Silvermeadow

10

K athy didn’t sleep well, her mind troubled by dreams of dark forests and lost children. She rose early, made a pot of tea and left a mug beside Leon, but didn’t wake him. He was still sleeping deeply when she left.

She was waiting for Winston Starkey as soon as the arcade owner opened up his premises. He looked as if he’d had a bad night too, and he hardly heard what she was saying as he rolled up the security grille. He made her repeat it, then stared at her with hostile suspicion.

‘That’s crap,’ he said. ‘I know the kid you mean, but he doesn’t stay here, and if you get me into trouble telling people he does I’ll sue you, see if I don’t.’

Harry Jackson appeared, strolling round his domain on a first morning inspection, and joined them. He was startled by Kathy’s story. ‘You saw him in here? In the dark? At midnight?’

Starkey made an elaborate performance of insisting that they search the place. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the boy. He and Jackson conferred while Kathy had another look behind the machines at the rear of the space, without result. By the time she left with Jackson she could almost believe that it had been a dream.

He led her out into the deserted food court and asked if they could have a word.

‘Just to get this straight, Kathy. You were in here on your own, at midnight, were you? Did my people know? I didn’t notice a note in their report.’

Kathy outlined her conversation with the security guard. She was aware of becoming defensive as Jackson probed.

‘You know about the dog patrol, do you?’

‘Yes, your man warned me. I left in time.’

‘Hmm.’ He said nothing for a moment, staring down at the toe of his polished shoe tapping silently on the patterned terrazzo.

‘Is Starkey a suspect now, then?’ he asked slowly.

‘No.’

‘But you were staking his place out at midnight. How about Verdi, is he a suspect?’

‘Harry, I can’t discuss-’

‘You see, I thought you were reaching a conclusion on this case. I thought Eddie Testor was your prime suspect, no? In fact, understand that Chief Superintendent Forbes is holding a press conference this morning to announce significant progress.’

‘Gavin told you that?’

Jackson frowned at her. ‘No, Kathy,’ he said softly. ‘The PR people at Hornchurch Street advised Bo’s office last night. So what do you want me to tell my boss? That despite what Forbes is telling us, interrogation of our people is continuing indiscriminately all over Silvermeadow?’

Our people. It was the first time Kathy had heard anyone refer to Starkey as that.

The sense of unease still hung in the air of unit 184 when Kathy returned there. Chief Superintendent Forbes had arrived and was deep in conversation with Brock.

‘I had assumed that we’d be able to announce that charges had been laid against Testor, Brock,’ he said. ‘Swift justice, that was going to be the gist of it, but now, well, what have we got?’

‘Yes. Unfortunately the picture is still incomplete. The forensic side is particularly disappointing. Now you could say, given the hairless nature of our suspect, that the absence of any foreign hairs on or around the victim is a kind of positive, but it doesn’t help much. One very young eyewitness placing the victim and the suspect in the same place in a public mall doesn’t amount to enough either, especially since we assume from the evidence of the ketamine use that she could have been kept in a drugged state for a period before she was killed. But we’ve no idea where he might have done that. The clearest solution would be a confession, and so far that’s not forthcoming. Testor is back at Hornchurch Street now, and I’ll be going over there shortly, but I’m not optimistic.

‘You heard about the attack on his house, did you? During the night, after the pubs had closed. Testor says he was woken by the noise of something clattering down the tiles above his bedroom. He says he thought he heard muffled voices out the front, but he didn’t get up and have a look. It wasn’t till the morning that he realised what had happened. Red paint was splattered all over the roof tiles and down the front of his aunt’s house. There’d been a bit of rain during the night, which made it look worse, apparently. He said it looked as if blood was coming out through the bricks.’

‘Hmm. Deplorable, of course, but understandable. People are angry, Brock.’

‘Yes. All the more reason not to raise expectations prematurely. I’d suggest we concentrate on appealing for public assistance from the press. Unless something comes up soon to resolve things.’

Something did come up, almost immediately. The caller asked for Sergeant Kolla, and Kathy recognised the throaty voice of Kim Hislop from the Primavera Fitness Salon.

‘Can I speak to you?’ she asked, her voice low and anxious. ‘I’ve got some information you should have, about Eddie Testor.’

‘Fine. Shall I come to your office?’

‘Yes, okay. Soon as you like.’

