Silvermeadow bak-5

by Barry Maitland

  ‘The accusation of racism is a serious matter,’ Brock said calmly. ‘I can assure you that it will be taken very seriously. As for the other business, this is a murder inquiry, not a sales promotion. Your tenants have an obligation to help us, and I haven’t heard of any of them wanting to do otherwise. Have you, Gavin?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Now Bo Seager took charge of the discussion. ‘I’m sure they’re anxious to see this thing resolved as soon as possible, Chief Inspector, as we all are. Why don’t you bring us up to date? I take it you have the authority to do that? We don’t need Chief Superintendent Forbes here for that?’

  And that, Brock assumed, was what the opening skirmishes had all been about, to put him in a position where he would feel obliged to tell them exactly what was going on. All in all, not much of a plan.

  ‘I have that authority, Ms Seager,’ he smiled, unruffled. ‘And I shall exercise it just as far as I feel appropriate, believe me. As far as our enquiries at Silvermeadow are concerned, you’ll be aware that our officers have almost completed interviewing tenants and centre staff. We’ve also finished our forensic investigation in the service road area for the time being.’

  He reached for a tiny asparagus and prosciutto roll.

  ‘Is that all?’ Bo Seager said.

  ‘All?’

  ‘What about outcomes? What’s happening?’

  Brock savoured the roll, then took a sip of wine. He felt sympathy for her, despite her attempts to manipulate him. She was obviously under some pressure to make things happen, presumably from this Tindall, whom she clearly didn’t much like. ‘There’s not much I can say about outcomes just at present, Ms Seager.’

  ‘How about the compactors, Mr Brock?’ Jackson broke in impatiently. ‘Have you got a positive link with the girl?’

  ‘We’ve got a stack of laboratory tests to be completed first, Harry.’

  ‘But no forensic proof of a connection so far?’ Tindall insisted. ‘So the whole basis of your enquiries here may be completely flawed.’

  ‘It seems unlikely, Mr Tindall, from what we know.’

  ‘And what exactly is that?’

  ‘Nathan…’ Bo Seager began.

  ‘No, sorry, Bo, bear with me, please. I just want us to be absolutely clear about this. As I understand it-correct me if I’m wrong, please-you have found a young woman’s body several miles away from Silvermeadow, and near it the remains of packaging probably originating from Silvermeadow stores. Is that right? Well, I’m not familiar with police procedures, but simple logic tells me that that really doesn’t prove that she was ever at Silvermeadow, does it?’

  ‘Mr Tindall,’ Brock said as patiently as he could, ‘your desire for absolute clarity is understandable, but in my experience it’s a rare commodity at the beginning of a murder inquiry. In this case, the circumstances in which the body and the packaging were found make it highly likely that both were processed through one of your compactors some time between the sixth and eighth of December. We haven’t spent all day taking them apart for fun, believe me.’

  ‘Have you any other evidence at all about where she went after she left her home?’ Tindall insisted harshly.

  ‘It seems she was planning to hitch-hike to her father in Germany.’

  ‘Well then!’ Tindall looked around the room, eyebrows raised, hands spread. It occurred to Brock that he’d probably picked up the posture from watching courtroom dramas on TV. ‘Rather makes my point, doesn’t it? Why would she have come here?’

  ‘She might have been brought here by whomever she got a lift from. That’s why we’ve been particularly keen to identify people who made deliveries here during the period. Or there could be another explanation. You’re on the M25 here, a good place to pick up a lift to the coast. Ms Seager pointed out to us before that your customers come from all over, including the Continent. Kerri could have picked out a suitable car in the carpark with Belgian or German plates, and approached the owner for a lift. Better that than standing thumbing on some motorway slip road in the rain. Or she may have met someone previously, someone who calls in at Silvermeadow on their way to the Continent, a regular traveller, someone who comes to the food court for a meal before heading down to the coast, maybe.’

