Silvermeadow

4

K athy returned to the Hornchurch Street station first thing the following morning, and found PC Miriam Sangster in the canteen, eating a meal after coming off night shift. The building seemed less bleak in the wan morning sunlight, and the emergency seemed to be over, gas supplies resumed to the kitchens and the reassuring smell of deep-fat frying heavy in the air.

Sangster struck Kathy as a brisk, intelligent woman, a wary, sceptical set to her eyes.

‘They switched me to nights,’ she said, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin. ‘Still getting used to it.’

‘I hate that shift,’ Kathy said, spreading butter on toast. ‘Did you hear about the Vlasich girl?’

‘Yes, people were talking about it. Gavin… DS Lowry’s working with you, isn’t he?’

‘Mm. But you were on your own for some of the time when you saw Mrs Vlasich, weren’t you? I thought I’d better go over it with you.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Sangster asked carefully. ‘About what I did? I wrote a fairly full report.’

Kathy sensed the other woman’s caution, just as she had with Lowry, in talking to an outsider. ‘No, no. No problem,’ she reassured her. ‘I’ve seen the report. I just wondered how you felt yourself about the business with the father.’

Sangster shook her head. ‘It was hard to tell without seeing him or the girl. There was a lot of fear on the mother’s side, as if she’d played it out so many times in her imagination, losing Kerri to the father, that when it actually happened she kept swinging from disbelief to absolute certainty. But the company he works for in Hamburg did confirm that he was abroad in Poland, not the UK, working for them on some pipeline project.’

‘Yes, I saw that in your report. But he had other relatives in Hamburg, didn’t he? They could have come over for her, I suppose?’

‘Yes. And there was a Vlasich in the computer, too, with a sex offence on his record, but that turned out to be a dead end. So without any other evidence it seemed simpler to assume she’d gone on her own, probably hitching, and probably to see her dad-she’d threatened to do it. Course, it’s easy to say now…’ she concluded defensively.

‘No, no one’s suggesting you should have done anything differently, Miriam. You spoke to her friends, didn’t you?’

‘I saw two of them at the school, Naomi and Lisa. Mrs Vlasich said they were Kerri’s closest friends, but they knew nothing. They said they had no idea she was planning to run away, and they seemed credible to me. Naomi is the brighter of the two, Naomi Parr-I’d start with her if you want to talk to them. They both have jobs at Silvermeadow, too.’

‘How do they get over there? It’s quite a way.’

‘The centre runs special bus services to bring people in from surrounding towns. One runs right past their school and the estate.’

‘Convenient.’

‘Yes. You’ve seen Mrs Vlasich, have you?’

‘Yes. When we told her the news. She was very shaken up, of course, didn’t say a lot.’

‘You mentioned Silvermeadow, did you? Did she say anything about that?’

Kathy noticed a certain hesitancy in the way Sangster said this. ‘That did seem to shake her, when we mentioned that. It seemed to hit her then. She went to pieces after that. Why?’

Sangster hesitated, then leant forward. ‘Did she mention the others?’

‘Others?’

The constable frowned and lowered her voice. ‘Gavin will say this is rubbish, but there’ve been stories going round about Silvermeadow: young girls going missing, a monster in the mall, stuff like that. Mrs Vlasich had obviously heard them, and she confided in me, after Gavin had left. The idea really terrified her.’

‘Nobody’s mentioned this. It’s not in your report.’

‘No, of course not. It’s just another one of those urban myths. You know, like that tattooed man with the hangman’s noose who’s supposedly been spotted in every other multi-storey carpark between Glasgow and Exeter, or the West African cannibal prince who lives on baby stew and has been seen-really, actually seen -with a baby’s tibia through his nose, by a friend of a friend of half the population of Leicester.’

Kathy smiled. ‘Yes, I know. And you’d heard the Silvermeadow stories yourself, had you? Before Alison Vlasich brought them up?’

‘Yes, I’d heard them, not through my job but from my partner. He’s a schoolteacher, and he was told about them by the kids in his class. He told them that they were just fairy-tales reinventing themselves, like Babes in the Woods, Little Red Riding Hood. But the kids wouldn’t have it. They knew the stories were true. They’d heard them from someone who had actually spoken to someone else who was a close relative of someone who had been there at the time. They were so convinced that he told me about it, and I agreed to check the computer. And of course there was absolutely nothing to it. I couldn’t find a single missing person report that made any mention of Silvermeadow. I told Gavin about it afterwards, and he advised me to forget it.’

‘Had he heard the stories before?’

PC Sangster lit a cigarette, thinking. ‘I don’t think so, not when I first mentioned it. But he spoke to me again a day or two later. He’d talked to someone he knows at Silvermeadow, one of the security people there, and they’d told him it was nonsense.’

‘So they’d heard of it?’

‘Oh yes. Gavin said they were really pissed off about it. They even thought one of their competitors might have deliberately started the rumours. That’s why he said to forget it. Only’-she exhaled a column of pale smoke from the side of her mouth up at the ceiling extract grille-‘when they told me she’d been traced to Silvermeadow, my blood went cold. Really, it did. I wondered what Mrs Vlasich must be thinking.’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘Tell me, when did she die? Do they know?’

‘We don’t know for certain it’s Kerri’s body yet, Miriam.’

‘Oh come off it, Kathy. When did she die?’

Kathy could follow the train of thought, and she looked down to sip from her tea. ‘Some time this week. They’re not certain.’

‘So it could have been Thursday, say,’ the constable added softly. ‘She might still have been alive when I told her mother that it had nothing to do with Silvermeadow…’

‘Miriam, you couldn’t-’

‘And I didn’t do a bloody thing to check.’

‘You phoned the people where she worked, didn’t you? No one had seen her.’

‘Yes.’ Miriam Sangster crushed out her cigarette with a bitter little flourish and got to her feet. ‘Really thorough that was, wasn’t it?’ She swung away, then stopped and turned back. ‘If you can avoid telling Gavin that I told you this, I’d be grateful. We do have to go on working together when this is over.’

‘Sure.’ Kathy smiled reassuringly. There was something ever so slightly self-consciously casual about Miriam’s use of his first name that made Kathy wonder if she and Gavin had ever done more than work together.

