Silvermeadow

8

T he hunt for Eddie Testor resumed the following day. It was spurred on by information given by another employee at the leisure pool, a young man whose shifts ran from Monday to Friday, so he hadn’t previously been interviewed. He recalled that he had seen Testor on the afternoon of the sixth. They were both rostered from midday to nine p.m. that day, and Testor had been due for a one-hour meal break from four to five p.m., and this was confirmed by his supervisor. But Testor had wanted his break later for some reason, and had arranged with the other lifeguard to cover for him between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. The man remembered it particularly because it had messed up his previous arrangements to meet a girlfriend during his break. He also suggested that, although Testor had never confided in him, he thought he might have had a close friend at the Silvermeadow Sports Club and Fitness Salon, where he seemed to spend much of his free time.

‘Fitness salon?’ Kathy said, taking the note from Phil. ‘What’s a fitness salon?’

‘It’s where they make you look fit, as opposed to actually being fit, Kathy,’ Phil explained patiently. ‘Sun lamps and stuff. Liposuction too, for all I know.’

‘That figures,’ Gavin Lowry growled at Kathy’s shoulder. ‘That wanker Testor would go for that. I’ll come with you.’

On the way down to the lower level, Kathy said, ‘Haven’t seen much of you recently, Gavin. How’s it going?’

He blew his nose loudly, looking out of sorts. ‘Bit hung over, actually. Me and a few of the lads went down the pub last night, after it became obvious we weren’t going to find that bastard. Drown our sorrows.’ In any ordinary town street on a wet December morning his scowling discontent would have seemed entirely normal, but here, in Silvermeadow’s perpetual Indian summer, he looked menacing and out of place, and people glanced at him uncertainly as they passed.

‘How’s your campaign against Forbes going?’

He shot her a mistrustful look out of the corner of a bleary eye. ‘Don’t know what you mean, Kathy. The chief super has implicit trust. Asked my advice this morning, as it happens.’

‘About?’

‘About Testor. We decided that it might be a good idea to work up a bit of a media storm about Testor before we catch him, so that the result will seem more “meritorious”. His word, not mine. He called another press briefing straight away. Rigorous detective work has identified a man the police are anxious to interview, blah, blah, blah. The public are warned not to approach this man who has a record of violent assault, blah, blah, blah.’

Kathy said nothing for a while, then, ‘What if he didn’t do it?’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the risk, isn’t it? Go public too soon and get egg on your face, too late and miss out.’

‘What did you advise?’

‘Boldness, grasp the nettle, seize the moment. Christ, I feel terrible. Can you slow down a bit?’

A girl in a tracksuit behind the front counter of the sports club pointed out the tinted glass entrance door of the Primavera Fitness Salon on the far side of the atrium, and they wove towards it through a stream of bustling volleyballers.

A redhead looked up from the schedules she was discussing with the receptionist as they walked in, and gave them a big smile. ‘Good morning. Haven’t seen you two here before.’ Her voice was deep and throaty. ‘Kim Hislop, manager. What can we do for you?’ The smile faded when Kathy showed her warrant card. ‘Oh yes. What now?’

‘We’d like some information about one of your customers, Ms Hislop. Is it all right to talk here?’ Kathy asked, looking around at the furniture in the reception area, something between a hotel foyer and a clinic.

The manager set her head back on her surprisingly broad shoulders, studying them before she said anything. ‘This way,’ she murmured finally, and led them into a second waiting room behind the first.

A glass door on the far wall carried the name PRIMAVERA above the stylised figure of Botticelli’s Venus wearing a sash that said FITNESS SALON. She indicated for them to sit, herself perching in her tracksuit pants on the very edge of a seat, projecting herself forward at them.

‘Well?’

‘We’re interested in anything you can tell us about Eddie Testor. Do you know him?’ Kathy showed her the computer image.

Hislop glanced at it. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ She smiled and handed it back. ‘We’re on performance contracts here. The last thing I need is a reputation for shopping our best clients to the filth, know what I mean?’

‘We’re anxious to contact him, that’s all.’

She shrugged and swept her red hair back from her forehead, her biceps swelling impressively under the brilliant white T-shirt. Then she got to her feet and took a book from a shelf and turned the pages. It was an album of photographs, Kathy saw, of men and women bodybuilders in studio poses. She found the one she was looking for and passed it over to Kathy and Lowry. In it, Testor was wearing almost nothing, his body oiled and gleaming. She traced the outline of the hairless torso with a fingertip. ‘This is my work,’ she said.