Kathy mentioned it to Brock on her way out, and he said, ‘Fingers crossed. I’m on my way over to see Testor at Hornchurch Street now. Ring me if it’s anything relevant.’

Kim Hislop was strung as tight as one of her male clients waiting for a total body wax. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I thought I should let you know straight away. As soon as I realised. I think I’ve made a stupid mistake.’

‘Really?’ Kathy said. ‘To do with Eddie?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, to do with Eddie. I realised last night. It just came back to me. The sixth. He was booked in for his monthly on the following day, the seventh, but I had a cancellation for the sixth, and someone else wanted a booking on the seventh, so I asked Eddie to swap round, and he agreed. He was always very obliging. The thing was, I never entered it on the computer, only in the desk diary, so when you asked I never picked it up. I forgot.’

‘So when did you see him, on the sixth?’ Kathy asked, heart sinking.

‘Five-thirty till six-thirty. I seem to remember he was a few minutes late arriving.’

‘And this has just come back to you, Ms Hislop?’

‘Yes.’ She looked away. ‘Sorry if it’s confused things. You can see the desk diary if you like.’ She passed it over to Kathy, pointing out the altered entries.

‘I’d like to borrow this,’ Kathy said.

Hislop looked unhappy. ‘Do you have to?’

‘It’s evidence that could clear Eddie of a serious charge. I’ll let you have it back this afternoon.’

There was a phone number written against the name of the woman who had been crossed out for the 5.30 appointment on the sixth. Kathy rang it when she got back to the unit. The woman answered and after checking her own diary confirmed that she had cancelled that appointment because of a clash with something else. The name written into Eddie’s original time slot on the seventh was indecipherable, and had no phone number, and Kathy decided to let it go. She rang Hornchurch Street and asked for Brock. After several minutes Gavin Lowry answered.

‘He and Forbes are on their way over here, Kathy. Anything I can do?’

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘No change.’

‘Has Testor come up with any story about what he was doing for the hour after five-thirty that afternoon?’

‘No. We keep pressing him, and he just keeps repeating that he can’t remember specifically, and he must have been working in the pool.’

‘It looks as if he’s got an alibi now.’ She told him Hislop’s story.

There was a long silence, then a slow, deliberate, ‘Shit.’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe you’d better get over here and tell Brock yourself. He’ll probably want to see the book. So will Forbes. His press conference starts in an hour. His silver braid is all laid out for him.’

When they told Eddie the good news, he seemed no wiser than before. ‘Oh, really?’ he said blankly. ‘Well, that must be it then.’

‘That doesn’t mean you didn’t speak to Kerri,’ Brock pressed him. ‘We know you did. It just means you didn’t speak to her for long on that occasion. You arranged to see her again later, is that it? You made a date for later?’

‘Mr Brock,’ Eddie said with the same patient tolerance, ‘I told you already. Maybe I can’t remember exactly what I was doing that afternoon, but I’m quite sure I never saw that girl before in my life.’

Since there were already press cameras and reporters arriving at the building they decided to wait until the press conference was over before releasing him.

Forbes began by introducing himself and then Stefan and Alison Vlasich, sitting on each side of him at the long table which faced the crowded room. The purpose of this press conference, he said, was to renew the appeal to the public for information concerning the whereabouts of Kerri Vlasich after she left school on the afternoon of the sixth of December. He briefly outlined the circumstances and underlined, reading from his prepared statement, the seriousness with which the police regarded such cases. This went on for a little too long, and he stumbled several times and paused for sips of water, his throat unaccountably dry. To Kathy he gave the impression of nervousness, despite the well-tailored uniform and air of command. She was aware of others in the room beginning to stir, restless.

He then asked Mrs Vlasich to say a few words, or rather, he referred to her as ‘Mrs Kerri’, and couldn’t understand why she stared at him, wide-eyed, before she turned unsteadily to face the cameras. She winced as the lights focused on her, and made an agonising appeal, barely audible, for anyone who knew anything about her daughter’s disappearance to come forward.

Everyone was relieved when she finished and Forbes turned to Stefan Vlasich, who delivered a couple of brief sentences in a low monotone.

Chief Superintendent Forbes then cautiously invited questions, and there was an immediate response from all sides of the room, everyone apparently trying to ask the same thing. Eventually one managed to speak for the rest. ‘What about the man you arrested yesterday? We were expecting an announcement of charges being laid.’