At this hour on a Sunday morning the carpark was bare, the building as forlorn as a vast abandoned circus tent in a macadam desert. Kathy parked next to the head of the service road ramp and descended to the striped barrier, where the man at the control window looked up briefly from his Sunday paper, glanced at her ID and nodded her in. She walked along the service road past the first compactor area, its tape untouched from the previous night, and on towards the sound of metallic clanging, men’s voices, a dog’s sudden bark. Turning the corner she saw the blue compactor taken half apart, white overalls crawling over its loosened panels on the ground, a dog and its handler working further along the service road. The man in blue denim overalls wielding the large spanner was presumably the mechanic, talking to a SOCO with hands on hips, whose face Kathy couldn’t see. She was aware of the mechanic registering her, his eyes flicking over to give her a quick appraisal. The SOCO turned to see what he was looking at, and Kathy saw the Indian features and recognised Leon Desai.

There was no reason at all why the laboratory liaison sergeant shouldn’t be there. Brock had undoubtedly insisted on it, and Kathy should have anticipated it. But she hadn’t, and the sudden sight of him there brought the colour up on her cheeks. The last time she had seen him he’d been in a hospital bed, crippled in the line of duty, and they had parted on bad terms. He had lain there in all his martyred dignity and accused her, quite rightly, of not having trusted him. She could remember his words precisely- you’re so bloody determined to trust nobody -as if it had been a deliberate policy on her part, a character flaw, rather than a mistake. She had left under a private cloud from beneath which it had taken her some time to crawl.

So by rights he should now have turned away and ignored her, but instead he was walking towards her. He stopped a yard away and looked at her with his steady dark eyes, unsmiling, and said, ‘Hello, Kathy. It’s good to see you again.’

Was it? Had she gone through all that soul-searching for no reason? He seemed perfectly sincere, genuinely glad to see her. She noticed the small pale scar across his left eyebrow and remembered herself telling him, not entirely unmaliciously, that he would no longer be perfect.

‘And you, Leon. Great.’

A smile slowly formed on his face, and she hurriedly said, ‘How are things going?’ meaning his broken jaw and leg, but he replied, ‘Nothing yet. It’ll take another hour or more to get this thing apart.’

‘Ah.’

‘You’ve come for Brock’s briefing? You’ll need a security code to get into the centre from here. Do you have one?’

She shook her head.

‘Use the one they’ve given me. Two-one-eight-nine. Want to write it down?’

‘No need. That’s the last four digits of your phone number.’

‘You’re right. Amazing memory.’ He smiled and turned back to his work.

She went down the service passage they had used the previous evening, using the security code to emerge into the lower mall as before. The emptiness and silence were uncanny, no background music or birdsong, no movement on the escalators, no people on the gleaming terrazzo, but still something, the building’s own presence, saying yes, I’m still here even when you’re not, I still exist and maybe have secrets.

Then a cleaner came buzzing round the corner on a ride-on floor polisher. The building reverted to background and the illusion evaporated.

Kathy walked up the dormant escalator to the upper mall, past the deserted Christmas tree, and looked for unit 184 in the side mall beyond. She spotted Gavin Lowry outside a shopfront filled with promotional posters for Christmas in the mall, hiding the unit’s interior, and assumed this must be the place. He was tugging a cigarette out of a packet, and when he saw her he said, ‘It’s chaos in there-electricians causing havoc.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Couple of hours. Come on, I need a coffee.’

They found a cafe nearby, just opening, and sat outside in an area of the mall defined by low clipped hedges in tubs. The cafe itself was tiled to resemble a Turkish bath house and the waitress who came to their table had her thick black hair tied up in a bandanna, and wore a scarlet blouse that might have suggested something oriental.

‘You Sonia?’ Lowry said.

‘That’s right,’ she said, suppressing a yawn.

‘Harry Jackson told us you’d look after us, Sonia. He said your coffee’s the best in the mall.’

‘Oh yes. I know Harry all right. Are you in his line of business, then?’

Lowry nodded and showed her his warrant card. ‘You’ll be seeing quite a bit of us. We’re taking over that unit down there for a while. Should be good for business. Our boss is a coffee connoisseur, isn’t that right, Kathy?’

‘That’s nice,’ Sonia said warily. ‘What you here for anyway? Is it public relations?’

Kathy watched Lowry tell her, show her Kerri’s picture, Sonia’s look of disgust, thinking how many times they would have to go through this, with hundreds of shopkeepers, thousands of customers. It made her feel depressed, but Lowry seemed to be enjoying it. He ended with something that sounded like a chat-up line.

‘You from the exotic east yourself then, Sonia?’

‘Yeah, Bermondsey. What’s your fancy then?’

Looking up through the tinted acrylic vault high above their heads, Kathy caught the glimmer of sunlight on cloud, too weak to compete with the warm intensity of artificial sunlight in the mall. A group of elderly people bustled past, kitted out in tracksuits, sweatbands and dazzling white shoes as if they really meant business. The pace was set by the joggers, moving marginally more slowly than the walkers, though with greater show. On their backs they bore the motto SILVER MEADOWLISTS.

‘Weird sort of place, isn’t it?’ Lowry said, blowing smoke after them. ‘Connie raves about it.’

‘Your wife?’

He nodded.

‘You have kids?’ Kathy asked.

‘Last time I looked,’ he said, off-hand. ‘They hated it here, for some reason. Now Connie comes on her own, when they’re at school.’

‘And you know Bren Gurney.’

Lowry turned back from watching Sonia making their coffees behind the counter. ‘Yeah. Used to play rugger with him. And we went on the inspector’s course together. He came out top, and I was second. We’ve got a lot in common, I reckon.’

Kathy doubted that, but said nothing.

‘How do you work with him, the old man?’ Lowry continued, voice becoming more intimate. ‘Your boss. Keeps a close eye on you, does he?’

‘Not really.’

‘Cunning old bugger, Bren said. Close.’

‘Did Bren say that?’

‘Something like that.’

With a soft clash of seraglio bangles Sonia appeared with their coffees, a thimbleful of espresso for Kathy, caffe latte for Lowry.

‘Thanks darling,’ Lowry said, then to Kathy, ‘You haven’t met our SIO, have you?’

‘Forbes? No, never heard of him before. Harry Jackson didn’t seem impressed. You don’t like him?’

Lowry smiled grimly. ‘Orville M. Forbes. Old Mother Forbes. Doesn’t matter whether I like him, Kathy. The problem is, as everybody’s so well aware these days, there are just too many chiefs in this force and not enough fucking Indians. So the people who are paid to think about these things imagine they can recycle old papershufflers like Forbes into born-again coal-face detectives and leaders of major investigations.’ He shook his head grimly. ‘Snowball’s chance. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to begin. And he knows it. That’s why he’s persuaded them to bring in your guv’nor, to save his skin.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I’m certain of it. He’s scared shitless that he’ll screw up his first major crime investigation with the eyes of the world focused on him. He told me once he has a recurring nightmare. He’s a schoolboy again, playing cricket, standing in the outfield with a long easy catch coming straight at him, and he drops it and loses the match, and all his friends and teachers and family are there to see it.’

