Silvermeadow (7 page)

She looked at him incredulously. ‘Your wife does the shopping, right?’

‘I’m afraid not. But I do tend to avoid it whenever I can.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I should say a little bit about this place. Just so you understand our
perspective
, Chief Inspector.’

‘I wish you would, Ms Seager. Are those the plans of the centre?’ He pointed to two large coloured diagrams mounted on one wall, between framed certificates awarded by the International Council of Shopping Centres, the Havering Chamber of Commerce, the Ronald McDonald Charity Appeal, and many others.

‘Yes. When was the last time you were in a modern shopping centre?’

‘Ages ago. The one at Croydon, probably.’

‘Right. Before it was upgraded, I guess. A windy, open pedestrian street below the tower blocks. We don’t do it like that any more.’ She spoke rapidly, as if time was very precious, her accent distinctly North American. ‘You haven’t been to Brent Cross? Thurrock?’

Brock shook his head.

‘OK, well, Silvermeadow isn’t just a couple of rows of shops strung between a few anchor stores. It’s a whole leisure experience. It has everything in it you’d want to visit a town centre for and more, all climate-controlled, under one roof. It’s what retailing is all about these days. We got the industry award for best new European centre last year. And it’s big, over a million square feet of trading area, the third biggest retail mall in Europe, probably the best integrated retail and leisure facility this side of the Atlantic. There are two hundred and sixty-eight shops and food outlets, not to mention the cinemas, fitness centre, leisure pool . . .’ She pointed to coloured rectangles on the plans of the two levels. ‘At peak times, there are over a thousand employees and fifty thousand visitors under this one roof, and they’ve come from all over, not just this area of London and Essex, but the whole of the south-east and from the Continent too: France, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia. We’re more like a small city than a department store. So when you talk about closing down our compactors, or sealing off the service road, or whatever, just bear that in mind, OK? This is one big beast.’

Brock’s frown had deepened as she had described the huge catchment area, and Kathy could imagine him thinking that North might have come here from almost anywhere. He sniffed and said, ‘And a beast that has a particular attraction to school children?’

‘Well sure, the kids like it here. It’s warm, it’s cheerful, and plenty of them get part-time work here. They love the shops on the main mall, of course, and then there’s the food court and the Hawaii Experience, the leisure centre, the grunge stuff down in the Bazaar, the multiplex cinema. But more than that, it’s where the people are. It’s where the other kids come and hang out. You know what the most popular activity is in the mall? People-watching. Kids are like everybody else, they’re attracted to buzz, to life.’

‘In this case the opposite is what we fear.’

The centre manager pursed her mouth. ‘Look, I’m not being insensitive or casual about this kid, Chief Inspector. I’m trying to explain. This place has a magic of its own. The kids flock here. And where the good people come, the bad people will surely follow, like sharks following the shoals. We do all we can to make this place the safest it can be— our reputation depends on that. But you can’t keep out human nature. Every now and then some sick character will wander through our doors, and we can’t stop him. All we can say is that we invest a lot of money and effort in security, and the chances of a child meeting trouble here are a lot lower than they would be in your average high street.’

The phone rang discreetly and she reached back over her desk to answer it. ‘I’m busy right now . . . okay, two minutes only.’

She put down the phone and said, ‘Harry, will you talk about the layout of the place for our visitors? I have to deal with something.’ She shrugged apologetically at Brock. ‘Sorry, but Christmas is only about five minutes away in our calendar.’

Jackson stepped forward as she left the room, and began to describe the features of the plans. They were shaped rather like a coat hanger, the long mall bent in its centre where the food court was located in the main square, with other attachments along the arms. Kathy was reminded of the diagrams of futuristic space stations, bits plugged in all over the place because there was no atmosphere or gravity to make them conform to some specific shape. The security chief explained, however, that the bent form came from the fact that the centre was wrapped round the north slope of a low hill, one of the few in this part of Essex. The hill had been remodelled with earth-moving equipment so that— and this was the cunning bit, he explained—the carparks on the flattened hilltop fed people directly into the upper mall level from the south, while the carparks on the lower, north side fed into the lower mall level. In this way, both shopping levels were equally accessible to shoppers, and the flow of people to both was maximised.

