Silvermeadow (16 page)

‘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 there 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 café 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.

She stopped outside a large household furnishings store on the lower mall, and gazed idly at the ranks of beds disappearing off into the distance. So many! What on earth was the difference? She strolled in, and a young man immediately came over.

‘Morning, madam. Can I help you?’

‘It’s okay, I’m with the police team, following up the visits yesterday. But I was just looking at your beds. I need a new one, actually.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place here.’

‘But what’s the difference between them all?’

It took him a little while to cover just a bare overview of the intricacies of inner springing and foam, orthopaedic and lumbar support, and during the course of it she was persuaded to try a few of the mattress types, which she did, a bit cautiously at first, imagining herself being spotted by colleagues in the mall as she slipped off her shoes and lay down and bounced. But the mall was quiet this Monday morning, and she soon entered into the spirit of the thing, and actually did decide which one she would have got, if she had actually been intending to buy something.

‘I can do a special on that one,’ the young man said, and quoted quite a decent discount price.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Not for too long though,’ he said. ‘This is a special for the run-up to Christmas.’

‘Oh, I see. But it would be difficult,’ she said.

‘How come?’

‘Well, for a start, I live on the twelfth floor of a block in Finchley.’

‘Not a problem. Finchley? We’re delivering that way this afternoon.’

‘But I won’t be there.’

‘Neighbour?’

There was Mrs P in the next flat, for whom Kathy often did favours, and who had a key.

‘But I have an old bed I’d have to get rid of first.’

‘We’ll take it away for you. No charge.’

‘Really?’ That easy. ‘Maybe I could . . . but then I’d need bedside cabinets, and reading lamps.’

‘I’ll show you our range: modern, traditional, cottage style.’

‘And new bedding, of course. I’d need completely new bedding.’ And about time, she thought.

‘Pop into Davis’s next door. They’ve got a huge range there. Pick out what you want and tell them that we’re delivering for you this afternoon. We’ll fix it up with them.’

Half an hour later Kathy left Davis’s feeling rather numb. It was all so amazingly easy. This wasn’t like battling through the supermarket or the chain store in the high street on a Saturday morning. This was
shopping
. She felt she’d never really understood before.

There was a vast electrical goods shop further along the mall. There seemed no harm in wandering in, just to get a preliminary idea of what was on the market these days. She had the place to herself. This time two sales assistants fell over each other to serve her. When she came out again, tucking her hot little credit card back in her purse, she made another call to Mrs P, to let her know there would also be a delivery of a new combined washing machine and drier, to be connected on delivery and the old machine taken away, as well as a video/TV, same deal. Oh, and the hair drier and toaster, her old ones being practically antiques. And the waffle maker. She detected a certain avid curiosity from Mrs P, who asked if she might have first refusal on the old stuff.

It was a heady combination, she decided, sex and shopping. She felt oddly elated and exhausted, and thought she’d better sit down calmly somewhere and have a cup of coffee.

She was so dazed that she didn’t realise at first that the couple sitting at the next table in the Café de l’Opera were making surreptitious little signals to her. Then she recognised them: the woman with the petition about the music in the mall, together with the tweedy old gent who’d doffed his hat to her when she’d been drinking coffee with Gavin Lowry.

‘Oh, hello,’ she smiled.

‘Would you care to join us?’ the little woman asked, and Kathy, remembering the residents’association, thought, why not? I might as well look as if I’m working, instead of daydreaming of Leon naked in that bloody great bed.

‘Robbie was just telling me that he’d seen you at the weekend with your husband,’ Mrs Rutter beamed, ‘and I said that I’d met you with your children, and so we thought, aha!, a new family we should get to know. This is Robbie Orr, by the way, and I’m Harriet Rutter.’

‘Kathy Kolla,’ she shook their hands, ‘and I’d better explain about the family.’

They looked grave but also extremely interested by what Kathy had to tell them.

‘Ah!’ Mrs Rutter nodded at her companion. ‘Of course we saw the officers here yesterday, but there were conflicting rumours going round as to what they were doing, and I was rather too busy with my own work to question them directly.’

