Silvermeadow

6

L eon Desai was in unit 184 when they returned, chatting to one of the clerical staff. Seeing him there, unexpectedly, Kathy got that little jolt she’d experienced seeing him that morning. He looked good, very trim and sleek in his black leather jacket and jeans, she thought, with his brown skin and blue-black hair. She saw a couple of the women eyeing him and thought yes, you wouldn’t mind being seen with that.

‘Hi.’ He grinned at them both.

‘Hello, Leon,’ Brock returned. ‘All done?’

‘Yes. Even had a shower and a swim downstairs in the pool. Feel a lot better than I did after I’d finished crawling around on concrete and grease all day. I just wondered if anyone could give me a lift in to a tube station. The guy who brought me out here this morning has gone.’

‘Certainly-’ Brock began.

‘I’ll do it. I’m going north of the river.’

‘You sure, Kathy?’ Leon asked. ‘Anywhere I can pick up a tube.’

‘Not a problem. I’ll just get my coat.’

They ran across the rain-swept tarmac and Leon held his umbrella over her as she unlocked the car. As they got in it occurred to Kathy that there is that moment when a couple, getting into a car together on a wet windy night, slamming the doors shut, experience a sudden compression of space, as the world shrinks to the intimate cabin around them. After a few seconds the effect fades, the mind adjusts to the new dimensions, and normal service is resumed. But for that moment they may be caught unawares, their mental-space reference tricked, and their sense of the proximity of the other dramatically heightened. At that moment, she thought, if there is the potential for something to happen, it probably will.

She glanced across at him, and found that his dark eyes were fixed on her. Unnerved by that look, Kathy said lightly, ‘I can’t believe Bren told you that, about Martin Connell. I haven’t seen him in ages.’

‘He didn’t say you were still seeing him, just that you were still obsessed with him.’

She flushed at the word ‘obsessed’. ‘That’s ridiculous. How would Bren know, anyway? And, come to think of it, Bren was the one who first put the idea in my head that you might be gay.’

‘Naughty Bren. Let’s go round to his place and beat him up.’

She smiled. ‘Better not. He’s bigger than both of us.’

‘Why would he do that, though? Does he fancy you?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I wouldn’t say there’s any “of course” about it, Kathy. It’s not that hard.’

She looked away, got the car going with quick, hard gestures and drove off. She felt quite absurdly unsettled and she couldn’t imagine how they were going to get through a long car ride together. As they approached the edge of the carpark, she recalled that she had been in this situation before with Leon, and had evaded its possibilities and regretted it afterwards. And she had a sudden sharp sense of how much she would regret doing that again. She braked hard and switched off the engine.

‘Let’s just think this through,’ she said, as if this was some practical sort of project. ‘You have to ask why we let Bren put us off, don’t you? I mean, we didn’t exactly struggle against his guiding hand, did we?’

‘Ah, it was the colleague thing,’ Leon said. ‘You and I, we don’t really approve of the colleague thing, relationships with people at work, do we? We’re embarrassed by it. It gets in the way, it’s messy.’

‘Yes, that’s true. That was one of the disastrous things about Martin, that he was connected to my work. Also he was married, and he was a total bastard.’

‘Was he really?’

‘Oh yes. You’re not married though, are you, Leon?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re not a bastard.’

‘It’s sometimes hard to know. Maybe everyone is.’

‘No, you’re not. But you are a colleague.’

He nodded, turned away, as if accepting that she wanted him to keep his distance.

‘Oh…’ She looked at his profile, the light from the tall mast floodlights rippling in the rain. ‘Bugger the colleague thing,’ she whispered, and undid her seat belt.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, the windows are greasy. Hang on.’

She grabbed the cloth from the door pocket and jumped out of the car, feeling a great need for cold air and rain on her face and space around her. ‘Heck,’ she muttered to herself, rubbing the glass furiously. ‘Get a grip, girl.’

She heard the other car door open and was aware of Leon walking round to her side of the bonnet, then the shelter of his brolly over her. She put down the cloth and they looked at each other, that same look again, and the space beneath the umbrella closed around them as they kissed.

After a few minutes they broke apart and she said, somewhat stunned, unable to recall quite how it had happened so decisively, ‘We’d better go before we become an entry in Harry’s daybooks.’ They got back in the car and drove away.

She took him to her home, a small flat on the twelfth floor of a tower block in Finchley. They were prickly with the dampness and the car heater, and when they got into the flat they peeled off their coats and then everything else, and made love under the shower. Then Kathy led him to her narrow, cold bed, and they curled up tight together there and made love again, at a more leisurely pace.

In the grey light of dawn she slipped out of bed to try to forage for something for them to eat. They had missed dinner, and she soon realised that her fridge and cupboards were bare. The whole place was bare in fact, like a nun’s cell, she realised, looking round at it as a stranger might-as he would. She’d made no effort to make it comfortable at all. The washing machine was old, and there was no tumble drier, so there wasn’t much she could do about his clothes. The TV was on the verge of packing up and she rarely watched it because there was no video and she was never there when the programmes she wanted to watch were on. The furnishings were uniformly spartan. Not much of a love-nest. Probably about as far from Mrs Desai’s cosy home in Barnet as you could get.

At least the central heating worked, which was just as well, because she didn’t have anything he could use as a dressing gown, so he was naked when he slid up behind her and put his arms around her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t got a thing to eat, and the milk’s gone off.’

