Silvermeadow

by Barry Maitland

  ‘This is cosy,’ she said, looking around at the table and chair, the filing cabinet and shelves of small cardboard boxes neatly labelled. It was much more comfortable than she’d expected, and even had a camp bed squeezed across the end of the room, and next to it a tall grey metal cupboard. A crudely wired distribution board was fixed to the wall above the table, and there were several electrical appliances: a desk light, two-bar fire and kettle. But cosy wasn’t the right word, she decided. Actually, it made her think of a claustrophobic, windowless prison cell.

  Lowry had hung his dripping raincoat on a hook by the door and was pulling on latex gloves. He was looking vaguely worried, Kathy thought, perhaps unsure how well his team of searchers had covered this in the first place. She also pulled on gloves and they began their search. On the table there were three small glass jars, one holding paper clips, another ball-point pens, and the third an assortment of coins. In the metal cupboard she found male clothing, old work clothes, a windcheater and a battered hat. A pair of wellington boots stood beneath them, thick woollen socks stuffed in the tops, and next to them an assortment of tools standing against the side, shovels and hand trowels.

  Lowry was working through the filing cabinet, discovering a half bottle of whisky among the files of work schedules, reports and letters. When he reached the bottom drawer he stopped suddenly and said, ‘Oh-oh.’

  Kathy turned and saw him reach into the back of the drawer and pull out a black rectangle. He pulled the video out of the sleeve, examined it briefly and handed it to her. She read the title on the spine: Teenage Sex Kittens. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and slipped it into an evidence bag. She felt disappointed but not especially surprised, like a nurse cleaning up after someone who might have been expected to behave better.

  Lowry turned back and groped around some more, and after a moment sat back on his heels and offered her a second trophy, this time a coloured loop of elasticised ribbon, such as Kerri had used to hold her ponytail in place.

  ‘I think that’s all down here,’ he said grimly.

  ‘It’s enough,’ Kathy said.

  They did a rapid search of the rest of the space without uncovering anything more, then put their coats on again and closed the place up.

  Jackson was still standing by the open door, looking miserable. ‘Finished?’he grumbled.

  ‘We’ll need to put a new lock on that one, Harry,’ Lowry said. ‘We’ll be getting forensic down here.’

  ‘How come? Find something?’

  Kathy would have said nothing, but Lowry immediately showed him the two evidence bags, which Jackson peered at intently.

  ‘Bloody hell,’he muttered. ‘In there? I don’t believe it. That old bastard.’

  ‘Keep it to yourself, eh Harry?’

  ‘Gavin!’ Jackson said reproachfully. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  The sky looked dark and threatening as Kathy pulled in at the kerb opposite the high street entrance to the estate. The rain had stopped, but few people seemed willing to come back out into the raw afternoon. A double-decker splashed up to a bus stop and a few bowed figures jumped off and hurried away. In the first courtyard the old man who had spoken to them after Lowry’s near miss with the TV was outside his door, wheezing as he swept the paving. Kathy called good evening to him, and got back a suspicious glower.

  Alison Vlasich was looking a little better. At least her expression was more lively, though she too had developed a cold, and this, coupled with tears and loss of sleep, had turned her pale skin raw pink beneath her eyes and nose.

  ‘I’d really rather go back to work,’ she said, ‘only the doctor said give it a week. I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘Why don’t you give her a ring and say you feel ready. You’re looking more yourself.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been getting out a bit, to the shops and that.’

  She led Kathy into the sitting room and they sat down. There were perhaps a dozen cards of condolence standing on the shelf beside the TV, including one large one with many signatures inside it.

  ‘From Kerri’s class,’ Alison said, following Kathy’s eyes. There was also a large bunch of red roses in a vase on the table.

  ‘Has Bruno been in touch today?’

  ‘Not today, no. Why?’

  ‘He’s admitted to us that he’d been planning with Kerri to help her go to her father for Christmas.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Nothing much seemed to register on Alison Vlasich’s face, neither surprise nor anger.

  ‘You don’t look surprised, Alison.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I suppose I’m not.’

  ‘You suspected this?’

  ‘Not so that I could put it into words . . . but now you say it, yes, I think I knew, really.’

