Silvermeadow (18 page)

There was something about the way he put it that she didn’t like.

Maybe it’s a dirty movie, she thought. Maybe this is Speedy’s way of flashing.

‘Okay. I’ll do that.’

‘Yeah.’ He grinned, and turned away. ‘You do that,
babe
.’

She turned to Sharon, who shrugged and gave her a look that said, that’s Speedy for you.

Kathy returned to the unit and phoned Brock. He was on his way back, he told her, having spent over an hour interviewing Stefan Vlasich, which hadn’t been very helpful. The man’s composure had been reimposed, his answers short and unilluminating. When pressed about his reaction to going into Silvermeadow he claimed that he had been unable to face the sight of another child playing the role of his little girl, but Brock knew that his panic had started before he had mentioned the walk-through. There was something odd there all right. Then they had gone to the morgue, where the people had done their best to make one side of Kerri’s face presentable. Stefan Vlasich had stared through the window at the small shrouded figure of his daughter without a flicker of reaction.

‘What about the walk-through?’ Brock asked. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine. The girls did it very well. We’ve had a lot of reports from members of the public who say they knew Kerri by sight, but no one who can be specific about the sixth. The walk-through itself was like a circus. There’s a tape of it here for you to see, if you want. There’s a machine in the centre management offices, and they say they’ll be open till late if you want a bit of peace and quiet.’

‘Okay. Why don’t you go home now, Kathy? Get to bed early tonight. Boss’s orders.’

Kathy hesitated. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, with a little smile.

She drove into central London, phoning him on the way, so that he was waiting under the arch of the railway bridge when she arrived. He put the carrier bags he was carrying into the back and slipped in quickly beside her, and they grabbed each other as if their whole day had been spent waiting in furious impatience for this moment, which it had.

‘God,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve missed you. I can’t believe how much.’

‘Me too. Home?’

‘Yes please.’

‘What did you tell your mum and dad?’

‘I’m staying with a friend. We’re thinking of getting a place together.’

‘How did they take that?’

‘Fine. They seemed pleased.’

‘Did you specify the gender of the friend?’

‘No, and they didn’t ask. Funny really.’

Kathy pulled out into the traffic and turned north, heading for Vauxhall Bridge. ‘Have you been shopping?’ she asked, nodding over her shoulder at the bags in the back.

‘Just a few things for you. Food, a couple of bottles, one or two little things for the kitchen. You’re not offended, are you?’

She laughed. ‘Course not. What sort of little things?’

He reached back for one of the bags and brought them out: pepper and salt grinders, a corkscrew, two eggcups and a thing for drizzling olive oil.

‘
Drizzling
olive oil! Wow.’

‘You’re sure you’re not offended?’

‘Not in the least. I did a bit of shopping today too.’

‘What did you get?’

‘That’s a surprise.’

Brock took the video down the mall to the centre management offices. The door was locked, but Bo Seager answered his knock. Her mood seemed much changed from the previous evening, relaxed and welcoming. She took the tape from him and put it in the machine, sat him down and offered him a malt.

‘That does sound tempting,’ he said. ‘Just a small one, thanks, Ms Seager.’

‘Bo, please.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sorry if we sounded kinda belligerent last night. David, isn’t it? Frankly, we were nervous about the impact of all this. And I guess Nathan Tindall felt he had to make a point.’

‘He did that all right.’

‘Nathan believes in covering all the angles. That way he may well end up with my job, if and when I mess things up good and proper.’ She said it lightly, as if it was to be taken as a joke. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers. So you feel less nervous now . . . Bo?’

‘After the way the walk-through went today, I feel we may have to make a big donation to the police widows fund, or whatever. Oh dear, you’re frowning at my tastelessness. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. So it didn’t put your customers off?’

‘Quite the opposite! It seems a murder is a much bigger draw than Santa Claus. Isn’t that interesting? I might give a paper on it to the next marketing conference. Look, I’ll show you.’

She reached for the remote and sat back, crossing her long dark legs in a way that Brock found momentarily distracting. Then the screen came to life with a scene like a triumphal parade.

‘Good grief !’ Brock muttered.

There was no doubt that Speedy Reynolds had flair, heightening the drama of the occasion with rapid switches from camera to camera, distant shots alternating with close-ups, panning and zooming like a professional.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Bo said. ‘Speedy, I mean. He does it really well.’