Forbes cleared his throat. ‘There seems to have been some misunderstanding. No one has been arrested. A man has been helping us with our enquiries, but no charges are being laid at this time.’

‘But he’s a prime suspect, isn’t he?’

‘Not necessarily, no. There’s nothing I can add about that at this time.’

There was a hubbub of disappointment, then the crime reporter for the Guardian, a sharp young woman with a deceptively friendly smile, spoke up.

‘Are you able to give us details yet of the cause of Kerri’s death, or the circumstances?’

‘We’re not able to release that information yet, no.’

‘Are you even certain she was murdered?’

Forbes hesitated. ‘We’re treating this as a murder inquiry.’

‘That’s not quite an answer, Chief Superintendent,’ the reporter said with a smile. ‘I understand this is being classified as an Area Major Investigation,’ she went on, although it hadn’t been announced, ‘and we have Chief Inspector Brock here, and other officers from Serious Crime Branch.’ She sounded puzzled. ‘Isn’t this level of response a bit unusual? Is there something you’re not telling us?’

Forbes cleared his throat and launched into a laboured account of the seriousness with which crimes against children were regarded by the authorities.

‘You think this sort of thing’s getting out of control, do you?’

Forbes didn’t like the use of that phrase, not at all. The police took all these cases very seriously, he explained, but independent analysis of crime statistics showed that the increase in reported assaults on children during the past five years was probably the result of increasing public sensitivity to the problem, rather than an actual increase in assaults per se.

‘Well, not exactly, Chief Superintendent,’ the Guardian reporter objected calmly, as if she’d known he’d say that. ‘The figures for assaults by strangers tend to be obscured by the much larger number of assaults within the family, which tend to be more readily reported now. But if we extract the family assaults, it’s clear that stranger assaults have been increasing at a fairly alarming rate, isn’t it? Practically an epidemic.’

Forbes looked startled. It seemed as though he hadn’t been told about the breakdown of the statistics. It occurred to Kathy that the reporter had been better briefed by somebody than he had.

Then he recovered. ‘We can argue about statistics,’ he glowered at the reporter, ‘but meanwhile, Mrs Vlasich’s daughter has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. Let’s just concentrate on that, shall we? We’d like you to emphasize that we’re particularly looking for witnesses who were in the Silvermeadow shopping centre and in the carpark outside from about five-fifteen p.m. onwards on the sixth, especially within an hour of that time.’

‘Did Kerri have a medical condition, Mrs Vlasich?’ someone called out.

‘Who was her favourite pop group?’

The questions, innocuous and inane, flitted backwards and forwards for a while, and then the Guardian reporter put up her hand again. Forbes avoided noticing her for as long as he could, but eventually her voice cut in. ‘Can you tell us when you last ran a major crime investigation, Chief Superintendent Forbes?’

The room went dead quiet. Forbes looked stunned.

‘Only, there’s been a suggestion that the force is so top-heavy with senior officers who haven’t been actively involved in crime-fighting for years that they can’t afford to put young officers, more in touch with the latest methods, in charge of important investigations like this. Is there any truth in that, would you say?’

Forbes stared at her for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath, drew himself up straight and said, ‘If there are no more relevant questions, I believe Mr and Mrs Vlasich have had enough,’ and he swept up his papers, rose to his feet, and escorted the couple out of the room.

When they were all safely back in the office next door, Lowry beamed at his chief. ‘Well done, sir. You dealt with her really well.’

Forbes shook his head. He looked flushed, wiping a handkerchief across his brow. ‘She seemed bloody well prepared. Hell’s teeth, what a bitch!’ Then he looked at Brock. ‘Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps this is all getting out of hand. We haven’t even established that it was murder yet, and the cost! I had a look at the man-hour summaries last night, Brock. You should do the same.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen them. Let’s stick with it for a little longer, sir,’ Brock murmured. ‘Like you said, one more push.’

Kathy returned to the briefing room. The Guardian reporter was speaking to her photographer. She nodded to him and turned to leave. Kathy followed, out through the front doors and down the steps. She caught up with her on the pavement and introduced herself with a smile.

‘Gavin Lowry said to say thanks,’ Kathy said, ‘and to let him know if you need anything else.’