Kathy’s reply was drowned by a muffled scream from beyond the Primavera door. Ms Hislop ignored it. ‘I wax him,’ she said. ‘I do most of the regulars myself.’

There was a second scream, a male voice in agony, followed by a string of curses. Ms Hislop shook her head resignedly and rose to her feet in one smooth aerobic movement. ‘’Scuse me one moment.’ She disappeared through the door.

After several minutes she returned and sat down in the same perching position, as if in the middle of a knees-bend exercise. ‘Where were we?’

‘What was that all about?’ Lowry asked.

‘God, they’re babies,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Men.’ She raised an eyebrow knowingly at Kathy. ‘It’s just so bloody embarrassing when they start to cry. Don’t you find that?’

‘What are they doing to him?’ Lowry asked cautiously.

The Primavera door opened again and a girl in a white tracksuit came out and knelt by Ms Hislop’s side, whispered in her ear.

‘All right,’ she nodded. ‘But there’s no refund. He knows that.’

She turned back to Lowry. ‘Body wax. First time.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘The women come in here, pop up on the couch and get it over with without a murmur.

But the men… God! They want a full consultation first, before they decide. Then they get so worked up thinking about it they’re in a panic before we even begin. You can see why God gave the job of having babies to women-if the men had to do it, there wouldn’t be any.’

‘They’re stripping his body hair off with wax?’ Lowry looked at her in horror.

‘That’s right.’

‘But… why?’

She looked at him as if he was even more stupid than she’d supposed. ‘It’s the look, isn’t it?’

‘The look?’

‘Yes. Don’t you read your wife’s magazines?’

‘I don’t think she has any.’

‘Course she does! You take a gander. All the male models have got totally hairless bods. Nobody would touch a hairy model these days. It’s the look. Movie stars are the same. When did you see a hair on Arnie Schwarzenegger’s pecs? And sportsmen, too, your swimmers and runners and that. Body hair is definitely out.’

‘Christ…’ Lowry’s imagination was still coping with the vision of the hair being ripped from his back. ‘But still, why bother?’

‘Well, it’s ecological, isn’t it?’

‘Ecological?’

‘Yeah, you know, clean and green. And anyway, a lot of them, their wives and girlfriends make them do it. They ask why they should be the only ones to have to do it. They expect their men to take equal waxing responsibility.’

This reduced Lowry to stunned silence.

Kathy said, ‘How much is it? I might treat him.’ She nodded at her fellow DS.

‘Men’s chest wax is the same as ladies’ half leg wax. Nineteen ninety-nine, unless he’s very hairy.’ She looked at Lowry appraisingly. ‘I’ll give you a half-price introductory offer.’

‘Thanks. Think I’ll give it a miss, all the same.’

‘So you do Eddie Testor regularly?’

‘Yes. He comes in once a month. Has the works. I give him a special deal, as a regular.’

‘What, head, body, legs…’

‘Everything, yes.’

‘Everything?’ Lowry echoed.

She nodded.

‘What’s he like?’ Kathy asked.

‘He never complains. Seems to like it. Ideal client.’

‘I meant, as a person.’

‘Quiet. Keeps to himself. He comes to the gym regularly, too. To work out, you know.’

‘Does he have a friend here? Someone he meets regularly?’

‘Not that I know of. He’s a solitary sort of bloke.’

‘What does he talk to you about?’

‘Movies. He just talks about the movies he’s been to see. At the multiplex, usually. He goes to everything that’s on: children’s films, horror films, comedies, thrillers, everything. That’s why the others don’t like to do him, because he spoils it for them, tells them what happens, can’t help himself. I don’t care, cos I never go to the pics. He never mentions friends, or family.’

‘What address do you have for him?’

She looked it up on the computer, but it was the same one they had.

‘He doesn’t seem to be there at the moment,’ Kathy said, and then had another thought. ‘You didn’t see him on the sixth of this month, did you? Week ago Monday?’

‘That’s the day that girl disappeared, isn’t it? Blimey! You think Eddie…?’ It hadn’t struck her before that this might be why they were there, and she seemed startled by the idea.

‘We think he could have been a witness to something,’ Kathy told her soothingly. ‘That’s why we need to talk to him.’

‘Ah, well…’ She checked her computer again. ‘No, not the sixth. He was booked in for his monthly the following day, the seventh, four till five p.m.’

As Kathy and Lowry thanked her and got up to leave, she suddenly added, ‘Oh, hang on! I just thought of something. Have you been to Carmen’s?’

‘What’s that?’ Lowry said. ‘A fortune teller?’

