Silvermeadow

by Barry Maitland

  Sharon frowned, thinking. ‘Yes, I remember. We’d had problems with her before. She was mental, I reckon. Nobody could understand what she was saying. She passed out in the mall, and we called an ambulance.’

  ‘How big was she?’

  ‘Oh, tiny. Fierce dark eyes. She had a bad cough, too. Spitting and coughing over everybody. Yuck.’

  ‘Black coat?’

  ‘Ye-es. I think she did.’

  ‘Did she have a sign?’

  ‘A sign?’

  ‘Yes. A message on a piece of paper?’

  Sharon shook her head. ‘Don’t remember that. Mind you, she tried to hide or run whenever anyone in uniform appeared. Oh yes, I remember! She was begging, that was it. Stopping people in the mall and pestering them. Speedy caught her on tape.’

  ‘Did you get a name?’

  ‘No idea, sorry.’

  ‘You say there’d been trouble with her before, but I didn’t notice any other daybook entries.’

  ‘Well, sometimes Harry would say not to bother putting trivial things in the book. Why? What’s the interest?’

  ‘She had a daughter we were trying to track down. This is her picture.’ Kathy took the photograph from her bag.

  ‘Oh, I think I know her . . .’ Sharon squinted at the portrait. ‘She looked a bit older than this. Hang on a tick.’ She got up, brought over a couple of the daybooks and began to turn the pages. ‘Somewhere . . .’ It took her a few minutes, but eventually she found the entry, almost illegible, in late May.

  ‘That’s Carl’s writing. He’s hopeless.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Kathy asked, peering at the scrawl.

  ‘“Cash theft at supermarket, f. employee, police called.” Carl and I both went. One of the girls who restocks the shelves was caught taking money from the handbags of other women who work there. This was her.’ Sharon nodded at the photograph. ‘She was thin as a rake, and refused to say a word. The store insisted on making a formal complaint so they could get rid of her, but in the end it was them who got into trouble.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘They said the girl was called something ordinary, like Mary Smith or something, but they couldn’t provide proof of identity, or age, and when they checked her social security number it was wrong. Social services and the tax people got onto it. Someone said the girl was on the run, or an illegal immigrant.’

  Kathy thought, Wiff Smiff and Mary Smith. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Dunno. We saw her in here a couple of times afterwards, I remember, and kept an eye out for trouble. Then she stopped coming, I suppose.’

  ‘Like Norma Jean,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Norma Jean?’

  ‘Oh, she was another trouble-maker in the daybooks, Sharon. Before your time. You’ve never heard the others talk about her?’

  ‘No, can’t say I have. Have you asked Harry?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all history now. I just had to cover any possible similar incidents in my report. You don’t know of any, do you? Girls reported missing?’

  ‘You don’t think Speedy—’

  ‘No, no. The case is closed. And as I say, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention to anyone that I was in here tying up these loose ends. I should have done it before.’

  Kathy left, avoiding Harry Jackson and the TV people.

  At Hornchurch Street she found Bren and Gavin Lowry together in the incident room, checking through interview statements. They looked up as she came in, and Bren said, ‘Something going on, Kathy? You look pleased with yourself.’

  ‘Not sure,’ she replied. ‘Have we got Harry Jackson’s statement about last Saturday here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lowry pointed at a pile of paper. ‘Silvermeadow staff statements. Why? What’s up?’

  ‘Tell you in a moment.’ Kathy pulled off her coat and sat down at the table, searching through the papers until she found what she wanted. The two men waited in silence while she read, nodding as she scanned the single page.

  ‘Right,’ she said, handing it across to Bren. ‘Harry Jackson says that he was at the conference at the Barbican all day Saturday until five p.m., and then caught a train out to Upminster where he’d left his car. He then drove home, arriving there about six-thirty.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I have a witness who saw him in Brentwood high street at about two o’clock. They say he looked as if he was waiting for someone he’d arranged to meet.’

  Bren said, ‘Interesting,’ but Lowry looked incredulous, shaking his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not Harry. They’ve mistaken him for someone else. Who is it anyway?’