  ‘Aren’t you angry?’

  She shook her head slowly, avoiding Kathy’s eyes. ‘No. He was trying to do the right thing, for Kerri, and for me.’

  ‘For you?’

  ‘He was worried about the way Kerri was behaving, the way she was talking to me. He felt it might be better for both of us if we had a break for a while, and if Kerri got away from some of the friends she was in with.’

  ‘What, Naomi and Lisa?’

  ‘No, the other ones, wild kids. He thought, if Kerri got away for a while it might change her attitude.’

  There was something in this that Kathy felt she was missing. Something about the air of guilt with which Alison Vlasich told it, and the careful and protective way she and her brother-in-law gave out each piece of information about each other. And suddenly Kathy wondered if it was possible that there was something more to the relationship between them. Was this what had made Kerri so rebellious and difficult, and led her uncle, and perhaps in the end her mother, to want to let her go?

  ‘So you think Mr Verdi was really trying to help?’ Kathy asked, and saw Alison glance at the bunch of roses, then away quickly, with a touch of a smile in her tired eyes. ‘Oh yes. He was just trying to do the right thing, as an uncle.’

  ‘He seems very devoted to his wife.’

  The smile vanished.‘Yes, very.’

  Kathy said, ‘There are one or two loose ends we’re trying to tie up, Alison.’ She took the plastic bag with the hair ribbon from her bag and handed it to the other woman. ‘Do you recognise this at all?’

  Little creases of worry formed around her eyes as Alison Vlasich took it and examined it carefully. ‘It’s the type that Kerri wore.’

  ‘Could it have belonged to her?’

  ‘I don’t think it could be hers, no. It’s blue, you see, and Kerri liked to wear red, and green especially, because she had green eyes.’ This memory had a sudden paralysing effect. She sat, immobile, as she tried to come to terms with it, and eventually Kathy reached forward and gently took the bag from her fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry, Alison,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to make a cup of tea or something?’

  ‘Oh . . . I didn’t think.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘I’ll do it.’

  They went together into the little kitchen, where Alison put on the kettle.

  ‘Do you remember Kerri ever mentioning a man called Orr? Or the Professor, something like that? An elderly man who’s a bit of a regular at Silvermeadow.’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘What about a younger man called Testor, Eddie Testor, who works in the leisure centre?’

  ‘Sorry, no. Are they suspects?’

  ‘They’re just part of a long list of names we’re trying to sort out, Alison. It doesn’t matter. Would you mind if I had another look in Kerri’s bedroom?’

  Alison shrugged and turned away, setting out teacups on a flower-patterned plastic tray.

  Kathy went through to the girl’s room, unchanged since their first visit. Kerri herself was beginning to become a cipher in all this, she thought, the victim, an increasingly remote figure, and the room, with its commonplace postcards and posters and small possessions, was a sobering reminder that she had been re
al, and ordinary. There was the table at which she would have sat, daydreaming over unopened homework books perhaps, and written letters to her father. On the table was a small hand-painted box, containing mementoes, trinkets and foreign coins. She opened the box and tipped the contents out onto the desktop. There were Italian lire, Belgian and French francs, Spanish pesetas, German pfennigs. There was one coin unlike the rest, very old, black and misshapen, its faces so worn smooth that it was impossible to make out any lettering. She lifted it up to the light as Alison came in to the room.

  Kathy handed it to her. ‘Any idea what this is?’

  ‘No. Is it important?’

  ‘Probably not. Can I hang onto it for a day or two?’

  ‘You can have it as far as I’m concerned.’

  They returned to the sitting room and sipped at their tea in silence for a while. Then Kathy said, ‘You have friends at work, Alison?’

  ‘Yes, well, work-mates, you know. I like the hospital. There’s always lots of things happening, lots of people around. You can’t feel too sorry for yourself there.’

  ‘PC Sangster mentioned to me that when this all started, you told her a story about an old woman in the hospital who thought she’d lost her daughter at Silvermeadow, do you remember?’

  ‘Yes. I feel embarrassed about that now. I think I got it mixed up. She explained that you hear lots of funny stories like that, that mean nothing.’

