by John Eider
Whatever lie-in she had been allowed the previous day, Cornelia knew she would be required bright and early this morning. Arriving at the station by eight, to work on writing up their various interviews of the previous two days, she learnt that Catherine the social worked had had similar instincts, she calling from her own office by a quarter past,
‘Sergeant, Esther and her mother arrived in town yesterday evening. They’re both staying at the Wheelwrights’, and are keen to get started. I’ve spoken to them both and am confident all is essentially well with them; though I fear for what we’ll be hearing in the interview. I’ve pencilled you in for nine, if that’s not too early..?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I assume your Inspector wants to take the lead on this. If you could let him know?’
But by a quarter to and still with no sign of him, she called Catherine back,
‘The Inspector’s unavoidably occupied elsewhere: you can imagine how many irons we have in the fire at the moment. Would I do for the interview?’
‘Yes, you might be better actually. Still good for nine?’
‘You haven’t seen him, have you?’ Cori asked Sarah Cobb typing diligently across the desk from her; but as she asked around the station she learnt that there had been no sighting of the Inspector there that morning. She checked her phone, but there was still no reply to the voicemail and texts she had left him. Cori had no choice though: she had to leave if she was to make the appointment. It was fifteen minutes later, as the interview with Maisie and Esther was about to start – and with her own phone switched off – that the alarm broke.
The sensation was refreshing even as it was perplexing, and sudden, and wet. It was the feeling of instant rain falling on a desert statue and washing away the dust of centuries. A few seconds later, much less abstract now, it became the awareness of cold drips of water running quickly down his back beneath his shirt, and of the fabric there instantly clinging to his skin. These impressions were each specific and singular enough to bring him back to consciousness even before the flat palm of another’s hand caught his cheek; leaving his face and scalp reeling from half a dozen different simultaneous stingings and ringings.
‘Sir, sir.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ coughed Grey as he open stinging eyes to see a hand waving before his face and wondering whether to slap him again.
‘Sir, what happened to you? You were out like a light?’
His face and hair and collar were soaked. The person stood before him with the dripping glass tumbler in his other hand was a Constable, deducible even in Grey’s current state from their blue uniform over white shirt. It was morning, very bright morning, even with the drapes pulled.
‘Open those curtains.’ His senses were returning now. ‘You were on guard outside. What happened?’
‘Nothing happened, not a thing all night, sir; and then I come in here to find you and you’re out cold.’
‘What time is it?
‘Around nine, sir.’
He was still on Rachel Sowton’s sofa, ‘Oh God. Rachel…’
‘She’s in the bedroom sir, spark out.’
‘Wake her, but don’t splash any water on her.’ He went to rise to follow the Constable in there, but wasn’t much less woozier than when he’d tried to stand last night. This brought the images rushing back: making the toast to absent friends with their mugs, falling back into the chair, not being able to get up again, Rachel being carried away, the man standing over him.
‘Where’s Derek Waldron?’ he called into the room before attempting to rise again, slower this time, and managing as far as the bedroom doorframe. He found the Constable with his hand behind the sleeping woman’s head, calling her name and trying to get her to drink from a tumbler of water. Another full tumbler… the details weren’t matching up: the policeman had not been back to the kitchen en-route to fill it up,
‘Where’d you get more water from?’
‘This?’ He held up the glass. ‘It was just here on the unit.’
Grey looked back into the lounge area to see that the identical tumbler emptied with force over his sleeping form had been left on the coffee table in front of where he’d been lying. Even as he tried to figure out this weird little puzzle, Grey’s overriding sensation was that he could do with a glass of it to actually drink, after having had his share go over him.
The woman was mumbling but waking.
‘Rachel, are you all right?’ called Grey from the door.
‘Uh? What’s going on?’
Grey was imagining the worst that could have happened to her.
‘She’s waking up now, sir,’ the Constable turned to him to reply. ‘She seems fine, just sleepy. Sir, you mentioned Derek just then? Is that the fellow on the first floor?’
‘Yes, he was here with us last night. I think he might have drugged us. Leave her to me, go and see if anyone’s seen him.’