‘Good grief,’ Brock repeated, shaking his head as the edited film came to an end.

‘What’s the matter?’ Bo asked him.

‘It’s a bloody circus!’

‘You look shocked.’

He shook his head. ‘No, not really. We uncover a body in the woods, or a plane comes down somewhere, and suddenly the lanes are full of cars, like blowflies homing in on the smell of death. But still, this is something, isn’t it? Carnival time.’

‘Oh, come on! You called them here! You wanted them to take an interest. Then you sit back and call them blowflies!’

He saw that she was teasing him, and he smiled back. ‘Yes, well, you don’t seem to be wasting the opportunity— ten per cent discounts on food in the food court? And it all seems to be doing great things for your turnover—the carparks look pretty full.’

‘Fifty per cent up on a normal Monday evening, I’d say. You’re disapproving again, but seriously, I wonder why you object to people showing their interest in their own way? Who’s to say what’s responsible interest and what’s morbid? Me, I prefer to take people just as they are.’

‘Then you’d probably make a good copper, Bo.’

‘No, a good shopping centre manager—much more rewarding, financially anyway. And more than financially. I don’t know how you can spend your life digging about exposing the shit in life. I prefer to wrap it all up in gorgeous gift paper and sell it for a bomb. I guess it’s basically a difference of philosophy.’

‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Philosophy, eh?’ He finished his drink and she reached across with the bottle, ignoring his shake of the head.

‘Sure. You’re a liberal, right? You adore positive logic, and you have a certain political awareness, which maybe is the conscience of the privileged. You want to have things verified, and at the same time help the less fortunate. It’s very old-fashioned.’

‘Thank you,’ Brock grunted. He had heard this lecture before, and wasn’t really in the mood for it again.

‘Winston Starkey, for instance, the black guy who runs the games arcade, who your officers were hassling.’

‘I am pursuing that, don’t worry. If they were in the wrong, they’ll pay, believe me.’

‘Oh, I do. You’ve been talking to him, yes?’

‘I went and had a word with him this morning, yes. You’re well informed, Bo.’

‘Naturally. But actually he came and told me so himself. He believes that some of the other traders and our security guys—all white, of course—have it in for him. Put your people up to it.’

‘He’s probably right. What’s your point?’

‘My point is that you want to believe the best of him, because of what he is: black and gay and kinda dumb. Whereas I don’t.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. If he’s up to anything, and especially if it’s drugs, I want you to hit him hard. And I’m black and wear gold jewellery too.’

‘Fair enough.’

Bo smiled. ‘Your sergeants have a more modern philosophy.’

‘Have they really?’

‘Sure. They’re not like you, they’re classless, thank God.’

Brock frowned at his glass, feeling tired.

She mistook his expression and said quickly, ‘Sorry, David, no offence to you. I just find this English class thing so boring.’

‘I know . . .’ He decided he’d better let her have her fun. ‘I thought I was fairly classless, actually.’

‘Sure,’ she laughed. ‘Middle-classless. I’m not sure whether it’s upper-middle-classless or middle-middle-classless, but that’s because I’m a foreigner. If I were English I’d know for sure within ten seconds of you opening your mouth which kind of classless you were. Now the tough guy, what’s his name?’

‘Lowry.’

‘Yes. He’s a contemporary, post-Thatcher, English type, I’d say.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Oh, hungry, devious, prepared to do whatever it takes.’

‘I think that’s just style, Bo. Posturing. We all do it, in our different ways. Reassures us that we aren’t completely beholden to the chief super’—he eyed her over the rim of his glass—‘or the finance manager.’

She flinched, then smiled and continued, ignoring his little barb. ‘Your other sergeant, Kathy, is different. I like her. She’s kind of intense, but interesting. Not too politically sophisticated, I’d guess, but she’s very keen on catching bad guys. She thinks in her own way. You tell her one thing, she’ll try something else. Am I right?’

‘Pretty much, yes. Intense, you think?’

‘Yes, but I think there’s a fairly straightforward reason for that.’

‘I work her too hard?’

Bo laughed. ‘No. I’d say . . . it’s just a guess. I’d say she needs a good screw. You look surprised. Am I right?’