  ‘Someone who works with him every day, Gavin. Sharon, one of his security staff. And she and her boyfriend talked to Harry in Brentwood, and he was embarrassed and told them to keep it quiet that he was there instead of at the conference.’

  Bren was on his feet. ‘I’ll get Brock.’

  Kathy and Lowry remained sitting at the table in silence for a while, then Lowry, scowling, shook his head and said softly, ‘No. Not Harry.’

  Lowry sat with his hands locked together on top of his crisp haircut. Brock took delivery of more coffee and a plate of sandwiches and closed the door again, catching a glimpse of the faces in the outer office, peering over to see what was going on.

  ‘You must know him as well as anyone,’ he said, putting the plate on the table between them.

  ‘He was my DI for four years at West Ham when I was getting started. He looked after me. More than that, he was a mate. And I think you’re wrong about this,’ Lowry added, eyeing the file that lay closed in front of Brock’s place. ‘There’ll be an explanation. Ask him.’

  ‘I shall, but not yet. You’d describe your DI as a mate, would you?’

  ‘I was newly married at the time, and Connie, my wife, got to be friends with Harry’s wife, so we got to know each other socially.’

  There was something, the hint almost of a sneer, Brock thought, as if Lowry didn’t approve of Harry’s wife.

  ‘He and I played snooker, though he was out of my league. We just hit it off. Yeah, he was a mate. Still is.’

  ‘Did you remain friends after you moved to Dagenham?’ Brock asked, helping himself to a sandwich.

  ‘At first, then they got divorced. You know how it is. We were friends with them both, felt awkward about them splitting up and ended up losing touch with both of them. We met up again with Harry by accident, when he left the force and went to work at Silvermeadow. Connie went out there soon after it opened. Couldn’t keep away, could she?’

  There it was again. Perhaps it was his own wife he despised, not Harry’s, and he had fallen into that little habit, the tiny curl of the lip, the put-down remark, whenever he mentioned her.

  ‘There’s worse things than shopping, I suppose,’ Brock said absently.

  ‘Depends what she spends!’ The response came back too fast. ‘Anyway, Harry came up to her in the mall. Said he’d recognised her on the security camera. Since then we’ve been out together a few times, and we keep in touch through work as well. I’ve become a sort of informal liaison with Silvermeadow.’

  ‘Have a sandwich.’ Brock pushed the plate across, but Lowry shook his head. ‘He didn’t remarry? What about a girlfriend?’

  ‘No. He’s past that.’

  Brock smiled. ‘We’re never past that, Gavin.’ He watched Lowry’s face relax a little.

  ‘Well, he’s never let on to us.’

  ‘Expensive tastes? The horses?’

  ‘Nah, not Harry, chief. He’s steady, steady as a rock.’

  ‘Has he been pumping you while we’ve been working on the Vlasich case?’

  Lowry looked uncomfortable. ‘No more than you’d expect. It’s his patch. Of course he’d want me to keep him informed of what we were doing.’

  ‘Naturally. But nothing you recall that seems significant, now, thinking back?’

  Lowry shook his head, then said tightly, ‘If he’s been up to something, I’d like
to be the one to nail him, chief.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

  ‘Why not?’ Lowry demanded.

  ‘Because the most important thing now is finding North. If Harry is mixed up with him in some way, we’re not going to get any closer by letting him know we’re onto him. I’m actually thinking, Gavin, that we might have to send you on a course somewhere far away. Or you might take Connie away on a surprise holiday until this is over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s an ex-copper, and he knows you well. You’re going to bump into him, and he’ll see it written all over your face. He’ll know, and our best chance of tracking down North will be gone.’

  Lowry looked devastated. ‘Don’t you think he might be suspicious if I suddenly disappear in the middle of the investigation?’

  Brock shrugged and took another sandwich. He was interested to see how far Lowry would press this point.

  ‘Look, chief,’ Lowry protested. ‘I’m the one who knows him! If he knows where North is, I’ve got the best chance of finding out.’