They had a big breakfast at the station cafe before Leon got a train into central London for meetings at the forensic science lab. She went onto the platform with him and kissed him goodbye when the train came in. It was crowded, and he got in last so that he could stand crushed against the door and they could look at each other with goofy little smiles as the train began to pull away. Kathy noticed people at the adjoining windows looking at their sleepy faces and guessing what was up, turning back to their morning papers with nostalgic grins.

There were arrangements for the walk-through to be confirmed, publicity material prepared, press statements cobbled together, liaison meetings attended, and a mountain of reports to sift, but Kathy didn’t feel much like any of it. Harry Jackson’s daybooks were delivered to unit 184, marked for her attention, but she didn’t feel much like immersing herself in them either. Instead she picked up a wad of information leaflets and interview kits and told Phil she was going to chase up some loose ends from the shop interview reports.

She stopped outside a large household furnishings store on the lower mall, and gazed idly at the ranks of beds disappearing off into the distance. So many! What on earth was the difference? She strolled in, and a young man immediately came over.

‘Morning, madam. Can I help you?’

‘It’s okay, I’m with the police team, following up the visits yesterday. But I was just looking at your beds. I need a new one, actually.’

‘Well, you’ve come to the right place here.’

‘But what’s the difference between them all?’

It took him a little while to cover just a bare overview of the intricacies of inner springing and foam, orthopaedic and lumbar support, and during the course of it she was persuaded to try a few of the mattress types, which she did, a bit cautiously at first, imagining herself being spotted by colleagues in the mall as she slipped off her shoes and lay down and bounced. But the mall was quiet this Monday morning, and she soon entered into the spirit of the thing, and actually did decide which one she would have got, if she had actually been intending to buy something.

‘I can do a special on that one,’ the young man said, and quoted quite a decent discount price.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Not for too long though,’ he said. ‘This is a special for the run-up to Christmas.’

‘Oh, I see. But it would be difficult,’ she said.

‘How come?’

‘Well, for a start, I live on the twelfth floor of a block in Finchley.’

‘Not a problem. Finchley? We’re delivering that way this afternoon.’

‘But I won’t be there.’

‘Neighbour?’

There was Mrs P in the next flat, for whom Kathy often did favours, and who had a key.

‘But I have an old bed I’d have to get rid of first.’

‘We’ll take it away for you. No charge.’

‘Really?’ That easy. ‘Maybe I could… but then I’d need bedside cabinets, and reading lamps.’

‘I’ll show you our range: modern, traditional, cottage style.’

‘And new bedding, of course. I’d need completely new bedding.’ And about time, she thought.

‘Pop into Davis’s next door. They’ve got a huge range there. Pick out what you want and tell them that we’re delivering for you this afternoon. We’ll fix it up with them.’

Half an hour later Kathy left Davis’s feeling rather numb. It was all so amazingly easy. This wasn’t like battling through the supermarket or the chain store in the high street on a Saturday morning. This was shopping. She felt she’d never really understood before.

There was a vast electrical goods shop further along the mall. There seemed no harm in wandering in, just to get a preliminary idea of what was on the market these days. She had the place to herself. This time two sales assistants fell over each other to serve her. When she came out again, tucking her hot little credit card back in her purse, she made another call to Mrs P, to let her know there would also be a delivery of a new combined washing machine and drier, to be connected on delivery and the old machine taken away, as well as a video/TV, same deal. Oh, and the hair drier and toaster, her old ones being practically antiques. And the waffle maker. She detected a certain avid curiosity from Mrs P, who asked if she might have first refusal on the old stuff.

It was a heady combination, she decided, sex and shopping. She felt oddly elated and exhausted, and thought she’d better sit down calmly somewhere and have a cup of coffee.

She was so dazed that she didn’t realise at first that the couple sitting at the next table in the Cafe de l’Opera were making surreptitious little signals to her. Then she recognised them: the woman with the petition about the music in the mall, together with the tweedy old gent who’d doffed his hat to her when she’d been drinking coffee with Gavin Lowry.

‘Oh, hello,’ she smiled.

‘Would you care to join us?’ the little woman asked, and Kathy, remembering the residents’association, thought, why not? I might as well look as if I’m working, instead of daydreaming of Leon naked in that bloody great bed.

‘Robbie was just telling me that he’d seen you at the weekend with your husband,’ Mrs Rutter beamed, ‘and I said that I’d met you with your children, and so we thought, aha!, a new family we should get to know. This is Robbie Orr, by the way, and I’m Harriet Rutter.’

‘Kathy Kolla,’ she shook their hands, ‘and I’d better explain about the family.’

They looked grave but also extremely interested by what Kathy had to tell them.

‘Ah!’ Mrs Rutter nodded at her companion. ‘Of course we saw the officers here yesterday, but there were conflicting rumours going round as to what they were doing, and I was rather too busy with my own work to question them directly.’

‘We’ll be holding a reconstruction later today, and giving out information to the public. I have some leaflets here, and I wondered if you might like to take them for your members.’

‘Of course.’

‘Shocking business,’ Orr said. Beside Mrs Rutter he looked lanky and craggy and slightly manic, tufts of grizzled hair sticking out of his ears and nostrils and forming the little beard which bobbed up and down as he spoke. ‘Was she seen here, then, on the day she disappeared?’ She had his accent now, clipped, Scottish east coast from Edinburgh or Fife.

‘That’s what we need to establish, Mr Orr. It seems probable from what else we know that she did come here on that afternoon or evening, but we need witnesses.’

‘Professor,’ Mrs Rutter said.

‘Pardon?’

‘Robbie is Professor Orr,’ Mrs Rutter beamed. ‘I thought I should let you know, but you must call us Robbie and Harriet.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’

‘A highly distinguished man. A professor of archaeology.’

