Late of the Payroll Read online

Grey woke to sunlight and no birdsong, he having left the alarm off in error, but noting to himself quickly before panic had a grasp, that he had nowhere but the office to be that morning, and that the catching up of paperwork he had planned for the day could be as easily completed from ten till six as from nine till five. His reporting back of the finding from the conference had gone well yesterday; but it would have been optimistic to expect for such a disheartening theme to have roused more than the professional interest it did. And anyway, it wasn’t as if an overriding concern for the lost souls of their town was something his team did not already have as instinct.

  As for today though it was back to the paperwork; and he hoped also, if he had the chance, to be able to some make further light enquiries around the edges of the issue raised the evening before last, or even to identify if there was anything to enquire after. Indeed, nothing involving Aubrey’s had caught his eye yesterday when looking at the records of minor activities occurring in the region, or at what had turned up that day on the uniform staff’s duty roster. Not that he expected to see much there, however helpfully the staff Constables had enquired as to whether there was anything they could do to assist, and how if he’d only point them in the right direction then they may be able to help him find whatever it was that occupied him?

  The evening had faired little better, it seeing his efforts to find out Bill at the Prince Hal Tavern founder on the rocks of his having been out of town that night visiting a sick sister – nothing serious Grey was relieved to hear from the barmaid, though he felt in no mood to stay for a beer.

  But, despite his lack of anything to back his feeling of Monday night up, as Grey sat there pondering later that Wednesday morning, his sense of something imminent in those drunken men’s words of two nights before seemed destined to brood within him, at least for the time being. He couldn’t shake the impression of there being some looming object beneath them, and set any day to break the surface of the town’s placid waters. And this he thought on as his more than able Sergeant’s head appeared around the door, to interrupt the paperwork he was at that point, now approaching lunchtime, still working through.

  ‘Boss?’ asked Cornelia Smith.

  ‘Yes?’ he answered, glad to be interrupted by her.

  ‘I thought you might be interested – uniform have got a lady downstairs, here to report a recently missing person.’

  ‘How recently?’

  ‘Only since yesterday, I think they said. But it seems a strange one.’

  ‘Any contributing factors?’

  ‘Well, no, not as such...’

  Grey’s look, though rooted in beguilement, may have appeared to his ever-enthusiastic colleague instead as slight consternation: a consternation demanding of his Sergeant an explanation of why such a routine matter, one easily within the ken of their able uniformed division to handle, at least at this early stage, should have been felt important enough, and by as capable an officer as herself, to be brought to his busy door?

  ‘Sarah came to speak to me.’ Sarah Cobb that was, the team’s administrative support officer. Cornelia continued, slightly downcast, as if having to explain away some indiscretion, ‘She said you were interested yesterday in anything we had had come in relating to Aubrey’s.’

  Before she said any more Grey’s heart seemed to leap up in confirmation,

  ‘And this has? Has to do with Aubrey’s, I mean?’ He knew deep in his old officers’ bones that this could be the point of revelation that any case started with.

  ‘Yes, he works there. It’s his mother who’s come in.’

  ‘Have they started interviewing her yet?’

  ‘Soon. They’re just making her a cup of tea right now,’ she said as she turned to walk with him downstairs, he having left his papers pretty much where they were. ‘So do you want to take over?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know if there’s anything in this yet.’

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  He was quite used to his subordinate asking after and indeed questioning his own thought processes. He appreciated her insights as much as his own, and had noted before how her own opinions and his had often worked together to form a complete picture.

  ‘It might be nothing... I met some men from Aubrey’s the other night.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, for Cori (for everyone always called her Cori) knew there must be more to it than that, and that this would be imminently forthcoming.

  ‘Well, they were upset and angry. They spoke as if the place was in chaos, that their jobs were gone.’

  ‘I didn’t know anyone had lost their jobs there.’

  ‘No, nor did I, and nor does anyone else it seems – not that you can call the place up and ask if they’re having troubles; but nothing’s been announced. That’s what is odd. But they were so honest in it. They were mourning their jobs, plain and simple, or so it seemed to me after. It was peculiar, very intense. Dignified even.’ Even as he said this Grey shocked himself to realise how strongly those few angry words in the pub, and carried notes of singing heard as he walked home had impressed themselves on his mind that evening.

