Silvermeadow (42 page)

‘I need an honest assessment,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in anything else. You were there, I wasn’t.’

The other man spoke up. ‘He was tipped off, chief. That’s my honest opinion. Whoever phoned him told him he had a tail.’

Brock nodded. There wasn’t much point in being coy with Harry Jackson any more.

*

He seemed in cheerful mood as he was shown into the interview room, his face fresh and pink as if he’d just had a run or a good laugh.

‘Evening, Mr Brock,’ he said, taking the offered chair. ‘Your lads were very silent on the way in. I was trying to tell them they didn’t need to pick me up. You should have given me a bell and I’d have come straight over. Is it about my little game with your boys in the Astra? Couldn’t resist it.’

‘Has he been cautioned?’ Brock asked. Bren shook his head.

‘Cautioned?’ Jackson said, shocked, and Brock began to intone the formal words, ignoring his protest.

‘That’s well out of order, chief,’ Harry said. ‘Okay, I had some fun, but it’s me you’re talking to, Harry Jackson, twenty-one years in the force.’

‘Who rang you in the car this evening?’ Brock said sharply. ‘Who warned you about the tail?’

Harry smiled. ‘Don’t know what you mean there, chief. I spotted the Astra myself, no bother.’

‘Who was on the phone?’

‘Some call centre, doing a survey on voters’ attitudes. I told them to get stuffed.’

‘Where were you on the afternoon of Saturday last, the eighteenth of December?’ Brock said abruptly, and watched Harry’s face go pale.

‘Oh.’

They waited in silence as he looked from one to the other.

‘Caught me out, have you, chief?’

Brock said nothing.

Harry bowed his head, groaned softly and said, ‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s me finished.’

‘I want a statement,’ Brock said. ‘Last Saturday afternoon.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Jackson sighed, turned towards the tape machine and began to speak slowly, eyes lowered. ‘I left the conference in central London at about twelve-thirty, and caught the tube out to Upminster, where I’d left my car. I drove over to Brentwood and parked in the town centre. I got a sandwich at a pub, then went to Boots, where I stood outside on the pavement and waited.’

‘What time was that?’ Brock said.

‘I got to Boots at five to two. I’d arranged to meet someone there at two. They were late. At about a quarter past, I was seen there by Sharon, who works for me at Silvermeadow, and her male companion, don’t know his name. My rendezvous arrived soon after they left, around twenty past two.’

He stopped and seemed disinclined to go on.

‘Come on, Harry,’ Brock said wearily. ‘Get it over with.’

‘Yeah . . . We walked to my car—’

‘We?’

A scowl came over Jackson’s face. ‘No names, Mr Brock. I won’t tell you that.’

Brock looked at him, thinking that he was to be pitied. ‘Go on then.’

‘We walked to my car, and I drove us home to my place in Dagenham, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon.’

‘Eh?’ Brock said, as if he’d misheard. ‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’

Jackson flushed, glared at Brock, then said. ‘What do you think? We went to bed.’

‘You what?’ Brock said. He tried to get his mind around the idea of Harry Jackson and Upper North in bed together.

‘You heard,’ Jackson said truculently. ‘I took her back to pick up her car at Brentwood at about six, maybe a bit later.’

‘Her?’

‘Yes,
her
. Jesus, what do you think I’m saying?
Her
, my girlfriend. Who do you think?’

‘Whose name you can’t reveal for fear of compromising her reputation.’ Brock shook his head sadly. He felt genuinely upset that a man with Jackson’s experience could offer him such a pathetic cliché. ‘Gavin Lowry told me you were too old to have a girlfriend, Harry.’ Jackson looked at him with a startled expression. ‘I disagreed with him, but maybe I was wrong. If you think anyone’s going to swallow that old line you must be well past it.’

At that moment there was a tap at the door and Kathy looked in. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. There’s something I need to check with you.’

Brock got to his feet. ‘Don’t say a thing until I get back, Harry. I wouldn’t want to miss a word of this.’

Outside the room, Kathy said, ‘We’ve traced the number that rang Jackson’s mobile at twenty to eight this evening, Brock. This is the number, and the name and address of the subscriber.’ She gave him a slip of paper.

He read it and felt that chill that comes when some unavoidable truth finally has to be confronted. It was Gavin Lowry’s name and address.

‘You’re not surprised?’ she asked.

‘It was one of the possibilities,’ he said, though he had never really believed it. He had given Lowry the opportunity to betray them, confident that he would not. He had been wrong.