Ms Hislop looked sharply at him. ‘You should take up the offer on the wax, you know. You could do the sunbed, too. It’d make a big difference to you. Your wife would have a nice surprise.’

‘She’d have a bloody heart attack,’ Lowry muttered, looking impatiently at the door.

‘Carmen’s?’ Kathy prompted.

‘Hair salon on this level, other side of the food court, beyond the multiplex, through the Spanish market. Everyone goes to Carmen’s, me included. And I remember her or one of her girls saying that one of their customers was related to Eddie-his aunty or something.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Kathy said. ‘We haven’t come across her.’ She thought of Kerri’s Uncle Dragan. One day, she thought, the computer would have a complete record of the family interconnections of everyone, a map of the hidden blood lines that linked a subject to a second cousin or a step-uncle twice removed who might be waiting in the shadows to provide help, or something else. ‘You wouldn’t have a name, I suppose?’

‘No, but Carmen might.’

The foyer to Carmen’s salon was all blonde timber and gleaming chrome, the only indication of its purpose a few discreet displays of bottles under concealed spotlights, like a museum of rare artefacts. Carmen turned out to be a small, dynamic woman with bright, compelling eyes, and a network that seemed to have got somewhat further than the police computer in mapping the human relationships of this area of Essex. She consulted with some of her staff, her technical director (colour), her creative director and her chief stylist, and finally found the nails consultant, who recalled a conversation with a woman who spoke of her nephew (actually, she thought, the adopted boy of her sister’s husband’s brother and his wife, who’d been tragically killed in a car smash) who was a pool attendant at the leisure centre. The customer, the aunt, was remembered as being in her fifties, blonde, a smoker with problem cuticles, and with an overall style bias described in the private terminology of the salon as ‘fluoro’.

‘That means brassy, hyper, unsubtle, too much,’ Carmen explained.

Together with an approximate date of her last visit, four to six weeks before, the computer came up with three possible names and addresses. Two of the names had bookings arranged for the month ahead, and the receptionist rang their numbers on the pretence of confirming these. As she closed, the receptionist asked if they had a relative working at Silvermeadow, by any chance, since the salon was offering a special discount to centre staff in December. The second one said yes, her nephew worked there, but she didn’t want to get him to come to the phone right now, because he was asleep and hadn’t been well. In any case, she said with a wheezy chuckle, he’d be the last person to need a booking at a hair salon.

‘Carmen, that’s brilliant, thanks,’ Kathy said as the receptionist rang off. ‘I’m really impressed. I wish our information was as efficient.’

Carmen smiled, eyeing Kathy’s hair. ‘Nice basic structure, love. But you need a better cut. And what have you been washing it with?’

Kathy agreed to make a booking once the investigation was over, and meanwhile bought three bottles that Carmen recommended.

When Lowry saw the price on the till display he gave a little gasp. ‘Kathy, if you ever meet my wife, do me a favour and don’t tell her about this place, eh?’

‘Lowry…’ Carmen frowned. ‘I know the name… Yes, Connie Lowry, is that your wife?’

‘Yeah.’ He looked worried.

‘Oh, I know Connie. She’s nice. She comes here regular. Everyone comes here, Gavin. Even your friend Harry Jackson comes here.’

Lowry looked shocked, as if she’d accused Jackson of participating in some morally questionable practice. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he’d have had enough raw material for you to work on,’ he said doubtfully.

‘Oh, you’d be surprised what we can do. You should have come to us for your last cut. Really you should.’

They ran across the carpark through the rain to Lowry’s Escort. Kathy was interested to see that whoever took care of his laundry obviously didn’t handle the interior of his car. It was full of rubbish: fast-food containers, newspapers, cigarette packets and odd bits of clothing jumbled together over all the passenger seats. He grumbled as he threw things into the back to make room for Kathy, who was shivering by the time she got in out of the rain.

‘I’ll get the heater going,’ he muttered. ‘There’s a box of tissues somewhere. Look down there.’ He began pressing numbers on his phone.

‘You reporting to Brock?’ Kathy said, groping around her feet.

‘Yeah,’ he said, but from the muttered words she could pick up it sounded more as if he was calling first for armed support and then, more surreptitiously, with his back to her, speaking to someone about cameras and a news crew. Then he drove off, pulling the car over short of the carpark exit and sitting with the engine running, tapping the steering wheel impatiently while he examined a street map.

A second car appeared on the road behind them and flashed its lights.

‘About bloody time,’ Lowry muttered, and threw the car into gear.