The south side of the lower level was buried against the hillside, and it was along there that the basement service road was run, providing secure, enclosed access to the loading docks and storage areas of the shops, as well as to the three compactor areas which they used to dispose of their dry waste.

Jackson yawned and scratched his bum. He wasn’t a great public speaker, Kathy thought, and his account was laboured and repetitive. He pointed out other features—his security centre located at the entry checkpoint to the service road, the leisure pool and fitness centre on the north side, the cinema complex—but then ran out of steam. Brock and Kathy got up to examine the plans more closely.

‘There’s a profile of your boss in here, Harry,’ Lowry said. He waved a newspaper,
Silvermeadow News
, at them. ‘Born in Trinidad, daughter of an English father and Trinidadian mother, thirty-six-year-old Deborah ‘Bo’ Seager is the high-flier who leads the Silvermeadow management team. Educated at schools in England and at university in the US, Bo honed her shopping-centre management skills with the big players in the US and Canada—Trizec, Cadillac Fairview and Olympia & York— before coming to the UK. Bo admits her private life—’

‘Is shit!’ Bo’s voice preceded the door slamming behind her as she marched back into the room and threw some papers onto the desk. ‘Sorry about that. Harry, your trooper asked me to let you know that Kerri Vlasich worked in Snow White’s Pancake Parlour, usually two shifts a week. They haven’t seen her the past week.’

‘Right, boss. I’ll take our visitors there when they’re ready.’

‘What bugs me,’ Bo Seager said slowly, ‘is how they could have got her to the compactor.’

‘How’s that?’ Brock asked.

She seemed almost reluctant to explain, then came and stood between him and Kathy in front of the plans. She placed a carefully manicured nail over the blue compactor position. ‘The general public aren’t welcome in the service areas, Chief Inspector. There are service corridors connecting the rear of the shops to the delivery loading bays, and service lifts to take goods up to the upper-level shops, but all these corridors are out of bounds to the general public. True, there are passages that connect the rear areas to the main mall’— she pointed them out on the plans—‘and in the event of a fire the public could escape down these passages and out through the service road. But there are security doors blocking these corridors, controlled by locks which open automatically in the event of a fire alarm. These locks are also controlled by keypads, and traders and staff are allocated security numbers to open the doors in case they need to have access that way. What I’m saying is, the only ways into the compactor area are through the rear service door of a shop unit or down a common service corridor protected by a security code.’

‘An inside job, you mean?’ Brock said quietly. ‘Someone on the staff?’

She frowned and bit her lip.

‘That’s not quite true, boss,’ Jackson said. ‘There’s the people who come in through the vehicle entrance— the delivery drivers.’

‘Oh yes, of course!’ Bo’s face brightened.

‘She could have been picked up and murdered somewhere else entirely,’ Jackson said to Brock. ‘Then brought here in a delivery truck, and dumped in the compactor when the coast was clear. That would be my bet.’

‘Yes, Harry!’ She nodded vigorously. ‘That must be it!’

‘Interesting,’ Brock said, ‘but we’re running ahead of ourselves. Ms Seager, unless something breaks quickly, it sounds as if we’re going to be involved in a lot of checking and interviewing. It’s possible that we’ll have to bring a number of officers here for a while at least. We could bring our own mobile offices onto the site, but if you’ve got anywhere suitable it might be more discreet.’

‘How about unit one-eight-four?’ Jackson suggested.

‘Yes,’ Bo Seager agreed. ‘It’s on the next side mall, and vacant right now. The shopfitting for the next tenants doesn’t start till after Christmas. There’s a phone line and a staff toilet.’

‘Sounds ideal. What time do you close tonight?’

‘Ten o’clock. Another half an hour or so.’

‘Then I think we’ll have a quick look at the compactors now.’

Bo Seager held out her hand, and Kathy now noticed the lines of fatigue round her eyes. ‘I’ve told Harry to help in any way he can, Chief Inspector. These things happen, I guess, even in the most carefully planned set-ups. It’s an aberration, a glitch. Let’s get it cleared up as painlessly as possible, huh?’

