Silvermeadow bak-5

by Barry Maitland

‘Had he?’

  ‘No. They suspended him anyway, and he had a nervous breakdown.’

  Brock noticed Kathy glance sharply up at Lowry’s reflection in the rear-view mirror, then snap her eyes back to the road.

  ‘I hope you didn’t try the same on Orr, Gavin,’ Brock said.

  ‘What, plant that tape in his filing cabinet?’ Lowry laughed. ‘No, but after listening to him droning on for half an hour I was capable of it, believe me. Who the hell is Harding?’

  ‘Should I know?’

  ‘Exactly! He says, “I was with Harding in Jordan”, like you should know what the hell he’s talking about.’

  ‘You weren’t too rough on him, were you, Gavin?’

  ‘Not nearly rough enough, chief,’ Lowry growled back. ‘Not nearly.’

  They arrived early for the meeting with Bo Seager, and found the office of the property manager, Allen Cook. He was a brisk, wiry man, with the certificate of an engineering degree framed on the wall behind his desk. He eyed Brock with interest as he listened to what he wanted, one technician to another. When Brock showed him the plans that Harry had supplied he shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Very crude. Detailed building plans are all on the computer there, and you can have a print-out at any scale of detail or layer of system you want, from structural grids to electrical or plumbing layouts. I imagine you’ll want the spatial plans, with partitions, doors, room layouts and so on.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds like it.’

  ‘There’s a slight problem though. These plans are essentially the original construction set, which we’ve modified and updated from time to time to include work done by tenants. You have to understand that up to half of the value of construction in a shopping centre like this is fitting-out work done by the individual tenants’ contractors. They come into the basic shell that the owner provides, and they put in their own ceilings, partitions, services, fittings, finishes. They have to get this work approved by the owner, and they lodge copies of their plans with us to put on to our master. But they don’t all work on AutoCAD like us, or a compatible software system. Some don’t do their plans on a computer at all, and they give us paper sets.’

  He went over to a plan chest of wide, shallow steel drawers and pulled one of them open and drew out a construction drawing from the top of the pile inside. He laid it on the table, spreading it with his palm to flatten its creases.

  ‘This is the contractor’s fitting-out drawing for a shoe shop in unit seventy-three, a medium standard unit. They put in a toilet and small staff room at the back there, and an office here, this curving wall between men’s and women’s shoes and this wavy ceiling, shelving, racks, a store front that folds away, plus the services-lighting, air-conditioning ducting, smoke detectors, sprinklers, plumbing-all tapping into the main lines we bring to the rear of the unit. The problem is that someone at this end then has to put this manually into our master plan-it would be difficult to scan a plan like this directly in. This has not been done consistently. I’ve been here nine months now, and I’ve hardly begun to get to grips with the backlog of plans that haven’t been entered onto the master set. Harry Jackson has a lad who’s a bit of a computer whiz, and I pay him to work on it from time to time, but he can’t keep up.

  ‘Also, as you can see’-he pointed to pencilled notes and alterations on the original print drawing-‘changes get made during the course of construction. In this case they had to change their toilet layout when they discovered where we’d put the connection point for their drainage, and that altered the layout of all the surrounding walls, just slightly. I couldn’t guarantee that what’s down there now is exactly like this, either. I know they also changed the alignment of the curved wall, because there was a grid of sprinkler heads already in the ceiling, and the wall would have interfered with them.

  ‘Now if we compare this sheet to the master plan on the computer. ..’ He went over to the machine on the next table and worked at the coloured plan on its screen until he found and enlarged the area around unit 73. ‘Very different, you see? Our master hasn’t been updated yet. You get the picture.’

  Brock was feeling the way he often did when people demonstrated computers to him. Irritated and depressed. He could sympathise now with Jackson’s warning description of Cook’s plans as ‘technical’. And he could understand why he’d stuck to his ‘crude’ plans.