The address was a modern brick terrace, compact and drab in the rain. The front doors faced a tarmac parking court into which Lowry turned his car, the other following close behind. He switched off the engine and waited.

‘Did you call Brock?’ Kathy asked. She hadn’t seen him at Silvermeadow that morning, and there were things she wanted to speak to him about. She pulled out her phone. ‘I’ll give him a call.’

‘Hang on.’ He pointed through the rain-washed windscreen as an unmarked van swung fast into the court and squealed to a halt. ‘I told Phil,’ Lowry said. He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve worked with the Indian guy before, I take it. Desai?’

The sudden jump in topic threw Kathy. ‘Eh? Yes, a couple of times. Why?’

‘Like him, do you?’

‘What?’

Lowry grinned and pulled a bag of barley sugars out of the door pocket and offered them to her.

‘I’m sensitive to these things,’ he said.

Kathy undid the paper from the sweet and threw it into the ankle-deep trash. ‘Go wax yourself,’ she said, and saw another van come to a halt in the street opposite the entrance to the carparking yard. It had a satellite dish on its roof and the logo of a TV channel’s news programme on its side.

‘Come on.’ Lowry jumped out of the car and ran to the back of the first van. As he pulled open the back doors, Kathy saw the outline of men inside with guns.

The woman who answered their knock on her front door was instantly recognisable from the hairdresser’s description. Her chemical hair colouring, her glossy orange lips, her lime-green costume jewellery, all vibrated in the dull grey light, working very hard to make the dreary world a brighter place. Kathy immediately understood what ‘fluoro’ meant.

‘Hello.’ She smiled at them, taking in the support people hanging back in watchful anticipation. ‘To what do we owe this little visitation?’

‘Mrs Goldfinch?’ Kathy said, showing her warrant card.

‘That’s me, darling. Call me Jan.’ Eddie’s aunt appeared unperturbed.

‘We want to speak to your nephew, Eddie Testor. Can you tell us where he is, please?’

‘Why yes, certainly!’ She gave them a little flash of brilliant white dentures. ‘He’s here! How on earth did you know? Everyone seems to want to speak to him today. Why don’t you come on in? I don’t think there’ll be room for all of you, mind.’

After they’d got Eddie dressed and taken him downstairs to the car with a towel over his head, Jan realised she was almost out of cigarettes, and went back up to Eddie’s room to see if he had any. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she said from the doorway, staring with fascination at Lowry pulling on a pair of latex gloves.

‘Why don’t we go downstairs and talk about Eddie, Jan?’ Kathy said, steering her back out onto the landing. ‘I’d love a cup of tea.’

Aunty Jan was happy to do that, because it was a touching story that she loved to tell. The poor boy had had a very difficult time of it after his parents were killed in the accident, she explained when they were settled in the kitchen. It was divine intervention really that had brought the two of them together after so many years. She had been checking out the sunbeds and spa pools and saunas at the fitness salon at Silvermeadow one day when she had stopped to admire the photographs of the waxed body builders hanging in their golden frames (‘Well, Kathy darling, there’s no harm in looking, is there?’), and one in particular had caught her eye. It had reminded her so much of her sister’s brother-in-law Donald, on whom she’d had a terrible crush twenty years ago, before he and his wife were killed in the accident. So like him, in fact, that she began to think of their little orphan kid Eddie, whom she hadn’t heard of for years. And then she’d looked at the signature scrawled across the bottom of the photo and when she managed to decipher the name her heart had gone all of a flutter, for there he was, Eddie Testor, in the glorious flesh.

‘It’s not that I fancied him, Kathy darling,’ she said. ‘Not really, cos that would be like incest almost, and anyway I’ve got a boyfriend, who’ll be here any minute actually, to take me to our dancing class, Latin American. But I had to speak to him, and tell him that we were long-lost relatives, and that if he ever needed an aunty I was here. He didn’t really take up my offer until last Sunday night, when he showed up in such a state, poor kid.’

‘Did he say what had happened? The black eye, the cut lip?’

‘Some thugs beat him up, didn’t they? He looks a great hunk of muscle, but he’s like his dad, a real softie inside.’

‘How did he get here?’

‘Taxi dropped him off.’

‘And he brought a bag with his things?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘So he’d been to his home, then?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘After he’d been beaten up, he went home.’

‘Oh yes, I suppose he did. He was done in when he arrived here. Completely exhausted. He’s hardly stirred from his bed since he got here. He’s really not been well.’

