Cori smiled her most sincere smile.
‘And did you keep in touch?’
‘No; but you can drift away from even your very best friends, can’t you?’
‘Thank you, Miss Oven,’ said Cori and held her hand.
‘And thank you for the tea,’ added the Inspector as he got up to leave.
‘You know we should have bought Brough,’ mused Cori as they walked back across the almost empty carpark.
‘No doubt there’ll be open days.’
‘And what a lovely woman.’
‘Were we talking to the same person?’
‘I might send the children here after all, if Miss Oven’s going to be their teacher. Give them some self-belief.’
‘I’m sure if they’ve enough of Brough’s genes then they’ll never want for that.’
‘Oh, Mr Grumpy. What’s got into you?’
‘All this talk of “child-centred learning”.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’
‘I’m only saying, let’s worry about their feelings once they can read and write and add up and find Britain on a map.’
‘I’m surprised you don’t ask them to bring back the cane.’ But Cori knew that this bickering would get them nowhere,
‘You didn’t say much in there,’ she whispered as they walked back to the car.
‘I couldn’t think of much to say. She sounds like a tough woman to work with.’
‘Who, Stella?’
‘No, Miss Oven — all smiles, until you cross her. Did you notice how she stood back out of Stella’s arguments with the new Head?’
‘But she didn’t agree with her.’
‘Do you think that’s why Stella buried that silver watch beneath her teaching notes?’
‘Yes, that seems quite cold now. I couldn’t have told Miss Oven the truth. We might have to place it in the display case though, if she visits for the funeral.’
It was after seven as they pulled away.
‘You’ve missed their teatime,’ stated Grey, ever conscious of his colleague’s family ties, as Cori drove them back to town.
‘It’s okay, we’ve found a good new Polish girl — I think it’s in her training not to say anything that makes me feel like a bad mother.’
‘Why don’t you go part time?’
‘Because what’s good enough for the rest of you is good enough for me.’
‘Oh hell, this isn’t a competition of who has the least to go home to.’
‘It’s because there’s too much temptation to that I can’t give in to it — once I’m on that slippery slope then leaving an hour earlier a day becomes two hours and then three; and before you know it I’m coming in for desk duty one morning a week.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a pause between them in the dark car.
‘Don’t be.’
‘Long day.’
‘Yep. Home?’
‘Home; though drop me in the High Street, will you? I want to see if someone’s lights are still on.’
Each knew that even the most serious case required time away from it, that working around the clock brought diminishing results, that batteries needed to be recharged and evidence stepped back from — that there was only so much data the brain could take on board in a day. They also knew that the big hope now was that their teachers might identify the Southney School girls when they were asked about them by Mrs Foreshore, and that that wasn’t going to happen till the morning.
In the end, Cori parked with Grey a minute after pulling up opposite and just along from the solicitor’s office visited earlier, the lights of which were still burning in all but their shop window.
‘So what’s the beef?’ she asked.
‘I think I’ve been bamboozled, told a lot to be told nothing; and it was by was by someone I liked, which doesn’t thrill me.’
‘Raine Rossiter?’
‘I wish I knew what was going on in there.’
‘But we know what — they’re getting our documents ready for in the morning.’
‘Or deciding which ones we see?’
‘Then get in there.’
‘No, I don’t know what I’m asking yet, or how it affects anything. You know,’ he said suddenly and not necessarily following on from his previous statement, ‘that they are losing five thousand a year on that cheesplant flat Stella wouldn’t let them sell. Would that be enough for someone on the Committee to see her as a hindrance to be rid of? Especially when there’s talk of wanting to expand and build more rooms.’
‘But property costs a lot more now, sir,’ counselled Cori, whose mortgage repayments reminded her of that fact clearly enough each month. ‘Five thousand’s a drop in the ocean.’
He conceded his theory wasn’t floating.
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ he said; and with that he was off, heading, with only minor detours to pick up his tea, back to his small house on its unobtrusive street ten minutes walk from the High Street.
Chapter 8 — The Hills Estates
Wednesday
The Inspector woke to a dull repetitive thudding, that in his dream had been his friend and landlord of the Young Prince Hal Tavern, Bill Blunt, banging tankards down along the bar; but upon waking was discovered to be insistent fists against his front door. He instinctively looked for the mobile phone he knew would be on the bedside table, only to see it instead on the floor and broken into three pieces. He looked to the bedside clock but there wasn’t even the light to illuminate the hands clearly.
He jumped up and, pausing only to grab his dressing down, rushed down to speak to the colleague he knew it must be waking him at such an hour — for it was still pitch black outside.
‘Sir, sorry for waking you up like this.’ The Constable seemed as apologetic as he did agitated. ‘We couldn’t raise you on your mobile.’
‘My phone fell on the floor; it’s in bits. What’s up?’
‘There’s been developments at the Cedars, a man called Charlie Prove is dead.’
Grey looked at the clock in the hall, that caught the light of the streetlamp coming through the open door — it was only one am.
‘Wait inside while I dress, make yourself a drink.’
‘Did you leave it on silent, sir?’ asked the practically minded Constable from down in the hall. ‘They can sometimes vibrate themselves off the edge of flat surface.’
Grey had left it on silent, after quietening it for the interview at Tudor Oak School.
Ready in five minutes, he was driven the short distance not to the Cedars but to an area in the Hills estates, where already there were cordons, crowds and harsh artificial light. Superintendent Rose met him sombrely. The Inspector had telephoned him only a few hours before, to report on much background information but no motive or suspect as of yet. Now the case was blown wide open.
‘It’s an ugly business, Grey,’ began his superior. ‘Charlie Prove, you met him earlier?’
‘We hadn’t a chance: he was under sedation.’
‘Well he seems to have come out from under it some time after midnight, to come dashing out in this direction, where someone stove the back of his head in with heavy instrument.’
‘Any witnesses?’
‘No. He was found by a resident of the flats he was left outside as she came back from work; though others we’ve spoken to have reported a commotion outside just before then — she must have been seconds from seeing the killer.’
‘Where’s Cori?’
‘She’s been directed straight to the Cedars, to manage things there. She’ll be going through his room, I expect.’
Grey’s mind was working now, recalling, ‘You know sir, another resident told me Charlie came from somewhere on the Hills, before living in the Cedars.’
‘We’ll know for sure by morning.’
‘And he had a daughter, sir, who died here.’
‘Eunice — I recognised the surname.’
‘Sarah was finding me the file out.’
‘I’ll re-read it once I’ve spoken to the Chief Constable’s office.’