Brock smiled and took the offered hand. Kathy could guess what he was thinking. She hadn’t seen the aberration herself, the smashed figure, so the sentiment was understandable, given her perspective.

Jackson led the way out of the management offices, on the way picking up a handful of glossy brochures with maps of the centre and dispensing them to the detectives like a tour guide. They followed him to the locked fire door at the end of the service corridor, where he demonstrated the security procedure, tapping his code into the keypad before opening the door and ushering them through to a bare concrete stair landing.

‘Is that recorded at all, Harry?’ Lowry asked. ‘Your opening the door?’

‘Oh dear me yes, Gavin. All the security doors are networked. The computer records the PIN of anyone opening a door, with time and location. We can provide a printout of all that.’

‘Does every employee have a separate number?’ Brock asked.

‘Not everyone, no. Each tenant applies to us for numbers for their staff, usually senior staff only. They don’t bother to get one for every salesgirl and cleaner.’

‘So, if a manager was busy, say, and needed to send one of the lads down to the service bay to pick up a delivery, what would he do?’

Jackson was ahead of them on the stair, his voice echoing back up as he replied. ‘Get someone with a code to go down.’

‘Or give the lad someone else’s number,’ Brock suggested.

‘Strictly forbidden!’

‘Still,’ Kathy heard Brock murmur. ‘It is Christmas . . .’

They reached the bottom and pushed the bar on another fire door and found themselves on a loading platform on the edge of the service area, the air suddenly humid and sharp with the stench of diesel fumes. High overhead the underside of the concrete slab was strung with colour-coded pipes and ducts, and somewhere in the background, out of sight, they heard the growl and warning signal of a truck reversing. With an athletic hop Jackson jumped down to the roadway, keeping up his tour-guide commentary of Interesting Facts.

‘Strong, eh?’ he said, sniffing the air, keeping a watchful eye on their descent to the slab, wet with the trails of truck tyres coming in from the outside. ‘We’ve had a lot of traffic down here today. Diesel fumes are heavier than air, right? So most of the big extract ducts are at low level.’ He pointed to grilles in the face of the wall below the edge of the loading platform. ‘Even so, it can get a bit thick on a busy day.’

‘Where’s the blue compactor from here, Harry?’ Lowry said, turning the plan in his hand as though trying to orient himself.

‘Round that corner. Not far.’

‘Security cameras down here?’

‘Only at the entrance to the service road. Not in this area, unfortunately. Not normally considered a hot spot, see? All the shop units backing onto the service road’—he waved a hand at the row of blank doors along the length of the loading platform—‘are alarmed, and we’ve never had a break-in attempt from down here.’

They marched briskly along the service road to the corner, where the space broadened out into a manoeuvring area. The reversing truck was ahead of them, along with several others backed against delivery bays on the far side. To their right, three figures in white overalls were stooped behind a crime scene tape examining the control panel on a large blue steel box.

They got to their feet as they saw the group approaching, one of them nodding at Gavin Lowry. ‘Don’t reckon much on trying to take this thing apart. It’s got hydraulic lines, compression springs . . . Reckon we could do it, or ourselves, a bit of damage if we tried. We need an experienced mechanic.’

‘I can arrange that,’ Jackson said. ‘We have a maintenance contract with the suppliers. Don’t know about tonight, though.’

They agreed to leave the compactors until the morning, the SOCOs moving off to search the surrounding roadways and access corridors.

Kathy stared at the mute blue box, trying to imagine how it would have been done. A loading platform ran down its far side and across the back end, providing the height from which waste could be hoisted into the feeder scoop on the top of the machine. The platform had a ramp connecting it to the roadway, so that laden trolleys could be rolled up. And the girl had been light, only eighty-eight pounds Brock had told her. One man could have managed it without difficulty, and probably quite openly, with her packed inside the plastic bag inside a cardboard box. The box itself would probably tell them nothing—next to the compactor was a big wire trailer full of loose boxes waiting to be loaded into the machine, any one of which would have done.

Brock walked up the ramp, pulled a large box out of the trailer and took it to the scoop on the machine. It fitted easily through the opening. ‘Then what?’ he called to Jackson, looking up at him from the roadway.