They watched a tall elderly man, bewhiskered, stiff-backed, marching by. He was wearing a heather-green Harris tweed jacket and matching cap, and swinging a gnarled walking stick, a laird taking a brisk constitutional through his glen. As he passed he doffed his hat to them.

‘Jesus…’ Lowry muttered. ‘This place is full of weirdos.’

‘Does it matter, about Forbes? As long as he keeps out of our way.’

‘But he won’t, he can’t. He’s petrified by failure and greedy for success. He’ll worry, and dabble, and interfere, and stuff us up. People like us have got to persuade people like Forbes, the grey crust through which we must eventually rise if we are ever to achieve seniority in this lifetime, that they should pack it in and bugger off to Bognor.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘By subjecting them to stress. They don’t like stress. Can’t take it any more. If you load them up with stress, they soon begin to dream of early retirement… or something else.’

‘Something else?’

Lowry stretched his arms out and ran the flat of his palm down the short hair of his nape. ‘My last boss passed away on the job, Kathy. His secretary came in with his coffee one morning, and there he was, stretched out across his desk, cold as yesterday’s toast. Stroke, probably down to stress, the doctor said.’ He paused, glanced at Kathy, then picked up the glass of creamy liquid that Sonia had placed in front of him. ‘I like to think that was my personal contribution to resolving the unbalanced staff profile of the Metropolitan Police.’

‘You killed him with stress?’ She stared at him, trying to decipher his expression.

Lowry licked his lips, then allowed them to form a little smile. ‘He didn’t realise it, of course. He thought I was trying to help.’

Kathy decided this was some kind of test of her sense of humour. ‘Well, well. So now you want to kill Forbes the same way?’

He nodded thoughtfully.

‘Brock knows, you know,’ Kathy said.

That made him sit up. ‘What?’

‘That you’ve been told to report directly to Forbes. Without telling Brock. Forbes did tell you to do that, didn’t he?’

Lowry stared at her for a long moment before the little smile reappeared. ‘What made you think of that?’

‘It occurred to me down below last night, when Jolly Harry asked you to bypass his boss in the same way.’

Lowry’s grin broadened. ‘You’ve got the advantage of being a woman, Kathy. You’ll have your own way to get through the grey crust. They’ll pull you up in the name of gender balance. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give each other a helping hand, does it?’

Kathy sipped at her coffee, watching the early shoppers now drifting along the mall. Across the way was a bookshop, and outside it a small boy studying a pyramid of books about Manchester United. He didn’t look like the type you’d usually find near a bookshop: baseball cap reversed over longish black locks, baggy jacket and pants, dark eyes watchful in a thin pale face. And a mobile phone clipped to his belt, of course. The essential teenage fashion accessory. She wondered if she might be witnessing one of Harry Jackson’s ‘exception events’ in progress, and she looked around for a ‘hot spot’ camera, imagining Speedy in the basement silently panning in on the boy. Maybe all this time he’d been watching Lowry and herself, reading their lips.

‘What about Brock, then?’ Lowry said.

‘You want to kill him too? I don’t think he’d fold so easily, Gavin.’

‘Getting a bit old for this lark though, isn’t he? Why isn’t he higher than DCI?’

‘He’s what he wants to be. He doesn’t want to spend his life chairing meetings.’

‘Bollocks. People only say that sort of thing when they haven’t been given the option. Maybe he did something naughty once…’ He sat back, musing, stroking the back of his head. ‘Something they buried. Something that might come to light again if he tried to go higher… Maybe we should look.’

Kathy shook her head, suddenly tiring of this. She had thought of asking him what he thought of the possibility that Kerri Vlasich might not be the only one to have disappeared through the blue compactor, but now she decided to say nothing. ‘Forget it, Gavin. Come on, we’d better see how things are going.’ She got up and went to the counter to pay Sonia.

They found Brock seated at a desk at the back of the unit, his jacket off, sleeves rolled up, talking into a mobile phone while he signed a requisition form on a clipboard that a clerk held out for him. All around him unit 184 was being rapidly transformed, and Kathy had to step back to allow furniture removers to pass by with desks and chairs. The patterns left by shelving and display racks stripped from the pinboard walls were being obscured by enlarged plans of the centre and of the surrounding area, schedules and gridded roster sheets. A couple of electricians were working on ladders up in the suspended ceiling void, other technicians were setting up computer workstations. A dozen uniformed men and women were already there, standing chatting together, and a second group had followed Kathy and Gavin Lowry inside.

Brock nodded as he saw them approach, finished his call and said, ‘Gavin, help our action manager organise the search teams over there, will you? We need to get these characters moving. Kathy, you haven’t seen Leon Desai by any chance?’

‘Yes, ten minutes ago.’

‘How’s he doing? I can’t raise him on his mobile-there seems to be a dead spot down there.’

‘He thinks another hour before they’ve finished dismantling the machine. I don’t think they’ve got anything yet.’

‘Hmm. OK, well, we can’t wait. Let’s get this thing moving.’ His brow furrowed, a last moment of uncertainty. Kathy had seen that look before. ‘Always difficult to be sure,’ he said. ‘Go in too early and you don’t know what questions to ask, too late and the trail may be cold, the answers faded away. I’d like to have given them pictures of the girl’s father to take round with them, but I don’t think we can wait.’ He grunted and shook his head, as if to shake the doubts away, then got to his feet and called for their attention.

He was good at this, Kathy thought, striking the right balance between recognising the sombre mood of a murder inquiry and giving them the taste for a hunt that might last a long time. He announced that the pathologist had now confirmed the identity of the body as Kerri Vlasich, through her dental records. He then gave a very brief account of the background, with the calm of someone who had been down such tracks many times before, and spoke of the incinerator and compactor with just an edge of outrage in his voice, so that the frisson would be implanted and maintained, even though they were forbidden from mentioning these details to the public, and above all to the press.

They would begin by dividing their forces, Gavin Lowry taking some to continue the search begun by the SOCO team, spreading out through the huge centre and beyond into the surrounding carparks and service areas, the remainder interviewing the staff in the shops.

