she didn’t come on our radar till long after all the fuss over her disappearance had died down. I knew there had been a connection to Southney somewhere. We did check missing persons at the time; she had always been a likely contender for being Isi — though hard to check without asking her, and obviously we couldn’t do that if we’re tailing the pair of them.
‘And to be blunt,’ continued Nash, ‘she was never at the centre of our enquiries. Whatever Carman is up to, she may well know about it, but he doesn’t involved her — and I am afraid we have rather bigger fish to fry… Sorry, are you still there?’ He hadn’t noticed at first that no one else had spoken for a while.
‘Chief Inspector Nash,’ answered Rose slowly. ‘You do realise that you have just solved the most famous case our town has known in recent times?’
‘Well, sorry about that,’ he said mock-apologetically. ‘I’m sure I can’t take any of the credit. You know,’ he continued over the speaker, ‘it was probably she who answered the phone yesterday, she who this Mr Smith spoke to. The phone is in Carman’s name, but the couple share it. I don’t suppose you know either, who it was who called her on it the day before? Late Monday evening this would have been? They’ve called her a few times actually: an odd number, some kind of mobile device we think; it’s proving tricky to trace.’
But the Southney detectives were still agog. Nash continued,
‘Hmm, this does though create exactly the kind of situation I mentioned earlier. For you’re going to want to and come and speak to her now, aren’t you; and you’ll believe that her family ought to know she’s been found, and all manner of other considerations; and at a time when any interference in the couple’s day to day routine could be critical.’
‘How long are you expecting your operation to go on?’ asked Grey, still not quite aligned to the new reality.
There was a telling silence at the end of the line. ‘Well these things are always open ended, the timescale under constant revision.’
This would have sounded like classic obscuration, but for the note of tension Grey, who often read too much into these things, sensed behind the Chief Inspector’s words.
‘The critical moment though does seem to be drawing in,’ resumed Nash. ‘I suppose,’ he added, suddenly brightening, ‘that it is a good thing that you are only approaching us now. Lucky really, or she could have been caught up in this for months yet.’
‘We hadn’t known Carman’s real name until today though,’ (This was Cori, who had been listening intently.) ‘and so we hadn’t traced him before.’
‘No, he’s slippery like that.’
‘Oh? So what’s he like?’