‘Former professor of archaeology, now retired,’ he said. ‘A mere amateur historian now, and thorn in Boadicea’s flesh.’

Harriet burst into more trilling laughter. Kathy guessed that this was rather excessive for her, brought on by Professor Orr’s presence.

‘I’m sorry, Kathy. You must excuse us. This is one of our little in-jokes. Boadicea is our name for the manager of this shopping centre. A harridan of a woman, whom Robbie puts securely in her place.’

‘Her ambition, do you see,’ Orr added, acknowledging the compliment with a smile that made his beard jump, ‘is to do, in shopping terms, to London and the Home Counties pretty much what Queen Boadicea did to Roman Britain-which is to say, lay it waste.’

More appreciative laughter.

‘Boadicea-Bo Seager; yes, very good.’ Kathy smiled.

‘You know her, do you?’ They looked at her in surprise.

‘I’ve met her, yes. And I can see what you mean.’

‘Robbie was here before any of us, fighting the good fight. Before the centre was even built.’

‘It was my last major project, Kathy-may I call you that? Sergeant seems wrong somehow. Whenever anyone uses the word sergeant I immediately picture my old drill sergeant, the most terrifying man in all the world. Conditioning, I suppose. You’re not too terrifying, are you, Kathy?’

His beard gave a playful little leap and Kathy thought, you’re a bit of a lad, aren’t you, Robbie?

‘ Well, tell Kathy about your work here, Robbie,’ Mrs Rutter scolded him.

‘Ah yes. Well now, would you be aware of the reason for the name Silvermeadow, Kathy?’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘It’s like this. Do you know that great big ugly structure out there in the upper carpark, with illuminated advertisements for the films showing at the picture house and so on?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s hard to believe it now, but that used to be the edge of a small wood, a copse really, on the crest of the hill. And one hundred and seventy years ago, a farmer who was ploughing up there, extending his field into the wood, unearthed a hoard of Saxon silver.’

‘Really?’

‘Aye. It’s believed that it was buried by a nobleman fleeing from the Battle of Maldon, which was fought twenty miles east of here. Would you be familiar with the Battle of Maldon from your schooldays, Kathy?’

‘Er, don’t think I am. Must have been asleep during that one.’

‘Shame on you!’ he teased. ‘Not a huge battle by modern standards, of course, but a great battle for its time all the same, between the Saxons and the Viking horde. I’m talking here of the true Battle of Maldon, of AD 991, not the legendary battle of 994, said to have lasted for fourteen days.’

‘Right.’

‘Aye. Well, anyway, these shopping centre people had no knowledge of the origin of the name. They merely noticed it on their maps as Silvermeadow Hill, and I suppose the combination of images that it conjured up, of hard cash on the one hand and a pastoral fairyland on the other, must have had a strong appeal to them.’

He arched one bushy eyebrow at her, a slightly manic gleam developing in his eye as he made the point. ‘Their choice of name was completely cynical, of course, suggesting that their monstrous new construction had some sort of connection with this place. I’m quite sure they never even considered whether this miserable little hill might have had a history at all. To them, it was merely a suitably positioned piece of real estate that might as well have been in Illinois or Manitoba.

‘But the place did have a history, you see. For after the battle one of the Saxon noblemen and his party were pursued here by the victorious Vikings, as rapacious for silver as the developers of this shopping centre. Indeed, I have no doubt there is a strong genetic connection.’

‘What happened?’

‘The Saxon party arrived here in the late afternoon, exhausted and demoralised, and buried their precious silver in the wood. Then they came down here, where we are now, in the lee of the hill, and made a fire and a camp for the night. They must have thought themselves safe from pursuit. But the Norsemen had not given up, and with the first dawn light they swept over the hill and descended on the Saxons like wolves, slaughtering them, every one.’ Orr paused for effect, sweeping his hand about him. ‘Eight men and boys, all murdered here, their corpses buried on the spot. Here they lay, undisturbed, for precisely one thousand years.’ He leant towards Kathy and fixed her with a wild stare. ‘ Precisely, mind you, that’s the uncanny thing. One millennium, to the day, perhaps the very hour, until they were disturbed by a bulldozer beginning the construction of this place.’

Kathy nodded, imagining the effect of his theatrical story-telling on his lady admirers in the Silvermeadow Residents’ Association.

‘Well, they had to stop, of course, as soon as the skeletons came to light. A proper archaeological assessment had to be made. I was nearby, at the local university, and this was my period, the Viking incursions. I lived here on the site for months, in those site huts you can still see round the east end of the building, with a team of volunteers, students and young people from all over, trying to establish what else was here before they chewed it up in their great machines.’

The imagery struck Kathy as oddly apt, given what had happened to Kerri Vlasich. But then the whole of Orr’s tale, with his rather exultant account of past murder, had an uncomfortable resonance with Kerri’s death.

‘And was there anything else?’

‘No. Oh there were a few surprises beneath the ground for them-a hidden spring, a pocket of sand-but nothing for me. My volunteers left at the end of that first summer, but I returned, from time to time. The construction workers got to know me, the mad professor.’ He chuckled, eyes twinkling. ‘They adopted me, like a mascot, an old goat.’

‘And now he’s one of us,’ Mrs Rutter said. ‘One of our most distinguished members.’

‘Oh now Harriet…’ he admonished her.

‘You must enjoy coming here,’ Kathy said.

‘I should describe it as a love-hate relationship,’ she said. ‘It’s terribly convenient, and comfortable, and we meet all our friends here. But it’s also very crass, of course, so commercial.’