Lowry joined them in the living room. He was carrying a number of clear plastic bags containing packets and bottles, which he laid on the coffee table.

‘What are these, Mrs Goldfinch? Do you know?’

‘From Eddie’s room?’ she said vaguely. ‘They’ll be his pills. For his body building, you know. He has to take a lot of pills.’

‘Where does he get them from?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know that. From his doctor, I suppose, or his friends at the gym.’

‘Do you take pills, Jan?’ Kathy said.

‘Me? Only what the doctor gives me. I’m depressed, see, since Alfred passed away. That’s my late husband. But I don’t believe in letting it show. You have a duty to add a little sunshine to the world, I always say, no matter if it’s raining in your heart.’

Kathy thought that probably explained Aunty Jan’s remarkable unconcern at being the subject of a police raid.

‘That’s your pills in the bathroom cabinet is it?’ Lowry said.

‘Yes, they’re mine… Oh!’ She looked at him in alarm. ‘You haven’t touched them, have you?’

Lowry shrugged ambiguously.

‘Oh no! You can’t take them away!’ Panicking, she looked to Kathy for support. ‘You mustn’t do that!’

‘It’s all right, Jan, I’m sure that won’t be necessary.’ She looked at Lowry, who seemed at first reluctant to cooperate, but then he reached into one of the plastic bags and took out a packet which he handed to Kathy. She made a note of the name and the chemist’s label before she returned them to Jan, who looked relieved.

Just then the front door bell sounded and Jan jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, that’ll be him now, my boyfriend. We’re late. You don’t mind me dashing off, do you? It’s the rumba you see, my favourite. I love the hip movements, don’t you? Although my boyfriend has a bit of trouble with them, since his operation.’

Kathy and Leon Desai stood at the window, watching Brock and Lowry working on Eddie. Kathy was very conscious of Leon’s body at her side and its stillness, observing the exchanges in the other room with hardly a blink of his dark eyes. Despite Lowry’s lip service to interviewing rules, Kathy was in no doubt that his manner was intimidatory, and was intended to be so. He sat hunched forward across the table as if short of hearing, baring his teeth in what he might claim to be a smile. His crouching posture contrasted with Eddie’s, sitting stiffly upright, head back on his thick neck, and Kathy wondered if Lowry might be physically envious of the other man, even while he seemed, with every gesture and word, to despise him utterly. Brock was sitting back, saying nothing, doing something with a pencil on a notepad as if the proceedings held no interest.

‘You’re a very, very stupid fellow, Eddie,’ Lowry was saying. ‘You could kill yourself taking stuff like that. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Sergeant,’ the duty solicitor interrupted. ‘Excuse me, but are you intending to lay charges in connection with the alleged possession of performance-enhancing drugs? Because if not, I don’t see-’

‘Do you mind!’ Lowry screamed at her, furious. The violence in his voice and in his cold stare set the solicitor abruptly back. There was silence for a moment as Lowry seemed to struggle with his temper, before continuing in a more reasonable tone to Eddie. ‘You do know that, don’t you? Those are animal drugs, Eddie. What they give to horses.’ He shook his head in amazement.

‘Are they?’ Kathy asked Leon. ‘Did you get a look at them?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Stenbolol, the anabolic steroid, is a veterinary product, usually used for geldings in training. It’s popular among body builders because it’s available in tablet and paste form, rather than by injection like most animal anabolic steroids. Eddie could have got them from anywhere-they’re common enough. He also had human testosterone tablets, and a cocktail of tranquillisers, too.’

‘What sort of doses have you been taking, Eddie?’ Lowry pressed him.

The solicitor frowned and sat forward to whisper in Eddie’s ear.

‘I’m asking, Eddie,’ Lowry said in a menacing tone aimed at the lawyer, ‘because I understand that taking heavy doses of this stuff can make you very tense and angry, is that right? Do you find that? Does it put you on a short fuse? Does it make you really mad when people muck you about? Does it make you want to sort them out with those great big bulging muscles of yours?

‘And maybe your clever solicitor can understand now the relevance of my question to you, Eddie. Because if you’d been taking them before you got talking to Kerri, and if she mucked you about and wouldn’t give you what you wanted, and if the steroids made you very, very angry with her, well, that might be something we should bear in mind, isn’t it? You might not have been in full control of your faculties, see? You know all about that, don’t you, Eddie, because you’ve used that excuse before. But the problem is, if you don’t tell us about that now, if you keep silent, the court won’t want to know about it if you try to bring it up later, when we’ve brought you to trial. Ask your brief, Eddie-go on, ask her. True or false, it’ll be too late then.’

