One of these shapes moved, and spoke to them, ‘No change, boss.’
‘Sullivan, these are the detectives from Southney, the ones who know Isobel.’
‘Good to meet you.’ Sullivan stuck out a black-gloved hand which Grey could hardly find to shake.
‘Sullivan is leading our surveillance.’ Nash was talking very quietly. ‘Show them, Tom.’
‘She’s in view now.’
Invisible hands moved Grey by his shoulders into a position to see through a pair of binoculars, its lenses focused like a laser-beam, burning right into the living room of a flat he imagined must have been at least fifty yards away, and perhaps a floor or two above the room he was in. He judged the low block he was staring at to be perhaps a street or two further back than the houses opposite them on the terraced street.
‘You’ll have as good a view here, if you want to see as well.’
Cori gave a little yelp as the gloved hands reached for her and placed her beside Grey and behind a high-powered camera.
‘Forgive his brusqueness,’ said Nash, ‘too long spent in darkened rooms can de-sensitise a man.’
The fellow in the close-fitting modern equivalent of a cloak made a few small adjustments to the lens, and suddenly the view was as clear for Cori as for her colleague. The pair of them side by side, as if watching a small stage through opera glasses, saw through a large picture window the interior of a modern apartment. Rather starker than the still-furnished rooms of the former home they were at that moment squatting in, the walls of this other residence seemed bare white, but for a series of dramatic prints hung in series across the back wall. It was a huge single pane they looked through — wouldn’t be allowed today thought Grey, he guessing the squat block dating from the Sixties — which gave him the impression of their watching the room through a giant television screen, and meant the officers could see everything that occurred within it, almost as if through a transparent wall.
‘Is that Isobel?’ asked Cori, shocked, as a figure walked into the room holding a glass of juice. Female, small, in only a nightdress or what could have been a large tee-shirt. Her hair was blonde, thick and short, and bearing none of the purple traces Chad at the record shop had mentioned her sporting in her Southney days.
Grey was stunned — there she was at last, the object of all of his endeavours nearly three years ago. In two days he had gone from not knowing if she were alive or dead, to learning of her phone calls, to seeing candid camera shots of her; and now to finally seeing her with his own eyes, albeit assisted by technology. ‘Southney’s Snowdrop,’ he whispered so quietly that only Cori heard.
But something wasn’t right, and both were sensing it. As she moved toward the sofa — that like the other items in the room looked both new and expensive — Isobel seemed to fall as much as sit down upon its ample leather frame.
‘She isn’t well, is she,’ spoke Grey.
‘And is that blood on her face?’ called out Cori, as she watched this dot of a woman, weak as a lamb, bring the drink to her lips with a titanic effort. She replaced the glass on the table, beside the shiny pebble of a phone, which she then lifted as if it were a lead bar; this was the phone they had of course already heard so much about. ‘She’s making a call,’ announced Cori.
‘What’s she’s saying?’ asked Grey.
‘We can’t hear the calls themselves,’ answered the mysterious Sullivan from yet another viewing post. ‘But the phone company send us the numbers called and answered.’
‘She’s probably trying to call an ambulance.’ Cori was getting anxious now. ‘Did you see what happened to her? Was it Carman?’
‘No,’ answered Nash from somewhere at the back of the room.
‘It wasn’t Carman? Then who..?’
‘No, I mean she isn’t calling an ambulance. Of course it could have been Carman.’
‘Did you see him do it?’
‘Not this time; but they have had fights before.’
‘So,’ Cori asked dumbfounded, ‘ with all these cameras… have you got footage of him hitting her? I mean, if you have it recorded then we can…’
‘We could do, yes.’
‘Then why not..?’
‘Because we want to put him away for longer than he’d get for knocking his girlfriend about.’
She was stunned to silence.
Grey took a step back in the conversation, ‘But how do you know she isn’t calling an ambulance?’
‘Because she hasn’t made a call in two days; or received one for that matter.’
‘Is that how long it’s been since she was hurt? When they fought?’
‘If they fought. Yes, two nights ago.’
‘Two nights ago? She’s been like that..?’ Grey fumed at this, almost lost for words himself now. ‘And where’s he, for that matter?’
Nash shot back, ‘Surveillance isn’t watching someone twentyfour-seven, Inspector. You monitor people, learn their manner and ways. We don’t know where Stephen Carman is every minute of the day.’
‘Do you know where he is this minute?’
The Chief Inspector didn’t reply; the Inspector thrilled for the accuracy of his off-the-cuff remark. Grey imagining Nash glaring at him across the darkness.
Meanwhile, Cori adjusted to the realisation of new intel — Nash had lost his suspect. Was that was what this was all about?
‘Two nights ago,’ explained Nash. ‘Tuesday. The night Stephen Carman disappeared, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since. And there you have it, Sergeant, Inspector: the reason you are here, and the situation we hope you can begin to help us out of.’
There was an aggravation in Nash’s tone that Grey wasn’t sure was entirely warranted; as though the Southney officers were somehow responsible for the mess he was in? He tried though to process this sudden information — primarily the fact, as his mind began to grasp it, that Stephen Carman had been missing for as long as Thomas Long.
Beside him though, Cori was still transfixed by the image of suffering brought to her through the camera’s telephoto lens. ‘So how has Isobel been?’ she asked the room. ‘Have you kept watch of her?’
‘Rest assured,’ began Nash, ‘that if she had passed out or slumped over we would have been in there regardless of blowing our cover. But she’s holding it together; she’s strong. Trust me, Sergeant, when I say this is the very worst scenario we face, and we do not enjoy it one bit.’
‘She hasn’t been out of our sight,’ offered Sullivan. ‘She’s had the curtains open the whole time.’
Cori was reassured that Isobel had been under constant watch, but his statement niggled her,
‘But why would she close the curtains?’ she asked, it occurring to her that if Isobel kept them open all evening when most people had them closed, then she might not close them at all.
‘Because he doesn’t like too much daylight of a morning, does our Stephen,’ answered Nash. ‘Or that’s our best guess anyway. He’s not too keen on bright lights in general. Of course this may all be a part of his paranoid desire to stay unseen, unnoticed, which is at the core of his professional secrecy, and part of the reason why he’s so good at what he does. But,’ the Chief Inspector pondered, ‘I do wonder if he doesn’t have some form of epilepsy, a light-sensitivity? A lot of them do, you know, troublesome lads. Dyslexia too. They suffer frustration caused by learning difficulties, embarrassment over not being able to read, things like that. It’s half the reason why they can’t concentrate in the classroom or hold regular jobs…’
‘Fascinating though this is…’ Grey interjected, as eager to have answers as his Sergeant. But Nash continued,
‘She’s often on her own up there at night. She likes to sit at the window, just looking out over the city.’
Cori was becoming as exasperated as Grey, before Nash, as if reading her thoughts resumed,
‘I know what you’re thinking, Sergeant. And yes, it does seem contrary to our avowed duty to protect the public, and the countless police initiatives to crack down on domestic violence — it is a sad but all too common aspect of this couple’s relationship. But their… spats never last very long, which is I expect why she’s still with him… which was the next thing you were going to ask me, right? Why does she stay?’