Silvermeadow

by Barry Maitland

  Brock smiled. ‘Me too. No, I just wondered if he had someone to vouch for his movements.’

  ‘Why? Has someone been putting the bad word on him?’

  ‘I’m just naturally suspicious, Harry. We’re checking again everyone whose code was used on the exit doors that evening of the sixth.’

  ‘Ah, right. With you now, chief. Well, if I was asked to say who springs to mind when the word “dodgy” was mentioned, I’d be more inclined to think of the operator of a certain games arcade down in the Bazaar.’

  ‘Winston Starkey,’ Brock said. ‘Yes, his code was used too. Anything specific, Harry?’

  ‘I take it you checked his record.’

  ‘Remarkably clean.’

  ‘Hmm. The kids who go there are always causing trouble. I reckon he encourages them.’

  ‘You keep a particular eye on Starkey, do you?’

  ‘As you say, chief, we all have our little blacklists.’

  It took a further hour before Brock and Kathy were able to leave the unit and go down to the food court to see Verdi. He welcomed them as if they were old friends, and it seemed to Kathy that he had been expecting them. She assumed Alison Vlasich must have spoken to him.

  When Brock said they wanted a private word, he showed them into a storeroom at the back of the shop. There was a chair at a small table heaped with invoices, and Verdi brought two more aluminium chairs in from the café and closed the connecting door. They sat down, refusing his offer of a little refreshment.

  ‘Have you tried my pistachio flavour?’ he urged them. ‘The peach? You must try, before you go.’ Kathy pictured him on his hands and knees in the van with the little girl.

  The room was lined with shelving containing boxes of disposable containers and spoons, paper napkins and detergent, as well as dried-food ingredients, and there was a pervasive smell of vanilla.

  ‘We were surprised to learn that you are a close relative of the dead girl, Mr Verdi,’ Brock began.

  ‘Ah, yes. I am her uncle,’ he said, smiling sadly. ‘So tragic.’

  ‘But you never mentioned this.’

  Verdi shrugged, an exaggerated Latin shrug. ‘I was so devastated that first evening, when I heard what had happened. I nearly fainted, you remember? And afterwards, well, it never came up.’ He passed a hand in a smoothing gesture across his bushy moustache.

  ‘It seems a strange thing to want to conceal.’

  ‘No, no! I never tried to conceal it! It just never came up. I suppose I assumed that Alison might have mentioned it, if it was important. No?’

  Brock shook his head. ‘No. She didn’t mention it either.’

  ‘Oh, well . . . I suppose Stefan told you, then?’

  Kathy thought, if Alison didn’t warn him to expect us, who did?

  ‘You’ve met your brother since he came over, have you? Only he seemed reluctant to come in here when he first arrived, and that seems odd, if his brother was working here. Has he been to see you?’

  ‘Actually, no. My brother and I have had our differences in the past. We prefer not to meet.’

  ‘What about your sister-in-law? How do you get on with her?’

  ‘Alison? We’re not close. We’re not enemies, mind. Just distant.’

  ‘You helped Kerri get her job here at Silvermeadow, I understand.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. Alison mentioned that Kerri was looking for a bit of work, and I spoke to the people at Snow White’s.’

  ‘I suppose you drove her home after work, did you?’

  Verdi gave an amused little smile. ‘No, never. I live in the opposite direction, Chief Inspector. It was up to her to arrange her own transport. She was a very independent young lady.’ More smoothing of the moustache.

  ‘You got on well with her?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘You were closer to her than to her mother, would you say?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. Look, that family has had its problems, with Alison and Stefan splitting up, and I didn’t really want to get involved or take sides or anything. We don’t have a lot of contact.’

  He wasn’t in the least perturbed by the questions, behind the defence of his moustache and his comic character. Brock said abruptly, ‘Tell us about your change of name, Mr Verdi. How did that come about?’

  ‘It was a matter of commitment, Chief Inspector.’ He smiled complacently. ‘That’s really what it was.’

  ‘Commitment?’