  ‘But someone like that couldn’t access the service areas, Mr Brock,’ Harry objected. ‘They wouldn’t have the code.’

  ‘But she did, Harry. She had it. She’d been sent on errands back there more than once, and the Snow White’s Pancake Parlour code was used several times on the afternoon and evening of the sixth, and subsequently.’

  He let that sink in, then added, ‘So that’s why it’s important to trace any sightings of Kerri here on that day, and to do that we intend to hold a reconstruction, or rather a walk-through in the mall with a girl similar in appearance and clothing to Kerri, as well as a leaflet and press campaign. Monday, the same day of the week, would be ideal for the walk-through, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t run it on Tuesday as well.’

  ‘No reason!’ Tindall exploded.

  ‘It’s a perfectly normal procedure, Mr Tindall.’

  Tindall’s face flushed darker, but before he could respond, Harry Jackson cut in with a conciliatory flutter of his big hand. ‘I think you could say that there’s a slight conceptual problem here, Mr Brock. By which I mean that you may still be thinking of Silvermeadow as some kind of super high street, a public thoroughfare with shops down each side and a bit of a roof overhead. But it isn’t that, not really. The mall here is more like a living room than a street. It’s private property, it’s looked after as well as if it were your own house, and it’s as safe. Think of it that way. How would you like a crowd of coppers marching through your living room and staging a walk-through, eh?’ He chuckled.

  Tindall clearly found Harry’s homely little clarification irritating. ‘You might as well put up a sign in flashing lights, “Beware-this place is dangerous”,’ he grated. ‘“Serial killer on the loose”.’

  ‘This is important,’ Bo Seager came in. ‘Our whole ethos is built around this, Chief Inspector. People must feel completely comfortable and safe here. What you’re suggesting simply isn’t acceptable. It would create a perception, perhaps even panic.’ She closed her mouth firmly, as if the point were settled.

  There was something very irritating about all this, Brock felt, as if the team had been on some management course together-How to Get Your Way in Meetings-and had worked out beforehand how they would tame him, while Lowry and Kathy were left to sit in silence on each side of him like a pair of china dogs. Kathy might have read his mind, for she broke her silence.

  ‘That’s an interesting choice of words, Mr Tindall,’ she said. The finance manager glanced at her in surprise, as if she should know that she didn’t have a speaking part. ‘“Serial killer on the loose”. Has there been any suggestion that this may have happened before?’

  Brock saw a look of shock flare briefly on Tindall’s face, and also a rapid exchange of looks between Jackson and Lowry.

  ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Tindall snapped, recovering himself.

  ‘The victim’s mother, Mrs Vlasich,’ Kathy continued, ‘mentioned in interview that she was frightened for her daughter’s safety if Kerri had come to Silvermeadow, since she had heard rumours that girls had disappeared from here in the past.’

  Jackson and Tindall immediately began protesting together, shaking their heads in disgust, while Bo Seager looked merely irritated, Brock thought, and Kathy expressionless, watching them. He couldn’t see Lowry’s face, but it was he who restored calm, speaking without raising his voice.

  ‘We were aware of that,’ he said, addressing himself alternately to Brock and Bo Seager. ‘One of our officers checked out the stories when Mrs Vlasich first raised it. We found no basis whatsoever. It’s just hysteria.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jackson nodded. ‘We did the same. Nothing to it. Rumours, hysteria, like Gavin says.’

  Bo leant forward intently
towards Brock. ‘Well, it just confirms how important it is to avoid encouraging ideas like that.’

  ‘Rumours grow on secrecy,’ he replied. ‘Far better to have it out in the open and eliminate the possibility if we can. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist on our plan.’

  For a moment it looked as if Bo was going to fight, but then she shrugged and conceded with a smile. ‘Okay, but let our publicity people work with yours on handling the press, please?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Brock got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the snack, and for your co-operation, Ms Seager. We do appreciate it.’

