Silvermeadow (5 page)

‘Be my guest. Just give me a shout when you’re finished,’ he said. ‘I’ll organise tea and biscuits. How do you take it?’

‘White no sugar, thanks,’ Brock said, and Forbes moved rapidly to the door.

Five minutes later there was a knock and a constable stepped in cautiously with a polystyrene cup.

‘The chief super asked me to tell you to ring him on this number when you’re finished, sir.’

Brock took the note she offered and lifted the cup as she left. Coffee, sweet. He grimaced.

His first phone call had reassured him that there was method behind Forbes’s manoeuvrings. There was a political climate to be appeased, and Forbes had probably acted wisely, both in terms of self-insurance and the greater good. Child murder, if that was what it was, was the number one priority of the day.

He put down the cup and rang a second number.

A woman’s voice answered after a couple of rings. ‘Hello?’

Brock looked at his watch. Six p.m. on a cold, wet, wintry Saturday night. ‘Kathy, it’s Brock. Am I intruding?’

‘Just washing my hair.’

‘Going out tonight?’

‘Yes. Nicole Palmer in Records. Know her? She and her partner are throwing a celebratory dinner party.’

‘Ah. A baby?’

‘No. A Harley Davidson, actually.’

‘Very wise.’

‘They’ve got a friend, a male of uncertain marital status. I think that’s why I’ve been invited. Maybe if things go well we might end up having a little motorbike together. But I’ll probably never find out.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, I suppose you’ve got something more interesting on offer?’

‘Fourteen-year-old girl, found inside a compressed block of cardboard at a waste disposal plant out in Essex. By rights she should never have been found—should have gone straight into the incinerator. Area have requested our help. But look, I could get somebody else . . .’

‘I’ll be there. Give me the address.’

Forbes returned with Lowry in tow, the sergeant looking subdued. Brock wondered how he’d taken the news that his case was being handed over to someone from outside.

‘I thought Gavin might brief us quickly on the Vlasich case, Brock, and then’—he glanced at his watch—‘then, I really must be on my way. Gavin?’

‘Sir. Last Wednesday morning PC Sangster and I interviewed a local woman, name of Alison Vlasich, from the Herbert Morrison estate next door here. She was reporting a possible abduction, her daughter Kerri, age fourteen. The physical description—colour of hair and eyes, height and weight—matches the girl at the incinerator. And she had a silver ring, from Mexico, that she liked to wear.’ He opened a file he’d brought and passed Kerri’s photograph across to Brock. A pretty girl, with a cheeky smile. No longer, it seemed.

‘How far did your investigation get?’ Brock asked.

‘When we interviewed Mrs Vlasich there were several things about the case that didn’t seem to add up. In the first place, the girl had obviously planned to go away for a while without her mother’s knowledge. She’d filled a backpack with a number of personal things that suggested more than just an overnight stay with a friend. Here’s the list we drew up with Mrs Vlasich’s help: change of clothes, underwear, favourite CDs, an alarm clock, toiletries, and her passport.’

‘Passport?’

‘Yes. The parents divorced over a year ago, and the father, Stefan Vlasich, went over to Hamburg, where his brother and mother live. Custody was a big issue, and Mrs Vlasich has always been afraid that the girl’s father would try to take her away from her. On top of that, the two of them, mother and daughter, haven’t been getting on lately. She described it as a phase Kerri was going through: rebellious, rude, uncommunicative—you know, teenage stuff.’

‘Indeed I do!’ Forbes said with feeling.

‘When she realised that the girl hadn’t just gone to stay with one of her friends, Mrs Vlasich tried to contact her former husband in Germany, and was told that he was abroad. She thought he must have come to the UK to pick up Kerri and take her back with him. It seemed like a reasonable assumption, and we initiated a check on ports and airports for the pair of them.’

‘Hmm. What’s the legal situation?’

‘Messy. If the father had been a German national, the pattern would be to get the girl before a German court as quickly as possible, sir, before the wife could act. The court would put the child’s interests first, regardless of what the UK court had ruled. If the girl stood up and said she felt herself to be a German and wanted to be brought up as one, the court would give the father custody, end of story. That’s the way it goes. However, he’s a Yugoslav citizen, apparently, and so it’s not at all certain how a German court would rule. Anyway, the point is, as far as we know, there’s no evidence that she ever reached Germany.’

