Silvermeadow

2

D etective Sergeant Gavin Lowry opened the door of the patrol car for Brock as soon as it came to a halt outside Number Three Shed, introduced himself and led him through the tall metal doors into the cavernous interior. Brock had an impression of vast scale, a shadowy Piranesian dungeon lit from high above by a few blinding industrial lamps, whose baleful glare illuminated a cardboard hillside, an unstable-looking avalanche of compacted cardboard blocks with the texture of a giant’s breakfast cereal.

‘They found her down there, sir,’ Lowry said, pointing to one corner, around which the figures of scene of crime officers in white nylon overalls were crawling. ‘One of the men was loading the waste onto the back of that truck. The bale split open and she was inside.’

‘How long ago was that, Sergeant?’ Brock asked, watching the man reach into the inside pocket of his black suit. A sharp dresser, mid-thirties, gel in his hair, after-shave, a smoker. His accent was standard Estuarine, Essex Man, delivered with a cool reserve, anxious to impress, Brock guessed, without showing it. He pulled the wallet of Polaroid pictures from his pocket and offered them to Brock.

‘The foreman placed a triple niner at eight forty-three this morning, sir. Reported the discovery of a body.’ He looked at his watch and automatically straightened his cuff again. ‘I’ve been here over five hours.’ He recounted briefly what steps he’d taken: the disposition of the SOCO teams, photographer, medical examiner.

‘The body’s been removed?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Brock put on his reading glasses and studied the photographs, peering at the strangely distorted figure coiled tight, pale and naked, inside a clear plastic wrapping, disconcertingly like some pre-packaged meal, a chicken leg perhaps, all ready for the microwave.

‘What did the FME have to say?’

‘Naked human, probably female, probably young, possibly adolescent, five to seven stone, between four six and five six, shoulder-length fair hair. No indication of cause of death, or time.’

‘Couldn’t get much vaguer than that.’ Brock turned to get more light onto the square glossy images.

‘She’s inside a heavy-duty clear plastic bag, as you can see, sir, and the doc didn’t want to open it up here. He reckoned she’d been crushed in a machine.’

‘A machine?’

‘Yeah, a compactor. The guy who runs this place is over there. He’ll explain the technicalities.’

‘No identification, then?’

‘We could see a ring on one of her fingers. It matches the description of one worn by a missing person, Kerri Vlasich, age fourteen, disappeared Monday, sir.’

They walked towards an incongruously dressed figure: bright yellow yachting jacket, white slacks and espadrilles, a navy peaked cap on his head.

‘This is Mr Cherry, sir. The manager of the plant,’ Lowry said.

‘FD, facilities director,’ Cherry corrected tersely. He looked impatient and tense.

‘Perhaps you could tell me what’s going on here, Mr Cherry?’ Brock asked.

‘I’ve already explained it half a dozen times.’

‘For my benefit, if you don’t mind.’

Cherry pursed his lips with frustration, then spoke rapidly. ‘This is one of four WTE plants…’ He saw the look on Brock’s face and checked himself. ‘Waste-to-energy plant,’ he said. ‘Two thousand TPD rating, mixed WTE facility with front-end processing of mixed MSW.. .’

He spoke hurriedly, as if preoccupied with some overwhelming inner problem, so that the incomprehensible acronyms spilled out of their own accord.

‘TPD? MSW?’ Brock interrupted mildly.

‘Tons per day,’ Mr Cherry replied automatically. ‘Municipal solid wastes.’

A phone began sounding from an inside pocket of his jacket, and he snatched it out. It was the same bright yellow colour as his coat. ‘Christ! What now?’ He hunched away from the police and barked, ‘Yeah? No, no, no, don’t do that, sweetheart… Just be patient, yes? Please… Hang on…’

He turned back to Brock. ‘How long, you reckon? Before you’ll be through with me?’

‘Hard to say, Mr Cherry.’

‘Shit.’ He turned away again, tucking the phone into his shoulder for privacy but making the gesture futile by raising his voice. ‘There’s some chicken and stuff in the galley, sweetheart… no, the kitchen… and a bottle of bubbly in the fridge… Did you? Oh, well, there’s more in the cupboard in the corner… Lie down, have a rest, eh?… How can you be seasick when you’re still tied up to the berth?… Take a walk outside, sweetheart. I’ll ring you back in half an hour.’

He put the phone away, took a deep breath. ‘Right. Okay. What do you want to know?’

‘Has this happened before, Mr Cherry?’

