Silvermeadow

21

T he mall was packed with a seething, anxious mob. The customary trance-like atmosphere had given way to a mood of urgency, as last-minute shoppers, heads down, frowning, rushed from shop to shop, scoring names off lists. The carols sung by a local school choir, amplified throughout the centre, had to compete with the wailing of over-excited children and the furious hubbub of raised voices.

Halfway along the mall Kathy spotted Harriet Rutter seated at a cafe table. Her heart sank, and she stopped. At that moment the phone in her bag began ringing. She turned against a shopfront to answer it, putting a hand to her other ear. Through the glass she could see a child strapped into a pushchair angrily battering a rack of wrapping paper with its tiny red boots.

‘Kathy? Brock here. What on earth’s that noise?’

‘The roar of rampaging shoppers. I’m at Silvermeadow.’

‘Really? What are you up to there?’

‘I forgot to get presents for my relatives in Sheffield.’

‘Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom? You’ll be in deep trouble.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘What? Can’t hear you. Look, the reason I called was to check you were still all right for Christmas lunch tomorrow.’

‘Really?’ Kathy brightened. ‘Is it still on?’

‘Of course. Unless you’ve had a better offer?’

‘No. You neither?’

‘No. We can call it the Rejects’ Lunch. The Salon des Refuses.’

Kathy laughed. ‘What can I bring?’

‘Well, since you’re at the shops, you could see if you can find a Christmas pudding. I’ve already got the duck.’

Kathy rang off and smiled to herself. A duck. So he’d been shopping too.

She continued along the mall, and reached Harriet Rutter. She seemed to be alone, only one plate and cup in front of her, her gaze aimlessly scanning the moving crowd. Kathy paused reluctantly and said, ‘Hello Mrs Rutter. How are you?’

The other woman turned with a vague smile that chilled as soon as she realised who had addressed her. ‘Ah… Sergeant.’

‘Are you on your own? Is Professor Orr not with you?’

Harriet Rutter shook her head abruptly. Kathy noticed that she seemed to be holding herself stiffly upright, like a widow at a funeral. And now she looked more closely, she was almost sure that there was moisture gleaming in the corners of the woman’s eyes.

She really didn’t want to stop and hear the story, whatever it was, but she felt compelled to ask. ‘Is something the matter? Are you all right?’

Mrs Rutter shook her head, speechless, and this seemed so completely out of character that Kathy was taken aback.

She took the other seat at the table. ‘What is it?’

‘Robbie and I… have had a falling out. That’s all.’

‘Oh. I am sorry. Do you know, I think it’s Christmas that does this. Everybody seems to have the same problem.’

The other woman looked at her doubtfully, as if to see if she was making fun of her.

‘It’s got nothing to do with Christmas. It’s my fault. I should have been more patient… more sympathetic.’

‘Oh dear. Do you want to tell me? Is there anything I can do?’

Mrs Rutter’s eyes widened. ‘You!’ she whispered, and turned abruptly away, behaving almost as if it was all Kathy’s fault.

Kathy was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

Mrs Rutter slowly turned back to face her, mouth set defiantly. ‘I mean that Robbie was devastated, utterly devastated, by the treatment he got from you people.’ She spoke in an uncharacteristically low tone, almost a whisper, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’

‘No, no I don’t.’

‘I suppose you deal with hardened criminals all the time, don’t you? And you assume that everyone’s the same. Well I can tell you, by the time you and that Sergeant Lowry had finished with Robbie, the poor man was a wreck. He hasn’t been able to sleep, or eat. And he’s not a weak man…’ The tears were flowing freely now. ‘He was in the army, long ago, and he’s coped with all the usual trials of a long and useful life. But you humiliated him. You made him out to be rubbish. You hurt him.’

Kathy was stunned, and felt herself wilting before the ferocity of the woman’s outrage. ‘Mrs Rutter, Professor Orr seemed quite all right when I last saw him. He didn’t like being questioned, of course, but he was co-operative, and didn’t seem too distressed.’ But that was before Gavin Lowry had had a go, and she remembered how angry Lowry had seemed afterwards.

Mrs Rutter wasn’t interested. She turned away and wiped her eyes and nose with a small handkerchief and recomposed herself. ‘What’s really galling is that that awful man has got away with it. That’s what Robbie can’t abide.’

‘DS Lowry?’ Kathy asked.

‘No! Bruno Verdi!’ She curled her lip as she pronounced the name like an obscenity. ‘He put those things in Robbie’s filing cabinet. Any fool could have worked that out in one minute. Even the police. He’s an evil and spiteful little man… But, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re afraid of Verdi?’