The questions: names, addresses and phone numbers of all employees; names, addresses and phone numbers of all suppliers who made deliveries between the nominated dates; possible sightings of the girl in the photograph during this period or before; accounts of any unusual incidents in or around the shop during the period; accounts of any unusual incidents in the service road areas and service corridors during the period. Questions with both open and hidden intent, hoping to draw out witnesses, observations, insights, but also designed to sniff out discrepancies, and to harvest names to match against the roll-call of known offenders.

Then Brock asked Phil, their action manager, to distribute the plans provided by Harry Jackson, and to read out the lists of officers’ names and the sections of the centre each would cover. Later there would be an exhibits officer and a statement reader and all the other stock characters from the cast of a major investigation, if indeed that was what this was to be. Because of course it could still turn out to be something altogether simpler and cruder than they were assuming. A tiff, a rape, even a mugging, done on impulse and readily uncovered, the compactor a panicked improvisation.

As the briefing broke up, Lowry said to Brock, ‘Could I have a quick word, chief, off the record?’ He sounded uncharacteristically tentative.

Brock looked up. ‘Certainly.’ He raised his eyebrows at Kathy beside him, who began to move away.

‘No, I don’t mind Kathy hearing it. In fact I’d prefer if she did.’

‘All right. I know the problem. You haven’t got enough men to do a thorough search.’

Lowry shrugged. ‘That’s true.’

‘Do what you can, Gavin, and as quickly as you can. If the killer took that much trouble to dispose of the body, the chances of him leaving her clothing behind are slim. It also seems unlikely that there would have been blood stains. Our best chance is that someone noticed something unusual, so I want your team to do a reasonable search as fast as possible, then join the others interviewing staff.’

‘Sure, I understand. That wasn’t what I wanted to ask you. It’s awkward really. I’m in a slightly difficult spot.’

Lowry stared at his shoes. Brock said nothing.

‘Mr Forbes has asked me to report to him, on a daily basis, chief. On the progress of the investigation. Without reference to you. I don’t feel comfortable about it.’

‘I see.’ Brock looked annoyed. ‘Did you tell him that?’

‘No, sir. At the time I didn’t think too much about it. We’ve known each other a few years, him and me. But I can see now that I’d be putting myself in a false position. Like a spy.’

‘Yes… well, I’ll speak to him. All right?’

Lowry hung his head. ‘Thing is, he’ll be annoyed I mentioned it to you. I wondered if you might put it to him that you brought the subject up first-asked me straight out if I’d been asked to report independently, and I had to admit that I had.’

Brock gave a little snort. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it tactfully.’

‘Thanks, chief. Thanks a lot.’

Lowry nodded and left. When he was behind Brock he glanced back and gave Kathy another of his guarded little smiles.

‘Well,’ Brock grunted at Kathy. ‘What do you make of him?’

‘I think we’re making him nervous. Bren knows him, apparently. Maybe you should ask him. Lowry thinks they’re very alike.’

Brock caught the intonation, raised his eyebrows and turned back to his paperwork.

Behind him the room was emptying, men and women, both uniformed and plainclothes, collecting clipboards and interview kits as they went out to find their designated areas.

Kathy returned to the Herbert Morrison estate after the briefing, her task to find out more about Kerri Vlasich. She parked in one of the visitor parking spaces inside Primrose Court, skirted the exploded TV set on the ground and walked up to the first deck level. A woman she didn’t recognise, a neighbour, answered the door and led her inside.

Alison Vlasich was seated in an armchair, motionless and very pale. When she lifted her face to Kathy her expression was blank, the empty stare signifying that nothing mattered any more. She didn’t even recognise Kathy, who had to explain they had met the previous day. After ten fruitless minutes Kathy got to her feet. The neighbour could tell her nothing useful, and she left.

She made her way along the access deck to the next court, Crocus. Naomi’s front door was decorated with a Christmas holly wreath, the effect of its bright red plastic berries and sparkly message, YULETIDE GREETINGS, marred somewhat by the signature of the yobs graffiti gang sprayed in black aerosol across it.

The woman who answered the door responded immediately to Kathy’s ID, as if she’d been expecting her. She was in her sixties, Kathy judged, hair pulled hard back from her face and thin framed glasses giving her a serious, slightly strained appearance.

‘Do come in,’ she said, speaking softly. ‘We wondered if you’d come again, after we heard.’

‘You know about Kerri, then? Mrs Parr, is it?’

‘No, Tait’s my name. I’m Naomi’s grandmother.’ They shook hands. ‘Yes, we heard about Kerri’s ring last night. News like that travels fast round here. Lisa’s mother knows the Vlasich’s neighbours. Lisa came straight round here, and she and Naomi were comforting each other till late. In fact Lisa stayed the night, and she’s only just gone home. So upset they are. It’s just so hard to believe. Kerri was such a lively girl, so full of life.’

She showed Kathy into a living room, full of old but comfortable furniture, and introduced her to her husband, who struggled to his feet as they came in. His right arm was stiff and held to his side, his right eye watery.

‘It’s the police, Jack, just as we thought,’ Mrs Tait said, and he grunted and gestured at a chair for Kathy. ‘If you’re wanting to know,’ she went on, patient and well-practised in her explanation, ‘Naomi’s mother, our daughter, passed away a couple of years ago-’

‘Two years ago this Christmas,’ her husband interrupted, scowling at his frozen hand.

‘And we took responsibility for the three girls. Naomi and her small sister live here with us. Her older sister, Kimberley, is away at present. So that’s why you find us here with Naomi.’

Kathy nodded with a sympathetic smile. She could imagine how many times this explanation had been necessary -to social security, the doctor, schools, inquisitive neighbours, parents of friends of the girls. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs Tait. I would like to have a chat to Naomi if it wouldn’t be too upsetting for her. You knew Kerri yourself then?’

‘Oh yes. Kerri was round here often.’

‘The three mouseketeers,’ Jack offered. He had a newspaper beneath his good hand on the arm of the chair, folded to the racing section.

His wife smiled weakly at him. ‘They did a fancy dress once, the three of them, Kerri, Lisa and Naomi. They were close. And how is poor Alison Vlasich coping?’

‘Not too well at present.’

‘I must go over and see her. We know what it’s like, to lose a child.’

‘Give her a bell. Ask her to come here,’ Jack said. ‘You know I don’t like you going over Primrose. Rough buggers in that court. It’s not safe.’ He glared at Kathy, ready to argue the point if she cared to deny it.

‘Kerri was a lively girl, you say?’

‘Oh yes, very lively, full of beans.’

‘A handful,’ Jack offered.

