Stepping outside to record another interview for the cameras, Grey updating them with news of the hotel sighting, the journalist, the same as earlier, said to him afterwards,
‘You know, Inspector. After we spoke this morning, I remembered that I had interviewed you before about a missing person. That blonde girl, Isobel Semple, the one who had been in all the papers. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, yes I think I do.’
‘Did we ever hear anything of her?’ asked the reporter with what seemed genuine concern. Fears that the man had got a jump on their latest lead instantly discounted, Grey only hoped his shaken head and brief goodnight had given nothing away.
Returning to the office to wait for her, Grey noticed on Cori’s desk the file she had that afternoon been reading, a corner of a photograph peeking out from under the cover,
‘That’s the picture of her they used in the papers,’ he said, not needing to see any more of it to recognise it, ‘the one of her young and smiling. You know,’ he offered, cryptically to any others in earshot, ‘I reckon they were lucky to take that photo when they did; because I don’t think she was ever happy in that house for one day before or after. Lord knows, I never figured that family out.’
Chapter 16 — Travelling Up
‘He’ll have to wait,’ Grey considered of Larry Dunn, muttering as they boarded Cori’s car, they having barely stopped off to drop the man back at the station before hitting the road again. Any questions Grey was keen to ask of him would have to wait — someone else would be taking his statement. The Inspector was keen to get going, if only so Cornelia might be back home before her young family were all asleep, making this the second such evening in a row.
Cori was just as keen, having assured the Inspector that they had everything they needed for the trip to Nottingham. As for him, she had long ago come to the conclusion that there seemed little the Inspector required in life that could not be found in the pockets of his suit jacket. She started up and pulled away from the station.
They had one call to make on their journey though before leaving town; and so at the very turning onto the motorway they would soon take to head northward, they instead pulled into the services carpark.
‘How’s it going?’ asked Cori of the Constable they found near the services shop, she being one of those dispatched to ask those working in the area if they remembered seeing anyone waiting near here at seven thirty on Tuesday evening.
‘It’s been difficult, Sarge,’ she began. ‘The shop and restaurant staff are on rotation, so half of them there that night aren’t here to ask. I’ve left messages for them to call, but…’ They all knew how low the return rates for such requests were: people had all kinds of reasons for not wanting to call the police. ‘It was dark by then too,’ she continued, ‘and though seven pm isn’t their busiest time, there are people coming and going at all hours — I think the workers here get into the habit of not noticing, of letting people drift past them.’
‘And we’re never going to track down all the drivers who happened to be parked here at that time either,’ lamented the Inspector. ‘They’re hardly going to have been paying much attention themselves.’ The Constable was right, he thought: this was a place people stopped at on their way to somewhere else, no one’s final destination, nowhere for anyone to get excited over or even recollect very clearly.
‘We might find some of the drivers, sir, if they stop here at the same time every evening. We could put signs up,’ she suggested helpfully, ‘like we do after an accident: Was anyone here at this time..? Did anyone see anything..? ’
‘Yes, that is worth a try. Look into that, will you? Speak to Traffic.’
‘Yes sir,’ she answered triumphantly.
‘There’s another of you, isn’t there?’ he asked.
‘Yes sir, they’re asking at the petrol stations either side.’
‘Good, good. Then thank you for your help,’ as with that he left them, strolling over to the spot by the hotel at which he had stood that morning; quite a distance actually, when you considered it.
‘There is nothing there to help us,’ he mused mournfully to no one in particular, as he trod the glum functional tarmac, rolled out it seemed like an endless grey carpet, white lines dividing it up into a thousand car-shaped spaces, ‘nor anything of any interest to man, woman or child; emotionally, intellectually, artistically, even criminally. Stood here we have nothing.’
Cori, jogging behind him, knew there was little point even trying to leaven his mood. It wouldn’t last though she was sure, not once they got moving again.
A glint of light on glass catching his eye, Grey looked up to see a camera moving atop a tall pole, ‘That could have caught something, even at night,’ he muttered.
‘Sarah’s onto it,’ Cori enthused. ‘She was scanning the footage as I left.’
‘Then maybe she’ll have something for us by tomorrow,’ he said hopefully, as they turned and walked back to where they had left the car.
A golden sunset at only five thirty though, Cori thought, pulling down her driver’s visor. It didn’t seem right, this Indian summer giving such a convincing impression during the daytime of it being July or August. They were soon moving through, past the vague hotel, and leaving behind them the retail estates of the Corridor.
Soon they were on the motorway slip-road, and joining the throbbing flow of traffic heading up from London, through the centres of the Midlands, and onward to the citadels of the North. Grey saw the cars they travelled among as blood cells pumped around the body geographic of Britain, each independent of the others but carried by common currents. As the afternoon turned to dusk they sped past vivid green cuttings, and isolated houses sat like sentry huts, guarding territory that though scenic he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to invade.
Cori was performing her familiar trick of driving while appearing utterly relaxed; not a skill Grey himself had ever mastered, the sheer constancy of the attention required leaving him mentally exhausted by the time he reached his destination. Driving had for him therefore become a when-required activity, left to others when possible, especially when those others took it so in their stride. Perhaps he had just seen too many accidents in his earlier career, or had had one too many near misses in his days spent chasing about in squad cars? Such incidents bothered him in a way they never had his colleagues.
He remembered one scene vividly, his panda car needing a whole new offside-front wheel and suspension after an evasive manoeuvre had left him hitting a kerb at speed. It hadn’t been the incident itself, for the car was in a week repaired and back on the road. What had lodged in his mind though were children laughing as they stood by his lame horse of an Escort, its orange stripe jinking over the buckled wing. Children, on the pavement his car had just slid halfway across. He couldn’t even remember if they had been there at the time of the collision, or merely came to look afterward. But to him that hardly mattered; and led him to put any further thoughts on the incident out of his mind this afternoon.
‘Sergeant, Inspector.’ Chief Inspector Nash turned out to be a tall and broad shouldered man, effortlessly imposing as he entered the Spartan police station reception. From his dress he looked, Grey thought, to be one of those officers whose work involved mingling with those on the street, unlike he and his Sergeant who had some duty to appear as offering a public face of the force. Everything he wore was broken in or faded, his clothes a patchwork of muted colours in quality fabrics, and bearing subtle designer labels. On his chin he wore a fuzz of stubble, just enough to give the impression he wasn’t having to shave for whatever role he filled in day-to-day life. Grey also knew that they worked hard on voices in that area of work, encouraging colloquial accents and casual speech; yet as they listening to Nash introducing himself as they walked up to his floor, Grey wondered if there hadn’t originally been something rather more dignified and upstanding in his voice, hidden now behind those broad Northern English tones. Either way, it struck Grey you didn’t hear such traditional accents in Britain so often any more, young people whatever their background tending towards rap-speak and exaggerated phrasing.