The reporter stared at Kathy for a moment, face blank, then raised one eyebrow and gave her a little smile. ‘You lot!’ she said. ‘You’re worse than we are. I’ve been trying to get somebody to do that to my editor for months.’

She saw the smile disappear from Kathy’s face.

‘Come on,’ the reporter said. ‘You know these old bastards need shafting.’

Kathy found Eddie Testor down in the basement carpark with Lowry and a couple of officers, waiting.

‘Is his solicitor going to take him?’ she asked.

‘No,’ one of the men said. ‘She had to go to court. We’re organising a lift in a patrol car.’

‘That’s no good. They’ll spot him straight away and tail you all the way.’

She looked at the cars parked around them and saw Lowry’s, blocking a couple of others. ‘What about it, Gavin?’ she asked. ‘We could take him in your car.’

‘I’ve got better things to do,’ he said, eyeing Testor sideways with distaste.

‘If you’re thinking of thanking the Guardian reporter, I already did it for you.’

‘Eh?’ He looked startled for a moment, then gave her a crooked smile and pulled his keys from his pocket. ‘Take him yourself if you’re that keen.’

‘All right.’ She held out her hand and he took the car key off the ring and gave it to her.

Testor looked bemused, but he followed her to the car and got in the back and lay down and let her cover him with Lowry’s raincoat and newspapers. She closed the door firmly on him and nodded to his minders.

‘Good luck,’ one of them said.

There were reporters waiting in the road that accessed the rear of the building, expecting this, but instead of turning towards them, and so out onto the high street, Kathy turned left into the narrow service lane that ran behind the primary school, then out into the residential street beyond. After a couple of minutes she checked her mirror and said, ‘All clear, Eddie. I’ll stop and let you get in the front.’

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, slowly stretching the belt across his oversize chest and shoulders. When he finally succeeded she caught the look on his face as he surveyed the garbage in the car.

‘Terrible, isn’t it? It’s not my car. Belongs to DS Lowry. What a slob.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘You two didn’t hit it off, did you? What did he say to you, at the end of the interview yesterday? Nobody else heard.’

Silence.

‘I’m not trying to trap you, Eddie. You could admit to every crime in the book in here and I wouldn’t be able to use a word of it. It’s only what you say in the station, properly witnessed, that counts. So you can relax.’

He said nothing at first and they drove on in silence, but then, as they got closer to his aunt’s house he muttered, ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘What for?’

‘You know, taking me away from there. I can’t stand them cameras. The lights and noise they make, shouting at you all the time. I can’t stand it.’

‘Don’t worry. People have a short memory. Keep out of sight and in a day or two they’ll have forgotten all about you.’

But not yet, she realised, as she turned into the court in front of Aunty Jan’s house. Distracted by the sight of the red paint, she didn’t immediately appreciate the mood of the crowd milling around the front gate. Eddie’s reaction was also slow, and they had spotted his distinctive pink skull long before he realised what was happening. Shouts went up and furious faces converged on the car, pressing against the windows as Eddie shrank from them. They closed around the rear of the car so that Kathy couldn’t reverse back onto the street, and for a moment they were motionless, the people glaring through the glass. Then the car began to rock, fists began banging on the roof, and a terrible howling noise grew from the crowd.

There was another sound too, Kathy realised, of Eddie whimpering.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said calmly, observing the distorted, almost animalistic expressions on the faces glaring in at them with a curious sense of detachment. There was no two-way radio in Lowry’s car and she didn’t think she had time to use her mobile phone. There was no sign of a uniform in the courtyard. She raised her wallet to the window by her side, showing her warrant card to the faces, but they didn’t see, or didn’t want to see.

‘Oh hell…’

She put the car into first gear, held her hand on the horn, and let out the clutch gently. Slowly, painfully slowly, the car began to inch its way forward against the bodies pressing in on it, while she prayed that the lock would be sufficient to turn in one manoeuvre.

They became angrier, realising what she was doing, and some began chanting. Then the people at the back scattered and the car was abruptly hit a jarring crunch, and Kathy saw a metal dustbin rolling away from the rear wing. Some youths were picking it up to throw it again, and now a brick landed on the bonnet, shattering into pieces and scattering the people in front. More bricks came flying in as she accelerated, and just as she reached the street the dustbin struck again, collapsing the rear windscreen into the back seat.