  ‘If you want to excel in anything, you have to be prepared to give yourself one hundred and ten per cent to it. I wanted to be the leading Italian ice-cream man in Essex. So I became Bruno Verdi, the gelato maestro.’

  ‘That seems a little extreme.’

  ‘Is it? You want to be the best detective in Scotland Yard, eh? So you stop being Mr Brock, you become Chief Inspector Brock, which is something else entirely. Am I right?’

  ‘What happened to Mr Kreemee?’ Brock said quietly.

  Verdi smiled to himself, his lids lowering briefly in reflection as if an anticipated moment had arrived. ‘Mr Kreemee was just a stage, my apprenticeship if you like. Long hours for small change, at the mercy of the weather. But this’—he waved his hand round at their surroundings—‘ this is where it was leading. This is what it was all about.’

  ‘Helen Singleton, she was a stage too, was she? An apprenticeship?’

  ‘Ah,’ he shook his head sadly, ‘now I wish you hadn’t said that, Chief Inspector, I really do. That was an unfortunate misunderstanding that was cleared up at the time to the complete satisfaction of the police, but only after I had been exposed to a great deal of prejudice and abuse, and it isn’t right that you should bring it up again now.’

  ‘Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the sixth of December last, Mr Verdi?’ Brock said.

  ‘Good, at last. Now we can put all these insinuations to rest.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Every Monday and Tuesday afternoon I leave early, at around three p.m., and go home. My wife is very ill. She suffers from multiple sclerosis. On Monday afternoons I take her to the clinic in Basildon for her weekly physiotherapy treatment, which lasts from four till six. I am with her all the time. Then we pick up takeaway Indian at the Koh-i-noor in Moor Street, and return home. On Tuesday, it’s her hydrotherapy pool session.’

  He reached across for a piece of paper on the table and presented it to Brock with a flourish. ‘There. I’ve written down the names of the nurse and physiotherapist who saw me that Monday afternoon. It would be so strange if I wasn’t there with my wife that they would definitely have noticed my absence. I used a credit card at the Indian restaurant, so I suppose you can get a time for that. All right?’

  ‘Very comprehensive, Mr Verdi.’

  ‘Yes. You see, if there was one time of the week when I simply couldn’t abduct Kerri or anyone else, it would be Monday afternoon. No hard feelings, Chief Inspector—no, really, I mean that. I am a very strong supporter of the police, and I am glad that you have grilled me like this, because I know you will do the same with every other possible suspect.’ He smiled broadly and wiped his moustache. ‘Now, are you sure about that pistachio? It really is superb.’

  They got to their feet and Verdi had his hand on the doorknob when Brock took the computer image of Eddie Testor out of his pocket and showed it to him. ‘Do you know this man?’

  Verdi shook his head. ‘Sorry, no. Is he a suspect too?’

  ‘Thanks for your help. We’ll let you get back to your customers.’

  They went back out into the food court, and walked in silence until they reached the top of the escalators, when Brock exclaimed, ‘One hundred and ten per cent is right. One hundred and ten per cent phoney.’ Then he added, ‘The couple who put you onto him in the first place, Kathy, is it worth speaking to them again?’

  ‘I get the feeling there’s a bit of animosity there. They were probably just stirring up trouble.’

  ‘Yes. All the same, I think I’ll talk to them.’ He looked at his watch. ‘U
nless we’re getting somewhere with Testor, in which case it may not be necessary.’

  But they weren’t getting anywhere with Eddie Testor. Brock had given him to a team of three young detectives, two men and a woman, all of about his age, but the switch hadn’t produced any results. Instead he had begun to complain of severe headaches and had given the name of his GP, who he said was familiar with his problem. The doctor had confirmed that he suffered periodically from severe migraines, identified the medication he should be given from among those found in his room, and said that he should be allowed to go to bed for twelve hours in a darkened room. Brock agreed that he be returned to his Aunty Jan.

  Kathy tried the mobile phone number on the card that Mrs Rutter had given her, and was answered almost immediately by a whispered voice. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Rutter? It’s DS Kolla. Can we talk?’

  ‘Wait a moment, dear,’ the voice whispered, and then, after a minute, she spoke again at normal volume but breathing audibly. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. I’m at a concert. How can I help you?’

