John Eider - Late of the Payroll

‘It is going to be hard, Inspector, keeping any of this from the workers downstairs. The payslips should be out by now — we can’t bluff them forever. The only reason they’re not up here asking for them now is because they know you… that the police are here. Sooner or later there will be someone from the union up those stairs like a shot, and what do I say to them? Where do I send them? Who’s in charge?’

At this point the steadfast woman broke down, Cori fulfilling some unwritten feminine role in being the one to rush to her and bear the sobs against her shoulder. ‘My husband works downstairs, you know,’ she wavered, wiping her eyes a little. ‘I can only tell him not to worry and that everything will be fine so many times, before he realises something’s up. Or else I find I just can’t lie to him any more.’

‘Chin up,’ encouraged Grey, ‘we’ll get this sorted out in no time.’ He gave Cynthia standing near a cheery smile, and Gail a hearty pat on the shoulder, which were rather the limits of his people skills in emotional situations. Cori released Gail from her hug, and bid the woman a reassuring farewell that was readily accepted.

With a last instruction for the ladies to call Alex Aubrey and get him back here today, that no matter what he was doing in London that this is more important, Grey and Cori turned for the stairs back down to reception; Cori wondering as they walked whether Grey’s promise to have this all sorted out soon would be one he could keep, while acknowledging he had had to offer the troubled women something.

‘Time is getting on,’ muttered Grey, as he and Sergeant Smith went back down the stairs, a glance at his watch revealing it was already past four — nothing in police hours, but these days it would soon begin getting so much harder to find civilians at their allotted posts. ‘If you can call for a squad car, and we’ll go and have a word with these two lads — if they are the same pair from Monday night then they might be a handful.’

‘No problem, sir,’ she answered routinely.

‘And it doesn’t look as though we’ll be getting off at five tonight.’ He added this in a conciliatory tone, for what he was really saying to Cornelia was that she might not be home when her family expected her to be this evening. She said nothing though, so he dropped the hint again more bluntly, ‘You might want to call Brough too…’

‘Yes, I know,’ she answered firmly, confirming the message had gotten through. ‘He’ll love that.’

‘Well he loves you, doesn’t he?’

‘Not if he’s left with the kids all night.’

These words saddened him, hinting as they did at marital discord, however minor. Was he really responsible for causing this sadness? It must be said, he did attempt to be ever sensitive to the family needs of his colleagues; perhaps overly so, his own single status leaving him with no personal benchmark as to how far the work/life balance could, or should, be pushed.

It sometimes shocked Grey — himself unmarried, childless, and promoted to the level he currently enjoyed by a combination (or so it sometimes seemed to him) of pure luck and others’ misfortune — to remember just how much his bright assistant had packed into her young life. Indeed, were it not for her two bouts of maternity leave hot after being posted at Southney station, she would most likely be his level now. And were it not also for her being kept in this town through marriage (her husband managing a regional office for a London firm), then he had no problem at all with the notion that she might already have attained that higher level at a more prestigious station. Sometimes he felt thirty years her senior, not the fifteen or so he guessed it must be. She would make Inspector ten years quicker than he had, and he was still barely in his mid-forties.

She hung back to make her calls, as he bounded down the stairs and into reception,

‘Inspector!’ announced the woman there, rising at his entrance.

‘Now, Miss..?’ said Grey, turning to face her.

‘Mrs, but separated!’

‘Mrs..?’

‘Reece, Shauna Reece.’

‘Well, Mrs Reece, I wonder if you could help me.’

‘Anything, Inspector.’

‘Well, you could do me a great favour. Now my Sergeant told me you could point out some lads to us?’ With only a momentarily gesture to Cori, to ensure she follow him when she was free to do so, he headed out the room behind the eager receptionist. From there they took a different turning, before coming to a rather battered set of doors, hidden from the casual visitor’s view.

‘Don’t go any further without headph…’ began Shauna Reece, but it was too late as Grey pushed on through the doors, the opening of which broke their soundproofed seal, and delivered the trio — for Cori had hurried after them — at the end of a long and very noisy space, filled with men in green overalls arranged along long lines of machinery.

The Inspector marched into the din, Cori followed as soon as she had taken the headphones Shauna offered. Bunching them up over her hair, worn down today, she expected she now looked quite ridiculous. Shauna too had donned a pair, attempting to follow the man she was meant to be leading.

But Grey had already taken the measure of the place: that if the men were here they would be along this single bank of machines, and so to move along them like some giant industrial identity parade would inevitably lead him to them. And so it was more with inevitability than relief when he clocked the younger — and the drunker — of the two men he had met on Monday evening.

‘Hello. Is it Chris or Larry?’

‘Chris,’ he answered nervily,

‘Inspector Rase, you might remember that we met at the Prince Hal pub on Monday night.’

The man said nothing, the detectives’ arrival calling him away from a piece of machinery that Grey considered would make a good museum exhibit were it carefully cordoned off, its many jutting parts and sharp edges posing so obvious a threat to public safety.

‘Not quite as conversational today, are we?’

Still he made no response.

‘Chris, they just want to ask you a few questions,’ added Shauna, almost apologetically, young Chris turning her a sharp gaze.

‘Forget about the other night.’ Grey asked, ‘Can we talk a moment?’ his badge now branded in the way officers did when expecting resistance. Chris nodded.

‘And can you tell me where Larry works?’ continued Grey, shouting beyond the constant rumble of thunder the production line generated, voices no more audible to those with headphones than without. ‘Was he the man you were with in the pub?’ Grey remembered the look of cold fury in the older man’s eyes.

Chris Barnes looked to the space on the other side of the apparatus he had until a short while ago been manhandling. Grey then clocked that the machines before and after this one in the row were manned by two.

‘He works with you here? Where is he now?’

Chris mumbled something sulkily.

‘What?’ Grey bellowed at him just a few feet away.

‘He went out for a smoke!’

‘How long ago?’

‘Twenty minutes maybe?’

‘Did he know we were here?’

To this Chris gave no reply, as casting one glance back at their now unattended machine, he moved with the officers back across the floor to where Shauna held open the double doors.

‘Can we borrow one of the rooms awhile?’ asked Cori, taking off the big ear-guards. They paused just to instruct the two Constables now arrived — Grey cursing his shabby handling of the situation — to search the grounds for anyone on a cigarette break and fitting Larry Dunn’s description; before Shauna led them up the stairs and left them to a large white room, perhaps used in more productive times for presentations or meeting clients. Blinded windows let in filtered sunlight, it casting a glow over everything like the candle at the back of a puppet theatre.