  ‘Frustrating, I know,’ the engineer said. He went over to a rack standing in a corner of the room, and slid from it a set of plans clipped together on a wooden handle, and laid these down on the table. ‘This is probably the sort of thing you want. One to five hundred scale plans of the spatial layouts of each level, with the landlord’s structure in black lines and tenants’additions, as far as we’ve recorded them, in red. I can give it to you at an enlarged scale if you want, one to two hundred say, but that would cover several sheets for each level.’

  Brock stared at the plans, rubbing his hand through his beard, his feeling of irritation becoming rapidly compounded by a sense of unease. ‘So inside their own shops, tenants could have built rooms, cupboards, cavities that don’t appear on these plans at all, and that you don’t know about?’

  Cook nodded. ‘Certainly. We should have a record of it somewhere, but I couldn’t guarantee it. You know, they get a builder in for a job they’ve agreed with us, and then they say to him, “While you’re here, give us a price for putting up an extra couple of walls over there.” It happens. And it’s always a last-minute rush, and they know if they apply to us for approval it’ll slow them down… You understand.’

  ‘And what would be the best way for us to check this?’

  Cook considered. ‘The best way would be to hire a team of surveyors to come in and make a survey, take spot room dimensions using laser equipment, check variations. I’d love it if you did. We could use an accurate set of plans.’

  ‘How long would that take?’

  ‘This is a big place. At least a month to do it thoroughly, I should think. And it would cost.’

  ‘We don’t have a month.’

  ‘What exactly are you looking for?’

  ‘We think that the murdered girl may have been held somewhere before the killer put her body into the compactor. We did a close search of the areas immediately in the vicinity of the machine, and a broader search of the whole complex, but we didn’t find this place, if it exists. That’s what we’re looking for, Mr Cook. What would you advise? Say you had twenty-four hours, not a month. What would you do?’

  The engineer considered that for a while. ‘You have to try to think like the murderer, don’t you? That’s what you do all the time, I suppose.’ He seemed amused by that thought. ‘Well, I think you’d have a problem getting up to much in the larger units. There would be people coming and going all the time, asking questions, noticing anything odd. In the small units on the other hand-I mean the very small units, with just one or two staff at quiet times… Was it a quiet time when she disappeared?’

  ‘Fairly quiet.’

  ‘Right… Yes, you might be able to get away with it. Say you’re the sole owner of a small business. A small card shop, for instance, or coffee shop-’

  ‘Or a games arcade or gelato shop,’ Brock suggested.

  ‘That sort of thing. You could have a quiet spot of building work done as part of a larger alteration, then change your employees, and after a while there wouldn’t be anyone but you would know.’

  ‘Trouble is, we’ve had a reasonably close look at most of the likely candidates. But we can do it again.’

  ‘Yes. But I was going to say that the quietest and most undisturbed places of all, if you had access…’ Cook pondered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, they’re not even on the plans you had. Look, I’ll show you.’

  They looked over his shoulder as he adjusted the image on his computer screen again.

  ‘Those plans you had are the type we give visitors, members of the public. They don’t need to know abou
t these, for instance.’ He pointed to an array of rooms on the screen. ‘Those are plant and service rooms, electricity substations and the like.’

  ‘We checked out a number of plant rooms along the service road,’ Lowry said.

  ‘Yes, but there’s plenty more. Like those, on the lowest level, around the main plenum.’ He indicated a long narrow chamber which zig-zagged across the width of the screen. ‘It runs the length of the basement beneath the loading platform.’

  Brock turned to Lowry, who shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘Go on,’ Brock said. ‘What’s a plenum?’

  ‘It’s the final big duct used for gathering all the exhaust air from the centre-its lung, you might say. The whole building breathes tempered air, see, which percolates through every part and finally ends up in the plenum. It starts at roof level, where outdoor air is treated in the rooftop plant rooms, washed, scrubbed, dried, cooled or heated to twenty-two degrees C, then pumped into the upper malls. From there it gets drawn in to the shop units by extract ducts at their rear, in the ceilings of the rear service corridors, then down in a series of big drop ducts to the lowest level where it discharges along with the exhaust air from the service road and basement areas into the plenum chamber. From there it’s pulled by big fans through heat exchangers to recover waste heat, then discharged to open air again at the end of the building.’