Lowry paused as a renewed burst of hammering vibrated through the building.

When it finally stopped, Forbes said, ‘What in God’s name are they doing, Gavin? At six-fifteen on a Saturday evening?’

‘Some kind of emergency, sir. A gas leak, I believe.’

More pounding, louder than ever. There was a knock on the door.

Forbes called ‘Come!’, but he was apparently inaudible to the person outside, for a second knock was heard. The hammering abruptly stopped just at the moment when Forbes bellowed ‘YES!’ at the top of his voice. A uniformed policewoman put her head tentatively into the room. ‘Message for DS Lowry, sir. You asked to be informed.’

Lowry got to his feet. ‘I’d better chase this up, sir.’

‘Yes, yes.’

When Lowry had gone, Forbes looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a dinner engagement this evening, Brock,’ he said. ‘Rotary people . . . networking, really. Otherwise I’d . . . Maybe you’d care to join us?’

‘I’ll stick with this, thanks, sir.’

‘Hmm.’ The chief superintendent caressed his calfskin briefcase with the tips of his fingers, frowning. ‘Look, I put a call through to Area Major Investigation Pool Management just now, Brock. And it appears that they have a general AMIP policy that the SIO should be at chief super level, do you see?’

‘Oh yes?’ Brock wondered how many murder inquiries Forbes had been senior investigating officer on.

‘Look, I know it doesn’t really make much sense for me to be leading someone like you on this, Brock, but it seems . . . it may just work out that way.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ll keep out of your way as far as practicable, of course. Leave all the day-to-day decisions in your hands. Give you all the support I can, and all the credit, goes without saying.’

We’ll see, Brock thought, but said nothing to ease the awkward moment.

Lowry saved Forbes further embarrassment by coming back into the room, reading from a sheet of paper. ‘Purfleet Electrical have traced the batch to their store at Silvermeadow.’ He looked up. ‘The centre has three compactors, apparently.’ He gave Forbes a moment to make enthusiastic noises, then continued, ‘Another of the compressed boxes, formerly containing packs of sugar, also seems to have come from Silvermeadow. And the Vlasich girl, as we know, had a part-time job there. We didn’t follow that up, though, because of the things she’d taken from home, and also we were put off by her school friends, who said they didn’t believe Kerri had planned to go there on Monday evening.’

‘What changed PC Sangster’s mind?’ Brock asked.

‘Sir?’ Lowry looked puzzled.

‘She was there this morning, checking with the girl’s employer apparently.’

‘I didn’t know that. She didn’t discuss that with me.’

‘Anyway, Silvermeadow seems to be our crime scene,’ Forbes said enthusiastically, looking as if he might have been a little premature in promising Brock the credit on this one. The way Lowry was going, they’d have no need of the Yard.

And Lowry was evidently still way ahead of them, for he continued, ‘I have my own contacts at Silvermeadow, sir. The head of their security, Harry Jackson, was a DI at West Ham when I was there.’

‘Really? They have a big security outfit, do they?’ Forbes asked.

‘Oh yes. He’s probably got more staff than you, sir.’ Lowry grinned. ‘Well, better equipped, anyway. All right if I give him a bell, get him to line things up for us?’ He directed this at Brock, who agreed. They also agreed that Mrs Vlasich would be unlikely to be able to make an identification from the ruined figure in the bale, and that her attention at this stage should be confined to the ring.

Forbes made renewed apologies and departed. Brock accepted Lowry’s suggestion to go down to the canteen for something to eat while they waited for Kathy to arrive. The emergency building work had cut off the gas supply to the kitchen, however, and disgruntled groups of uniformed men and women sat at the tables poking at solitary-looking sausage rolls and pasties. Brock ordered an improvised toasted sandwich and mug of tea, without sugar.

While they ate, Lowry maintained a courteous but careful conversation. He knew Bren Gurney, it transpired; they had played rugby together for the Met, Bren in the pack and Lowry, leaner and slighter of build, at fly half. He mentioned this a little too casually, Brock thought, as if implying that he had a wide circle of contacts in the force and wasn’t in any way overawed by an attachment from SO1. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. The man was certainly sharp and it was too early to judge him. Brock tried to discount the uncomfortable impression that everything Lowry said had a hidden agenda, as if he was testing everyone in some way.