  Kathy imagined her clambering over angry concert goers at the Festival Hall. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs Rutter. Perhaps I should speak to you later. Where are you?’

  ‘In the Plaza Mexico, dear, in the upper mall. We’ve been listening to a splendid performance by the school orchestra of St Vincent’s. But we’ve had enough, I think, so your call was timely.’ She immediately agreed to come to unit 184 with Robbie Orr.

  ‘I think they live here,’ Kathy said to Lowry, who’d just arrived back at the unit. She told him about Verdi.

  ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘I might sit in on this. Okay?’

  When Rutter and Orr arrived Phil showed them to the interview area. They seemed clearly gratified to be called upon again, announcing themselves in discreet and conspiratorial tones.

  Brock shook their hands gravely. ‘An archaeologist, Professor Orr. I always thought that must be a wonderful thing, ever since I heard Michael Ventris speak on the radio when I was a boy.’

  ‘Ah Ventris!’ Orr’s eyes lit up. ‘I remember that broadcast well. I met him, you know. Yes, yes. Extraordinary, quite extraordinary.’ He saw the blank look on the others faces and added, ‘He deciphered Linear B, you see. Quite amazing. He had no right to do it. Well, it had baffled everyone else, and he was a total amateur, but he did it anyway. An architect, he was. Probably the only worthwhile thing any architect has done this century, I should say.’

  Harriet Rutter gave one of the delighted chuckles that Kathy noticed she reserved for Orr’s little quips.

  ‘Did you ever work in Crete yourself?’ Brock asked.

  ‘Aye, indeed. Sir Arthur Evans was my inspiration, though I never met him, of course. I’m not quite that old. But I visited his house at Knossos not long after the end of the war. The commander of the German forces had used it as his residence, you know. Anyway, I stayed there and took part in the work for a couple of months. That was what I call real archaeology, with none of the modern methods they have these days: magnetometers and potentiometers and all their electronic gadgets, drenching the ground with their electro-magnetic rays . . . ha!’ His face twisted in a wild sort of grin. ‘When I began, with Thom, our favourite tool was the bayonet!’

  ‘Tom?’ Kathy queried politely.

  ‘Aye. I was with Thom on North Uist, don’t you know.’

  The way he said this, it sounded like someone might say, I was with Scott in the Antarctic, or, I was with Armstrong on the moon.

  ‘Really?’ she said vaguely. She wanted to ask, Tom who?, but held her tongue.

  ‘I can see by the look on your face that you’ve never heard of the great Alexander Thom, young woman,’ he accused.

  ‘I’m afraid—’

  ‘One of the greatest archaeologists these islands have produced, no less. It was Alexander Thom who deciphered the meaning of the ancient stone circles and rings which exist across the face of this country. It was he who revealed the fact that, one thousand years before the earliest mathematicians of Ancient Greece, a civilisation flourished in these islands which made free use of Pythagorean triangles, and nurtured astronomers of such extraordinary accomplishment that they were familiar with the variations in the inclination of the moon’s orbit three and a half thousand years before Tycho Brahe rediscovered them!’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Aye, it is right! I spent the summers of fifty-seven and fifty-eight with Dr Thom, as he then was, surveying the great slabs of Sornach Coir Fhinn and Leacach an Tigh Chloiche. I was at his side as he strode the heather, driving his bayonet into the deep peat to find the fallen stones hidden beneath the surface. And I shared his tent at night, drinking his usque, as he refined his calculations of the true value of the megalithic yard.’

  ‘The what?’ Brock asked.

  ‘The megalithic yard! It might surprise your young colleagues to learn that almost four thousand years ago, when they probably imagine these islands were populated by painted savages, there existed a common standard unit of measure, the megalithic yard, which was in use throughout the British Isles, from the English Channel to the Outer Hebrides, and was employed to set out the dimensions of all the stone circles throughout the land. Just think of that! Imagine how that standard length was maintained and propagated across a thousand miles of wild country without benefit of roads or writing. Eh? How did they communicate it? How did they agree upon it, to two decimal places?’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Brock said. ‘Quite a mystery.’