‘We’ll be holding a reconstruction later today, and giving out information to the public. I have some leaflets here, and I wondered if you might like to take them for your members.’

‘Of course.’

‘Shocking business,’ Orr said. Beside Mrs Rutter he looked lanky and craggy and slightly manic, tufts of grizzled hair sticking out of his ears and nostrils and forming the little beard which bobbed up and down as he spoke. ‘Was she seen here, then, on the day she disappeared?’ She had his accent now, clipped, Scottish east coast from Edinburgh or Fife.

‘That’s what we need to establish, Mr Orr. It seems probable from what else we know that she did come here on that afternoon or evening, but we need witnesses.’

‘Professor,’ Mrs Rutter said.

‘Pardon?’

‘Robbie is
Professor
Orr,’ Mrs Rutter beamed. ‘I thought I should let you know, but you must call us Robbie and Harriet.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’

‘A
highly
distinguished man. A professor of archaeology.’

‘Former professor of archaeology, now retired,’ he said. ‘A mere amateur historian now, and thorn in Boadicea’s flesh.’

Harriet burst into more trilling laughter. Kathy guessed that this was rather excessive for her, brought on by Professor Orr’s presence.

‘I’m sorry, Kathy. You must excuse us. This is one of our little in-jokes. Boadicea is our name for the manager of this shopping centre. A harridan of a woman, whom Robbie puts securely in her place.’

‘Her ambition, do you see,’ Orr added, acknowledging the compliment with a smile that made his beard jump, ‘is to do, in shopping terms, to London and the Home Counties pretty much what Queen Boadicea did to Roman Britain—which is to say, lay it waste.’

More appreciative laughter.

‘Boadicea—Bo Seager; yes, very good.’ Kathy smiled.

‘You know her, do you?’ They looked at her in surprise.

‘I’ve met her, yes. And I can see what you mean.’

‘Robbie was here before any of us, fighting the good fight. Before the centre was even built.’

‘It was my last major project, Kathy—may I call you that? Sergeant seems wrong somehow. Whenever anyone uses the word sergeant I immediately picture my old drill sergeant, the most terrifying man in all the world. Conditioning, I suppose. You’re not too terrifying, are you, Kathy?’

His beard gave a playful little leap and Kathy thought, you’re a bit of a lad, aren’t you, Robbie?

‘
Well
, tell Kathy about your work here, Robbie,’ Mrs Rutter scolded him.

‘Ah yes. Well now, would you be aware of the reason for the name Silvermeadow, Kathy?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘It’s like this. Do you know that great big ugly structure out there in the upper carpark, with illuminated advertisements for the films showing at the picture house and so on?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s hard to believe it now, but that used to be the edge of a small wood, a copse really, on the crest of the hill. And one hundred and seventy years ago, a farmer who was ploughing up there, extending his field into the wood, unearthed a hoard of Saxon silver.’

‘Really?’

‘Aye. It’s believed that it was buried by a nobleman fleeing from the Battle of Maldon, which was fought twenty miles east of here. Would you be familiar with the Battle of Maldon from your schooldays, Kathy?’

‘Er, don’t think I am. Must have been asleep during that one.’

‘Shame on you!’ he teased. ‘Not a huge battle by modern standards, of course, but a great battle for its time all the same, between the Saxons and the Viking horde. I’m talking here of the
true
Battle of Maldon, of AD 991, not the
legendary
battle of 994, said to have lasted for fourteen days.’

‘Right.’

‘Aye. Well, anyway, these shopping centre people had no knowledge of the origin of the name. They merely noticed it on their maps as Silvermeadow Hill, and I suppose the combination of images that it conjured up, of hard cash on the one hand and a pastoral fairyland on the other, must have had a strong appeal to them.’

He arched one bushy eyebrow at her, a slightly manic gleam developing in his eye as he made the point. ‘Their choice of name was completely cynical, of course, suggesting that their monstrous new construction had some sort of connection with this place. I’m quite sure they never even considered whether this miserable little hill might have had a history at all. To them, it was merely a suitably positioned piece of real estate that might as well have been in Illinois or Manitoba.