Silvermeadow

by Barry Maitland

  3

  Traffic was heavy on the motorway, the freezing rain continued to gust in across the Essex flats, and Kathy had difficulty keeping Lowry’s tail lights in sight through the sluicing water. Along the way Brock briefed her on North, the real reason why they were there. She felt a disconcerting sense of having been through this before, for in her first encounter with Brock he had been doing exactly this, using the cover of another murder investigation in order to get a lead on this same elusive North. It had been her first murder case as investigating officer, and she had been both flattered and intimidated to have a senior Yard detective like Brock looking over her shoulder. After she got used to him he had seemed benign, fatherly and harmless. Later she had discovered that he had been trying to track down whoever it was in her division who was supplying information to North’s lawyer. Since she was having an affair with the lawyer at the time, she had been the unwitting prime suspect.

  She wasn’t sure how far back Brock and North went, but they were already long-standing adversaries at that time, four years before. Brock had led a team drawn from the Serious Crime Branch and Robbery Squad to hunt North following a series of violent robberies in the London area, culminating in what the tabloids dubbed the ‘City Securities Slayings’, in which two young police officers had been shot dead by the escaping gang. North had fled abroad, but had been lured back to the UK and arrested by Brock, only to escape again while in transit between prisons.

  ‘You say he was with a little girl?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Yes. That’s a mystery. He had a wife and a six-year-old boy when he escaped abroad, but we’ve kept an eye on them over the years and there’s been no hint of contact from him. The wife said she’d had enough of him, and eventually we believed her. She and the boy are living in Southampton now. If he had a girlfriend at that time we didn’t know of it.’

  ‘The girl might just be cover, someone he borrowed for the day.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Brock looked unhappy. ‘But who would lend their child to an animal like North, for God’s sake?’

  It was a chilling thought. Kathy said, ‘And Lowry and the others, they’re in on this?’

  ‘No, only those that already knew—Forbes, PC Sangster and her inspector. We’ve asked them to keep it to themselves. Simpler that way. As far as Lowry and the rest are concerned, you and I are investigating the disappearance of Kerri Vlasich. And we will do that, while Bren and his team get on with hunting North. The priority is to sift through the security camera tapes from the centre to get any further sightings of him. If we are very lucky there might a shot of him using a credit card, or getting into a bus or a taxi or car. We’re putting a couple of women officers in shifts into the shop where he was seen, in the hope he might return.’

  After a while they saw the sign SILVERMEADOW and followed Lowry up the exit slip road to an overpass bridge. From the top of the embankment the view opened up to the west, the blackness of the night fractured by tall lighting masts illuminating a vast carpark with the brilliance of a football stadium. Beyond the cars, thousands of them, lay the indeterminate outline of a huge building which might have been an assembly plant, or a large warehouse complex. Only the electric hype of the entrances, lit up like pinball machines, signified that this was a place at which the public was welcome.

  They parked as near as they could to one of the beckoning entrances, beneath a sign which said REMEMBER! ORANGE CAR PARK, AISLE K4. They hurried through the rain towards the brilliant orange neon WELCOME TO SILVERMEADOW sign. Beneath it, silhouetted against the glass doors, stood a group of motionless figures, waiting. As they hurried closer, Kathy could make out uniforms.

  One of them, the oldest and tallest, was in a suit, an identity card clipped to his belt. He stepped forward and shook Lowry’s hand warmly, Kathy noted, then turned to be introduced to them. Grizzled, but looking fit and tough, he gripped her hand firmly and looked steadily into her eyes, like a general receiving a delegation at the frontier of his command, she thought. The others held back and were not introduced, two men and a woman, all dressed entirely in black, in American cop-style caps and leather blouse jackets with insignia on their arms and identity cards on their left breasts.

  ‘Is this the lot, Gavin?’ Harry Jackson asked, sounding mildly disappointed, as if he’d been expecting an armoured division at least.

  ‘We’ve got a scene of crime team coming to look at the compactors, Harry. I told them to go to the service road entry, like you said.’