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Kathy fumed as she threw the car round the corner and hurtled away. She drove over a mile before she pulled in to the kerb. Eddie was crouched beside her, his arms covering his head, sobbing.

‘It’s all right now,’ she said, aware of her heart thumping in her chest as she fumbled with the phone. ‘What about your aunt?’ she said, having almost to shout above his sobbing. ‘Eddie! Stop this! Is your aunt in there?’

‘I dunno,’ he wailed.

She stared at him. This was the thug who’d battered a car to a heap with rage, and who may yet have tipped Kerri Vlasich into the compactor. She put her hand to her left ear to block out his noise and made her report into the phone. When she was finished she took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself.

Eddie’s head was shaking under the cover of his enormous arms. The sobbing had died away, and she heard a mumbled word. He sounded just like a terrified child.

‘What did you say, Eddie? Put your arms down and tell me.’

He mumbled something she couldn’t pick up.

‘Put your arms down, Eddie. I can’t hear what you’re saying. There’s no one around now. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

He slowly straightened himself, head drooping on unyielding pectorals, and whispered, ‘He said that this time they’ll put me away in a special prison, where the other men will use me like a girl.’

Kathy waited, watching his head rocking from side to side. Then he added, ‘It’s just not fair. All I did was give her the ticket.’ And he burst into a flood of tears, unable to contain them any longer.

Among the debris on the floor were several packets of tissues. Kathy reached for one of them and slowly undid the wrapping and waited until the flow of tears died away.

‘Here,’ she said gently, handing the packet to him. He accepted it, and she said, ‘You’d better tell me all about it, Eddie. There’s no point going on like this.’

He sniffed and wiped and finally nodded. ‘I was just doing a favour for Mr Verdi, that’s all.’

‘You know Mr Verdi, do you?’

‘A bit,’ he said cautiously. ‘He works out at the gym. He… he’s friendly to me.’

Kathy thought that the word ‘friendly’ didn’t come out very easily. And she also remembered that Verdi had denied recognising Eddie’s picture.

‘Go on.’

‘Well, he wanted to do a favour for this girl he knew, only he didn’t want nobody to know.’

‘What sort of favour?’

‘Her mum and dad had split up, and she wanted to go and see her dad in Germany, only her mum wouldn’t let her go, which was really unfair, he said. So Mr Verdi agreed to help her, give her a ticket and some cash. He said he’d get into trouble if her mum found out, so he wanted me to give her the envelope one Monday evening, when he would be at the hospital with his wife, and nobody could say he had anything to do with it.’

‘What exactly did you do?’

‘She was going to come in to Silvermeadow on the bus that arrives at five twenty-five. I was to change my shift break around so I could meet her at five-thirty at the windows overlooking the pool, and give her the envelope. That was all. And that was what happened. This girl with the green frog bag, like Mr Verdi said, came in right on time, and I waved the envelope and she came over and said, “Hello Eddie, I’m Kerri. Is that for me?” and I gave it to her, just like Mr Verdi had said.’

‘You hadn’t met the girl before?’

‘No.’

‘And it was the girl in our photographs?’

He looked sheepish. ‘I suppose.’

‘Did you see what was in the envelope?’

‘I didn’t actually see. It was sealed up, but it was tickets and some money-Mr Verdi said.’

‘Mr Verdi trusted you with money, Eddie? He wasn’t afraid you might take it for yourself?’

‘Oh no!’ He looked shocked at the idea. ‘I wouldn’t do that to Mr Verdi.’

‘You know him pretty well then?’

Eddie shrugged. ‘He’s an important man at Silvermeadow. He knows the people who run things.’

‘I see. And what happened after you gave the girl the money?’

‘She left. I don’t know where… along the mall.’

‘And you went to your waxing.’

Eddie shook his head sadly. ‘No. I went and got a hamburger in the food court.’

‘But Kim Hislop said-’

He looked very uncomfortable. ‘I ’spect she was trying to help me. Maybe she got it mixed up. I don’t know. I don’t want to get her into no trouble.’

Kathy shook her head. ‘Eddie, why the hell didn’t you tell us this at the beginning? You’ve caused lots of people trouble by lying like that.’

‘Sorry,’ he whispered, squirming in his seat. ‘I couldn’t, see. Cos I’d promised Mr Verdi.’