‘It’s worse than that, Harriet. It’s deadening, it feeds on life.’

‘How do you mean?’ Kathy asked.

‘I mean that it feeds on all the real places around here, all the real towns and villages that have been steadily growing and developing for a thousand years, and are now having the life-blood sucked out of them by this great hulking parasite!’ His eyes blazed at the word. ‘And I also mean that it takes the life out of people, too. It is an offence against our natures, Kathy. It sanitises us, deodorises us, and turns us into shadows. Look at them!’ he roared, sweeping an upturned hand like a claw towards the shoppers meandering past. ‘It’s turning a warrior race, the hammer of the Scots, the butchers of the Welsh and Irish, the ravagers of half the globe, into a docile herd of consumers who care for nothing but woolly jumpers and soft music.’

Harriet Rutter gave a delighted chuckle. ‘And yet we keep coming back, do we not, Robbie?’

‘Aye,’ he nodded, calm again, wiping some spittle from his chin. ‘We keep coming back. The only thing that can be said for it is that: just as it has no past, so it also has no future. It didn’t grow out of anything that was here before and nothing will grow out of it; it will not age or acquire the patina of time, and no archaeologist will ever excavate its ruins; for when its usefulness is over its owners, caring nothing for it, will simply bulldoze it, sweep it away, and not a trace of it will remain.’

Brock was taking an early working lunch, munching a pie while he worked through the piles of reports covering his table. Kathy spotted a Sainsbury’s bag by his chair.

‘I’m getting bogged down, Kathy,’ he complained. ‘Buried in paper.’

‘Sorry, you should let me do that,’ she said, guilty at her morning lapse. She still couldn’t quite believe that she’d bought all that stuff. On impulse.

‘No, no. I want you out there, finding out about the girl. There’s a lot about Miss Kerri Vlasich that we don’t know, I’d say. You all right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Just thought you looked a bit… distant. Phil thinks you might be going down with something.’

Going down with something. Well, it did feel a bit like that.

‘No, I’m fine, really. Why don’t you get Gavin Lowry to do it then?’

‘He’s the one shovelling most of it onto my desk,’ Brock said, thoughtful. ‘Yes, you’re right. He can do this. He elected himself to meet the father at Gatwick this afternoon, but we should go. We’ll bring him here for the walk-through. Watch his reaction.’

‘Good idea.’

‘You missed our SIO’s visit,’ Brock said dryly.

‘Oh dear.’

‘Never mind. You’ll see him on TV tonight. He’s made a public statement, appealing for information. You do have a TV, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. Gavin isn’t loading the chief super down with paperwork, then?’

Brock smiled. ‘Too nimble on his feet for that, is our Orville. I get the impression he knows Gavin pretty well. He was highly amused when I brought up Gavin’s little worry about reporting direct to him. Said he’d only asked him to let him know if we were short of anything. Didn’t want me to get the impression they were penny-pinching.’

Stefan Vlasich showed little reaction to anything when they picked him up at the airport. He had broad, impassive Slavic features, and seemed determined to show no signs of emotion. He’d been working in the forests near Jaroslaw in eastern Poland, near the Ukraine border, he growled, staring stolidly at the Surrey countryside flashing past the patrol car window. Communications had not been good. It had taken longer than it should have to get him back to Warsaw and catch a plane. How long had he been there, in the forests? He swivelled his blank eyes round at Brock and said, ‘Four weeks. Almost five. Living night and day in a camp with twenty others, laying pipeline. The police spoke to the supervisors. They confirmed it, didn’t they? What, you think I came over here and killed my own daughter?’

‘We’ll have to go over all this in a formal interview, Mr Vlasich,’ Brock said. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s necessary for the record. But tell me now, will you? I’m curious. You really had no idea at all that your daughter was planning to visit you?’

Kathy was in the front passenger seat, next to the police driver, Brock and Vlasich in the back, Vlasich directly behind her so that she had to swivel right round to see his face.

‘No. No idea,’ he said, and turned away to watch the slip road curve onto the M25.

They crossed the Thames through the Dartford tunnel and emerged into the flat industrial wastes of Essex, and Kathy tried to imagine an earlier landscape, of marshes and Saxon hamlets, without success.

‘Are you taking me to see her?’ Vlasich asked heavily.

Brock replied, ‘Later, Mr Vlasich.’

They passed Junction 29, and then the driver began signalling his turn, and Vlasich said, ‘Where are we?’ Then, seeing the Silvermeadow sign, ‘What is this?’

‘We’re calling in here first, Mr Vlasich,’ Brock said. ‘It’s possible that Kerri died here.’

The vast carpark panorama opened up as the slip road reached the crest.

‘What?’ There was a note of sudden alarm in Vlasich’s voice, the more startling after its persistent monotone.

Kathy twisted round in her seat, but her attention was caught by Brock’s expression as he studied the other man, watchful, attentive, the hunter’s focus in his eyes.

‘She worked here, you know,’ Brock said, sounding the same as before. ‘We’re staging a walk-through with someone who looks like Kerri. We’d like you to witness it, if you wouldn’t mind. Is that all right?’

Kathy turned to look at Vlasich. He was staring at the long low bulk of the building ahead. ‘No… I don’t want… I won’t do this. I don’t want to go in there.’

‘I can understand it might be distressing for you,’ Brock said carefully, sounding more curious than sympathetic. ‘But your observations might help us. You may recognize someone. Something might jog your memory, about something Kerri might have said, or hinted.’

‘No way!’ Vlasich said, almost in a panic. ‘You turn round this fucking car right now!’