‘Of what Robbie may do. That’s why we quarrelled. I wanted him to put it out of his mind, forget about it, but he can’t. He says he’s going to expose Verdi. He’s become obsessed by the idea.’ She shook her head hopelessly. ‘How can he?’

Kathy had the sudden notion that Orr’s outrage at being accused of possessing a dirty video might just be because it had touched a nerve, and perhaps one that Mrs Rutter might have recognised. Maybe she had had her own suspicions about the great man’s proclivities. Didn’t they used to chat up the young people in the malls together? And then there was the matter of the coins.

Kathy mentally kicked herself; she had forgotten about the coins. What was happening to her memory? Maybe sex and shopping affected the brain.

‘Do you think, if I spoke to him, apologised?’

‘Oh, I really don’t think that would do any good. Not now.’

‘Is he at home?’

‘No, we came here together. That’s when we quarrelled.’

‘He’s here, is he?’

She nodded. ‘I think he’s gone to that hut.’

‘Well, I might call in on him and see if I can calm him down.’

Mrs Rutter looked doubtful, then relief began to soften her face. ‘Would you? It might help.’

As she continued along the mall Kathy passed a deli, and selected one of the small gourmet Christmas puddings they had on offer, and a box of mince pies. She also noticed a sign advertising a delivery service to anywhere in the UK, and with relief ordered a presentation box of delicacies to be sent up to Sheffield, with a hurriedly written card which she backdated to the twentieth. She had a moment of anxiety as the machine scanned her card, but some residual credit still apparently remained, and she emerged from the shop contented.

The icy wind caught her breath as soon as she stepped out of the shelter of the east entrance. She lowered her head, turned up her collar and strode towards the top of the grass bank that separated the upper and lower carparks, where she could see down the bare flank of the centre to the two steel containers in their water-logged compound at the far corner. It occurred to her that Orr couldn’t be in his hut, because they had put a new padlock on the door, one to which only the police had a key. And yet, screwing up her eyes against the wind, Kathy was almost convinced that she could see a glimmer of light reflecting from the puddle at that end of the container. Puzzled, she began the tricky descent down the slippery grass slope and across the muddy ground below.

There was definitely light coming from the bottom edge of the door, and when she reached it she was able to make out the hasp that secured the door dangling loose, and still locked by the padlock to the staple which had been forcibly wrenched from the jamb. Robbie Orr had obviously come prepared.

He literally jumped into the air when she pulled the door open and said hello. Coat flapping, arms flailing, he scrambled to hide whatever he had been examining on the table as he turned to face her.

‘What do you want?’ he barked.

He was certainly the worse for wear, she saw. He looked older, clothes dishevelled and splashed with mud.

‘I bumped into Harriet in the mall. She said you might be down here. Can I come in?’

She stepped in before he could reply, and swung the door to.

‘I’m busy,’ he said angrily, and she caught a whiff of whisky. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed.’

‘What are you doing?’

She stared at the tabletop behind him, and he shuffled sideways to block her view. She was startled to see what looked like copies of the computer plans that Allen Cook had provided for their search. Even more disconcerting was a glimpse of what looked like several fat brass cartridges. He began feeling along the edge of the table with the long, bony fingers of his left hand towards the jemmy he’d presumably used to force open the door. His right hand was plunged deep in his coat pocket, and he seemed reluctant to take it out. The coat was dragged down on that side of his body, as if the pocket contained something heavy.

‘DS Kathy Kolla,’ Kathy suddenly said with a big smile, and stuck out her hand. ‘Remember me?’

He jerked back from her hand, then flushed when he realised she was offering it to shake. ‘Of course I do!’ He flapped his left hand at her, while his right remained firmly in the pocket. ‘Please go away.’

‘I thought maybe we could talk things over. I think we could help each other.’

He leant forward, eyes glittering with anger. ‘Don’t try your soft soap on me, lassie,’ he said. ‘I know why you’ve come.’

‘Do you?’

‘Aye. To save your corrupt friends. To have me take the blame for your bungling. What have you got in your bag, eh? What did you bring to hide in my drawers this time? More filth? Perhaps you’d like me to tell you what an attractive wee girl she was? How she liked to tease old men like me for a pound or two? Is that what you want to hear?’

‘I want to hear the truth, Robbie. Did she tease you?’ Kathy searched his face, trying to read it. Inside the pocket of her coat her fingers found the small black disc she had taken from the box on Kerri’s desk, and she held it up for him to see. ‘You did give her old coins, didn’t you? What were they? Gifts, tokens?’

Orr stiffened. ‘I gave coins to many of the young people in the mall,’ he growled.

‘Why?’