  Actually it doesn’t much surprise us, Kathy thought, for the good reason that none of us is that interested. She could see Lowry sitting unblinking, expressionless, almost as if he were asleep with his eyes open, while she had been thinking of the meal that Leon might have ready for her, and wishing that they could move on from the megalithic yard to more immediately pressing matters.

  ‘It’s a great mystery, indeed. A very great mystery,’ Orr continued. ‘But that is only one of many mysteries. For example, the skeletons of these people, the ones that we’ve discovered in their graves and burial mounds, are almost invariably young. It was practically a civilisation of teenagers, their life expectancy about thirty, that is all.’ He glared balefully in the direction of the mall. ‘Much the way our young people are heading today, one might think, from observing their goings-on in this place.’

  ‘You keep an eye on them, then, the children here?’ Brock said mildly, and Lowry immediately seemed to wake up and look carefully at Orr.

  ‘How could one not, Chief Inspector? They swagger along the mall looking as if they’ve inherited the earth, instead of a self-indulgent fantasy of dope and baubles.’

  ‘You’re aware of children taking drugs here?’

  ‘No, no, no. I don’t mean that, exactly. I’m just referring to the emptiness of their lives.’

  ‘But you keep your eyes open, all the same. It’s that I wanted to speak to you about. Your comments to Sergeant Kolla here about Bruno Verdi and the murdered girl, can you be more specific? Can you recall instances of him talking to her, for example? You’d assume they would talk, if they were related.’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure . . .’ Orr looked suddenly uncomfortable, as if he’d been caught out telling tales he couldn’t substantiate. Or perhaps, Kathy thought, it might be that he could remember the distant past a lot more clearly than yesterday.

  ‘Well, that in itself was odd, you see!’ Harriet Rutter broke in. ‘When she referred to him as “Uncle Bruno” I thought, well, why don’t they behave like family, instead of eyeing each other that way?’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . warily, I suppose.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean, that she was afraid of him?’

  She frowned doubtfully. ‘I couldn’t really say that was it. It might have been, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

  ‘Or could it be that they had some sort of relationship that they didn’t want to reveal to others watching, in pub
lic, like yourselves?’

  ‘Ha!’ Orr suddenly barked. ‘Might be that!’

  ‘Well, it might, I suppose. Oh dear . . . I don’t want to slander the man. He may be a bully . . .’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘Oh yes, in meetings. He loves to talk over people, and put them down. Especially women. That’s one thing I’ll say for Bo Seager—she knows how to put him in his place when he goes too far. But getting back to the poor girl, we did see them talking, do you remember, Robbie? Not too long ago. Perhaps three or four weeks ago, we were having our pancakes when he came over from his shop and tried to attract her attention. She pretended to ignore him, but he stood there, over by one of the palm trees, and stared at her until she went to him. They talked for a few minutes, and then she gave a toss of her head, and flounced off on her roller skates. Do you remember, Robbie?’

  Orr looked unsure.

  ‘Well, we did. I remember it quite clearly.’

  Brock tried to prod their memories further, but there was little they could add, and after a while they left.

  Lowry looked thoughtful. ‘All right if I talk this over with Harry Jackson, chief?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Brock nodded. ‘We did ask him about Verdi and he seemed to regard him as a pillar of the community, but if you think you can get anything else out of him, go ahead.’

  ‘You might find out if he warned Verdi that we were interested in him,’ Kathy said. ‘The way Verdi had everything ready for us it looked as if someone had tipped him off.’

  ‘Harry wouldn’t do that, Kathy,’ Lowry said dismissively. ‘What, you got your sights on Verdi as your serial killer, have you? On the strength of those two old farts’ gossip?’

  The way he said it, your serial killer, as if it was a personal foible, made Kathy flush. She saw Brock react too. ‘Kathy’s suggestion certainly got Alex Nicholson’s attention,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’ Lowry shrugged, then shook his head as if he’d decided to keep his doubts to himself.

  ‘Yes but what?’ Kathy insisted.