Brock considered him silently for a moment, then turned to the driver and murmured something. The car drew to a halt. ‘Kathy,’ Brock said, ‘you’d best stay here and meet the girls when they arrive. I’ll take Mr Vlasich to Hornchurch Street to make a formal statement.’

‘Fine,’ Kathy said, and looked again at the dead girl’s father. His face was as grey as the weeping sky.

*

Brock had told Kathy of his concern that the re-enactment might be lost among the shopping crowds at Silvermeadow, but it was clear, as soon as the police car pulled up at the west mall entrance, that the radio and poster publicity had ensured this was going to be the big event of the afternoon, if not the shopping week. A crowd of people was waiting as Lisa and Naomi stepped out, like stars arriving for a guest appearance. They walked forward to the doors, then hesitated at all this attention: the people strained forward, a TV cameraman backing away in front of them, lights and microphone suspended over their heads.

Kathy came to Lisa’s side and whispered encouragement. She looked very pale as she drew herself up and set off again, face set, striding forward, her hair pulled back in a ponytail tied up in a scarlet and green ribbon, as Kerri’s had probably been, the green backpack bobbing conspicuously between her shoulders. There had been doubts about whether Lisa should do this, whether it might be distressing for her to play the part of her murdered friend, but when it had been raised with her she had been adamant. It was her duty to Kerri, she had said through tears. Kerri wouldn’t want anyone else to do it.

Once in the mall it seemed to Kathy that the cavalcade took on the character of a royal progress, with lines of shoppers forming up on each side of the route in front of the advancing party, Harry Jackson’s security guards forging the way ahead, small kids running along the outside to stir up the stragglers. A second local TV news camera crew joined the procession, then another. Shoppers got to their feet at the cafe tables as they passed, and lined the balcony rails overhead. Kathy noticed how the girls seemed to become more confident. When they reached the C amp;A windows they paused, positioning themselves advantageously in front of the cameras, and put on a show of window-shopping while the crowd stood attentively silent all around.

They moved on down the mall and the music on the PA system cut out so that a voice could inform everyone what was happening, the programme notes to a real-life tragedy. The music resumed, an upbeat number, just as it had a week before, and the cavalcade moved forward towards the escalators and surged down into the rainforest and through the food court. It was obvious that the crush would never make it through the narrower spaces of the Bazaar, and the PA system came on again to announce that the reenactment was now at an end and that police officers would be ready at tables strategically positioned throughout the centre to hear from witnesses, their tables identifiable by enlarged photographs of Kerri’s smiling face. At the same time, all stalls in the food court would be offering a ten per cent discount on food purchases made before six p.m., twenty per cent on family specials.

Kathy took the girls back to the patrol car waiting to take them home. Lisa was subdued, but Naomi seemed almost serene as she turned to Kathy at the car door and said, ‘Same time tomorrow, then?’

‘Yes, thank you, Naomi. We really appreciate it.’ And she added, though afterwards she wondered if it had been a bit mawkish, ‘Kerri would be grateful too, for what you’ve done.’

She tapped in her security code at the door to the service area, getting a little buzz from the recollection of Leon giving her his number. So long ago it seemed, before everything happened, before she had even imagined that it could happen. She was impatient to leave, to pick him up in Lambeth as they’d arranged, but there were things that had to be done.

Sharon gave her a wave from her console in the security centre as she came in. Speedy was working at another table, on what looked like a video-editing machine, with images flashing past on the screen in front of him. He spotted her reflection in his screen and turned to her with a big toothy smile. ‘Yo, Sergeant!’ he called.

‘Hello Speedy,’ Kathy said, surprised at this welcome, wondering what had put him in such a good mood.

‘Your tape’s ready, babe,’ he said. ‘All done.’

‘Thanks. We appreciate it.’ Bo Seager had arranged for Speedy to compile a tape of the walk-through from his monitors for Brock to view when he returned from Hornchurch Street.

‘Ms Seager said if you want you can use the video machine in her office,’ Sharon said. ‘The office’ll be open till late.’

‘Great. We might do that. It gets rather hectic in the unit.’ Kathy took the tape that Speedy offered her and turned to go.

‘Oh, and I’ve got this as well,’ Speedy said, reaching for a second tape in a sealed box.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s some odds and ends I found,’ Speedy said, grinning rather wildly. He’s on something, she thought. ‘Just stuff from the monitors. But I thought there might be something there of use to you. You never know.’

‘Really? You think it could help us? Maybe I should leave this for my boss too.’

‘Oh, no.’ He sniggered as if at some private joke. ‘Have a look at it yourself first, babe, before you show him. Decide whether it’s worth a wider audience.’

There was something about the way he put it that she didn’t like.

Maybe it’s a dirty movie, she thought. Maybe this is Speedy’s way of flashing.

‘Okay. I’ll do that.’

‘Yeah.’ He grinned, and turned away. ‘You do that, babe.’

She turned to Sharon, who shrugged and gave her a look that said, that’s Speedy for you.

Kathy returned to the unit and phoned Brock. He was on his way back, he told her, having spent over an hour interviewing Stefan Vlasich, which hadn’t been very helpful. The man’s composure had been reimposed, his answers short and unilluminating. When pressed about his reaction to going into Silvermeadow he claimed that he had been unable to face the sight of another child playing the role of his little girl, but Brock knew that his panic had started before he had mentioned the walk-through. There was something odd there all right. Then they had gone to the morgue, where the people had done their best to make one side of Kerri’s face presentable. Stefan Vlasich had stared through the window at the small shrouded figure of his daughter without a flicker of reaction.