His lip curled at her with contempt. ‘Not for the reason your sordid police mind imagines, I dare say. I wasn’t trying to buy them, Sergeant. They have far too smart an estimate of their own worth to sell themselves for trinkets. I wanted them to learn a different lesson about money. The coins came from this hillside. I found them near the bones of the Saxon children. Small change. Part of the hoard the Vikings were looking for. I wanted them to know that children like them were murdered for these coins. That the coins survived, but the children did not. But I was naive. Today the children are more greedy, and the people that hunt them more evil.’

He rocked back on his heels, and reached behind him with his left hand to grip the table, as if running out of steam.

‘I didn’t come here to trap you,’ Kathy said quietly. ‘If you know something, let me help you.’

He looked at her sadly. ‘Have you arrested Verdi?’

‘No.’

‘Have you found his lair?’

She shook her head, startled.

‘Then you can’t help me.’ He turned away dismissively.

‘What do you know about a lair?’ she asked. ‘We’ve been looking-’

‘In all the wrong places, no doubt.’ He turned to her again, a smile of patronising superiority twitching his whiskers.

He’s been a teacher for years, she thought. He can’t help turning every conversation into a seminar. ‘Well, I don’t know. We know its walls are bare concrete blocks-’

He looked sharply at her. ‘Oh yes? How do you know that?’

‘A witness says she saw a photograph of Verdi in a bare room, with a girl.’

He nodded. ‘But where is it?’

‘We don’t know. We’ve been searching disused factories, garages-’

He made a scoffing noise. ‘Pathetic!’

‘It was the best we could come up with.’

He pondered, and she thought, Come on, you can’t resist telling me something.

‘Are you familiar with the legend of the Minotaur, Sergeant?’

‘Not really. It was a monster, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye, half man and half beast. It lived on human sacrifice, the youth of Thebes.’

‘And where was its lair?’

‘In the labyrinth at Knossos, on the island of Crete. I spoke to your chief inspector about my time there, you may remember. The labyrinth was within, or some said beneath, the palace.’

Kathy thought about that. ‘If you’re suggesting that Silvermeadow is the palace… We’ve been all over it, and beneath it. That’s where we found-’

‘Aye, I heard. The remains of human sacrifice.’

‘But no lair.’

He said nothing.

‘Did they catch the Minotaur?’

‘The hero Theseus slew it, yes.’

‘How did he find it?’

‘A young woman showed him the way. Ariadne. Alas, I fear you will not be my Ariadne, Sergeant. Too bad. Now please go away.’

Kathy felt her patience ebbing. His dismissal reminded her of every dismissal she’d ever experienced at school. ‘Sorry,’ she said briskly. ‘I can’t do that. It looks as if someone’s forced that lock. I’ll have to get security.’

She reached into her bag and took out her phone.

‘Don’t do that!’ He spun round and shouted at her, his earlier agitation flaring up again.

She glanced at his right hand, still jammed in his coat pocket, then began to press the numbers.

The hand suddenly lurched into movement as if of its own accord, hauling out of the pocket one of the largest and heaviest-looking handguns Kathy had ever seen. He pointed it at her, the barrel wobbling alarmingly, and lifted his other hand to try to steady it.

‘Bloody hell!’ Kathy breathed. ‘What is that?’

‘The phone!’ he barked, flecks of spittle on his lips. ‘Put it down! Put it down!’

She shrugged and slipped it back in her bag.

‘No, no! Put it on the floor! Put it on the floor and step back!’

Kathy did exactly as he said, her eyes on the trembling fingers that held the swaying ordnance.

He stepped forward and swung a clumsy kick at the phone, missed, tried again and connected, sending it spinning away. ‘Foolish woman!’ he gasped. ‘You foolish, foolish-’

‘Where on earth did you get that?’ Kathy asked, trying desperately to sound completely calm and unconcerned by his obvious incompetence with the gun.

‘The very place,’ he said, and gave a rather wild little laugh. ‘Knossos, Crete. The island was full of small arms after the war. I bought this from a village boy for two packets of cigarettes-two more for the box of ammunition.’

‘Over fifty years ago? Have you ever fired it?’

‘I tried it once after I bought it, on the beach. Nearly deafened me.’

‘Are you sure it still works?’

‘We’ll have to see, won’t we? Sit down.’

He nodded towards the chair. Kathy moved carefully towards it, and he matched her steps in a slow-motion ballet to position himself between her and the door. When he was satisfied, he lowered the gun to his side, much, Kathy suspected, to the relief of them both. She tried to read the expression on his face. Not anger, she thought, nor fear. More like perplexity.