  ‘Can you get into these ducts?’

  ‘Into the plenum, yes. There’s access for maintenance, and to the plant rooms that support it. But not for general use. Between maintenance inspections you could wander around down there for months without being disturbed, provided there wasn’t a plant failure or a rat plague or something.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Brock said. ‘Why the hell didn’t we know about this before?’

  ‘Well, probably because there’s a very good reason why your murderer wouldn’t be down there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, you see, the access is through the security centre. That would make it a bit tricky for him, wouldn’t it?’

  They thanked Cook and crossed the corridor to the entrance to the management offices.

  Brock found Bo Seager tense and preoccupied, with Nathan Tindall ominously silent on the opposite side of the room. Both seemed subdued by the presence of a solicitor representing the company which owned Silvermeadow.

  Bo began by saying that Harry Jackson had not made it clear what Brock wanted a meeting for, and then asked peremptorily what they’d been doing in Allen Cook’s office. Brock’s answer, that they’d been checking the building plans to see if there could be areas they’d missed on their earlier search, didn’t seem to reassure her. From her comments he gathered that the initial euphoria over the turnover figures arising from the publicity had worn off, and this was confirmed by the solicitor, who quickly established himself as the spokesman for the management group. Their board, he explained, was now deeply disturbed that the company name should be associated with this sort of notoriety, which was absolutely contrary to the image and values they had all worked so hard to project. The board demanded a speedy resolution.

  ‘I understand you have been interviewing various of our tenants,’ he said. ‘May I ask whether you intend to make any arrests, or lay any charges?’

  ‘Not at present.’

  ‘From my reading of the situation, we have bent over backwards to facilitate your demands for access to Silvermeadow to assist your investigations, Chief Inspector. But enough is enough. This is private property you’re camping in.’ He smiled thinly. ‘You don’t need me to remind you that if you’d applied for a warrant to enter this centre it would have entitled you to one visit only. This open-ended, interminable access is simply unacceptable. It is disrupting my client’s operations and creating a highly negative climate at a critical point in the trading year.’ He cleared his throat and looked over at Bo Seager.

  ‘Four kids tried to mug Santa this morning,’ she said in a sombre tone.

  ‘ Santa, did you say?’ Lowry asked, looking startled.

  ‘Yes. Santa was in his grotto next to the magic roundabout on the upper mall, with a line of toddlers and their mums queuing up to see him, and the four of them marched up and started laying into him.’

  ‘What, to rob him?’

  ‘No, no, just for the pleasure of it. Fortunately control spotted them on the cameras coming in the west entrance, and radioed the mall security. They caught up with the little bastards just as they were getting really stuck into poor old Santa.’ She turned to Brock with a concerned frown. ‘He’s seventy-two, Chief Inspector.’ Brock noted the formal title. No more David, at least not in front of the suits. ‘He’s been doing it for twenty years. We inherited him from a department store that closed down in Dagenham. The thing was, when Harry asked these little creeps what they thought they were doing, the ringleader said, cheeky as anything, “Well, this is murder-mall, yeah?” Like it’s open season, or something.’

  ‘The point is, Chief Inspector,’ Nathan Tindall broke in angrily, ‘this can’t go on. We’re going to have to ask you to vacate unit 184.’

  Brock turned to see what Bo had to say, but she remained silent.

  ‘And any further incursions will have to be supported by a warrant,’ the solicitor added, ‘which we shall oppose, bearing in mind there’s no conclusive evidence we’re aware of that a crime has been committed on this property, or that any further evidence relating to the disappearance of Kerri Vlasich is to be found here.’