‘But sir, he’s gone. He left at six this morning, told me he had an early start today.’
‘Early start doing what?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Then get up to his room, kick the door in if you have to, see if there’s any sign of what he’s up to; otherwise get his description out, get everyone looking for him.’
‘Sir.’ The man dashed upstairs, as Grey picked up the tumbler from the coffee table and moved more steadily now to the kitchen to fill it once for himself, and then again after knocking it straight back to take in for Rachel.
‘Rachel,’ he said in a tender croak, ‘drink this as well, you’ll be dehydrated. Don’t move if you’re hurt.’ But even as he said it he saw her face was unmarked, her discomfort no worse than his own grogginess, and the bedclothes still smoothed out beneath where she’d been placed on them.
And there had been someone else with them at the Cedars last night… Grey ran, almost going over in the process, from the flat, through the corridor and into the dayroom… where all before him were respectable citizens chatting, eating, and looking at his chaotic appearance. It was a young and distinct voice that first spoke directly to him,
‘Good morning, Inspector. Come and meet Alex, he was telling me about his visit to Russia last year.’
‘Ludmila, you’re okay?’
‘Yes, are you? You look like you slept even better than me. Are you… all right? Has something happened?’
He came to their table and sat down in sheer relief.
‘Of course, I’d learned Russian during National Service…’ continued Alex.
It was the reassuring figure of Ellie who brought Grey back to reality,
‘It looks like you could use this.’ She put a cup of coffee down before him. ‘So, a wild night over at Rachel’s place then?’
‘Eh?’
Ludmila took up the theme, ‘The Constable came in earlier, asking if anyone had seen you, as you were needed at the police station. I told him you’d been here last night with Rachel.’
‘And as we’d seen no sign of her either this morning… and here’s herself now.’
Rachel appeared at the dayroom doorway.
‘A man in her room all night? So a leopard can change its spots,’ said someone in the dayroom to a ripple of general amusement, her social life evidently no secret here; but she had no time for such frivolities,
‘Inspector, where is he? What did he do?’
Good, she had remembered. He answered,
‘He left early this morning. I’ve put the alert out, people will be looking for him. As soon as I’ve got my legs back I will be too. The warm milk?’
‘I think it must have been. You know he’s washed everything up in there?’ she noted.
‘He’d left us each a glass of water too for when we woke,’ he said in equal disbelief.
‘What are you pair talking about?’ asked Ellie.
The Constable appeared at the door, ashen-faced.
‘What is it?’ asked his Inspector.
‘In private, sir?’
‘Ellie, you do a wo
nderful job, and I’m no going to keep you from it a moment longer. Look after Ludmila for me.’
Joining the Constable in the hallway, the man explained,
‘Sir, Derek Waldron isn’t in his room, doesn’t look like he’s been there all night. But he’s left this on his bed.’
Grey took the envelope from his hand, marked with his own name.
‘And sir, something’s happened at the Mars house. I’ve told them you’re here, and they sending a car for you right away. And sir.’
‘Yes?’
‘You might want to brush up…’
‘Thank you, yes.’
In the bathroom mirror of Rachel’s flat he smoothed down his hair and dried his face and neck; anything else would have to wait. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket he suddenly discovered; and sure enough, found it folded neatly on the arm of the chair next to the one he had been passed out on.
‘Derek, what are you up to?’ he asked the room as he slipped the jacket back on, it instantly becoming the least disordered part of his otherwise slept-in apparel.
Rachel Sowton had followed him to her own door,
‘He’d taken your jacket off for you? He’d put my shoes at the foot of the bed. Your Constable’s doing a role call and room search, but no one’s noticed anything out of the ordinary this morning.’
‘That’s good. At least he didn’t drug the guard outside.’
‘It would have been easy though – this place is like a pharmacy, and he’d have seen what dose we use. Is he in trouble?’
‘I’ll know soon.’
‘Then let me know.’
‘I will,’ and with that he left to meet the squad car he saw from the window pulling up in the road outside.
Chapter 22 – Social Services