  ‘Yes, but all the same, we could check it again, just to be sure. Can you remember who the nurse was who heard her talking about it?’

  ‘No. It was one of those friend-of-a-friend stories.’

  ‘Could you ask around for me, do you think?’

  She looked doubtful. ‘I could try, I suppose.’

  Kathy could see that the idea of raising such a thing with the people at work troubled her, and said, ‘Just a name. Someone I could follow it up with.’

  *

  Robbie Orr was mortally outraged by Brock’s suggestion that the pornographic video tape belonged to him. They had found him and Harriet Rutter at Silvermeadow in Plaza Mexico again, this time watching an unveiling of next year’s new Ford among the haciendas and cacti, and she had insisted on accompanying him to Hornchurch Street. They had sat her in a waiting area, no more than a row of seats in the corridor near a temperamental coffee machine, looking out of place and out of sorts, while Orr was taken to an interview room.

  ‘How dare you insinuate, sir,’ he bellowed, eyes blazing, ‘that I am the owner of such trash!’

  ‘It’s not a criminal offence,’ Brock said calmly, thinking that Orr’s outrage seemed rather excessive, unless he understood the context of the find, and the construction that might be put upon it. ‘It’s just that we’d like to establish whose it is. It was found in the site hut, in your filing cabinet, among your reports and papers.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Orr roared. ‘Impossible!’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Well, someone else has put it there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘One of your people perhaps! I’ve read about this— police fabricating evidence when they run out of ideas. Well, let me assure you that you’ve taken on the wrong man this time, sir. I have a reputation for probity, you will find, and friends to support it. Why, the chancellor of my old university is a friend of the Home Secretary—’

  ‘Let’s not get carried away, Professor,’ Brock murmured. ‘The video was found in your filing cabinet by two of my officers. Actually we’re less interested in it than in what was found with it.’ He showed Orr the hair band.

  Orr peered at it for a moment. ‘You don’t mean to say that this belonged to the lassie?’ His fury seemed to evaporate as he said it.

  Brock raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply. If Orr knew the answer to that then he would mostly likely stick to a pose of outraged innocence. Brock waited, eyes fixed on his face.

  ‘But that is . . . monstrous . . .’ Orr said, with rather less confidence. ‘In my filing cabinet? All I keep in there, apart from the papers, is a wee bottle of whisky.’

  ‘Yes, we found that too.’

  ‘You’re serious about this?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Orr’s indignation had gone. ‘Well, for a start, you can take my fingerprints. You’ll find they won’t match anything on those things.’

  ‘That would be most helpful. We’ll do it now, if you don’t mind. One of my officers will fix it up.’

  As he got to his feet, Brock sensed the man’s mood change again. From outrage to shock, he now moved on to prickly martyrdom. A thought occurred to him.

  ‘In any case,’ he said scathingly, ‘why in blazes would I keep a video in the site hut when there’s no machine there to view it on, eh? It makes no sense.’

  ‘That’s a good point. Who else has a key to the hut, do you know?’

  ‘The security people, of course, and I was given one. But I had others cut when we were in the thick of our digging. Time was short, we worked round the clock, and I gave keys to some of the other people in the team. I never got them all back.’

  ‘Do any of them have any connection with Silvermeadow now?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘So you have no theories about how these things could have got in there?’

  Orr sat gauntly upright, stiff with bruised dignity. ‘I don’t care to speculate, sir. That seems to be your job.’

  Brock sat with Lowry and Kathy in an adjoining room while Orr’s prints were being taken. ‘Let him stew on it for a few minutes, then we’ll go through it again. What bothers me, Gavin, is that we can’t be sure that drawer was searched the first time.’

  He saw the discomfort return to Lowry’s face. When he had questioned the two officers who had searched that part of the site, one had claimed that they’d searched the drawer and seen nothing, the other that they’d never opened it.

  ‘What else might we have missed?’

  Lowry clenched his jaw. ‘I told them to work fast, chief, and it was a huge complex to cover with the men we had. We got round the lot in half a day . . . Yeah, none of us could swear we didn’t miss something. It would take a week to do it properly. Not only that, the plans we were using were very simplified. They didn’t show all the store cupboards and plant rooms and stuff like that. We just had to use our judgement what we opened up and searched.’