‘What?’ He looked alarmed. ‘With…?’ His voice trailed off. ‘Oh, you mean the body?’

‘Yes, the body.’

‘No, never. They joke about it, the lads, but this is the first time it’s actually happened.’

‘Maybe if you explained to me in laymen’s terms what goes on here, at the plant. You dispose of refuse, do you?’

‘In a nutshell, yeah. It comes from all over Essex and east London. We do some front-end processing to the mixed waste for general recovery and recycling in the building near the front gates. The rest goes up the ramp for processing into RDF-refuse-derived fuel.’

‘Can we see?’

‘Sure.’

He led them out of the shed and onto the roadway leading to a concrete ramp. A light drizzle was falling now and they turned up their collars, hunching against the wind that grew stronger the higher they climbed. Halfway up they were obliged to stop and stand hard against the parapet as a heavily laden truck came grinding past, headlights on. It gave a blast of its horn and continued on up to the head of the ramp. They followed, the view opening up across the surrounding industrial landscape, flat and bleak, the humped profiles of grey factory sheds interspersed with the odd scarlet crane and silver flue.

The truck belonged to one of a number of designated contractors, Cherry explained, whose waste sources were known and whose loads did not require to go through the front-end screening process. They watched as the truck began reversing towards the delivery point, guided by the waving signals of an operative in waterproofs and a hard hat. The back of the truck began to tilt upwards, the load slid with a rumble into the steel maw, and within a minute the truck was disappearing down the exit ramp ahead.

‘Nobody actually inspects the load, see?’ Cherry said, having to shout now against the wind and the roar of the plant. ‘The contractors certify the organic content, and it goes straight in here for processing-shredding, grinding, spin-drying and then into the fuel silos. From there it’s pumped to the power plant’-he pointed to a pair of tall gleaming steel chimneys reaching upwards to the cloud base-‘and incinerated. We generate electricity for the grid, and sell the waste heat to a number of industrial plants around here, and to the district heating scheme that serves the Herbert Morrison estate.’ He gestured towards a row of grey concrete slabs almost invisible against the dark clouds.

‘You’re joking,’ Lowry said. ‘Straight up?’

‘Yes, sure. Why?’

‘We think that’s where the girl came from.’

‘Blimey! She could have ended up heating her mum’s radiators and giving her a few minutes of Terry Wogan on the telly,’ Cherry said softly, and they all stared at the distant housing blocks, looking disturbingly like tombstones in the rain.

The rain was falling with greater density and penetration now, and Cherry said, ‘Well, seen enough up here?’

They jogged quickly back down the ramp, returning to the shelter of Number Three Shed where they shook their coats and stamped their feet. The two drivers were back in their machines again, scooping out cardboard bales to the instructions of the SOCO officers. A handler with a beagle had joined them, and the dog was eagerly investigating each new batch of material uncovered. He seemed to be the only one enjoying his work.

‘So where does this fit into the process?’ Brock asked Cherry.

‘It doesn’t,’ the man said wearily. ‘That’s the point. We’ve been having trouble with our emissions. A month ago we were forced to shut down one of the two incinerators while we installed new filters. It’s only just been fired up again. Meanwhile we couldn’t burn all the material coming in. The RDF silos filled up, and we had to start dumping half the loads in here, as a temporary storage. We’ve hardly begun to clear it. By rights, none of this stuff should be here. Number Three Shed is due for demolition, to make way for a third incinerator.’

‘All this should have gone straight up the ramp?’

‘That’s right.’

The manager’s phone rang again and he clamped the yellow instrument to his ear. ‘What’s that, sweetheart?’ he yelled. ‘Where?. .. You threw up where?… Oh, Jesus!’ He swung round, oblivious to those around him now, staring wildly up into the darkness beyond the floodlights, his mind seized by some vivid mental picture.

Brock walked away, taking the Polaroid pictures from his pocket. The image in the photographs was so bizarre that he wished he’d seen it in situ for himself, the figure coiled inside the cube of compressed cardboard, like a foetus inside an egg. A private, secret foetus that by rights should never have been exposed, should have been delivered straight up the ramp to the shredders and grinders and then incinerated without anyone having a clue. Uncovered by a problem with emissions.

The plant manager seemed preoccupied with an emissions problem of a different kind, Brock thought wryly, watching him thrust his phone back in his pocket.

‘Tell me about compactors,’ he said.

‘Plenty of them about. Factories, supermarkets, anywhere that generates a lot of dry waste. Common type has a two-cubic-yard capacity, four-to-one compression ratio’-he rattled off the technical mantra while his mental eye seemed mesmerised by the vision of his girlfriend vomiting-‘usually linked to a receiving container that’s emptied by a contractor.’