‘I understand. But now you must put things right, by telling Mr Brock everything. Okay? Mr Brock is a much more important man than Mr Verdi, believe me, and he can make a lot more trouble if you don’t come clean.’

He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, yeah. I want to do that. I couldn’t keep it in no more.’

The press had gone from Hornchurch Street by the time they got back, and Kathy was able to drive in without difficulty. She took Eddie to an interview room to make his statement to Brock. When it was over they made some rapid phone calls, then sent a car to Silvermeadow to pick up the gelato king.

Verdi arrived with an air of benevolent mystification, Brock noted, an honest citizen trying be patient with the inexplicable ways of the police.

‘Was it really necessary to bring me over here, Chief Inspector? I am quite short-handed today.’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Brock snapped down the switch of a recording machine and intoned the time and names of those present. ‘We found a travel agent in Basildon who says you bought some tickets on the sixth of December. Tell us about them, will you?’

Verdi blinked, and Brock saw the signs of sudden panicked calculations. ‘The sixth? Perhaps you would just remind me?’

‘Why? Did you make more than one purchase of tickets around then?’

‘Well, I don’t think… I just don’t recall.’

‘One single ticket on the coach that stops at Silvermeadow en route from Victoria to Harwich, plus one single ticket for the night ferry from Harwich to Hamburg.’

‘Ah!’ His face creased in an exaggerated smile. ‘Yes, of course, how stupid of me.’

Stupid indeed, thought Brock, and remarkably forgetful.

‘Open tickets,’ he said, ‘valid during the following six months-’

Brock leant forward and spoke slowly, not trying to keep the anger from his voice. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence.’

Verdi drew back a little. ‘Really, Chief Inspector! You’re being very aggressive, if I may say. Maybe I should call my solicitor.’

‘Maybe you should. Lying to police conducting a murder inquiry is an extremely serious matter.’

‘Lying?’

Brock placed the computer image of Testor on the table. ‘You never saw this man before. A lie. You had no idea what your niece was doing at Silvermeadow on the sixth. A lie.’

‘This man?’ He touched his moustache nervously as if it were a charm that might help.

‘Eddie Testor.’

‘That is Eddie Testor? No, I don’t think… Well, maybe there is some similarity…’

Brock made an abrupt move of irritation.

‘No, please.’ Verdi took a scarlet handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face, which had gradually become almost as red. ‘All right, look, I see you’ve been talking to Eddie, and if he’s chosen to speak then I can feel free to tell you everything. I was keeping silent to protect him, you see. No, please, you’re looking as if you don’t believe it, but that’s the truth of the matter.’

It occurred to Brock that it would be easy to underestimate this man, to write him off for his bluster and his lies as a fool. He guessed that Verdi had been playing this part, part clown and part bully, for most of his life, and might have become quite adept at using it to hide bigger, deeper lies beneath the phoney surface.

‘The fact is, what can I say?’ Verdi went on. ‘I did try to help Kerri visit her father, my brother, over in Hamburg. Well, I felt it my duty, really. Alison was being very unreasonable in preventing it, and I could see it would end up destroying her relationship with Kerri, apart from causing heartache to the rest of my family-my brother and our elderly mother, who hasn’t seen her grand-daughter in three years and isn’t able to travel. Stefan, my brother, had been exchanging letters with Kerri for some months, using me as a post-box, and they had decided that they would get together for this Christmas, regardless of Alison. Anyway, I agreed to arrange Kerri’s tickets, thinking she’d go over towards the middle of December. But on the Sunday night, the fifth, she came in to see me at the shop after she’d finished her shift and said her mother was driving her mad, and she was going to leave the following day, with or without my assistance. She said she would hitch-hike if I wouldn’t help. I told her to calm down, and tried to persuade her to wait, but she was very stubborn. She wouldn’t listen, so I phoned the family in Hamburg, and this travel agent I know, and made the arrangements.

‘The following day I collected the tickets from Basildon, but I didn’t want Kerri being seen anywhere near me or the shop on the day she was to disappear, or I was sure I’d be in trouble for helping her. On Mondays and Tuesdays I leave early from Silvermeadow, so Monday afternoon was a perfect time, and I arranged for Eddie to act as the go-between, to hand over the tickets.’

‘Why Eddie?’