‘What about the walk-through?’ Brock asked. ‘How did it go?’

‘Fine. The girls did it very well. We’ve had a lot of reports from members of the public who say they knew Kerri by sight, but no one who can be specific about the sixth. The walk-through itself was like a circus. There’s a tape of it here for you to see, if you want. There’s a machine in the centre management offices, and they say they’ll be open till late if you want a bit of peace and quiet.’

‘Okay. Why don’t you go home now, Kathy? Get to bed early tonight. Boss’s orders.’

Kathy hesitated. ‘I’d like that,’ she said, with a little smile.

She drove into central London, phoning him on the way, so that he was waiting under the arch of the railway bridge when she arrived. He put the carrier bags he was carrying into the back and slipped in quickly beside her, and they grabbed each other as if their whole day had been spent waiting in furious impatience for this moment, which it had.

‘God,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve missed you. I can’t believe how much.’

‘Me too. Home?’

‘Yes please.’

‘What did you tell your mum and dad?’

‘I’m staying with a friend. We’re thinking of getting a place together.’

‘How did they take that?’

‘Fine. They seemed pleased.’

‘Did you specify the gender of the friend?’

‘No, and they didn’t ask. Funny really.’

Kathy pulled out into the traffic and turned north, heading for Vauxhall Bridge. ‘Have you been shopping?’ she asked, nodding over her shoulder at the bags in the back.

‘Just a few things for you. Food, a couple of bottles, one or two little things for the kitchen. You’re not offended, are you?’

She laughed. ‘Course not. What sort of little things?’

He reached back for one of the bags and brought them out: pepper and salt grinders, a corkscrew, two eggcups and a thing for drizzling olive oil.

‘ Drizzling olive oil! Wow.’

‘You’re sure you’re not offended?’

‘Not in the least. I did a bit of shopping today too.’

‘What did you get?’

‘That’s a surprise.’

Brock took the video down the mall to the centre management offices. The door was locked, but Bo Seager answered his knock. Her mood seemed much changed from the previous evening, relaxed and welcoming. She took the tape from him and put it in the machine, sat him down and offered him a malt.

‘That does sound tempting,’ he said. ‘Just a small one, thanks, Ms Seager.’

‘Bo, please.’ She smiled. ‘I’m sorry if we sounded kinda belligerent last night. David, isn’t it? Frankly, we were nervous about the impact of all this. And I guess Nathan Tindall felt he had to make a point.’

‘He did that all right.’

‘Nathan believes in covering all the angles. That way he may well end up with my job, if and when I mess things up good and proper.’ She said it lightly, as if it was to be taken as a joke. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers. So you feel less nervous now… Bo?’

‘After the way the walk-through went today, I feel we may have to make a big donation to the police widows fund, or whatever. Oh dear, you’re frowning at my tastelessness. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. So it didn’t put your customers off?’

‘Quite the opposite! It seems a murder is a much bigger draw than Santa Claus. Isn’t that interesting? I might give a paper on it to the next marketing conference. Look, I’ll show you.’

She reached for the remote and sat back, crossing her long dark legs in a way that Brock found momentarily distracting. Then the screen came to life with a scene like a triumphal parade.

‘Good grief!’ Brock muttered.

There was no doubt that Speedy Reynolds had flair, heightening the drama of the occasion with rapid switches from camera to camera, distant shots alternating with close-ups, panning and zooming like a professional.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Bo said. ‘Speedy, I mean. He does it really well.’

‘Good grief,’ Brock repeated, shaking his head as the edited film came to an end.

‘What’s the matter?’ Bo asked him.

‘It’s a bloody circus!’

‘You look shocked.’

He shook his head. ‘No, not really. We uncover a body in the woods, or a plane comes down somewhere, and suddenly the lanes are full of cars, like blowflies homing in on the smell of death. But still, this is something, isn’t it? Carnival time.’

‘Oh, come on! You called them here! You wanted them to take an interest. Then you sit back and call them blowflies!’

He saw that she was teasing him, and he smiled back. ‘Yes, well, you don’t seem to be wasting the opportunity- ten per cent discounts on food in the food court? And it all seems to be doing great things for your turnover-the carparks look pretty full.’

‘Fifty per cent up on a normal Monday evening, I’d say. You’re disapproving again, but seriously, I wonder why you object to people showing their interest in their own way? Who’s to say what’s responsible interest and what’s morbid? Me, I prefer to take people just as they are.’

‘Then you’d probably make a good copper, Bo.’

‘No, a good shopping centre manager-much more rewarding, financially anyway. And more than financially. I don’t know how you can spend your life digging about exposing the shit in life. I prefer to wrap it all up in gorgeous gift paper and sell it for a bomb. I guess it’s basically a difference of philosophy.’

‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Philosophy, eh?’ He finished his drink and she reached across with the bottle, ignoring his shake of the head.

‘Sure. You’re a liberal, right? You adore positive logic, and you have a certain political awareness, which maybe is the conscience of the privileged. You want to have things verified, and at the same time help the less fortunate. It’s very old-fashioned.’

‘Thank you,’ Brock grunted. He had heard this lecture before, and wasn’t really in the mood for it again.

‘Winston Starkey, for instance, the black guy who runs the games arcade, who your officers were hassling.’

‘I am pursuing that, don’t worry. If they were in the wrong, they’ll pay, believe me.’

‘Oh, I do. You’ve been talking to him, yes?’

‘I went and had a word with him this morning, yes. You’re well informed, Bo.’