  ‘But nothing we know this missing person is associated with?’ Cori speculated, in a voice which urged caution, knowing how her boss could get carried away.

  ‘No, nothing at all. But I just get a feeling about it, nothing explainable yet. It was like a commiseration: they seemed to know the game was up.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need to justify your hunches to me.’ They pushed through a series of doors, through to the staff area of the ground floor, and leading on to the various spaces public and private in which they worked; and eventually on to where a young female Constable, having supplied the requisite tea and biscuits, now led a lady of a visibly nervous disposition into a room usually reserved for interrogating suspected muggers and thieves.

  ‘Just you go in,’ Grey instructed Cornelia, ‘it won’t make her any less nervous to have a mob of detectives in the room.’

  ‘No problem, boss,’ she answered, as Grey, there being no way he could return to his paperwork now with all this going on, planted himself down at an empty desk in the office, to wait until his Sergeant had something to tell him, those working there attempting to continue their tasks without reference to his brooding presence; before he instead opted for the smaller room next door, where a monitor would let him watch the interview take place.

  Cori noted that the lady, even in her time of worry, had still made the effort to turn herself out smartly. Perhaps she was of that dying breed that saw a civic institution like a police station as a place to dress up for and to approach in a spirit of good conduct.

  ‘So, Mrs Long,’ began Cori, once they were all sat down, she having been quickly briefed in the corridor, ‘I’m Sergeant Smith. We’ll be recording our conversation just so we can write it up for our records, if you are okay with that?’ The lady’s nervous nodded assent was all Cori needed to continue. ‘So, you told the Constable that your son has not been home for… twenty-four hours now?’

  ‘Yes, well, since yesterday morning. He goes out to work you see.’

  ‘How old is Thomas?’

  ‘Twenty-four.’

  ‘He lives at home still?’

  ‘Yes. Flats are so expensive for young people these days.’

  ‘And where does he work?’

  ‘Aubrey Electricals.’

  ‘And how long has he been working there?’

  ‘About six years. He started straight from the sixth form.’

  ‘And how does he get on there? Does he enjoy it?’

  ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘So, you last saw him yesterday morning?’

  ‘When I saw him off to work.’

  ‘First thing in the morning?’

  The lady nodded.

  ‘I need you to keep answering “yes” or “no”, Mrs Long, for the tape.’

  ‘Sorry. Yes, about seven o’clock.’

  ‘And
this was the time he usually leaves?’ Cori’s early questions were for the most part an exercise in confirming the obvious.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And so you were expecting him home in the evening?’

  ‘Yes, always.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t expect him ever to spend a Tuesday night out?’

  ‘No, not Tom, he never does, not any evening. He always comes home.’

  ‘I wonder, had he mentioned anything he might have been doing that evening? Perhaps somewhere he was going or someone he was seeing?’

  She answered in the negative to each suggestion.

  ‘Mrs Lane, does Thomas have a girlfriend?’ Cori’s instinct was the answer would be no, and so it proved.

  ‘No, Sergeant, Tom has... never shown much interest in that area of things, in fact I wish he would. I do worry about him sometimes. I mean, he can’t stay at home forever. Not that I’d ever throw him out!’

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Lane, I’m sure there’s no suggestion of that. I have to ask quite difficult questions, sorry.’

  ‘No dear, I understand.’

  Cornelia admired the way Mrs Lane faced up to the questions at what must have been such a tough time for her.

  ‘And I know it is hard to think about areas of your son’s life you may not know as much about, but can you think of anything that Thomas may have been involved in, that could have worried him? Any trouble…’

  ‘My dear, believe me, if you had grown up with a brother like mine, notorious at every pub and shady haunt in his time, bringing the police to our door like clockwork… If my Tom was in trouble I would be the first to know it, and the first to still love him whatever it was he had done.’