  She laughed out loud at this. ‘Just so long as we can speak frankly, Chief Inspector.’

  When they reached the front door Lowry hung back to speak to Jackson, and Kathy and Brock went out alone into the mall crowd.

  ‘That was news to me, Kathy-the serial killer.’

  ‘Yes, sorry. I wasn’t going to mention it until I’d done some more checking. I just thought they needed shaking up a bit.’

  ‘Well, it did that all right. I thought Gavin sounded rather defensive. Do you think there could be anything in it?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Mr Brock! Kathy!’

  They turned round and saw Jackson weaving through the throng. ‘Just wanted to say, no hard feelings, eh? Mr Tindall likes to sound like he’s well hard, but they both know you’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘Of course, Harry,’ Brock said. ‘We’ll work with you on the walk-through. You’ll help us, will you?’

  ‘Course, course. And Kathy, that stupid rumour. Maybe it would put your mind at rest if you had a look through our security daybooks, eh? We record every little incident in there. If anyone had been aware of anything weird going on, it’d have to be recorded there. Okay?’

  ‘Thanks, Harry. Yes, I’d like to borrow them for a day or two if that’s all right.’

  ‘No bother! I’ll send them up tomorrow first thing. Night.’

  ‘Good night, Harry,’ Brock said, and they moved off again through the strolling crowd. ‘Well, that’s more like it, Kathy. The books will be more use than that glossy report he did for us.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘They are. I photocopied most of them this afternoon while he was out.’

  6

  L eon Desai was in unit 184 when they returned, chatting to one of the clerical staff. Seeing him there, unexpectedly, Kathy got that little jolt she’d experienced seeing him that morning. He looked good, very trim and sleek in his black leather jacket and jeans, she thought, with his brown skin and blue-black hair. She saw a couple of the women eyeing him and thought yes, you wouldn’t mind being seen with that.

  ‘Hi.’ He grinned at them both.

  ‘Hello, Leon,’ Brock returned. ‘All done?’

  ‘Yes. Even had a shower and a swim downstairs in the pool. Feel a lot better than I did after I’d finished crawling around on concrete and grease all day. I just wondered if anyone could give me a lift in to a tube station. The guy who brought me out here this morning has gone.’

  ‘Certainly-’ Brock began.

  ‘I’ll do it. I’m going north of the river.’

  ‘You sure, Kathy?’ Leon asked. ‘Anywhere I can pick up a tube.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’ll just get my coat.’

  They ran across the rain-swept tarmac and Leon held his umbrella over her as she unlocked the car. As they got in it occurred to Kathy that there is that moment when a couple, getting into a car together on a wet windy night, slamming the doors shut, experience a sudden compression of space, as the world shrinks to the intimate cabin around them. After a few seconds the effect fades, the mind adjusts to the new dimensions, and normal service is resumed. But for that moment they may be caught unawares, their mental-space reference tricked, and their sense of the proximity of the other dramatically heightened. At that moment, she thought, if there is the potential for something to happen, it probably will.

  She glanced across at him, and found that his dark eyes were fixed on her. Unnerved by that look, Kathy said lightly, ‘I can’t believe Bren told you that, about Martin Connell. I haven’t seen him in ages.’

  ‘He didn’t say you were still seeing him, just that you were still obsessed with him.’

  She flushed at the word ‘obsessed’. ‘That’s ridiculous. How would Bren know, anyway? And, come to think of it, Bren was the one who first put the idea in my head that you might be gay.’

  ‘Naughty Bren. Let’s go round to his place and beat him up.’

  She smiled. ‘Better not. He’s bigger than both of us.’

  ‘Why would he do that, though? Does he fancy you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say there’s any “of course” about it, Kathy. It’s not that hard.’