‘Naturally. But actually he came and told me so himself. He believes that some of the other traders and our security guys-all white, of course-have it in for him. Put your people up to it.’

‘He’s probably right. What’s your point?’

‘My point is that you want to believe the best of him, because of what he is: black and gay and kinda dumb. Whereas I don’t.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. If he’s up to anything, and especially if it’s drugs, I want you to hit him hard. And I’m black and wear gold jewellery too.’

‘Fair enough.’

Bo smiled. ‘Your sergeants have a more modern philosophy.’

‘Have they really?’

‘Sure. They’re not like you, they’re classless, thank God.’

Brock frowned at his glass, feeling tired.

She mistook his expression and said quickly, ‘Sorry, David, no offence to you. I just find this English class thing so boring.’

‘I know…’ He decided he’d better let her have her fun. ‘I thought I was fairly classless, actually.’

‘Sure,’ she laughed. ‘Middle-classless. I’m not sure whether it’s upper-middle-classless or middle-middle-classless, but that’s because I’m a foreigner. If I were English I’d know for sure within ten seconds of you opening your mouth which kind of classless you were. Now the tough guy, what’s his name?’

‘Lowry.’

‘Yes. He’s a contemporary, post-Thatcher, English type, I’d say.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Oh, hungry, devious, prepared to do whatever it takes.’

‘I think that’s just style, Bo. Posturing. We all do it, in our different ways. Reassures us that we aren’t completely beholden to the chief super’-he eyed her over the rim of his glass-‘or the finance manager.’

She flinched, then smiled and continued, ignoring his little barb. ‘Your other sergeant, Kathy, is different. I like her. She’s kind of intense, but interesting. Not too politically sophisticated, I’d guess, but she’s very keen on catching bad guys. She thinks in her own way. You tell her one thing, she’ll try something else. Am I right?’

‘Pretty much, yes. Intense, you think?’

‘Yes, but I think there’s a fairly straightforward reason for that.’

‘I work her too hard?’

Bo laughed. ‘No. I’d say… it’s just a guess. I’d say she needs a good screw. You look surprised. Am I right?’

Brock took another swallow of his drink while he considered that. ‘Quite possibly. I didn’t think you’d really seen much of her.’

‘Oh, I read people quickly, David. And I have talked to her, as a matter of fact. We bumped into each other this morning. She wanted to know about our archaeologist.’

‘Your what?’

Bo laughed. ‘One of our local fruitcakes. He first showed up when we started building here. Early on, when they disturbed the ground, they hit something bad.’ She leant forward, eyes bright, and whispered, ‘Bones.’

‘Bones?’

She nodded. ‘Human remains.’

Brock sat up sharply, pushing out of his mind the extraordinary way her broad lips formed the first syllable of ‘human’.

‘Human? How the hell didn’t I know about this?’

‘They were kind of old.’

‘But still…’

‘Like, a thousand years old.’ She laughed. ‘It was really bad news, because of course the archaeologists had to be told, and for six months they were here, off and on, digging around the place, getting in everybody’s way. We were terrified they’d find a Roman city or something, but all they ever found were those bones. Eventually they all left, all except this local fruitcake, a professor of archaeology, who’d been helping them. He’s still here, haunting the place, mainly I think so he can lord it over the elderly matrons of the locality, who fuss over him and give him treats. Kathy bumped into him with one of those ladies in the mall, and came to find out from me what they were on about.’

‘I see. She didn’t mention it to me. Which reminds me that I’ve got a pile of reports to read before I go home.’ He sighed and got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the use of your video, and the drink, and the assessment of my team. It was all most enlightening.’

‘You’re not cross with me, are you? About the class thing?’

‘No, not at all. Although it did make me feel a little old.’

‘Well, you know the best way to stay young, don’t you?’

He never heard the answer to that because her phone started ringing, but from the look she gave him as he left he guessed that sex came into it somewhere.

Kathy opened her front door with some trepidation, expecting a mess, but between them Mrs P and the delivery men had managed things remarkably well. There, facing them, where the battered old brown box of her TV had been, was an impressive black electronic presence winking a small red light at them to tell them it was alive and ready to go. Over to the left, through the door of the kitchenette, she could see other gleaming new friends, while the transformation in the bedroom was even more impressive.

‘When did you manage this?’ Leon gasped, astonished.

In the vast spaces of the showroom the bed had seemed quite moderate in scale, but now, in the small bedroom, it looked huge. There was barely room to move around it, or open the built-in wardrobe door.

‘Is it too big?’ Kathy said, feeling a twinge of loss for her old narrow bed.

Leon shook his head. ‘Hell no. What’s a bedroom for?’

They unpacked the bedding stacked neatly at the foot, and made up the bed, adjusting to its dimensions. Then Kathy checked her watch and said, ‘Let’s see if we can get the TV to work. Forbes is making a press statement.’

She was astonished at the clarity of the picture, the subtle flesh tones that made the people on the screen look and sound like humans instead of plastic puppets. And Chief Superintendent Forbes filled these new dimensions like a seasoned performer, voice resonant, gaze steady, as he appealed for public assistance. The pictures of the girl wearing the frog bag, and of Kerri herself, leapt out into the room.

When it was over, they switched off and unpacked the food and wine that Leon had bought.

‘I’ll get plates and glasses,’ Kathy said, and handed the remote to Leon. ‘See if you can figure out how to work the video. One of the security guys at Silvermeadow gave me a tape he said I’d want to see. We can try it out.’

When she returned a few minutes later Leon was standing staring at the screen, transfixed. ‘Who did you say gave you this thing?’ he said.

