Silvermeadow (17 page)

‘But the place did have a history, you see. For after the battle one of the Saxon noblemen and his party were pursued here by the victorious Vikings, as rapacious for silver as the developers of this shopping centre. Indeed, I have no doubt there is a strong genetic connection.’

‘What happened?’

‘The Saxon party arrived here in the late afternoon, exhausted and demoralised, and buried their precious silver in the wood. Then they came down here, where we are now, in the lee of the hill, and made a fire and a camp for the night. They must have thought themselves safe from pursuit. But the Norsemen had not given up, and with the first dawn light they swept over the hill and descended on the Saxons like wolves, slaughtering them, every one.’ Orr paused for effect, sweeping his hand about him. ‘Eight men and boys, all murdered here, their corpses buried on the spot. Here they lay, undisturbed, for precisely one thousand years.’ He leant towards Kathy and fixed her with a wild stare. ‘
Precisely
, mind you, that’s the uncanny thing. One millennium, to the day, perhaps the very hour, until they were disturbed by a bulldozer beginning the construction of this place.’

Kathy nodded, imagining the effect of his theatrical story-telling on his lady admirers in the Silvermeadow Residents’ Association.

‘Well, they had to stop, of course, as soon as the skeletons came to light. A proper archaeological assessment had to be made. I was nearby, at the local university, and this was my period, the Viking incursions. I lived here on the site for months, in those site huts you can still see round the east end of the building, with a team of volunteers, students and young people from all over, trying to establish what else was here before they chewed it up in their great machines.’

The imagery struck Kathy as oddly apt, given what had happened to Kerri Vlasich. But then the whole of Orr’s tale, with his rather exultant account of past murder, had an uncomfortable resonance with Kerri’s death.

‘And was there anything else?’

‘No. Oh there were a few surprises beneath the ground for them—a hidden spring, a pocket of sand—but nothing for me. My volunteers left at the end of that first summer, but I returned, from time to time. The construction workers got to know me, the mad professor.’ He chuckled, eyes twinkling. ‘They adopted me, like a mascot, an old goat.’

‘And now he’s one of us,’ Mrs Rutter said. ‘One of our most distinguished members.’

‘Oh now Harriet . . .’ he admonished her.

‘You must enjoy coming here,’ Kathy said.

‘I should describe it as a love-hate relationship,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly convenient, and comfortable, and we meet all our friends here. But it’s also very crass, of course, so
commercial
.’

‘It’s worse than that, Harriet. It’s deadening, it feeds on life.’

‘How do you mean?’ Kathy asked.

‘I mean that it feeds on all the real places around here, all the real towns and villages that have been steadily growing and developing for a thousand years, and are now having the life-blood sucked out of them by this great hulking
parasite
!’ His eyes blazed at the word. ‘And I also mean that it takes the life out of people, too. It is an offence against our natures, Kathy. It sanitises us, deodorises us, and turns us into shadows. Look at them!’ he roared, sweeping an upturned hand like a claw towards the shoppers meandering past. ‘It’s turning a warrior race, the hammer of the Scots, the butchers of the Welsh and Irish, the ravagers of half the globe, into a docile herd of consumers who care for nothing but woolly jumpers and soft music.’

Harriet Rutter gave a delighted chuckle. ‘And yet we keep coming back, do we not, Robbie?’

‘Aye,’ he nodded, calm again, wiping some spittle from his chin. ‘We keep coming back. The only thing that can be said for it is that: just as it has no past, so it also has no future. It didn’t grow out of anything that was here before and nothing will grow out of it; it will not age or acquire the patina of time, and no archaeologist will ever excavate its ruins; for when its usefulness is over its owners, caring nothing for it, will simply bulldoze it, sweep it away, and not a trace of it will remain.’

Brock was taking an early working lunch, munching a pie while he worked through the piles of reports covering his table. Kathy spotted a Sainsbury’s bag by his chair.

‘I’m getting bogged down, Kathy,’ he complained. ‘Buried in paper.’

‘Sorry, you should let me do that,’ she said, guilty at her morning lapse. She still couldn’t quite believe that she’d bought all that stuff. On impulse.