Verdi shrugged. ‘He was just someone I knew who had no connection at all with Kerri or, as far as most people knew, with me. I just knew that he was a very willing lad, someone who could be trusted to run an errand.’

‘Did you know he had a criminal record?’

Verdi frowned. ‘The road-rage case, you mean? Yes, I knew about that. But I’ve never seen that side of him, and frankly I think he’s got over all that. But of course, when Harry told me that Kerri had been murdered, that came straight into my mind.’

‘Did you give him the black eye?’

Verdi lowered his head. ‘When I got my thoughts together that Saturday night, after I heard what had happened to Kerri, my first thought was that Eddie had done something to her. There is something a bit weird about the boy, do you know what I mean? Sometimes he seems a bit simple or something. Maybe just too wrapped up inside his own head, I don’t know. Anyway, that was the way my mind went.’

‘Then why the hell didn’t you say something to us?’

‘I… I wasn’t sure what to do. I was in the wrong, wasn’t I? Helping Kerri and my brother to break the terms of the custody order, and helping the girl set off abroad all on her own. I felt responsible, and I wanted to see what Eddie had to say before I came to you. Only I couldn’t find him that night, and the next day you were talking to him, and it wasn’t till the evening that I went to his home and had it out with him.’

Brock stared at Bruno, a foot shorter than Eddie Testor and three or four stone lighter, and tried to imagine the little man beating him up.

‘Who helped you?’

‘Nobody. He’d taken something, I don’t know what, and he was in a stupid mood. He played silly buggers at first, joking around, so I hit him a couple of times to make him listen and show him I was serious. He sobered up then, and told me that the police had spoken to him, trying to find out who had helped the girl run away, and he’d been really smart and made up some story for you about another man talking to her. While he was telling me this, I realised that he had absolutely no idea that anything bad had happened to Kerri. He believed she was safely in Germany, and that you’d been trying to trick him and he’d been covering for her and me. Once I was sure about that, I thought the best thing was for us to keep quiet. How could it help you to know what we’d planned? We had no idea what had really happened. So I told Eddie that making up stories about another man was really dumb, and if you spoke to him again he should just say he’d got confused, and deny he’d ever seen the girl.’

Brock sat back and scratched his jaw, considering Verdi. The man had tinted his eyebrows as well as his hair and moustache, he realised, and the effect at close quarters was to make his every expression seem exaggerated and false, like a stage actor captured in close-up on film, overacting.

‘So your brother Stefan can confirm this story,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, certainly. You ask him.’

‘And Alison Vlasich knew nothing?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘How much money was in the envelope?’

‘Not a lot. Enough for emergencies. A couple of hundred quid.’

‘Sterling?’

‘Yes. Just a bundle of old notes I took from the till.’

‘It was very trusting of you to leave all this to Eddie, and even tell him there was money in the envelope.’

‘He’s a good boy really.’

‘Why did Ms Hislop at the fitness salon tell lies about his waxing session to give him an alibi?’

‘Oh dear…’ Verdi looked sheepishly contrite. ‘I’m sorry. That was my doing. I hope she won’t get into trouble over it. When there was all that talk on TV about a prime suspect and they showed that picture of Eddie, I thought I’d got him into real trouble, and I just wanted to do whatever I could to save him.’

‘Short of actually coming forward and clearing him yourself with the truth. Truth seems to be a rather irrelevant concept to you, Mr Verdi. You’re quite happy to pile lies on lies, and get any number of other people tangled up in the mess, if it’ll help make us buy your story. How did you persuade her to do it?’

‘Oh, you know, just a favour for an old friend.’ He chuckled impishly. ‘Please don’t be angry with her. It’s all my doing.’

Brock leant forward and said, ‘We want to search your premises, Mr Verdi.’

‘My shop? Well, yes, if you really think that’s necessary. I hope you won’t alarm the customers though.’

‘Your shop, and your home.’

‘Oh, my home? Oh no, I don’t think I could allow that. My wife is an invalid, as I told you, and very easily distressed. It would be a dreadful intrusion. No, no.’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be very considerate of your wife’s feelings. Where do you think you’re going?’

Verdi had risen to his feet, chest thrust out as if about to deliver an operatic rendition. ‘I am going to my sick wife’s bedside, Chief Inspector! If you want to violate my house you’d better get yourself a search warrant.’