Brock took another swallow of his drink while he considered that. ‘Quite possibly. I didn’t think you’d really seen much of her.’

‘Oh, I read people quickly, David. And I have talked to her, as a matter of fact. We bumped into each other this morning. She wanted to know about our archaeologist.’

‘Your what?’

Bo laughed. ‘One of our local fruitcakes. He first showed up when we started building here. Early on, when they disturbed the ground, they hit something bad.’ She leant forward, eyes bright, and whispered, ‘Bones.’

‘Bones?’

She nodded. ‘Human remains.’

Brock sat up sharply, pushing out of his mind the extraordinary way her broad lips formed the first syllable of ‘human’.

‘Human? How the hell didn’t I know about this?’

‘They were kind of old.’

‘But still . . .’

‘Like, a thousand years old.’ She laughed. ‘It was really bad news, because of course the archaeologists had to be told, and for six months they were here, off and on, digging around the place, getting in everybody’s way. We were terrified they’d find a Roman city or something, but all they ever found were those bones. Eventually they all left, all except this local fruitcake, a professor of archaeology, who’d been helping them. He’s still here, haunting the place, mainly I think so he can lord it over the elderly matrons of the locality, who fuss over him and give him treats. Kathy bumped into him with one of those ladies in the mall, and came to find out from me what they were on about.’

‘I see. She didn’t mention it to me. Which reminds me that I’ve got a pile of reports to read before I go home.’ He sighed and got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the use of your video, and the drink, and the assessment of my team. It was all most enlightening.’

‘You’re not cross with me, are you? About the class thing?’

‘No, not at all. Although it did make me feel a little old.’

‘Well, you know the best way to stay young, don’t you?’

He never heard the answer to that because her phone started ringing, but from the look she gave him as he left he guessed that sex came into it somewhere.

Kathy opened her front door with some trepidation, expecting a mess, but between them Mrs P and the delivery men had managed things remarkably well. There, facing them, where the battered old brown box of her TV had been, was an impressive black electronic presence winking a small red light at them to tell them it was alive and ready to go. Over to the left, through the door of the kitchenette, she could see other gleaming new friends, while the transformation in the bedroom was even more impressive.

‘When did you manage this?’ Leon gasped, astonished.

In the vast spaces of the showroom the bed had seemed quite moderate in scale, but now, in the small bedroom, it looked huge. There was barely room to move around it, or open the built-in wardrobe door.

‘Is it too big?’ Kathy said, feeling a twinge of loss for her old narrow bed.

Leon shook his head. ‘Hell no. What’s a bedroom for?’

They unpacked the bedding stacked neatly at the foot, and made up the bed, adjusting to its dimensions. Then Kathy checked her watch and said, ‘Let’s see if we can get the TV to work. Forbes is making a press statement.’

She was astonished at the clarity of the picture, the subtle flesh tones that made the people on the screen look and sound like humans instead of plastic puppets. And Chief Superintendent Forbes filled these new dimensions like a seasoned performer, voice resonant, gaze steady, as he appealed for public assistance. The pictures of the girl wearing the frog bag, and of Kerri herself, leapt out into the room.

When it was over, they switched off and unpacked the food and wine that Leon had bought.

‘I’ll get plates and glasses,’ Kathy said, and handed the remote to Leon. ‘See if you can figure out how to work the video. One of the security guys at Silvermeadow gave me a tape he said I’d want to see. We can try it out.’

When she returned a few minutes later Leon was standing staring at the screen, transfixed. ‘Who did you say gave you this thing?’ he said.

‘Oh, don’t tell me it’s tacky.’

‘Look.’ He rewound the tape and began it again as she came to his side.

It was hard at first to make it out: a night scene, the camera dazzled by a car’s headlights, then tracking after it, across a dark wasteland. The car stopped, some way away, and the camera zoomed slowly in on it as a figure got out and began cleaning the windscreen.

‘Hang on . . .’ Kathy said.

A second figure had got out of the car, the picture brightening and becoming clearer as the camera zoomed closer and adjusted to the lighting levels. The second figure moved to the side of the first. They turned towards each other, and after a moment’s hesitation they began to kiss. By the time they broke apart, their upper bodies and heads were large in the screen and clearly identifiable.