‘Yes,’ Kathy agreed. ‘Mrs Vlasich gave me the impression that Kerri was being a bit rebellious lately, not telling her where she went and so on.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s not easy for a woman on her own to cope with a lively teenager.’ Mrs Tait looked sadly at a group of four framed portrait photographs mounted on the wall. ‘Our daughter had three girls to bring up on her own.’

‘Would you say she was adventurous enough to take off by herself to see her father in Germany?’

Mrs Tait gave it a little thought. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s the sort of thing she would do.’

‘Pain in the neck,’ Jack Tait said grumpily.

‘Don’t say that, Jack. Not now.’

He looked sheepish and cocked his head to one side to acknowledge the scolding.

‘She liked to tease Jack sometimes,’ Mrs Tait explained. ‘It wasn’t cheek, really. More high spirits. Is that what happened, then? She ran away to find her dad?’

‘We’re not sure yet. Had she mentioned him to you recently? Maybe plans to see him for Christmas?’

‘No, not to us. But Naomi would be the one to ask. She would know. Shall I get her for you?’

While she went to fetch her grand-daughter, Kathy said, ‘It must be difficult for you, Mr Tait, taking on a family again.’

‘We manage,’ he said stiffly. ‘Don’t you worry about that. And we’re not the only ones. You’d be surprised how many of us there are, grandmums and dads, lining up to collect the kiddies from playgroup and school. That’s the way it is these days.’ He looked grimly at the photograph of the lost daughter. ‘Something seems to have happened to the generation in between. Do you know what it is?’ He glared at Kathy, who wasn’t sure if he was really asking for her opinion.

‘No… not really. What do you think?’

‘I haven’t got a clue. Not a bleedin’ clue.’

He shook his head, baffled. Kathy got to her feet and went over to look at the photographs on the wall. They formed a triangle, the Taits’ dead daughter at the top, her three girls below her.

‘Is this Naomi?’ Kathy asked, pointing to the eldest, a bright, cheerful-looking girl with long black hair, very like her mother, kneeling between two panting golden retrievers.

‘No, that’s her big sister, Kimberley. Naomi’s the middle one.’

She had square, plainer features, her dark hair cut short like a boy’s, a stubborn set to her mouth. And as Kathy looked at the picture the girl herself came into the room behind her and said hello at her grandmother’s prompting. Then she sat down, face pale, eyes lowered, and Mrs Tait said softly that she would make them all a cup of tea.

‘Are you feeling all right, Naomi?’ Kathy said. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’

The girl nodded, not looking up.

‘We very much need your help, to find who may have done this.’

‘Done…?’ The girl raised her eyes to meet Kathy’s, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘We’re still trying to work out the details of what happened, Naomi, but it seems likely that Kerri was murdered. Probably at or near the Silvermeadow shopping centre.’

‘How do you know that?’

Kathy frowned, surprised by the question. There was something obdurate about Naomi, as if determined to believe nothing without the hard evidence under her nose.

Her grandfather had caught the tone of scepticism in her voice too, and said, ‘Don’t you be cheeky, young lady.’

‘Well, that’s the best indication we have so far as to how she met her end,’ Kathy said. ‘Why? Does it surprise you?’

‘Only, we were at Silvermeadow that afternoon, the Monday she went missing, and we didn’t see her there.’

‘We?’

‘Lisa and me. We caught the four-fifteen bus. We didn’t see Kerri.’

‘You’d seen Kerri at school that day, hadn’t you, Naomi? How did she seem?’

Naomi frowned at her feet. ‘We didn’t talk much.’

‘Did she seem different from usual in any way?’

A shrug.

‘Speak up, girl, when the detective asks you something,’ her grandfather grumbled.

‘Wouldn’t she normally have gone to Silvermeadow with you?’ Kathy went on. ‘Didn’t she give a reason for not going with you?’

The girl’s expression had become a scowl, fixed on one toe. ‘We were going to work. She wasn’t on that afternoon. I dunno.’

‘Where do you two work then?’

‘Lisa wipes the tables in the food court, and I help in the sandwich bar, on the preparation mostly.’

Kathy wondered if it was accidental that Kerri, the pretty blonde, was out front with the customers, in her short skirt and roller blades, while the stolid Naomi was back in the kitchen. ‘The thing is, Naomi, she went home that afternoon and packed a bag as if she was planning to go away somewhere. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she would have said something to her closest friends. Some hint, surely?’

Silence.

Jack Tait said, ‘Speak up, girl,’ rapping his fingertips on the newspaper.

Mrs Tait had come into the room with a tray. She set it down and stooped beside Naomi and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Come on, love,’ she urged. ‘Do try to think.’

The girl relented, gracelessly. ‘Yes. She told us. She said she was planning to go away.’

Mrs Tait drew back, looking worried.

Kathy said, ‘That isn’t what you told the officer who came to see you before, is it, Naomi?’

‘She made us promise not to tell anyone, see. She said she was going to Germany to stay with her dad.’

‘Oh bleedin’ heck,’ Jack Tait muttered. His fingers abruptly stopped tapping the newspaper.

‘Well, what else could I do?’ Naomi glared defiantly at him, and Kathy caught a glimpse of his eye meeting his grand-daughter’s and then sliding away, so that for a moment she seemed the adult, the one with the difficult responsibilities to deal with.

‘Had she arranged this with her father?’ Kathy asked. ‘Was he going to meet her somewhere?’

‘I don’t think so. She said it would be a surprise. She said she’d saved enough money to buy a ticket for the Channel ferry.’

‘Just the boat? Was she going to hitch-hike?’

‘I think so. But she wouldn’t tell us what she was planning exactly, like it was a secret. Just that she was going to see her dad. But we thought that was what she was planning to do, hitch-hike.’

Her grandmother shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, that’s terrible, Naomi. A young girl like that on her own! Didn’t you try to stop her? Promise me you’ll never do anything so stupid.’

Naomi ignored her. ‘She said, after she got to Germany and sorted things out, she’d ring her mum and put her mind at rest. But we weren’t to say nothing, not to nobody.’

Mrs Tait passed round their cups of tea, fussing slightly, mollifying, removing her husband’s newspaper and positioning his saucer securely on a special rubber mat attached to the chair arm. ‘They’re good girls. They work hard and do their best, Sergeant. You can’t blame them. But I just wish you’d told us, love. I really do.’

The girl lowered her head, bottling up any reply.

‘Anyway, you want to help us now, don’t you, Naomi?’ Kathy said.

‘Of course she does!’

Naomi gave a reluctant little nod.

‘I’d like to take you, and Lisa too, over to Silvermeadow, and get you to show me round. Show me the places you and Kerri liked to hang out, the people you know there. Will you do that?’