Cherry paused, and stared up at the harsh lights. ‘Christ, we’ve had so many fucking disasters lately… Stroke of luck for you though, eh? You’ll be able to work out where it came from, no bother.’

They spoke to the woman leading the SOCO team, who described their preliminary results from the bale of cardboard waste in which the body had been hidden. The manufacturers’ symbols printed on them were those of household names, makers of electrical goods, paper towels, breakfast cereals. Several of the compressed boxes had delivery codes written on them, and one had fragments of a delivery notice inside it, with the sender’s name and despatch number, and the destination: a store at Silvermeadow.

When they returned to the patrol car, Lowry held the door open for Brock and said, ‘He’ll take you to Hornchurch Street, sir. Chief Superintendent Forbes is waiting for you in his conference room on the fourth floor. The driver’ll show you the way.’

He was perfectly polite, Brock noted, like a young man looking after an elderly relative who needed direction. Brock rested his arm on the roof of the car and looked him over thoughtfully. ‘Where are you going, Sergeant?’

Lowry checked his watch. ‘I’d better get over to the autopsy, sir. They said they’d make way for this one, and I’ll be needed to establish continuity of identification.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Ah…’ Lowry’s voice became coaxing, the volume low, as if he didn’t want the driver to hear. ‘Chief Superintendent Forbes is expecting you back there, sir. Area Major Investigation Pool Management has been alerted. I believe there are important management issues to resolve.’

‘Bugger the important management issues, Sergeant. I want to see the body.’

Lowry’s eyes flicked away briefly, a little smile forming on his lips. The elderly relative was becoming difficult. ‘You’ll get me into trouble, sir…’ he began, almost teasingly, then suddenly caught the cold look in Brock’s eye and stopped what he was about to say. He shrugged and reached for his phone. ‘I’ll let them know, sir.’

Brock put out his hand. ‘Just get the number for me, Sergeant. I’ll speak to him.’

He took the phone and walked away, out of earshot.

She-it definitely was a she-was curiously resistant to their probing, as if unwilling to release her secrets. Her age for a start. Perhaps it was the effect of the prolonged wrapping in the heavy plastic, or simply the result of the brutal compression, but her crushed face appeared old, that of a wrinkled old woman, while some other parts of her body-a thigh, a breast-seemed undeniably juvenile. The juxtaposition was disturbing, and Brock found his eyes wandering backwards and forwards, trying to reconcile a span of sixty years in the one body. In the end the pathologist called for X-rays of the teeth, as the only sure guide, but made an informed guess based on the weight of her organs, especially the liver and the spleen, which of all the main organs experience the greatest growth during puberty, and which in both cases were close to the median weight for a fourteen-year-old of similar build.

How and when she died were also problematic. There were no wounds incompatible with the effects of the compactor, into which, the pathologist was fairly certain, she had been put after rigor mortis was well established. But this was only a guess, he explained, for who had any real evidence of what the relentless hydraulic forces of the machine could do to the joints of a human body, whether stiff with rigor or not? He could only estimate, too, that she had been dead for around seven days, which matched reasonably well with Cherry’s conjecture that, from her position in the cardboard mountain, she had probably been delivered to Number Three Shed four or five days before. Maybe. As for identity, the teeth would again most likely provide the most reliable evidence, apart from the Mexican silver ring. It struck Brock as obscene that this little trinket, completely unscathed, should now seem to contain more of her personality than anything else on the stainless-steel table.

When it was over, and they set off again for their meeting with Chief Superintendent Forbes, Brock thought he sensed a certain satisfaction in Lowry that he had kept the senior officer waiting for a couple of hours for so little additional information. But he felt happier. He had, in some way that he couldn’t quite define, made contact with the victim, seen what had to be seen. It was the true starting point, from which the axis of the investigation would extend.

The jackhammering was at full volume when they returned to the divisional station at Hornchurch Street. Lowry showed Brock to the fourth-floor conference room and departed. Forbes rose to his feet, smiling, as Brock walked in. This was a much more comfortable meeting room, with high-backed chairs and a long polished timber-board table. The noise was muffled in here, and Forbes waved Brock to a seat. ‘So, how was the PM?’ he asked.

‘Not as informative as I’d have liked. A fourteen-year-old girl, most probably, but nothing much more solid than that. Sorry to have held you up.’

Forbes waved a large hand dismissively. ‘Can’t stand autopsies. One was enough for me. Had she been interfered with?’