‘No, no. I want you out there, finding out about the girl. There’s a lot about Miss Kerri Vlasich that we don’t know, I’d say. You all right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Just thought you looked a bit . . . distant. Phil thinks you might be going down with something.’

Going down with something. Well, it did feel a bit like that.

‘No, I’m fine, really. Why don’t you get Gavin Lowry to do it then?’

‘He’s the one shovelling most of it onto my desk,’ Brock said, thoughtful. ‘Yes, you’re right. He can do this. He elected himself to meet the father at Gatwick this afternoon, but we should go. We’ll bring him here for the walk-through. Watch his reaction.’

‘Good idea.’

‘You missed our SIO’s visit,’ Brock said dryly.

‘Oh dear.’

‘Never mind. You’ll see him on TV tonight. He’s made a public statement, appealing for information. You do have a TV, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. Gavin isn’t loading the chief super down with paperwork, then?’

Brock smiled. ‘Too nimble on his feet for that, is our Orville. I get the impression he knows Gavin pretty well. He was highly amused when I brought up Gavin’s little worry about reporting direct to him. Said he’d only asked him to let him know if we were short of anything. Didn’t want me to get the impression they were penny-pinching.’

Stefan Vlasich showed little reaction to anything when they picked him up at the airport. He had broad, impassive Slavic features, and seemed determined to show no signs of emotion. He’d been working in the forests near Jaroslaw in eastern Poland, near the Ukraine border, he growled, staring stolidly at the Surrey countryside flashing past the patrol car window. Communications had not been good. It had taken longer than it should have to get him back to Warsaw and catch a plane. How long had he been there, in the forests? He swivelled his blank eyes round at Brock and said, ‘Four weeks. Almost five. Living night and day in a camp with twenty others, laying pipeline. The police spoke to the supervisors. They confirmed it, didn’t they? What, you think I came over here and killed my own daughter?’

‘We’ll have to go over all this in a formal interview, Mr Vlasich,’ Brock said. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s necessary for the record. But tell me now, will you? I’m curious. You really had no idea at all that your daughter was planning to visit you?’

Kathy was in the front passenger seat, next to the police driver, Brock and Vlasich in the back, Vlasich directly behind her so that she had to swivel right round to see his face.

‘No. No idea,’ he said, and turned away to watch the slip road curve onto the M25.

They crossed the Thames through the Dartford tunnel and emerged into the flat industrial wastes of Essex, and Kathy tried to imagine an earlier landscape, of marshes and Saxon hamlets, without success.

‘Are you taking me to see her?’ Vlasich asked heavily.

Brock replied, ‘Later, Mr Vlasich.’

They passed Junction 29, and then the driver began signalling his turn, and Vlasich said, ‘Where are we?’ Then, seeing the Silvermeadow sign, ‘What is this?’

‘We’re calling in here first, Mr Vlasich,’ Brock said. ‘It’s possible that Kerri died here.’

The vast carpark panorama opened up as the slip road reached the crest.

‘What?’ There was a note of sudden alarm in Vlasich’s voice, the more startling after its persistent monotone.

Kathy twisted round in her seat, but her attention was caught by Brock’s expression as he studied the other man, watchful, attentive, the hunter’s focus in his eyes.

‘She worked here, you know,’ Brock said, sounding the same as before. ‘We’re staging a walk-through with someone who looks like Kerri. We’d like you to witness it, if you wouldn’t mind. Is that all right?’

Kathy turned to look at Vlasich. He was staring at the long low bulk of the building ahead. ‘No . . . I don’t want . . . I won’t do this. I don’t want to go in there.’

‘I can understand it might be distressing for you,’ Brock said carefully, sounding more curious than sympathetic. ‘But your observations might help us. You may recognize someone. Something might jog your memory, about something Kerri might have said, or hinted.’

‘No way!’ Vlasich said, almost in a panic. ‘You turn round this fucking car right now!’

Brock considered him silently for a moment, then turned to the driver and murmured something. The car drew to a halt. ‘Kathy,’ Brock said, ‘you’d best stay here and meet the girls when they arrive. I’ll take Mr Vlasich to Hornchurch Street to make a formal statement.’

‘Fine,’ Kathy said, and looked again at the dead girl’s father. His face was as grey as the weeping sky.