‘Okay.’ The idea seemed to perk her up a little.

‘Of course she will!’ Mrs Tait passed round the shortbread, eager for Naomi to have a chance to make amends.

‘What about Kerri’s bag, the one like a frog, do you know where she got that from?’

‘Yes, a place in the mall. A bag shop.’

‘Good. Maybe you can help me find another one like it.’

‘That’s the way, old girl,’ Jack said, a little restored, lifting his cup to his mouth and blowing on his tea.

Lisa lived in Jonquil Court, distinguished from Crocus by the wrecked children’s play equipment corralled within a high chain-link fence in one corner. She was a paler, less confident version of Kerri’s picture, with the same length of fair hair cut in the same way, almost as if she had modelled herself on her friend. She confirmed Naomi’s account practically word for word, and agreed to come to Silvermeadow on condition Naomi was going too.

As Kathy took the girls back to her car she turned it over in her mind. Both of them seemed certain that Kerri had planned to surprise her father. Or perhaps to test him, Kathy thought, picking up on something Lisa had said, that Kerri idolised her dad and made excuses for his absence. For the girl would know, as soon as he opened his front door and saw her standing there, she would know from his expression if he really loved her. What if he’d got wind of it beforehand? Maybe she’d written, hinting at what she intended, and he’d tried to stop her. Or maybe she had reached him and he had tried to bring her back.

But the Hamburg police had confirmed that the company he worked for was quite certain that Stefan Vlasich was in Poland all through the period Kerri was missing. He was still there, waiting for a plane that would now bring him over to bury his daughter, and they would have their chance to interview him when he arrived. A simpler explanation was that she had started hitch-hiking, and had been picked up by someone on their way to make a delivery to Silvermeadow. Someone who had murdered her and then used the simplest and most anonymous disposal method available.

Kathy was about to set off with the two girls when her phone rang. It was Miriam Sangster.

‘Can I talk to you again?’ the constable said.

‘I thought you’d have gone off duty by now, Miriam,’ Kathy said.

‘I’m still here. There’s something I wanted to tell you. It won’t take long, but it’s quite urgent.’

‘I’m not far away now, but I’ve got the girls in the car with me, Naomi and Lisa. I suppose I could call in at the station.’

‘No, don’t come in. I’ll meet you round the corner in the high street, near the pillar-box outside the post office. It’ll be quicker for you. I’ll only take a minute.’

Kathy found the place and parked on a double yellow line, making desultory conversation with the two girls in the back. She asked which of them had the best job, and they explained, reluctantly, the good points and the bad. Kerri’s had seemed the most glamorous and the most fun, in her costume and make-up, talking to the customers, whizzing about on her skates. But the skates were hard on your legs after a while, and sometimes she’d get a customer who would hassle her. No, no one special, just sometimes she’d get a troublemaker, whereas Lisa and Naomi didn’t have so much of that.

Then Kathy spotted Miriam Sangster, out of uniform now, crossing the zebra up ahead and hurrying towards the car. She got out and walked up to meet her in front of the post-office window.

‘Sorry,’ the constable said. She had the same stubborn, preoccupied look about her that Naomi had had. ‘I thought you’d want to know this.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath, then began, speaking low although the street was deserted this cold Sunday morning. ‘When I tried to check that rumour, about Silvermeadow, remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was checking missing persons, and there were no references to the centre at all. But this morning, after we spoke, I tried a different line. Obvious really. I called up all the reports we’d had from Silvermeadow. There weren’t a lot, considering its size. A couple of ram raids, a few dozen shoplifters they decided to prosecute, some car thefts, some heart attacks, one fatal, that we attended, that sort of stuff.’

‘Yes, that’s pretty much what they told us. Go on.’

‘Then I came across Norma Jean.’ She sucked in her breath as if the memory was troubling. ‘A right pain she was. Young, under sixteen we thought, and a vagrant. I remember her causing trouble round here a couple of summers ago, begging, soliciting. Then when the weather turned chilly she took a fancy to Silvermeadow and started making a nuisance of herself there. We were called out a couple of times. I attended once-she’d been found in the women’s toilets, out cold with a needle in her arm and someone else’s handbag on the floor beside her. She was put in a shelter, then juvenile detention. But she kept coming back. The youth offender team took her under their wing for a while, but no one could really handle her. She was like a headache that wouldn’t go away. And then one day someone in the canteen said, whatever happened to Norma Jean? And we realised that the headache seemed to have disappeared. No one had heard of her for weeks. It was wonderful.’

‘She wasn’t reported missing?’

‘No way. Nobody gave a damn. I just phoned her last social worker. She said the same thing. Sometime around March, Norma Jean stopped being a bother, and everybody breathed a great big sigh of relief. She’d tried to follow it up, but couldn’t find out anything. In theory, Norma Jean is still on her load.’

Kathy didn’t say anything at first, not wanting to sound dismissive. Miriam Sangster was clearly taking this very much to heart.

‘Yes, all right,’ the constable said, ‘there are hundreds of Norma Jeans, thousands.’

‘She probably just moved on, Miriam. Decided to go somewhere she wasn’t so well known.’

‘Yes. But still, I thought our records showed that no one had disappeared from Silvermeadow. Now I can’t be certain, can I?’

‘Tell you what. I’ll check her out in the Silvermeadow security records. They may have something on her that we don’t.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And let me know if you find anything else. You said that Mrs Vlasich had heard some stories at the hospital?’

‘Yes, but I think she got it confused. A cook had heard it from a nurse who’d supposedly heard an old woman say she’d lost her young daughter at Silvermeadow. Sounded like classic urban myth stuff.’

‘Yes, well, frankly I’d forget about it. You’ve done about as much as you can.’

The other woman nodded reluctantly, relieved all the same. ‘I hope you get something soon.’

The girls seemed to brighten a little once they were under the dappled artificial sunshine of the mall, as if this was where they were most at home, whereas Kathy felt the same sense of disorientation as before. It was full of people again now, not as in a city street hurrying past without eye contact, but a relaxed crowd such as one might find at a fairground, perhaps, or a fete, sharing some implied sense of community and well-being. Yet there seemed no substance to it here, no relationships and ties that one might hope to uncover between people in a real street or town. Here everyone was afloat, gliding through a fantasy. She recalled Bo Seager’s remark about sharks following the shoals. A shark could easily pass unnoticed here.