‘I got them to double-check. There’s no mistake.’

‘The bloody fool.’

‘Yes.’ He felt Kathy’s silence as he came to a decision. ‘Get him in here.’

He could see Lowry was puzzled that they should meet in an interview room, and that Kathy should be loading the recorder with a fresh tape. He looked tired and there was a smell of whisky on his breath.

‘I was just about to hit the sack, chief,’ he said, yawning broadly. ‘Something up?’

‘Yes,’ Brock said grimly, and began to recite the caution while Lowry stared first at him, then at Kathy, stunned.

‘Where were you at twenty to eight this evening, Gavin?’

‘What?’ He blinked stupidly like a man trying to force himself awake from a dream.

‘Seven-forty. Think.’

‘Sir, I don’t understand—’

‘Just answer.’

Lowry gaped for a moment, then said, ‘At home.’

‘You’re quite sure about that?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Did you make a phone call at that time?’

‘No . . . no I didn’t. What is this, chief?’

‘I’m going to repeat that question just once. Think before you answer. Did you make a phone call this evening at seven-forty?’

Lowry flushed. ‘I just said no.’

‘Someone rang Harry Jackson on his mobile at that time and tipped him off that he was being tailed. Why did you do that, Gavin?’

‘Me! Don’t be daft, chief! I wouldn’t have done that, would I? Did he say I did?’

Brock handed Lowry the sheet of paper Kathy had given him.

‘What’s this?’

‘Mercury’s record of the call. That is your home number isn’t it?’

Lowry stared at it, eyes wide, then shook his head. ‘I don’t know what this is, Brock. Have I been set up?’ He looked in turn at Brock and Kathy. ‘Look, look, look . . . when I got home this evening, Connie had the meal ready. We ate, then I talked to her about Harry, just like we agreed. We discussed it. She was upset and couldn’t believe he was bent and I had to go over it several times. Around seven-thirty she took the boys up to bed. She’d planned to go out to the pictures with a girlfriend from work, but she said she didn’t feel like it any more, after what I’d told her about Harry, so she had a bath instead.’

‘After she phoned her friend?’ Kathy said quietly.

‘Her friend?’

‘To tell her that she wasn’t going to the pictures.’

‘Oh, yeah . . .’ Lowry’s mouth hung open, and he looked as if someone had smacked him on the head quite hard. ‘You’re joking. She wouldn’t have . . .’ Brock recognised the note of contempt again. ‘The stupid bitch. I told her. I explained! The stupid, stupid bitch!’

‘You’re suggesting what, exactly?’

He shook his head in exasperation. ‘She was upset that you suspected Harry. She was sorry for him. Connie must have rung him up and tipped him off.’

Jackson looked up as Brock and Kathy came back into the room. He was looking wearier now, tie loosened, shirtsleeves rolled up in the over-heated room.

Brock placed the record of the Mercury call in front of him. ‘The number that rang you at seven-forty this evening.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Jackson lowered his head abruptly, shoulders sagged. ‘He knows, does he, Gavin?’

‘Know what? Come on, Harry. I need it for the record. All of it.’

Jackson closed his eyes and took a deep breath before replying as if delivering a formal report. ‘The woman who spent the afternoon of last Saturday with me was Connie Lowry, DS Lowry’s wife. We’ve been seeing each other now for over two years.’

‘You’re lovers?’

‘Yeah.’

All the fight seemed to have gone out of Harry. He slumped forward on his elbows. Brock thought, Gavin knows she made the call, but the idea that the two of them—his stupid wife and his friend who was past it— might be having an affair had never entered his head.

‘Tell the truth, it feels good to say it out loud. Get it out in the open. Two years of bliss and quiet desperation . . . Christ, she and Gavin only went out for six months before they got married, and we’ve been lurking in the bleedin’ shadows for four times as long.’ He looked at Brock, wanting to explain. ‘It’s a rotten thing to do to a mate, but we never planned for it to happen. Gavin took her for granted, usual thing, just assumed he could live his life the way he wanted and she’d cope. He didn’t even notice she was miserable, needed help. She started coming to the mall, regular, and we’d have a coffee, and talk. After a while, well . . . I was the one who was there for her.’

Brock looked down at his blank note pad, trying to suppress a momentary vivid picture of Suzanne. He had no doubt at all that Harry was telling the truth.

