Silvermeadow (15 page)

‘Excuse me,’ Tindall interrupted. ‘Sorry, Bo, but just before we leave that point, can I be absolutely clear about this. I’m not really familiar with police ranks, but I take it that a chief superintendent is much more senior than a chief inspector.’

Brock nodded.

‘Considerably so?’ Tindall pressed. He had an angry nasal Lancastrian accent.

‘Two steps above,’ Brock replied. ‘Although the rank has actually been abol—’

‘Well, why
isn’t
he here then, if this is the focus of your investigation?’

Brock stared at him for a moment before replying. ‘We’re running this investigation as we think best, Mr Tindall.’

Tindall stared right back, gave a little shake of his head, and said, ‘But is that good enough, Chief Inspector?’

‘If you have any problems with what we’re doing, I hope you’ll let us know.’

‘Well we do have problems, as it happens.’ He turned away with a dismissive shrug, as if he had no intention of spelling out what they were.

Brock waited, and the bluff knight leant forward to take up the point.

‘Several problems this afternoon, in point of fact, Mr Brock,’ Harry Jackson said gravely. ‘An accusation of racist harassment by one of our tenants, a black gentleman, against two of your officers. I have the details here.’ He handed a sheet of paper across to Brock. ‘Also a general complaint from a number of our tenants that the presence of your officers in their premises has been disruptive and has generally interfered with the carrying on of their business. I’m surprised, as a matter of fact, that we haven’t had a deputation already from our Small Traders’ Association. Their president, Mr Verdi, whom you met last night, is usually jumping down our throats at the slightest hint of trouble.’

‘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.’