‘Oh, don’t tell me it’s tacky.’

‘Look.’ He rewound the tape and began it again as she came to his side.

It was hard at first to make it out: a night scene, the camera dazzled by a car’s headlights, then tracking after it, across a dark wasteland. The car stopped, some way away, and the camera zoomed slowly in on it as a figure got out and began cleaning the windscreen.

‘Hang on…’ Kathy said.

A second figure had got out of the car, the picture brightening and becoming clearer as the camera zoomed closer and adjusted to the lighting levels. The second figure moved to the side of the first. They turned towards each other, and after a moment’s hesitation they began to kiss. By the time they broke apart, their upper bodies and heads were large in the screen and clearly identifiable.

‘Hell…’ Kathy breathed. ‘That’s us.’

The picture jumped: a new scene, bright lights, the camera panning across a shopfront, stopping, then zooming in on a woman lying on a bed, shoes off, bouncing, then sitting up with a self-conscious smirk on her face.

‘The bastard…’ Kathy whispered. ‘The creepy little bastard.’

The screen went blank.

Afterwards Kathy tried to recall what had gone through her head. She remembered the stories of people who wouldn’t let travellers take their photographs for fear that some part of them would be stolen, and for the first time she understood what they meant. She did feel robbed, intruded upon, assaulted, and the fact that she had no physical damage to show for it only somehow made it more insidious. And she also understood for the first time the fuss that people made about surveillance cameras, which up until then had seemed neutral, even benign.

But it was Speedy that most bothered her, the hand controlling the camera, the intention behind the electronic eye. The way he had giggled and squirmed when he handed her the tape, and called her ‘babe’.

‘I’ll knock the bastard’s head off,’ Leon said.

‘That wouldn’t look good. He’s a cripple, confined to a chair.’

‘Why’s he done it? He’s obviously trying to embarrass you.’

Kathy tried to remember exactly what he’d said, something about looking at it before she decided whether it was ‘worth a wider audience’, and she felt a cold chill creep over her skin.

‘He couldn’t exactly blackmail me with it, could he?’ she said. ‘Just make me look stupid. Bouncing on a bed at the height of a murder inquiry. I feel bloody stupid. Imagine if Brock saw it!’

Leon put an arm round her shoulders. ‘How many days off have you had in the last month? I don’t think you have to feel guilty about buying a bed. I don’t think you need to feel guilty about anything.’

‘No.’ But that was the result all the same. It made you feel guilty, so you’d be looking over your shoulder next time.

It had a dampening effect on the rest of the evening, and Kathy found herself making sure the lights were off, the curtains drawn and the door to the sitting room closed before she took off her clothes and slid under the new duvet with Leon.

Brock, too, felt on edge as he cooked some pasta for his dinner. Partly it was the lonely sound of rain spattering against the kitchen window, partly Bo Seager’s conversation, but mostly it was a matter of timing. The machine had been organised and set in motion, so far without result. Data was being amassed, but key pieces were missing, forensic most of all. There would be action soon enough, but not yet. There was no point beating the table about it. It was only a matter of timing. It would come.

He really wanted to ring Suzanne, but thought it might be a bit soon after their last conversation. Not good to sound pushy. And then he thought of Bo Seager’s explanation for Kathy’s air of intensity, and smiled. If only things were that simple. Kathy was surely driven by deeper demons than that. Although, now he came to think of it, she had seemed different that day. Calm. Almost euphoric. Probably the anticipation of a fresh case.

He opened a bottle of red, drizzled some olive oil on a chunk of bread, and sat down to eat. When he was finished he put his feet up and dialled a number on his phone.

‘Suzanne?’

‘David! I’m glad you called. I wasn’t sure when to ring you, with your new case. How is it?’

‘Just getting started.’

‘I saw someone on TV tonight. A rather pompous man in uniform, talking about a murdered girl. Is that your case?’

‘You’ve got it. Probably abducted from one of those big new shopping centres.’

‘Silvermeadow, yes, I’ve read about that place. I’d love to see it. Do you like it?’

‘Not my cup of tea. Huge place, a sort of shopping fantasyland.’

‘ Th e Ladies ’ Paradise.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a book. Zola. About a wonderful new department store that takes over Paris. I’ll lend you my copy if I can find it.’

‘Thanks. How are your plans?’

‘Our trip? Well, I’ve got dates for a pantomime, Pete r Pan. Will you come with us?’

‘Certainly. I always had a soft spot for Captain Hook.’

‘Oh. That’s interesting.’

‘And accommodation?’

‘The place I’d had recommended is booked up. I’m trying somewhere else.’

‘You’re daft. I told you what to do. Stay here. It’ll be so much simpler.’

‘The children will wreck your calm sanctum, David. You’d hate it. We’d end up fighting.’

‘Rubbish. Anyway, maybe I need my calm sanctum being shaken up a bit. You can get too set in your ways, I’m told.’

‘Your job does all the shaking up you need. Two small children.. .’

‘Bugger the children, Suzanne. I’d like you to stay here. Just to try.’

‘Ah… Well, put like that, so eloquently, I’d have to give it serious thought.’

‘Exactly.’

Later, on the edge of sleep, a chain of thoughts passed through his mind. He had to force himself awake to reconstruct it. It went something like this: pantomime- improbable characters (Widow Twankey, Captain Hook, etc.)-the improbable Italian, Bruno Verdi, in the food court-the joke about Guiseppe Verdi not being such a great composer if he’d been called the English equivalent of his name, plain Joe Green-they were checking Bruno Verdi, but what about Bernie Green? Then he’d fallen deeply asleep.