‘I didn’t think it could happen at my time of life, Mr Brock, but it did. It crept up on me. One day I was pouring out a cup of tea, and I realised that I was thinking about her all the bleedin’ time. Couldn’t help myself. Like some pathetic teenager. But that doesn’t stop you feeling guilty. Yeah, I’m glad it’s out in the open now.’

‘What did you mean earlier, when you said that now you were finished?’

‘My job, at Silvermeadow. I’m already under a cloud with everything that’s been happening, and this’ll be the final straw, I reckon. They’ll have my guts, mine and Bo Seager’s.’

‘Why her?’

‘Politics, chief. Nathan Tindall wants her job, and now’s the time for him to make his move.’

Connie Lowry guessed why they’d come as soon as she saw them standing there on her doorstep. Brock could see it written all over her face. She was in her dressing gown, for it was after midnight, but she didn’t look as if she’d been asleep.

‘Yes?’ she said cautiously.

He introduced himself and Kathy, and she led them into the front living room of a neat, well-cared-for home, made comfortably untidy by the wooden train set the little boys had been playing with earlier, while she and Gavin had been discussing Harry Jackson.

‘I wondered . . . when you called Gavin in,’ she said. ‘You’ve come about Harry, haven’t you?’

Brock nodded, and she did the same, a mutual understanding. ‘You know then, about him and me.’

‘He told us you’ve had a relationship for a couple of years.’

She coloured slightly. ‘Yes . . . well, it’s a relief, really, to have it out in the open at last.’ She didn’t sound entirely convinced about that. ‘Does Gavin know?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I don’t want to see him. Will you tell him that? Tell him I don’t want him to come back here tonight.’

‘Why don’t you tell him yourself, Connie?’ Brock said quietly. ‘He’s at Hornchurch Street station. Why not give him a ring?’

‘No. I don’t want to talk to him. I couldn’t. Not yet.’

Brock shrugged. ‘Can you tell us where you were last Saturday afternoon, Connie?’

‘With Harry. We met outside Boots in Brentwood shortly after two, and went back to his house. We try to see each other at least twice a week.’

‘What about your boys?’

She blushed, but her voice remained firm. ‘A friend of mine looks after them. She knows about Harry and me.’

‘How long did you stay with him?’

She thought. ‘Till after six. We listened to the end of the six o’clock news on the car radio when Harry drove me back to Brentwood. Gavin wasn’t due home till nine that night.’ She looked at them defiantly. ‘You have to live like that, when it’s a secret. But not any more.’

On the road back, Brock said, ‘Oh well, another false trail.’

‘Yes,’ Kathy said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Not at all. It looked very promising.’

‘Poor Gavin. He must think I’m bringing down some kind of curse on him. First his car and now his marriage.’

‘Yes, you do seem to be his nemesis, don’t you? Well, I’m having a day off tomorrow. If they discover anything interesting on the security tapes they can phone me. But not during matinée hours.’

‘You’re going to see a show?’

‘Yes,
Peter Pan
.’

‘Really? Appropriate.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, that’s what Harry’s trying to be, isn’t it?’

Brock wasn’t too impressed by that observation, and decided to change the subject. ‘I heard a rumour that you and Leon are going up north for a couple of days. Is that right?’

He noticed Kathy’s grip tighten abruptly on the steering wheel, and followed her eyes flicking down to the car clock. He felt the car give a little swerve on the road.

‘You all right?’

‘Oh . . . yes,’ she said. ‘I just forgot something. Doesn’t matter. What were we talking about?’

‘About you going up north.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Not this week anyway.’

Brock looked over, curious, but she said no more, her face giving away nothing of what was going on inside her head.

When she got home to the deserted flat she still couldn’t really believe that it could have happened. He hadn’t phoned. Presumably he had assumed she’d deliberately not come. Well, of course he would. What else could he think? That she’d
forgotten
? The idea was absurd. DS Kathy Kolla didn’t forget appointments.

She looked at the time yet again. The train would have reached Liverpool long ago. Reluctantly she tried his mobile number, but got the message that it was switched off. Then she got the number of the Adelphi Hotel and rang that. She asked reception if they had a room in the name of Desai and the woman said yes. She imagined him in the room, tired and angry with her, and her courage, or perhaps it was her stamina, failed. She rang off before she could be connected, and turned to a small pile of mail. Among the junk was a Christmas card from her aunt and uncle in Sheffield, and a separate small package containing a Christmas present from them which she didn’t open. She winced, realising that that was something else she’d forgotten. There was also her credit card statement, the size of which gave her a small shock.