John Eider - Late of the Payroll

‘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 though 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 onto 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 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 on 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 your 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 Infirmary.

It was a call from a fellow officer, received at the station during the interview with Ms Long, that led the Inspector to the Southney amp; District Infirmary this lunchtime: a call to the effect that Alex and Sheila Aubrey had been seen at the hospital just now, he in a bad way it seemed; and, remembered the Constable, hadn’t the Inspector been asking after the Aubreys just the day before?

He had indeed been asking after them, and so no sooner had the message reached him than, realising time may be of the essence, he had headed over there without delay — Cori would have to fill him in later with the finishing details of the interview with the missing man’s mother.

Grey had set off on foot, the hospital being only five minute’s walk away, and so as quick to travel this way than to exit one carpark and pull up in another. He paused only to leave word of his destination at the desk for Cori once she had finished.