‘We’ll have to wait for the tests.’

‘Mmm. But nasty, you’d agree?’ He appeared keen to have Brock confirm this point.

‘Yes. Certainly that.’

‘A sticker, as my young colleagues would put it, eh?’

Brock nodded. A sticker, certainly.

‘Mmm.’ He seemed reassured. ‘Wouldn’t like it said that we’d overreacted.’

Perhaps that was what the insurance was for, protection against some sensitivity in the system to premature approaches to Area Major Investigation Pool Management.

‘And an interesting case?’

Again Brock nodded. Interesting indeed.

‘No chance of further bodies out there?’

‘They haven’t found any so far, but they’re less than halfway through searching.’

‘Ah. So tell me, have you been able to give my proposal any further thought?’

‘What exactly did you have in mind, sir? There’s no suggestion that North is connected to this other case.’

‘No, no. But it has occurred to me since we last spoke that we might be able to come to some arrangement that would suit both our purposes. You want to spend time at Silvermeadow in the hope of tracking North, but don’t want it to be apparent, and we need top-calibre people there to support our investigations into the murder of this girl. Now suppose I, or rather AMIP, were to make a request to the Yard for high-level assistance with this murder, and you and your team were nominated. That would give you a legitimate reason to be at Silvermeadow, and of course would be a bonus for us.’

‘You would want us to participate in your murder team?’

‘Oh, I think that would be essential, don’t you? Otherwise people would ask what you were doing there. And, given your… status, I imagine people would expect you to play a leading role, at least nominally, yes? And of course, I would express my delight that the Met had agreed to lend us someone so’-he hesitated, searching for the right word-‘distinguished,’ he said finally, rather lamely.

Brock was thinking that the insurance Forbes was seeking must be of a more ongoing nature if he wanted him effectively to take over one of his cases. But Brock wasn’t averse to that. He wanted to know what had happened to the crushed child he’d just seen dissected on the pathologist’s table.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see possibilities in that.’

‘Really?’ Forbes seemed almost taken aback at the success of his gambit. ‘Excellent, excellent. I’ll get it formalised right away. I take it you’re happy to work with DS Lowry? Well regarded. Sound. Local knowledge. An asset, undoubtedly.’

Brock noted the sudden abbreviation of Forbes’s sentences, and wondered if he might have some problem with this local asset.

‘I expect,’ Forbes added with a conciliatory smile, ‘that you’ll want to have your sergeant on the team?’

Brock nodded, acknowledging the etiquette in the balance of power. ‘Bren Gurney, yes. But I want him working on the North case. I’ll bring in someone else to back up the Vlasich inquiry.’

‘Fair enough. Anyone in mind?’

‘I’ve an excellent DS we could probably make available. Name of Kolla.’

‘And he is…?’

‘She.’

‘Ah. Yes, well, good idea. A dead girl-a woman DS should be an asset.’

What a pompous ass he was, Brock thought. ‘Her asset is that she’s a bloody good detective. We’ve got an excellent forensic liaison officer too, if that suits you. I wonder if I might make a couple of calls?’

‘Of course, of course.’ Forbes jumped to his feet, reached for the phone, which was sitting on a side cabinet, and hefted it, together with the three Metropolitan Police telephone directories, red, black and grey, across onto the table. He set the books down beside the phone, pointedly placing the black volume, covering headquarters branches, on top.

‘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?’

Lowry told him, ‘A TV.’

‘Oh, you’re lucky, mate! Last week it was a bleedin’ dog. From the top deck. What a bleedin’ mess that was!’

‘Who?’ Lowry asked. ‘Who was it?’

‘Kids,’ the man said dismissively. ‘They’ll have calmed down in a year or two. Be full of ’eroin by then, eh? That’ll keep the little bastards quiet.’

There was a further delay while Lowry reported the incident on his phone, demanding a full-scale raid on the estate from an uncooperative duty sergeant.

While they waited, sheltering under an overhang from the sleeting rain, Kathy said to Brock, ‘Two things. The way she reacted to the name Silvermeadow.’

Brock nodded. ‘And the other?’

‘PC Sangster. I’d like to talk to her.’

‘Good idea.’He rubbed a hand across his beard. ‘Never mind, Kathy. It could be worse. You could be stuck in some hideously comfortable room, eating and drinking too much, being chatted up by a ridiculously handsome merchant banker with a yen to get you across his pillion.’

‘An airline pilot. That’s what he was. But it would never have worked. I don’t have the leathers, see.’