  Cornelia couldn’t help but feel that the lady sat across the table from her, so worried for her son lost somewhere in the world, and speaking of such sad and serious things, nonetheless was glad to have a chance to talk of her boy. Her pride in him was obvious, as were her concerns,

  ‘It isn’t so much that he isn’t out with women very much that worries me,’ she said, ‘but that he isn’t out very much at all. I try and encourage him, suggest he goes for a drink after work – I know the other lads there do. Philip tells me.’

  ‘That’s your husband?’

  ‘Yes, he works at Aubrey’s too. Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘I think you may have mentioned it outside,’ said the young Constable beside Cori, smiling sympathetically.

  ‘He got Thomas the job. He used to know old Mr Aubrey.’

  ‘And do they work in the same area?’

  ‘Oh no, Philip’s on the floor.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘He’s on the factory floor, where they make the parts for the heaters. Always been a practical man, has Philip. I think that’s why he never really understood Tom; they’re so different.’

  ‘And so what job does Tom do there?’

  ‘Oh, he could never work on the production line. He’s not delicate, you understand. He works just as hard; in fact he comes home even more shattered than Philip. They are just different men. The office suits Tom. I think that’s why he doesn’t socialise much with the others; I think their humour’s just too rough and ready for him.’

  ‘And what do you do, Mrs Lane?’

  ‘Oh I don’t work, I have my hands full looking after that pair.’ She said this with a glowing pride, and also a return of her upset, it perhaps coming home to her that the chances were her boy would not be there for her to look after again this evening, as he wasn’t the last.

  Knowing there was basic information yet to be asked after, Cori ground on with the interview,

  ‘Mrs Lane,’ she resumed, ‘when on Tuesday did you first realise there was a problem?’

  ‘When he didn’t come home.’

  ‘And this would have been when?’

  ‘He likes to walk home if it’s bright weather, otherwise he gets the bus and gets in a bit earlier. So I didn’t start to miss him until about... six thirty maybe?’

  ‘And does he have a phone with him, and would he call you if there was a problem?’

  ‘Yes, he has a phone, but he never needs to call me much.’

  ‘If you could give us the number, and we can check it out.’

  The lady took a small address book or diary, from her bag and dutifully recited the number for the Constable.

  ‘And does he have a computer? Does he use the Internet?’ These days this was as important a question as any, but in this case yielded few clues,

  ‘He did have a computer when he was young, for playing games you know? But he prefers to use the one at work now. He said it was faster. He sometimes orders books, they come in the post.’

  ‘Right. So he is never on a computer at home?’

  ‘No, not any more.’

  Well, Cori thought, that didn’t entirely rule out email contacts and social networking sites,

  ‘So,’ she reiterated, ‘he does have a phone, but he doesn’t need to call you very often because he rarely stays out after work?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from on Monday.’

  ‘What, this Monday?’

  ‘Yes, but not just this week. The Monday before the last Friday of every month. He has an important task that day, something to do with their finances. He tells me about it, but I’m so busy when he comes in. Sometimes it keeps him there late, and he gets so stressed before and after.’

  ‘So, he was late home on the Monday of this week, and that was the last night you saw him?’

  ‘Yes. But he is always late that day, so I wasn’t worried about that. I leave his tea in the oven, cook him something that can stay warm and won’t go funny.’

  ‘And so what time was he home?’

  ‘Oh, getting on for nine it must have been. He didn’t want his tea in the end, he said he had grabbed something in town, which didn’t sound like him.’ The woman looked as if she was about to start crying again.

  ‘And how did he seem to you?’

  ‘Well, tired; and if I am honest, a bit snappy – he hardly gave his father the time of day when he came in. He went up to his room like I haven’t seen him do since he was a teenager.

  ‘So he seemed stressed. Would you say uncommonly so?’

  ‘Well, maybe a bit. But he has that in him, that snappiness, when he is asked to do more than usual at the office, when he feels pressurised.’

  ‘So that was Monday, and then he didn’t come home on Tuesday. Was your husband working that day? Was he due to come home with Tom?’

  ‘The factory work different shifts. They don’t do nine to five, so he wouldn’t be getting ready to go home till eight.’