  Brock felt a twinge of unease. It wasn’t Lowry’s fault. He’d done exactly as Brock had instructed him. ‘Fair enough. But we may just have to do it again.’

  He heard Lowry mutter under his breath, ‘Christ.’

  ‘What’s the problem, Gavin?’

  ‘Two problems, chief. Manpower—the chief super’ll do his nut. And the centre management. They’re becoming difficult. I think they want us out of there. Harry said he’d got new instructions not to give us access unaccompanied.’

  ‘I think I may be responsible for that,’ Kathy said. She also was looking uncomfortable, and told them about her late encounter in the games arcade the previous night, and Jackson’s reaction that morning.

  ‘You’re telling me that a boy was in there, playing arcade games at midnight? When the place had been locked up and secured?’ Brock’s feeling of losing control was growing by the minute. ‘Good grief, Kathy!’

  ‘I know. But I’ve no idea how. I searched the place myself this morning with Jackson and Starkey. There was no sign of anywhere he could have been hiding overnight, and no way he could have got out without triggering the alarms. They . . . well, I don’t think they believed me. They said I must have got confused by the flickering lights from the machines in the darkness. I wish they were right.’

  Brock thought, working out the implications. Finally he said, ‘All the more reason to make another search, then.’ He thumbed through a notebook for a number, lifted the phone and dialled.

  ‘Harry, how are you?’

  ‘Not too bad, chief. What can I do for you?’ The voice was cautious
.

  ‘Those plans you gave us of Silvermeadow, they’ve been giving us a bit of trouble.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They don’t show much detail. Plant rooms, store cupboards . . . We’re just beginning to realise what we missed.’

  Brock let that sink in. The line was silent, then he continued, ‘You must have more accurate plans somewhere, don’t you?’

  ‘The property manager,’ Jackson said slowly, ‘holds the technical plans.’ He stressed ‘technical’ as if it were something dangerous and obscure. ‘But I wouldn’t imagine you’d need—’

  ‘I’m afraid we do. It’s beginning to look as if we’re going to have to search the damn place again.’

  ‘I don’t think management will buy that, chief.’

  ‘I’m not that keen on it myself, Harry.’ Brock’s voice hardened suddenly. ‘It’s a mistake that’s going to make us all very unpopular. I’d better speak to Ms Seager.’

  ‘Hang on, chief. How urgent is this?’

  ‘It’s urgent. I want some action tonight.’

  ‘Tell you what. Leave it with me for half an hour. Let me see what I can do. Let me get back to you.’

  The phone rang again as soon as Brock replaced it. Bren was on the line, sounding fired up.

  ‘I think we’ve got something on North, Brock. Can we talk?’

  ‘I could do with some good news. Where are you?’

  Bren was in the building. They arranged to meet and Brock rang off.

  ‘Gavin, something’s come up on another case Kathy and I are working on. Would you look after Orr? I doubt if you’ll get much out of him, but try anyway.’ He noticed a set look about the mouth as Lowry jumped to his feet, as if he was determined to redeem himself. ‘Don’t be too rough on him,’ Brock added, but Lowry was already through the door.

  Bren looked rejuvenated, Brock thought, his big, deceptively gentle-looking countenance alight with good spirits. Burrowing away quietly in the undergrowth with a small team of his own, he had emerged into the light with something tasty, clearly.

  ‘One of the lines we’ve been taking is that he came here from Canada,’ he said, his soft West Country burr more pronounced than usual. ‘We’ve been checking arrivals, money transfers, that sort of thing. You wouldn’t believe the number of Canadians who have come over for Christmas. Then we thought he might have got himself a motor to get out to Silvermeadow, so we’ve been checking car hire places too. Yesterday we called in at a small independent rental outfit at Redbridge. Two weeks ago they hired a blue Golf to a man who offered a Canadian passport and driver’s licence as identification. Name of Keith Nolan. He was on our list of tourist visitors, arrived at Heathrow unaccompanied in mid-November. We also had him down as cashing several American Express travellers’ cheques issued in Montreal, at a bank in Barking on the thirtieth of November.’