‘Sit down, Mr Verdi. By lying to us in the way that you’ve just admitted you can be charged with obstructing the police. By persuading a third party to obstruct our enquiries you can also be charged with conspiracy and incitement. This is an arrestable offence. If I arrest you for that offence I may then enter and search any of your premises, without a warrant, for evidence relating to that or a connected offence, such as the abduction of Kerri Vlasich.’

Brock’s explanation seemed to stun Verdi. Punctured, he slid slowly back down into his seat. ‘Can you do that?’ he asked faintly.

‘Yes, yes I can, actually. And I will, unless you’re prepared to accompany us to your home and invite us in to search it.’

Later, briefing Lowry, Kathy and the others, Brock said, ‘You’re looking for anything relating to Kerri: correspondence, photographs, personal articles, clothing and so on. And especially you’re looking for ketamine. That’s the key. Get Desai to brief you on what it may look like, bottles, pills, whatever. If you can find that, we’re home and dry. Look everywhere, even under the invalid’s mattress. No, especially under the invalid’s mattress.’

Verdi’s home was a small detached house, one of a row packed close together behind small front gardens-late Victorian, Brock guessed-with decorative brickwork around the doors and windows that produced a slightly fantastical effect, as if the builder had had a fairy-tale gingerbread house in mind. Mrs Verdi lived on the ground floor, her room at the front where she could sit propped up in bed or in a chair by the window, watching the traffic in the street. Brock guessed that with help from her husband she could also access a family room and kitchen at the rear, and a bathroom which had been specially built for her use.

When they had finished searching the family room, Verdi lifted his wife into her wheelchair and took her through so that they could search her bedroom. He did it with an air of wounded dignity, and surprising lack of effort, Brock thought, and he remembered that Verdi also was a regular at the gym. There was nothing but dust and old tissues under the invalid’s mattress.

Upstairs was Verdi’s territory, inaccessible to his wife, and mirroring the arrangement below, with his bedroom at the front and what he described as his ‘den’ at the rear. This room was locked, and he was obliged to hand Brock the key with a sullen look. It contained an exercise machine and some hand and bar weights, a TV/video player, and empty shelving covering one wall. When asked what the shelves were for, he said he was thinking of buying a set of encyclopaedias.

‘Miniature ones,’ Lowry muttered, measuring the spaces between the shelves. ‘Eight inches? More like paperbacks. Or videos.’

As for ketamine, the only possibility seemed to be the medicine cupboard, full of Mrs Verdi’s bottles and pills, from which samples were taken.

After less than two hours the search seemed to be exhausted and the team prepared to return to Silvermeadow. Verdi watched them packing up with a satisfied look on his face. When Brock thanked him for his co-operation, he said, ‘Don’t mention it, Chief Inspector,’ barely keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. Then he added, ‘That Rutter woman had something to do with this, didn’t she?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Brock replied.

‘Mrs Harriet Rutter,’ he repeated, spitting out the syllables of the name. ‘She puts on airs and acts as if shopkeepers were her personal servants, and when someone like me stands up to her she gets to work with her poison tongue. I’m right, aren’t I? She put in the word against me, eh? You won’t say, but it’s true. Her and that old fool that tags along behind her. Well, if you want some advice, you should take a long look at him. I’ve seen the way he tries to talk to the young girls. He gives them little presents, has he told you that? I’ve seen him do it, winking at them like a hairy old goat. You should check him out and that hut of his.’

‘What hut is that?’

‘The site huts down below the east end of the centre. He had the use of one of them as his workroom when they were doing their excavations. Didn’t you know that? He’s been at Silvermeadow longer than any of us. He’d know better than any of us how to make someone disappear from that place.’

When they were in the car, Brock said, ‘Bruno Verdi has an amazing capacity for making me feel that he knows in advance when we’re coming for him. All that fuss about getting entry to his home, and when we go there there’s not a teacup out of place.’

‘Those empty shelves…’ Lowry said.

‘Exactly. What about the huts he was talking about, Gavin? They’ve been searched, haven’t they?’

Lowry didn’t answer straight away. ‘I… Yes, they must have been.’

‘You don’t sound very confident.’

‘I was inside the building when we did the initial search, chief. Another team worked the carpark and external site areas. They’d have covered the site huts.’

‘Get Harry Jackson to open them up for you when we get back. You and Kathy. Just to be on the safe side.’