Chapter 14: How to Make Gravy (N is for night time)

Granthams Leeds had been closed for almost two hours. The sales staff had all headed for home, leaving only the executives, security, and cleaners in the building.

"Are you ready to shove off then, Elsie?" Joe asked as he entered Phyllis Baxter's office, which Elsie had unapologetically taken over. Graciously Ms Baxter had left Elsie to it, seeing out the rest of her day on the shop floor with her London equivalent.

"Joe tells me he's starving," Phyllis said, surprising Elsie by gently touching his hand and smiling in his direction.

Joe was just not one of those people that others instantly took to liking. Usually people needed to warm to his idiosyncrasies, and yet it looked like he and this glamorous woman had hit it off immediately.

"Well I am! I didn't get to eat before Charles forced me to help him chase after-"

Elsie pretended she hadn't noticed Joe instantly clamming up. There was only one way she could think of to end that sentence though. She was the one Charles had forced Joe to travel to Leeds to chase after. The question was, why did he want to chase after her?

She finished packing up her laptop and zipped up its case with a flick of her wrist. "We just need to find Charlie and we can be off," she said, forcing brightness into her tone.

"Where is Charlie?" Joe asked pleasantly. "I thought he'd be here with you."

"He's with Thomas," she said, checking around the room one more time for anything she might have left behind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Joe and Phyllis exchange a confused look. "What?" she asked.

"Thomas left about four hours ago," Phyllis replied. "He always had a planned trip to York this evening and I told him we'd be fine for him to go."

Elsie frowned and snatched up her mobile, scrolling through to check her emails and messages. There was nothing from Charles since Thomas must have left for York. "Where's Charlie been for four hours?" She dialled his number, tapping her fingers against her lanyard impatiently as the long drawn out ring in her ear continued. When the call clicked over to his message bank, she hung up and quickly sent him a text message. Then, logic prevailed: "He must be just using Thomas's office!"

They traipsed down the hall and pushed open Thomas's office door, ready to be feel stupid but relieved. It was dark and eerily quiet. Charles Carson didn't instantly appear once she groped around and flicked a switch to light up the room.

"Maybe he left a note…" Elsie frowned at the way she was clutching at straws. She strode across the room and hovered next to the desk, checking for any clues to his whereabouts. It was neat and tidy and clear of clutter, meaning any note - or missing six foot two man - would be quickly noticeable.

She clicked on Thomas's computer keyboard. It was shut down.

"I'll call security and ask them…" Phyllis said, touching Elsie on the shoulder as she spoke. Elsie wondered how pale she had become in the last few minutes for the other woman to make the gesture.

"Perhaps you could check the gents, Joe?" Elsie suggested, concentrating on keeping a cool tone despite her escalating worry.

While they both did that, she moved to the window, peering down at the high street for any sort of hint of commotion. With the lights, it was difficult to see, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Next Elsie tried his telephone again. Still, it rang for the prescribed five times before his familiar voice gave a spiel regarding leaving a message.

After what seemed an age (but was only a few minutes she knew in reality) Joe returned to the office, followed by young Andy, who'd taken over as Financial Controller at Granthams Leeds just over three months ago.

She hurried up to them. "Did you find him?" she asked, hopeful.

"No," Joe exhaled. "He did meet with Andy after finishing up with Thomas though."

Andy nodded. "Afterwards, he said he was going to go for a walk."

"When was this?"

Andy checked the time on his phone. "Probably about seven, I guess."

Her phone said 10.15 pm. She dialled Charles's number again. A minute later, she thumbed the red button on her mobile far too heavily in frustration. Again, there was no answer. "Did he say where he was thinking of walking to?"

"No, I'm sorry, Mrs Hughes. I didn't think…"

She waved away any guilt Andy might be feeling. "Why would you..."

"I'm sure he's okay though. I mean, he seemed quite capable when we spoke… And Leeds isn't that rough at night time."

Elsie nodded, suddenly feeling quite guilty about the way she was panicking. Andy was correct. Charles wasn't some doddering old fool who needed her permission to go for a walk. There was any number of reasons why he wasn't answering his mobile, including simply running out of battery life.

"It's so unlike him though," she said aloud. "His mobile is always charged, and he's not the type to drop in at a pub or-" She broke off when the office door opened, but her mind wasn't to be set to rest.

It wasn't Charlie who'd entered but Phyllis Baxter.

"Security have noticed nothing unusual," she said, "but they're going to check through their cameras and let me know."

"Did he give you any hint of where he was headed, Andy? Can you think of anything that would give us a clue as to which direction we should start to search in?"

Andy screwed his face up and stared at the floor for a moment, obviously replaying his conversation with Charles in his mind. Eventually he simply shook his head. "I'm sorry…"

"We could split up?" Joe suggested. "Ms Baxter and I could head along the street in one direction, check in a few likely places and ask... Andy, you and Mrs Hughes could walk in the other direction."

Elsie bit her lip. She was overreacting, but she couldn't shake off the image of Charlie lying in the gutter, bloody and disorientated after being hit on the head and robbed of his wallet and phone somewhere.

"Yes, let's go. I'll call the police and hospital on the way."