  ‘You must have been very worried. Were you at home alone?’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s just the three of us there.’

  ‘You don’t have any other children?’

  ‘No, but not by design. I’d have loved a couple more, but, well, sometimes it just doesn’t happen.’

  ‘So you waited for your husband?’

  ‘Yes. I thought that if anything had happened at the plant, if Tom had had to stay behind again, or whatever had happened, then Philip might know about it.’

  ‘And did he know anything?’

  ‘No. He didn’t even know Tom hadn’t already come home as usual.’

  ‘Is that common, that they don’t speak much at work?’

  ‘The factory and the office don’t always have much to do with each other. I often know more about what each are up to than the other.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well it was near on nine o’clock by that time; I hardly knew who to call or what to do. I called the office, even though Philip said it was daft and that there would be no one there. Which there wasn’t.’

  ‘What about friends, relatives, people he might have gone to?’

  ‘Well we don’t have many relatives in the area; all mine are in Leicester, and we don’t see them very much. Philip’s family are a mixed bag, and scattered to the four corners. I couldn’t
imagine Thomas would have gone to any of them, even in the direst straits.’

  ‘But friends?’

  ‘Yes, I was just getting to those. There are a couple of lads he knows, or knew, I should say; old school pals he would go for a drink with sometimes. I had to hunt their numbers down, and then I wished I hadn’t: one of their mothers told me her son didn’t even work in the area anymore; and the other one I tracked down hadn’t seen Thomas for months. I tell you what, Sergeant...’ she floundered for the name.

  ‘Smith,’ added Cori.

  ‘...Sergeant Smith, I felt so low at that point, pestering these people getting ready for bed who hadn’t a clue about Thomas’s whereabouts these last six months or more, let alone that night.’

  ‘Oh, dear Mrs Long, please take a tissue,’ the Constable jumped in upon seeing the lady’s distress. Cornelia sat back a moment, as Mrs Long wiped her eyes and blew her nose, wondering what she herself made of all this; and what Grey would think when she reported it back to him; and whether it was something like what he was expecting, if only to justify whatever sixth sense he had of trouble at the plant?

  ‘So, all avenues exhausted after your enquiries last night, you left it at that?’

  ‘Well I didn’t want to trouble the police unnecessarily; and I didn’t know how long he had to be missing before you’d, you know...’

  ‘Before we’d class him as a missing person? I understand. And I suppose,’ offered Cori as a stab at leavening the saddened tone, ‘there was always the remotest chance he could still roll in at some late hour?’

  However not even the boy’s poor mother seemed to think this very likely, although at least it made her smile in reminiscence,

  ‘You know, you wouldn’t think it to see him now, but my Philip was a devil to his old Mum when he was young; he used to come in at all hours, half the time after stopping out with me! I tell you, had this been him gone missing back then, his mother wouldn’t even have been worried about him yet.’ But no sooner had her flashback taken Mrs Long to something like what Cornelia imagined might have been her old self, then the floodgates opened afresh, requiring from the Constable another tissue. But nearly done now, Cori thought, and then the lady could cry her heart out.

  ‘Well, for the record,’ began Cori, to break the silence, ‘you can call us any time, day or night, and at the very least we can advise you or refer you to someone who can help. But you did call in this morning? What time was that?’

  ‘Well,’ she resumed, her attempts at composure at best intermittent now, ‘I called his office first, as soon as I thought anyone would be in.’

  ‘And still he hadn’t come home. It must have been a long night?’

  ‘I swear, I did not sleep a wink. Anyway, I tried Aubrey’s a couple of times; and then at eight o’clock one of the secretaries answered the phone – poor girl, they must have been working her ragged to have her in that early. Anyway, she was very sympathetic, but thought that she remembered Tom leaving as normal yesterday. She was very worried when I told her he hadn’t come home at all. She said though that the person I needed to speak to was their boss, who was never in that early on the best of days, but who she would pass my details on to as soon as he came in, which should only be within the next couple of hours at the latest.’

  ‘And who is their boss?’

  ‘Oh, Alex Aubrey. He manages the office staff himself.’