‘This is awkward, isn’t it?’ she said slowly. ‘You can’t lock me in here because the lock is broken, and you can’t let me go.’

He nodded sharply, as if this was exactly what he’d been thinking.

‘Would it help if I were to say that I’m as anxious as you are to find this room, if it exists?’

‘It exists,’ he said flatly.

‘How do you know?’

‘I’ve found it.’

‘You’ve been there?’

He shook his head. She followed his glance over to the table, covered by the sheets of plans. She noticed coloured pencil marks.

‘Those are the plans we worked from,’ she said, puzzled. ‘What could we have missed?’

A hint of the smug tutorial smile crept back onto his face. ‘They have been tampered with.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because when I first arrived here, when the construction of the building had hardly begun, they gave me a set of the plans so that we would know where to concentrate the digging. I still have them.’

‘We know those plans have been modified since then-’

‘I know that. But they’ve also been tampered with. A room has been removed. A special room. I saw them build it.’

Kathy stared at him, not sure what to believe, and then Allen Cook’s comment came into her head: Harry Jackson has a lad who’s a bit of a computer whiz, and I pa y him to work on it from time to time. Speedy Reynolds of course. He could have done anything to the plans and nobody would have been the wiser.

‘You saw this room being built? What was special about it?’

‘It was right in the middle of the food court, shaped as an octagon, a pit containing a stage that could move up and down for spectacles and events. But it was too large, too ambitious, the costs got out of hand. Then one of the directors had a holiday in Hawaii, and when he came back they changed their plans. They sealed off the pit and built that ridiculous volcano on top. I was on good terms with the site foreman. He told me all this. The workmen thought it was a great joke.’

‘But the room is still there, under the volcano?’

Orr nodded.

‘But if it was sealed off…’

‘It was connected to the main plenum duct by a short corridor and a door-you can see it on the original plan- so that they could get to the machinery under the stage. But that’s been removed from the plans too.’

‘So you think you can reach it from the plenum?’

‘Yes.’ Orr looked unhappy, and Kathy thought she could guess why.

‘But how can you get into the plenum? The only way is through the security centre. Christ, you weren’t going to hold them up with your blunderbuss, were you?’

He lowered his eyes guiltily and muttered something indistinct.

Kathy looked at him sadly. He was just a pathetic old man, bruised, almost casually, by Verdi’s malice and Lowry’s bullying. Thank goodness she’d come down here before he’d tried to carry out his plan. She could disarm and arrest him now without difficulty, but what would that achieve? Verdi and Lowry would find it all very amusing, no doubt.

She didn’t hold much store by his theory. She could imagine him poring over the plans, the revelation when he noticed the discrepancy that allowed him to pin-point the missing room, the old instincts aroused by the promise of a hidden, buried chamber of horrors. Under the volcano, too. Really, he had been planning his last great expedition, Orr as Theseus as Indiana Jones, archaeologist-hero, complete with antique revolver.

They had searched the plenum thoroughly and seen no sign of the door. Yet he had watched the octagonal room being built. They probably should have another look, although she could imagine the scepticism if she suggested it. One thing at least was sure: if Verdi did have a den down there, he wasn’t there now, for the surveillance team had reported that he had gone home early that afternoon, leaving the gelato parlour in the charge of two assistants.

‘It’s a funny way to spend Christmas Eve, Professor,’ she said at last.

He was lost in thought, and looked at her vaguely. ‘What?’

‘Suppose I agreed to be your Ariadne, and get you into the plenum.’

‘Would you?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘On strict conditions. No guns, and I phone in and report what we’re doing.’

He frowned at her, then at the phone lying by his foot. Without a word he lifted his boot and stamped on the phone, then again. It splintered with a loud crack.

‘No gun and no phone,’ he said simply. He went over to the filing cabinet and placed the gun inside.

Kathy shook her head in exasperation. ‘Show me your map, then.’

They stood together at the table and Orr showed her where the missing room was located.

‘Have you got torches?’ she asked.

While he went back to the cabinet and searched through the drawers, she took a page from a notepad on the table and wrote ‘Please advise DCI Brock NOW’ and added his mobile number. She slipped the paper into her pocket and began folding up the plans to take with them.

They trudged together across the mud to the lower carpark, and into the mall at the first entrance they came to. They passed briefly through the still frantic crowd until they reached a side corridor, where Kathy led the way to the security door at the end. She used her code to pass through and into the service corridor beyond, leading to the service road. It was deserted now, no deliveries at this late hour on Christmas Eve. They walked on in silence until they came to the lighted window of the security centre at the foot of the entry ramp.

Kathy was relieved to see Sharon’s face illuminated inside, doubting whether she would have been able to talk their way past Harry Jackson. She waved to her and opened the door.