  ‘And how would you do that, Gavin?’

  Lowry thought for a moment. ‘Maybe . . . maybe there’s some link between North and Harry that I could spot. Someone they both know, or a place. I don’t know. I could talk to Bren, go through everything he’s gathered on North.’

  Brock considered this. ‘Maybe. But I don’t want you running any risk of meeting Harry. You stay here. Don’t go near Silvermeadow, okay?’

  Lowry nodded.

  ‘You might think about places he may have mentioned to you in the past. A property somewhere? A caravan maybe, a place he used to rent?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘What about Connie? Could he have mentioned something to her?’

  ‘Possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Speak to her. Get her to think back. Then keep your head down. Warn Connie to tell him you’re out if he rings. If you have to speak to him on the phone I want to be beside you with a recorder going.’

  After Lowry left, Brock opened the file and pondered. He felt reasonably sure that the help Lowry had given Jackson arose out of nothing more than innocent loyalty to an old friend. But if it was more than that he would certainly alert Jackson now. What would happen then? How steady was Harry’s nerve these days?

  He scanned the page in front of him until he came to the note about Ilford. Two years before he retired from the force, DI Harry Jackson had been transferred to Ilford. He had been there when North and his gang had robbed the local Midland Bank, knocked out Pauline Lewins’s front teeth, and shot Fairbairn the branch manager dead. That was surely why Brock had recognised Jackson on their first meeting, for although Jackson hadn’t been directly involved in the hunt for North, there had been considerable contact between Brock and his team and local officers in the days after the robbery.

  So what? North had committed armed hold-ups in a dozen different police divisions before he fled the country, and hundreds of officers would have had direct experience of his handiwork. All the same, Brock would have been happier if Lowry had mentioned Jackson being in Ilford, although he may not have known. But surely Jackson would have remembered why Brock recognised him?

  The unmarked car had slowed as Harry Jackson’s Opel showed its brake lights a hundred yards up ahead and pulled over to the kerb. As they cruised past, the two men had seen Jackson behind the wheel, a mobile phone to his ear. They stopped just short of the next corner and waited, distracted for a moment by the karaoke din coming from the crowd in the Red Lion, audible even through car windows closed tight against the cold wind.

  ‘How long did he talk?’ Brock asked.

  ‘Not long, sir. No more than a minute.’

  He recognised the ponderous, formal manner of the two men as their defensive reaction to the mortification they must be feeling.

  In the mirror the driver had seen Jackson’s indicator, and then the Opel moving forward again. He’d let it go well past before he pulled out after it. A second time it had stopped, and again they’d overtaken it. But this time it had made a rapid U-turn and disappeared fast back the way they had come.

  ‘I pulled over,’ the driver reported, ‘and waited till Jackson’s tail lights had rounded the bend in the road, then swung round after him. When we reached the bend, the road ahead was empty. I put my foot down until we were stopped by the next set of lights. Then I saw him in the mirror, sitting on my tail.’

  ‘He’d spotted you?’

  The driver gave a stiff nod, as if the gesture hurt. Brock knew that it wasn’t necessary for him to labour the point. These two were from TO14, specialists in covert surveillance.

  ‘When the lights changed I drove slowly back the way we’d come, to his flat. He followed on my tail all the way.’

  Harry had had a little game with them, Brock thought. Why would he do that?

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the driver said, through clenched teeth. ‘I’d swear he changed his pattern after the phone call, as if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to do. It’s possible he spotted us then, because the traffic was thin.’

  Brock sensed the ‘but’, unspoken because the man didn’t want to sound as if he was making excuses.

  ‘I need an honest assessment,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in anything else. You were there, I wasn’t.’

  The other man spoke up. ‘He was tipped off, chief. That’s my honest opinion. Whoever phoned him told him he had a tail.’

  Brock nodded. There wasn’t much point in being coy with Harry Jackson any more.

  *

  He seemed in cheerful mood as he was shown into the interview room, his face fresh and pink as if he’d just had a run or a good laugh.