  Jackson glanced at one of the uniformed men and inclined his head. The man turned without a word and marched off into the night.

  ‘Right then, let’s get you into the warm, for a start.’ He stretched out an arm in a gesture of welcome, and the automatic doors, picking up the movement, slid obediently open. Kathy breathed in the warm, scented breeze that billowed out.

  ‘And may I say, Mr Brock, that it’s a pleasure to meet you at last.’

  ‘Have we met before, Harry?’ Brock asked. ‘Your face looks familiar.’

  ‘Don’t believe so. I was at West Ham most of my time in the Met. Were you ever there?’

  Brock shook his head.

  ‘Maybe you saw Harry win the Met snooker championship in 1988, sir,’ Lowry offered. ‘That’s his main claim to fame.’

  Jackson chuckled. ‘What a night that was! Hardly get the time to play at all these days, which says something about working in the private sector I suppose. There again, the game always got me into bad habits—smoking and booze. At our age we’ve got to be more careful with our bodies. Am I right?’

  Having established a certain level of parity and bonhomie, Jackson took charge. ‘I’ve arranged for you to meet our boss, the centre manager, first, for an initial briefing. Then we’ll inspect the compactor site. Your SOCOs should be here by then. Suit you?’

  ‘Fine. I’d be interested to see your set-up, too, Harry. Gavin tells me you’re state of the art, is that right?’

  ‘Well, we do our best. Of course our needs are more modest than the Met’s. Up to now this has been a relatively crime-free environment. That’s really what we’re on about. Prevention.’ He turned and waved through the window of a building society office at a young woman behind the counter. She smiled and waved back. ‘This is a safe community, Mr Brock,’ he went on. ‘That’s why Gavin’s phone call was of such concern to us. You’ll find us completely cooperative, believe me.’

  The uniformed couple fell into step behind them as they set off into the mall.

  Kathy’s first reaction was of disappointment. She’d expected something spectacular and instead thought it rather plain, with its white polished terrazzo floor and mirrored ceiling strips, and standard shopfronts, but this was only a side mall, relatively quiet and restrained. Soon they reached the main mall, and here the space opened out dramatically, golden light flooding down from above. White steel columns arched up between the shopfronts which lined the broad route, and branched and met overhead, so that the view down the long mall resembled a tree-lined boulevard in winter, all sparkling white and silver, but bathed in the golden light of perpetual summer. Christmas music interspersed with birdsong drifted down from the steel branches from which scarlet banners were suspended between glittering fairy lights. YULETIDE AT SILVERMEADOW they proclaimed, CHRISTMAS IN THE MALL. It was surprisingly busy for the late hour. Throngs of people slowly flowed past the glowing shopfront displays, many in light clothes, despite the December cold outside, for in here it was always warm and balmy. Soon they came to Plaza Mexico, where the shops were of adobe and the plants yucca and giant cactus, and a little later they glimpsed the sails and rigging of a half-scale pirate galleon moored at a seventeenth-century wharf in a side mall.

  It was partly the effect of contrast, Kathy thought, having come directly from the Herbert Morrison estate, that caused the sense of disorientation that gradually filled her, as if somehow, while no one was really looking, the city had polarised into two grotesque extremes: one a concrete nightmare,
the other a luminous fantasy, all make-believe and impossible sweetness and light.

  They moved on through the crowded mall, weaving between pushchairs, bulging carrier bags and clusters of seats and café tables, towards what appeared to be the end. But when they reached the place they realised that it was another town square marking a change in direction, and beyond it the mall continued, far into the distance.

  ‘It’s huge,’ Kathy murmured, ‘like a self-contained city.’

  ‘Or an airport,’ Brock grunted, sounding determinedly unimpressed.

  To their left the line of shopfronts swept away around the square, with balconies looking down over a lower level occupied by the trees of a tropical rainforest, among which dozens of tables and chairs were visible below. The music and birdcalls had changed, ‘Jingle Bells’ giving way to Polynesian guitars and the sound of parrots. Crowded escalators and a glass lift carried people up and down between the two levels.