They walked down the main mall, the girls pointing out the stores where they liked to window shop, the characters they knew by sight or reputation, and gradually the shock of Kerri’s murder seemed to fade from their minds, as if time and reality were suspended in the magic grove, and all the intractable grubbiness of life dissolved away in the glowing golden light. From time to time their eyes would be drawn to a sparkling shop display, and Kathy would pause with them and find herself drawn into their conversation, checking out some lovely thing that none of them had a use for. Then she would have to turn away, and remember what they were supposed to be doing, and get them moving again. Lulled by the scented air, the music not too loud or too soft but just right, it was hard to imagine that anything unpleasant could ever have really happened here-an abduction, a murder. In here the foetal figure waiting for the incinerator was no more than a chimera, a bad dream.

They stood at the balcony overlooking the food court for a while, listening to the sounds of fountains and waterfalls from the rain forest on this side of the lagoon, and the girls pointed out where they worked, and the other food stalls that formed the perimeter of the court. Between Mexican Pete’s and the Peking Duck was the Soda Factory, done up like an American drugstore counter in stainless steel and red leather stools. Then there was Snow White’s Pancake Parlour, and they were silent for a moment as they watched the girls on their roller skates, gliding skilfully on long legs between the tables.

They descended on the escalator and came to the shore of the volcanic lagoon. There was a uniformed copper standing there in conversation with one of the locals, who was explaining what happened.

‘Yeah, well, first you get yer warning tremors and rumblings see.’

‘Right, right.’ The officer nodded seriously, as if this was significant evidence.

‘Well then yer water starts moving, ominous right, and you ’ear the sound of frightened birds. Then the eruption starts-bangs and roars from the mountain-then smoke and sparks comin’out from the peak, and after a while molten lava starts flowing down the sides.’

‘Molten lava! You’re having me on.’

‘No, right up. Course it’s not yer actual molten lava, naturally. It’s an illusion, see, made with coloured lights hidden down the sides of the volcano. But it’s convincing. Then the water foams up, and that native canoe over there tips up in the air and sinks under the waves, like a whirlpool’s sucked it down. You should see it, mate. You’ll be impressed. Get your mates down here, on the hour.’

‘Yeah.’ The policeman nodded thoughtfully. Kathy could imagine the scene that afternoon: small children and grannies complaining that they couldn’t see for all the hulking great coppers in the front row.

But Lisa and Naomi were bored by this. They’d seen Mauna Loa erupt so many times. They led Kathy across to the far side of the food court, where an abrupt leap took place from the Pacific to Ali Baba’s Arabian Nights. Large pots belonging to the Forty Thieves stood at the entrance of the Grand Bazaar, the name written in Arabic-style neon lettering over the cave-like entry, guarded by a turbaned mannequin with a flute frozen in the act of charming a cobra out of its basket.

‘Do they have snake-charmers in Arabia?’ Kathy asked, then saw from the look on the girls’ faces that the question made no sense.

Inside the Bazaar the lighting levels dropped sharply, small spotlights dazzling like stars overhead against a black ceiling, a theme taken up in many of the shops. These were clearly aimed at the teen market-lurid T-shirt boutiques, a Doc Martens store, pop CDs, an electronic games arcade and a salon offering challenging concepts in hair and the piercing of body parts.

There seemed to be something going on here, voices raised above the general noise. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, were talking to the agitated tenant of the games arcade, a black man with dreadlocks.

‘Look!’ he yelled at them, brandishing his arms, rattling the gold bangles on his wrists. ‘You lot think that every black guy wearing a bit of gold jewellery is nicking stuff or selling drugs, don’t you? That’s what it is, innit?’

‘Keep your voice down please, sir,’ the male officer said.

‘No, I won’t shut up, ’cos it’s true, innit? I get this all the time, don’t I? You think I’m selling these kids drugs, is that it?’

‘Are you?’ the woman cut in.

All around them in the unit, teenage boys were easing away from the machines they had been playing and slipping away into the mall. Among them Kathy saw the boy she’d seen that morning outside the bookshop. He glanced back over his shoulder, then skipped into a run and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Hang on, you stay right there.’ The male officer left his colleague and moved over to two boys trying to leave. He bent forward and started talking to them. One of them shrugged and reluctantly began to turn out his pockets.

Kathy didn’t know the officers. The woman was trying to make some point with the operator of the arcade, who was now adopting an exaggerated pose of silence. Kathy walked over and showed the woman her warrant card. ‘Can I help?’

‘No, it’s okay.’ The woman smiled. She seemed calm and in control. ‘We’ve received some information regarding Mr Starkey, and we’re just persuading him to close up shop so we can talk to him. We can manage, thanks.’

‘What information?’ the man shouted. ‘What you fucking talking about?’

‘Watch your language, Winston,’ the woman PC said sharply.

Kathy turned back to the girls, and they continued on through the Bazaar until the dark mall opened into a small square from which another set of escalators led upwards towards light and another abrupt change of scene. Here they were on a gallery with large observation windows along one wall, overlooking the leisure centre and pool. It was busy down there, full of little kids with their dads, grandparents sitting under the palm trees and striped umbrellas on the astroturf waving encouragingly to the bodies in the surf, children sliding down the curling multi-coloured intestines of the water chutes, whooping and screaming silently beyond the glass. And there was surf too, surging from the wave machine at the deep end of the huge pool and spreading out across its surface to lap finally on the sandy beach.

‘You come up here do you?’ Kathy asked, looking at the benches for spectators along the gallery.

‘Sometimes, when we have a break at work.’

‘What, to check out the good-looking boys?’ Kathy suggested.

Lisa giggled and Naomi glowered disapprovingly at her.

‘What’s down there?’ Kathy asked. To the right she could see the shops of the main upper mall, but to the left the gallery continued across the end of the leisure centre, then narrowed to a set of glass doors.

‘That’s the gym and fitness centre,’ Naomi said, offhand.

‘Can we go in?’

‘If you want.’

Through the glass doors the public gallery continued as a narrower bridge, with a view on one side over squash courts, and on the other into a gymnasium full of machines. The floor of these rooms was only a few metres below the gallery level here, and the people working out below seemed almost close enough to touch. They stood for a while watching a couple of young women capably thrashing a ball around one of the squash courts, then turned to view a muscular male through the other window, pounding the leather arms of the machine in which he lay. He was almost directly below them, the beads of sweat visible on his body as he lifted and dropped, an expression of intense effort on his face as the column of weights behind his head rose and fell with every grunt.