  ‘Of course. Pray, go on.’ Cori considered, with this latest nugget of information, that the case might interest Grey after all.

  ‘Anyway, I hadn’t heard anything after a bit, so I called again, and got the same girl, worried herself that Mr Aubrey hadn’t come in yet, and beginning to feel bad that she hadn’t found anyone able to help me. She said she would call him at home, and for me to call her back in twenty minutes, and only then if someone hadn’t called me before then. Well, I felt bad chasing her when she was only chasing someone else herself. But you can guess – I didn’t hear any more after twenty minutes, and then half an hour, and then three quarters. So I called again and got an engaged tone. So I left it another five minutes, and then by the time I did get through the girl was really beginning to fret. She said she was very sorry, but that Mr Aubrey wouldn’t be coming in today after all; that she had just spoken to Mrs Aubrey, who told her that her husband had had a fall and hurt himself, and as they were going on to a business trip to London later that day anyway, they were going to leave straight from the hospital!

  ‘Well, I think everything happening at once had overcome her. The poor girl was almost in hysterics, in fact I quite forgot why I was calling her! I tried to calm her, and I wish I’d been there, for it is so hard to offer a shoulder over the phone don’t you find? I got the impression that Mrs Aubrey had been in something of a state herself, and that it was all happening just as we were talking.’

  Cornelia felt the pace of things quickening, and the need to wrap this interview up quickly,

  ‘So, what happened then?’

  ‘Well,’ continued Mrs Long, ‘the girl had quietened down a little, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there with her. So I stayed on the line a little longer, what with her being so upset. I guessed no one there could help me, and so once she was settled I wished her well, and got ready to come and speak to you.’

  ‘And what time was it by now?’

  ‘Well, by the time I got off the phone it was after half-nine! I got dressed, and got a few things in I needed for Philip, and made him his breakfast (he was still sleeping in you see, he does when working twelve till eights) and I went to catch the bus.’

  ‘You went shopping before you caught the bus? Sorry, I don’t mean to…’

  ‘No, I meant to say, well, the bus is only every hour, and after nine o’clock it’s not the speediest vehicle once you’re on it, hence my getting here when I did.’

  Cori thought she could trust the Constable from here on in, with the collating of the minutiae of Thomas Long’s life: schools, doctors, trouble as a teenager. There wasn’t likely, she intuited, to be very much of interest falling under these headings, or indeed in any other category of Thomas Long’s life, at least not up until these last two days.

  ‘Well, thank you Mrs Long.’ Cori rose. ‘I’m going to leave you with the Constable to go through some more details, and then perhaps we can arrange another cup of tea. And I see you’ve brought a picture, which is very good.’ She looked at the wanly smiling young man at the centre of the family portrait; his beaming mother holding tightly the sleeve of what must have been his best suit, his hair more managed than styled, his face friendly in a way you couldn’t really argue with, stood between his parents in the kind of family pose she had seen often, yet which her family had never in her youth gone in for.

  ‘You won’t need to cut the photo up will you?’ asked Mrs Long, fresh tears poised at the corners of her eyes, as the Constable gently prised the frame from her grasp.

  ‘No, not at all. We can scan it into the computer. You can have it back today. It will be fine.’

  Meanwhile Cornelia bade Mrs Long good afternoon as she turned to leave the room.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  Cori was caught out by the question,

  ‘Yes, yes I do: two, a boy and a girl.’

  ‘He is the light of my life, my Thomas. Please find him for me.’

  ‘We will,’ Cori assured her, and thinking they had a fair bit to go on headed toward the door.

  ‘So what happens now, Sergeant?’ the lady asked after her as she was half-way out of the room. Cori turned and answered,

  ‘What happens now? I go and speak to the Inspector, and then we start to look for your son.’

  And speak to the Inspector was exactly what Cornelia intended to, however on exiting the interview room she was presented by the officers at the front desk with the same information Grey had just this minute been given, and which had prompted him to leave so suddenly: namely that the Aubreys had been seen this morning at the town’s Inf
irmary.

  Chapter 3 – Initial Enquiries