  Jackson stopped briefly here to point out the food court below with its Tastes of Five Continents, the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, and, a particular delight, a miniature volcano in a lagoon half hidden among the trees. ‘Our very own Mount Mauna Loa. Erupts every hour, on the hour. You’ll want to see it.’

  Kathy didn’t think she would, but didn’t argue. She watched a family stroll past, husband, wife and little boy. The boy was wearing a dressing gown and shuffling along in a pair of slippers, his teddy bear tucked under his arm, looking for all the world as if he’d stepped straight out of his bedroom.

  ‘Kerri Vlasich had a part-time job in the food court, Harry,’ Lowry said.

  ‘Is that right? Which one, any idea? There are twenty-six outlets down there.’

  Lowry shook his head. They could make out knots of teenagers gathered under the rainforest trees, lounging, swaggering, eyeing each other, older people detouring around them.

  ‘Never mind. I’ll find out for you.’ He turned away and spoke to the uniformed woman, at whom the small boy in the dressing gown was staring, bug-eyed.

  They resumed their journey, past a bamboo thicket in a stand of elaborate planter boxes incorporating seats, litter bins, a small pool, and, half hidden among the foliage, a fearsome-looking gorilla.

  Kathy felt uncomfortably warm now in her outdoor coat as they made their way past a queue of small children waiting to meet Santa Claus beneath a huge Christmas tree. Jackson went over and gave Santa a pat on the shoulder as he passed, and the old man playing the role gave a cheery wave and cried, ‘Ho, ho! Hello there, Harry!’

  Beyond the tree Jackson paused to let three long-legged girls cross his path, with shorts and damp blonde hair and rolled-up towels, looking as if they’d just wandered off the beach at Malibu or Bondi. Kathy saw him wink at Lowry as he led them on into a side corridor off the mall, where they came to a glass door labelled CENTRE MANAGEMENT.

  A young black woman was in the front office, stacking a pile of brochures and promotional literature on the receptionist’s desk. She looked up as they came in and gave them a flash of brilliant white teeth. Jackson introduced her as Bo Seager and she shook their hands in turn and led them through to an inner office where she took their coats and invited them to sit down around a coffee table.

  ‘Can I offer you anything?’ she asked. They declined. She leaned back against the edge of the large desk and said, ‘Now, how can I help?’

  Kathy caught the look of surprise on Brock’s face. So did Bo Seager. ‘Yes, I’m the manager of this place, Chief Inspector. You thought, female? black?’

  ‘Young,’ Brock replied. ‘You seemed too young.’

  She smiled very briefly. ‘Is there any possibility that you’ve made a mistake about this, about the compactor?’

  ‘I’d say we’re eighty per cent certain at this stage,’ Brock said. He handed her a list of identification marks from eighteen of the boxes found crushed in the same bale as the girl’s body. ‘So far only two of these have been definitely linked to Silvermeadow shops. We’re working on the rest.’

  She stared at the list, mouth puckered with concentration. She was elegantly dressed in a dark business suit and cream silk blouse, simple gold accessories, her hair pulled tight to the back of her head. After a moment she exchanged a look with Jackson and nodded. ‘Yes, these could all have come from units in the middle section of the centre that would use the blue compactor. Purfleet Electrical backs right onto the blue compactor area.’

  ‘We’ll have to check all three compactors,’ Brock told her.

  ‘What, dismantle them?’

  ‘Probably. I’ll leave that to the experts.’

  ‘This is Christmas, you know. The whole basement’ll fill up with rubbish in no time.’

  ‘I thought Christmas was a couple of weeks away,’ Brock said mildly.

  She looked at him incredulously. ‘Your wife does the shopping, right?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. But I do tend to avoid it whenever I can.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I should say a little bit about this place. Just so you understand our perspective, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I wish you would, Ms Seager. Are those the plans of the centre?’ He pointed to two large coloured diagrams mounted on one wall, between framed certificates awarded by the International Council of Shopping Centres, the Havering Chamber of Commerce, the Ronald McDonald Charity Appeal, and many others.