  ‘Evening, Mr Brock,’ he said, taking the offered chair. ‘Your lads were very silent on the way in. I was trying to tell them they didn’t need to pick me up. You should have given me a bell and I’d have come straight over. Is it about my little game with your boys in the Astra? Couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘Has he been cautioned?’ Brock asked. Bren shook his head.

  ‘Cautioned?’ Jackson said, shocked, and Brock began to intone the formal words, ignoring his protest.

  ‘That’s well out of order, chief,’ Harry said. ‘Okay, I had some fun, but it’s me you’re talking to, Harry Jackson, twenty-one years in the force.’

  ‘Who rang you in the car this evening?’ Brock said sharply. ‘Who warned you about the tail?’

  Harry smiled. ‘Don’t know what you mean there, chief. I spotted the Astra myself, no bother.’

  ‘Who was on the phone?’

  ‘Some call centre, doing a survey on voters’ attitudes. I told them to get stuffed.’

  ‘Where were you on the afternoon of Saturday last, the eighteenth of December?’ Brock said abruptly, and watched Harry’s face go pale.

  ‘Oh.’

  They waited in silence as he looked from one to the other.

  ‘Caught me out, have you, chief?’

  Brock said nothing.

  Harry bowed his head, groaned softly and said, ‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s me finished.’

  ‘I want a statement,’ Brock said. ‘Last Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Jackson sighed, turned towards the tape machine and began to speak slowly, eyes lowered. ‘I left the conference in central London at about twelve-thirty, and caught the tube out to Upminster, where I’d left my car. I drove over to Brentwood and parked in the town centre. I got a sandwich at a pub, then went to Boots, where I stood outside on the pavement and waited.’

  ‘What time was that?’ Brock said.

  ‘I got to Boots at five to two. I’d arranged to meet someone there at two. They were late. At about a quarter past, I was seen there by Sharon, who works for me at Silvermeadow, and her male companion, don’t know his name. My rendezvous arrived soon after they left, around twenty past two.’

  He stopped and seemed disinclined to go on.

>   ‘Come on, Harry,’ Brock said wearily. ‘Get it over with.’

  ‘Yeah . . . We walked to my car—’

  ‘We?’

  A scowl came over Jackson’s face. ‘No names, Mr Brock. I won’t tell you that.’

  Brock looked at him, thinking that he was to be pitied. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘We walked to my car, and I drove us home to my place in Dagenham, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon.’

  ‘Eh?’ Brock said, as if he’d misheard. ‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’

  Jackson flushed, glared at Brock, then said. ‘What do you think? We went to bed.’

  ‘You what?’ Brock said. He tried to get his mind around the idea of Harry Jackson and Upper North in bed together.

  ‘You heard,’ Jackson said truculently. ‘I took her back to pick up her car at Brentwood at about six, maybe a bit later.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Yes, her. Jesus, what do you think I’m saying? Her, my girlfriend. Who do you think?’

  ‘Whose name you can’t reveal for fear of compromising her reputation.’ Brock shook his head sadly. He felt genuinely upset that a man with Jackson’s experience could offer him such a pathetic cliché. ‘Gavin Lowry told me you were too old to have a girlfriend, Harry.’ Jackson looked at him with a startled expression. ‘I disagreed with him, but maybe I was wrong. If you think anyone’s going to swallow that old line you must be well past it.’

  At that moment there was a tap at the door and Kathy looked in. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. There’s something I need to check with you.’

  Brock got to his feet. ‘Don’t say a thing until I get back, Harry. I wouldn’t want to miss a word of this.’

  Outside the room, Kathy said, ‘We’ve traced the number that rang Jackson’s mobile at twenty to eight this evening, Brock. This is the number, and the name and address of the subscriber.’ She gave him a slip of paper.

  He read it and felt that chill that comes when some unavoidable truth finally has to be confronted. It was Gavin Lowry’s name and address.

  ‘You’re not surprised?’ she asked.

  ‘It was one of the possibilities,’ he said, though he had never really believed it. He had given Lowry the opportunity to betray them, confident that he would not. He had been wrong.