After half an hour Kathy appeared in the canteen. The sight of the familiar face looking around the room, fair hair glistening with rain, her grin when she spotted him, cheered Brock considerably. He waved her over, introduced her to Lowry, and gave her a rapid briefing.

When he was finished Lowry led them out to his car. He took them first to the far side of the Herbert Morrison estate, leaving his car under a street light on the main road rather than on the estate roads that led through the large courts. These courts appeared to Brock to be identical, so that although the layout seemed simple, it was easy to lose a sense of direction once landmarks on the surrounding streets were left behind. Lowry, leading the way, soon became a victim of this effect.

‘I think we’ve been through this one before,’ Kathy said after a few minutes. ‘I remember that tree in the middle, with the broken branches.’

‘Hell.’ Lowry looked around in frustration at the bleak, darkened concrete grids. ‘We want Primrose Court. They’re all named after spring flowers: Bluebell, Jonquil, Tulip . . . Bloody tragic, isn’t it?’

There was no one about, the shadowy decks deserted, the courts silent except for the dripping of the rain, a burst of TV from an open window, the muffled sounds of traffic somewhere beyond. Lowry was eventually obliged to ring a doorbell. After a rattling of a chain a nose appeared cautiously in the crack. The minimum of information was hurriedly exchanged and they went on, coming finally to Alison Vlasich’s front door. Although the decks were identical bare concrete throughout the estate, Brock had noticed that many of the residents had put small rectangles of carpet or vinyl floor-covering outside their front doors to individualise their address, or perhaps because they too had trouble finding their own front doors. Mrs Vlasich’s threshold was marked by a piece of flowery Axminster, an offcut from her living-room carpet, as they soon discovered.

It was immediately clear to Brock that she felt uncomfortable with Lowry. She avoided his eye and when he opened the conversation, introducing him and Kathy, she turned away and asked what had happened to Miriam, and when he said that PC Sangster was no longer working on this investigation she looked anxiously at Kathy.

‘Are you on your own, Alison?’ Kathy asked, as they sat down.

The woman gave a little nod.

‘Is there anyone we can call, to be with you?’

They watched her reaction, numbness spreading through her. ‘You’ve found Kerri?’ she asked, very slowly. ‘Is that it?’

Lowry took the plastic bag containing the ring from his pocket, and handed it to her. She stiffened and nodded immediately.

‘You’re sure it’s hers?’

‘Yes.’ Her responses were becoming slower and slower, as if she might save her daughter by delaying their news.

‘Might she have given it to someone else? Swapped it with a friend?’

‘No, that’s impossible. Her father sent it to her, for her last birthday. She’s worn it constantly since.’ Alison Vlasich stared at the floor in front of her, at the flowery Axminster, and added dully, ‘Have you come to take me to see her?’

‘No,’ Brock told her gently. ‘We have found someone, a girl of Kerri’s age, with this ring. She seems to have been involved in an accident. It would be better if we make sure who she is before you see her. Has Kerri been to the dentist recently?’

The question made no sense to her, but Mrs Vlasich answered anyway, giving the name of a local practice.

‘Is she dead, this girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where . . . where was the accident?’

‘We’re not certain. But it may have been at Silvermeadow . . .’

The name had an effect like an electric shock. She went rigid, staring at Brock for an instant, then folded abruptly in half, her hands over her face, sobbing hysterically.

It took a little while to organise a neighbour to stay with Alison Vlasich before they headed off again along the deck around Primrose Court. Their visit had stirred activity. Voices could be heard in the cold night air, and from time to time the patter of running footsteps on the upper deck above them. They took a staircase, comprehensively tagged with graffiti, to the ground. Lowry was ahead of them, hurrying, and as he stepped out into the open a weird sound of whistling made him stop and look up. Out of the darkness overhead Brock was briefly aware of a black object tumbling down through the rain. Before Lowry could move, it smashed to the ground beside him with a shattering explosion. He leapt away and stood staring at the debris.

‘A television set,’ he said, breathless. ‘A fucking TV!’

From overhead they heard a shout, some laughter, then running feet again, like the sound of scurrying rats.

Light suddenly flooded out from one of the front doors and the small figure of an old man lunged forward, bellowing, ‘What? What did they use this time?’