  ‘Yes. When was the last time you were in a modern shopping centre?’

  ‘Ages ago. The one at Croydon, probably.’

  ‘Right. Before it was upgraded, I guess. A windy, open pedestrian street below the tower blocks. We don’t do it like that any more.’ She spoke rapidly, as if time was very precious, her accent distinctly North American. ‘You haven’t been to Brent Cross? Thurrock?’

  Brock shook his head.

  ‘OK, well, Silvermeadow isn’t just a couple of rows of shops strung between a few anchor stores. It’s a whole leisure experience. It has everything in it you’d want to visit a town centre for and more, all climate-controlled, under one roof. It’s what retailing is all about these days. We got the industry award for best new European centre last year. And it’s big, over a million square feet of trading area, the third biggest retail mall in Europe, probably the best integrated retail and leisure facility this side of the Atlantic. There are two hundred and sixty-eight shops and food outlets, not to mention the cinemas, fitness centre, leisure pool . . .’ She pointed to coloured rectangles on the plans of the two levels. ‘At peak times, there are over a thousand employees and fifty thousand visitors under this one roof, and they’ve come from all over, not just this area of London and Essex, but the whole of the south-east and from the Continent too: France, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia. We’re more like a small city than a department store. So when you talk about closing down our compactors, or sealing off the service road, or whatever, just bear that in mind, OK? This is one big beast.’

  Brock’s frown had deepened as she had described the huge catchment area, and Kathy could imagine him thinking that North might have come here from almost anywhere. He sniffed and said, ‘And a beast that has a particular attraction to school children?’

  ‘Well sure, the kids like it here. It’s warm, it’s cheerful, and plenty of them get part-time work here. They love the shops on the main mall, of course, and then there’s the food court and the Hawaii Experience, the leisure centre, the grunge stuff down in the Bazaar, the multiplex cinema. But more than that, it’s where the people are. It’s where the other kids come and hang out. You know what the most popular activity is in the mall? People-watching. Kids are like everybody else, they’re attracted to buzz, to life.’

  ‘In this case the opposite is what we fear.’

  The centre manager pursed her mouth. ‘Look, I’m not being insensitive or casual about this kid, Chief Inspector. I’m trying to explain. This place has a magic of its own. The kids flock here. And where the good people come, the bad people will surely follow, like sharks following
the shoals. We do all we can to make this place the safest it can be— our reputation depends on that. But you can’t keep out human nature. Every now and then some sick character will wander through our doors, and we can’t stop him. All we can say is that we invest a lot of money and effort in security, and the chances of a child meeting trouble here are a lot lower than they would be in your average high street.’

  The phone rang discreetly and she reached back over her desk to answer it. ‘I’m busy right now . . . okay, two minutes only.’

  She put down the phone and said, ‘Harry, will you talk about the layout of the place for our visitors? I have to deal with something.’ She shrugged apologetically at Brock. ‘Sorry, but Christmas is only about five minutes away in our calendar.’

  Jackson stepped forward as she left the room, and began to describe the features of the plans. They were shaped rather like a coat hanger, the long mall bent in its centre where the food court was located in the main square, with other attachments along the arms. Kathy was reminded of the diagrams of futuristic space stations, bits plugged in all over the place because there was no atmosphere or gravity to make them conform to some specific shape. The security chief explained, however, that the bent form came from the fact that the centre was wrapped round the north slope of a low hill, one of the few in this part of Essex. The hill had been remodelled with earth-moving equipment so that— and this was the cunning bit, he explained—the carparks on the flattened hilltop fed people directly into the upper mall level from the south, while the carparks on the lower, north side fed into the lower mall level. In this way, both shopping levels were equally accessible to shoppers, and the flow of people to both was maximised.

  The south side of the lower level was buried against the hillside, and it was along there that the basement service road was run, providing secure, enclosed access to the loading docks and storage areas of the shops, as well as to the three compactor areas which they used to dispose of their dry waste.