‘Hi, Sharon. Still hard at work?’

‘I’m just about to knock off, Kathy,’ she replied, looking doubtfully at the old man following at Kathy’s back.

‘You know Professor Orr, don’t you?’ Kathy said. ‘He’s helping me clear up one or two loose ends in our investigation. He was here when the building was being constructed, you see. We just need to take a quick look down below in the plenum duct.’

‘You want to go down there now?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Kathy began to walk towards the rear of the office.

‘I’d better check with Harry first,’ Sharon called after her. ‘I couldn’t let you through otherwise.’

‘That really won’t be necessary,’ Kathy said firmly. ‘And it’d hold us up-and you too. Harry might feel he has to check with my boss, and that might take hours, finding him. We only need five minutes, ten at most. If we’re not back then, contact Harry and tell him I insisted.’

Sharon wavered, then capitulated. ‘Well, just make sure you do get back before he comes down here, Kathy. He’ll give me hell.’

She took them to the door at the back of the unit and gave them a hard hat each. As she took hers, Kathy gave her the piece of paper on which she’d written Brock’s phone number. ‘Just in case there’s a problem, okay?’ she whispered.

As they descended the long ramp, Kathy was aware of appreciative little noises from Orr behind her. ‘This is really very good,’ he murmured. ‘It feels very like the passageway down into one of the tombs of the New Kingdom. Did I tell you I was with Emery at Saqqara?’

The illusion became even stronger when they moved from the chamber at the foot of the ramp into the unlit plenum duct itself, with its low ceiling and whispering darkness. Orr stumbled as he stepped inside, banging his helmet against the ceiling just as Leon had done. The memory gave Kathy an unexpectedly sharp jab of regret. She put out a hand to steady Orr, and flinched as his coat swung against her and something heavy and hard banged against her knee.

She swore softly and turned the light on him, seeing the bulge in his coat pocket. ‘That bloody gun!’ she hissed. ‘You promised!’

‘I’m sorry, Kathy.’ His voice was plaintive. ‘I felt obliged… in case I led you into any danger.’

‘The only danger I’m in is from that damn thing going off by mistake!’

‘No, no. I was in the army, you know. The safety catch is on. What in God’s name is that sound?’ Orr breathed. ‘It’s like the voices of ghosts.’

‘It’s only the machinery,’ Kathy said, and turned away, irritated. ‘The extract fan’s at the far end. Come on.’

They passed evidence of where workmen had begun replacing the missing grilles in the incoming ducts, and came to the place where Wiff ’s nest had been, still cordoned off with police tape. Here they examined the original plan, orienting themselves. If the door to the octagonal room existed, they realised, it must be quite close.

They moved on down the main plenum to the next short branch to the left, which they followed to its end, closed by a panel of louvres. This, they decided, talking for some reason in whispers, was where the door should have been. But there was no sign of a handle or hinges in the louvres, which appeared firmly fixed. Orr rattled them in frustration, pushed his shoulder half-heartedly against them, then stepped back in astonishment as they swung soundlessly open.

Their torches showed another corridor beyond, its walls formed of grey concrete blockwork. It ran forward for about twenty yards, then turned left and stopped at a door. Kathy told Orr to wait and tried the handle. It turned, and she opened the door into a darkened room. The air was suddenly much warmer and had a strong human smell, of urine and sweat. She pointed her torch into the dark space and picked out a chair, an electric fan heater and a pair of wellington boots. As the beam swept slowly across the room she saw a mattress on a steel-framed bed. From the head-frame hung a pair of handcuffs.

‘Oh God…’ she breathed. ‘You were right, Robbie. Just stay where you are please. Don’t come in here.’

She shone the torch back along the wall towards the door and found a light switch. A harsh white fluorescent light flickered into life overhead, and Kathy stepped cautiously into the room. There was a suitcase near the bed, open, with clothes heaped untidily inside.

At her shoulder, Orr whispered, ‘I knew it, Kathy. I knew I was right. The Minotaur’s lair, eh?’

‘Yes. And I told you to stay outside. For goodness’ sake don’t touch anything.’

She was staring at the mattress. There was a sleeping bag heaped at one end, a pillow at the other, magazines scattered in between. Behind her she heard the door click shut. She turned, assuming Orr had followed her instructions and left, but he was still at her back, staring towards the door. Then she saw the man standing there and her heart gave a violent jolt.

‘Who the blazes are you?’ Orr demanded.

The figure didn’t answer, but Kathy knew who it was. She had seen the face on video and mug shots, and once in the flesh.

Gregory Thomas ‘Upper’ North.