  She looked away, got the car going with quick, hard gestures and drove off. She felt quite absurdly unsettled and she couldn’t imagine how they were going to get through a long car ride together. As they approached the edge of the carpark, she recalled that she had been in this situation before with Leon, and had evaded its possibilities and regretted it afterwards. And she had a sudden sharp sense of how much she would regret doing that again. She braked hard and switched off the engine.

  ‘Let’s just think this through,’ she said, as if this was some practical sort of project. ‘You have to ask why we let Bren put us off, don’t you? I mean, we didn’t exactly struggle against his guiding hand, did we?’

  ‘Ah, it was the colleague thing,’ Leon said. ‘You and I, we don’t really approve of the colleague thing, relationships with people at work, do we? We’re embarrassed by it. It gets in the way, it’s messy.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. That was one of the disastrous things about Martin, that he was connected to my work. Also he was married, and he was a total bastard.’

  ‘Was he really?’

  ‘Oh yes. You’re not married though, are you, Leon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’re not a bastard.’

  ‘It’s sometimes hard to know. Maybe everyone is.’

  ‘No, you’re not. But you are a colleague.’

  He nodded, turned away, as if accepting that she wanted him to keep his distance.

  ‘Oh…’ She looked at his profile, the light from the tall mast floodlights rippling in the rain. ‘Bugger the colleague thing,’ she whispered, and undid her seat belt.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, the windows are greasy. Hang on.’

  She grabbed the cloth from the door pocket and jumped out of the car, feeling a great need for cold air and rain on her face and space around her. ‘Heck,’ she muttered to herself, rubbing the glass furiously. ‘Get a grip, girl.’

  She heard the other car door open and was aware of Leon walking round to her side of the bonnet, then the shelter of his brolly over her. She put down the cloth and they looked at each other, that same look again, and the space beneath the umbrella closed around them as they kissed.

  After a few minutes they broke apart and she said, somewhat stunned, unable to recall quite how it had happened so decisively, ‘We’d better go before we become an entry in Harry’s daybooks.’ They got back in the car and drove away.

  She took him to her home, a small flat on the twelfth floor of a tower block in Finchley. They were prickly with the dampness and the car heater, and when they got into the flat they peeled off their coats and then everything else, and made love under the shower. Then Kathy led him to her narrow, cold bed, and they curled up tight together there and made love again, at a more leisurely pace.

  In the grey light of dawn she slipped out of bed to try to forage for something for them to eat. They had missed dinner, and she soon realised that her fridge and cupboards were bare. The whole place was bare in fact, like a nun’s cell, she realised, looking round at it as a stranger might-as he would. She’d made no effort to make it comfortable at all. The washing machine was old, and there was no tumble drier, so the
re wasn’t much she could do about his clothes. The TV was on the verge of packing up and she rarely watched it because there was no video and she was never there when the programmes she wanted to watch were on. The furnishings were uniformly spartan. Not much of a love-nest. Probably about as far from Mrs Desai’s cosy home in Barnet as you could get.

  At least the central heating worked, which was just as well, because she didn’t have anything he could use as a dressing gown, so he was naked when he slid up behind her and put his arms around her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t got a thing to eat, and the milk’s gone off.’

  They had a big breakfast at the station cafe before Leon got a train into central London for meetings at the forensic science lab. She went onto the platform with him and kissed him goodbye when the train came in. It was crowded, and he got in last so that he could stand crushed against the door and they could look at each other with goofy little smiles as the train began to pull away. Kathy noticed people at the adjoining windows looking at their sleepy faces and guessing what was up, turning back to their morning papers with nostalgic grins.

  There were arrangements for the walk-through to be confirmed, publicity material prepared, press statements cobbled together, liaison meetings attended, and a mountain of reports to sift, but Kathy didn’t feel much like any of it. Harry Jackson’s daybooks were delivered to unit 184, marked for her attention, but she didn’t feel much like immersing herself in them either. Instead she picked up a wad of information leaflets and interview kits and told Phil she was going to chase up some loose ends from the shop interview reports.