  Brock studied his fingernails, letting them wait for his inevitable objections, then said abruptly, ‘I agree. I was coming to the view myself that a visible police presence here was becoming counterproductive. I suggest that we make a press statement to the effect that the investigation here is being wound down and moving elsewhere.’

  He was aware of Lowry looking at him, startled, while Bo Seager appeared intensely relieved.

  ‘Well,’ the solicitor smiled, ‘good, good.’

  ‘From our discussion with Mr Cook,’ Brock went on, smiling back, ‘we are just a little concerned that we may have missed one or two areas in our original search that may prevent us from making a conclusive final report. The coroner hates loose ends, you understand. That’s my only concern.’

  The solicitor frowned. ‘How long, exactly, are these loose ends?’

  ‘Mr Cook has estimated that it might take a month to be a hundred per cent sure we haven’t missed anything.’

  This produced a spluttered protest.

  Brock let it run for a moment, then lifted his eye to see Bo Seager’s reaction. She was considering him closely. She shook her head and said, ‘No.’

  ‘The problem is that some of your tenants seem to have been building rabbit warrens inside their tenancies, without getting approvals. I have to say that the fire brigade might be concerned at some of the things we’ve seen. Without a definitive plan-’

  ‘How long?’ Bo said.

  ‘We might be able to do enough to satisfy the coroner in, say, twenty-four hours. But we’d need complete access.’

  Bo looked at him coolly for a moment, then turned to the solicitor and murmured something about peanuts. He shook his head sharply, and Bo looked back at Brock without a trace of expression on her face.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘let me consult with my colleagues here and get back to you. We may have to get approval from above. Will tomorrow morning be okay?’

  ‘Tonight, Bo. There are some areas we want to check tonight.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’

  12

  K athy thought she understood Brock’s mood well enough as they waited. He was annoyed with Lowry, but most of all with himself, for the way in which the initial search of the huge building had been conducted. It was difficult now to know what would be worse: finding nothing after yet more wasted effort, or turning up something that should have been discovered five days before. She watched him stomping among the teams as they assembled and studied the copies
Allen Cook had provided of the most current plans. They fell silent as he joined each in turn, hands in pockets, face dark, making them feel edgy.

  While they waited they were joined by a dog handler and also by a small SOCO team accompanied by Leon Desai. Kathy felt an odd sense of embarrassment at waiting in the crowded room with him, as if somehow their private life, as well as Silvermeadow’s, was under scrutiny. She was aware of him trying to catch her eye, and of herself finding ways to avoid it.

  Bo Seager’s call finally came, and they filed out. Lowry was to take most of them down to check the smaller units in the food court and Bazaar areas, while the remainder, including the handler and his dog, took the stair down to the service road and along to the security centre, where Cook was waiting for them with a box of hard hats. The two security staff on duty watched them with vague curiosity as they tried out the hats, and some put on overalls and boots, before following Cook through to the back of the centre and down a corridor which brought them to a locked door marked AUTHORISED ENTRY ONLY. He unlocked it, hit a light switch and led them down a sloping ramp.

  Kathy found it hard to say what made the place seem suddenly so different. The harsh bulkhead lights, the bare concrete tunnel descending into darkness, the silence disturbed only by their footsteps and the distant murmur of machinery, all made it feel as divorced from the bustle of the service road as that had seemed from the life of the mall. It really did feel like descending into an ancient tomb or catacomb.

  They reached a space at the bottom of the ramp, a kind of chamber whose walls contained a number of doors. Cook used his key to open them, and people moved off into the plant rooms that lay beyond. Kathy, Brock, Leon, the dog handler and two SOCO men remained. Cook took them to the last opening, a low double doorway of louvred panels, and said, ‘No lights beyond here, folks. Watch your heads. We’re going into the lungs of the beast.’

  Kathy stooped and followed Leon through the opening and into the pool of light formed by Cook’s flashlight as he helped them through. As he straightened, Leon, the tallest one among them, hit his hard hat against the low concrete roof with a clunk.