*

Brock had told Kathy of his concern that the re-enactment might be lost among the shopping crowds at Silvermeadow, but it was clear, as soon as the police car pulled up at the west mall entrance, that the radio and poster publicity had ensured this was going to be the big event of the afternoon, if not the shopping week. A crowd of people was waiting as Lisa and Naomi stepped out, like stars arriving for a guest appearance. They walked forward to the doors, then hesitated at all this attention: the people strained forward, a TV cameraman backing away in front of them, lights and microphone suspended over their heads.

Kathy came to Lisa’s side and whispered encouragement. She looked very pale as she drew herself up and set off again, face set, striding forward, her hair pulled back in a ponytail tied up in a scarlet and green ribbon, as Kerri’s had probably been, the green backpack bobbing conspicuously between her shoulders. There had been doubts about whether Lisa should do this, whether it might be distressing for her to play the part of her murdered friend, but when it had been raised with her she had been adamant. It was her duty to Kerri, she had said through tears. Kerri wouldn’t want anyone else to do it.

Once in the mall it seemed to Kathy that the cavalcade took on the character of a royal progress, with lines of shoppers forming up on each side of the route in front of the advancing party, Harry Jackson’s security guards forging the way ahead, small kids running along the outside to stir up the stragglers. A second local TV news camera crew joined the procession, then another. Shoppers got to their feet at the café tables as they passed, and lined the balcony rails overhead. Kathy noticed how the girls seemed to become more confident. When they reached the C&A windows they paused, positioning themselves advantageously in front of the cameras, and put on a show of window-shopping while the crowd stood attentively silent all around.

They moved on down the mall and the music on the PA system cut out so that a voice could inform everyone what was happening, the programme notes to a real-life tragedy. The music resumed, an upbeat number, just as it had a week before, and the cavalcade moved forward towards the escalators and surged down into the rainforest and through the food court. It was obvious that the crush would never make it through the narrower spaces of the Bazaar, and the PA system came on again to announce that the reenactment was now at an end and that police officers would be ready at tables strategically positioned throughout the centre to hear from witnesses, their tables identifiable by enlarged photographs of Kerri’s smiling face. At the same time, all stalls in the food court would be offering a ten per cent discount on food purchases made before six p.m., twenty per cent on family specials.

Kathy took the girls back to the patrol car waiting to take them home. Lisa was subdued, but Naomi seemed almost serene as she turned to Kathy at the car door and said, ‘Same time tomorrow, then?’

‘Yes, thank you, Naomi. We really appreciate it.’ And she added, though afterwards she wondered if it had been a bit mawkish, ‘Kerri would be grateful too, for what you’ve done.’

She tapped in her security code at the door to the service area, getting a little buzz from the recollection of Leon giving her his number. So long ago it seemed, before everything happened, before she had even imagined that it could happen. She was impatient to leave, to pick him up in Lambeth as they’d arranged, but there were things that had to be done.

Sharon gave her a wave from her console in the security centre as she came in. Speedy was working at another table, on what looked like a video-editing machine, with images flashing past on the screen in front of him. He spotted her reflection in his screen and turned to her with a big toothy smile. ‘Yo, Sergeant!’ he called.

‘Hello Speedy,’ Kathy said, surprised at this welcome, wondering what had put him in such a good mood.

‘Your tape’s ready, babe,’ he said. ‘All done.’

‘Thanks. We appreciate it.’ Bo Seager had arranged for Speedy to compile a tape of the walk-through from his monitors for Brock to view when he returned from Hornchurch Street.

‘Ms Seager said if you want you can use the video machine in her office,’ Sharon said. ‘The office’ll be open till late.’

‘Great. We might do that. It gets rather hectic in the unit.’ Kathy took the tape that Speedy offered her and turned to go.

‘Oh, and I’ve got this as well,’ Speedy said, reaching for a second tape in a sealed box.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s some odds and ends I found,’ Speedy said, grinning rather wildly. He’s on something, she thought. ‘Just stuff from the monitors. But I thought there might be something there of use to you. You never know.’

‘Really? You think it could help us? Maybe I should leave this for my boss too.’

‘Oh, no.’ He sniggered as if at some private joke. ‘Have a look at it yourself first, babe, before you show him. Decide whether it’s worth a wider audience.’