He stopped abruptly, opened his eyes and sat up. Then, as if he could sense that he was being observed, he turned his head and looked up and gave Kathy and the girls a sly grin. She watched his eyes track down each of their bodies in turn, and she turned away from the glass and they walked back the way they had come. She noticed a red blush on Lisa’s cheek, and saw Naomi mutter something in her ear which made the other girl pull away with a complaining, ‘Naomi!’

‘So, where else do you go?’ Kathy asked.

‘That’s about all,’ Naomi replied. ‘Sometimes we go to the cinema down on the lower mall, just off the food court the other way. They have eight screens.’

‘Ten,’ Lisa corrected.

Naomi shrugged.

‘Are there any pubs, clubs?’

‘Yeah, down past the cinema, but we don’t go there.’

‘Never?’

They shook their heads.

‘Do fellers come into the food court from the pub? Having had too much to drink?’

‘The security are very hot on that. Mr Jackson.’

‘You know Mr Jackson, do you?’

‘He’s nice,’ Lisa said. ‘He gives us sweets, and vouchers for things on offer.’

Naomi rolled her eyes. Big deal.

‘What about the shop where Kerri got her bag?’

‘Oh yes, it’s on this level. We’ll take you there.’

Along the way they were stopped by a silver-haired woman wanting their signatures on a petition. Though small, she was formidable and not easily bypassed. Pinned to her cardigan was a printed identification which covered a significant portion of her chest on account of the length of its message and the size of the letters:

HARRIET RUTTER, PRESIDENT, SILVERMEADOW RESIDENTS’ ASSOCIATION.

The woman beamed up at Kathy. ‘We are petitioning for significant improvements in the choice of music which is played here in the centre,’ she said briskly, with a piping Home Counties accent. ‘It is currently repetitious and bland, and we are pressing the management for a more enlightened choice, encompassing a mixture of classical and popular works, selected by a democratically elected committee.’

‘A residents’ association?’ Kathy said. ‘Do people actually live here?’

‘Aha, well, no, not exactly. We had a great deal of debate over that word. A great deal.’ Mrs Rutter raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips in a way that managed to suggest that there had been a great deal of foolishness spoken before her own view on the matter had prevailed. ‘You see, there’s really no appropriate word for what we are. We don’t live here, no, of course not. No one could live here.’ She looked about her with a smile at the absurdity of the idea. ‘We come from all around, many from miles away. On the other hand, we are not just customers or consumers or users or stakeholder s-such dreadful terms! We don’t come here just to buy things, you see. We toyed with the Friends of Silvermeadow, but that makes it sound like an orphanage, don’t you think, or a zoo. We’re simply concerned citizens, for whom Silvermeadow has become a kind of focus in our lives, and it occurred to us, after we’d bumped into each other in repeated encounters such as this, that we should form an association.’

‘I see,’ Kathy nodded, thinking that this might have its uses. ‘And you’re the president.’

‘Yes. Here, let me give you one of our leaflets. You may be interested in joining us. You’ll find our mission statement on the second page, and an application for membership section at the back. We’ve won a good many victories for improvements here over the past eighteen months, and enjoyed ourselves enormously in the process.’ She chuckled combatively and thrust a leaflet into Kathy’s hand. ‘And the petition?’

‘I’ll think about that,’ Kathy said. ‘I haven’t really formed a view about the music.’

‘We’ll sign,’ Naomi said. ‘The music’s crap.’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Rutter was startled, but only for a moment. ‘That’s nice, dear. Here you are.’

They moved on to the bag shop, in which they found one last remaining frog bag, identical, so the girls said, to the one Kerri had bought on her last birthday with money sent by her father. Kathy bought it and they went back out into the mall.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now I’d like to take you to meet my boss, Detective Chief Inspector Brock.’

Their faces fell.

‘What’s the matter? You’ll like him.’

‘We’re not in trouble, are we?’ Naomi said.

‘No, it’s all right. I think he’ll understand why you did what Kerri asked. But he’ll want to hear it from you.’

‘He’s a big wheel, is he?’

‘Yes. He’s one of the top detectives in Scotland Yard, Naomi. If anyone’s going to find out what happened to Kerri, he will.’

‘I feel sick,’ Lisa said, and looked it.

‘She felt sick last night,’ Naomi said. ‘It was hearing about Kerri. She hasn’t eaten since. Neither of us has.’

‘Well look, why don’t you come with me to meet Mr Brock, and you can sit down there, and we’ll get you something nice to eat and drink, and you’ll feel a lot better.’

Phil, the action manager, was now firmly established at a desk just inside the front door, so that no one could come or go without being checked off on his spreadsheets and schedules. Kathy reported to him with the girls in tow, staring wide-eyed and intent at all the activity inside the shop unit. She sat them down beside Phil and got a paper cup of water for Lisa, then went through the unit to Brock’s table, now looking considerably more cluttered. He looked up from the papers he was reading and waved her to a seat.

‘Progress?’ she asked.

‘Six staff so far with records, one promising.’ He passed a fax across to her. ‘Eddie Testor, six months for assault and criminal damage two years ago. Road rage-he forced the other driver to pull in, then battered his car to a crumpled heap with a couple of five-pound hand-weights he happened to have with him. Offered steroid abuse in mitigation. He’s been working at the leisure centre as a lifeguard and swimming instructor, based on false references and credentials. Gavin Lowry’s interviewing him at Hornchurch Street now.’

‘Has he finished the search here?’

‘Pretty much. A few of them are still checking outside.’

‘That was quick.’

‘Yes, he doesn’t waste time. I’m on my way over to see how he’s getting on, but I’d like to talk to Kerri’s friends, see if she ever took swimming lessons from this character.’

‘I’ve just brought them in,’ Kathy said, ‘Naomi and Lisa.’

‘They’re here? You must have read my mind, Kathy.’

She told him about their change of story, showed him the green frog bag and mentioned Lisa’s physical similarity to Kerri. ‘I thought, if we wanted to stage a reconstruction…’

‘Yes, yes. Good idea.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll talk to them.’

‘They’re a bit overwhelmed at present. I might organise some lunch for them.’

She led them over. Naomi shook Brock’s hand solemnly, but when he leant across the desk to take Lisa’s she began making little gulping noises, and with a sudden jerk of her head ejected a bolt of mushy material onto the middle of his desk. Cornflakes and toast, Kathy noted. So she had had breakfast.

‘Oooh…’ the girl wailed, and Brock, looking benignly unconcerned, as if this was always happening, murmured, ‘There, there. Don’t worry.’ He refrained from wiping the splashes off the front of his shirt and trousers while Kathy sat the girl down and gave her tissues.

‘Maybe we should take Lisa home,’ Kathy said.