Lowry thumped the table with the flat of his hand and got to his feet and paced away as if he couldn’t stand to look at Testor any more. Eddie stared after him, then turned slowly and looked at his solicitor.

Desai shook his head. ‘I don’t think Gavin’s making any impression at all,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t think Testor has a clue what he’s talking about.’

The solicitor was frowning. She leant forward across the table to say something to Brock, who stooped to hear her point. While the two of them were taken up in this, Lowry, stretching his frame, sauntered round the table and suddenly ducked his head against Eddie Testor’s ear, muttering something which the microphones didn’t pick up. The body builder flinched abruptly, his eyes widened, and he shrank away from Lowry as if from a freezing draught. Lowry straightened, smiling grimly to himself, and strolled away.

‘I wonder what he said,’ Kathy murmured.

Desai shrugged. ‘Fancy a coffee?’

‘In a minute,’ Kathy said. ‘Brock’s going to have a go.’

‘Eddie,’ Brock began, sounding as if he was only noticing him for the first time. ‘Are you feeling all right? The lip, I mean. It looks sore. You sure?’

Eddie made no response.

‘You like working at the pool, don’t you?’

Eddie studied his fingers fixedly, waiting for the trap.

‘I can understand that. It looks like a really nice place to work. I haven’t been able to find the time to go down there yet, but I will, for a swim. How much will that cost me, for a swim?’

‘Two fifty,’ Testor whispered, ‘three fifty at peak time.’

Brock nodded, as if this confirmed something that had been on his mind. ‘I was reading about the pool in the brochures. An average length of fifty-three metres, width of eighteen and a half metres, and depth of one point six metres, that’s what the brochure said, and I was trying to multiply the numbers together to work out how many litres it holds, at one thousand litres to the cubic metre.’

‘One million five hundred and sixty-eight thousand eight hundred,’ Eddie Testor said without hesitation.

Brock chuckled and nodded his head. ‘That’s absolutely right,’ he said, and slid his notebook across the table to Testor. ‘But it took me five minutes to work it out.’ He grinned at the solicitor, who was looking very puzzled. ‘No really, I’m impressed, Eddie.’

Testor ducked his head, clearly pleased with the compliment although reluctant to acknowledge it.

‘Let’s see,’ Brock continued. ‘If we assume the earth is a perfect sphere with a radius of six thousand three hundred and fifty kilometres, and the volume is pi times the radius cubed, what is the volume of the earth in cubic kilometres?’

Testor looked unhappy. ‘Pi times…?’

‘Take a value for pi of three point one four one five nine,’ Brock added.

‘Oh.’ Eddie’s face brightened. ‘Eight hundred and four billion three hundred and ninety-seven million, four hundred and fifty-three thousand four hundred and twenty-one point two five.’

Brock laughed out loud. ‘That is simply amazing. I’ve heard of people who can do this, but you’re the first I’ve ever met, Eddie. How do you do it?’

Testor gave a shy smile. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Astonishing.’ Brock looked at the solicitor. ‘Isn’t it?’

She gave a guarded smile, looking at Brock a little oddly.

‘You really don’t know how you do it?’ Brock asked again.

‘The answer just sort of comes into my head. I don’t know how.’

‘Well, you’ve got a very special kind of head there then, Eddie. Very special. Is that why you got that black eye? Has that got something to do with it?’

Testor looked unhappy, winced as he pulled a face.

‘Your mouth hurts?’

He nodded.

‘It was someone you knew, wasn’t it, Eddie?’

Testor’s face formed a deep scowl of denial.

‘I can’t do sums in my head like you, Eddie,’ Brock said amiably, ‘but I can see some things that are obvious. If it was a stranger who knocked you down in the street, like you said, your clothes would have been wet and dirty, but they weren’t. There was blood on your tracksuit top from your mouth, but no dirt or rain. And things were upset in your flat, the chair knocked over, and the lamp. It seems obvious to me that you were knocked down in your flat, after you let the people in. So I assume you knew them. That’s obvious, isn’t it? Like two times two?’

Eddie wouldn’t meet Brock’s eyes. He stared down at his hands and made little flexing motions with his shoulders.

‘Why did they hit you, Eddie? Was it to do with the way your mind works? Did they not like that?’

There was no reply.

After a moment, Brock took Kerri’s photograph from the file and placed it in front of him. ‘Tell me what goes through your mind when you look at her now, Eddie,’ he said gently. ‘Is it as simple as long multiplication? Or is it more difficult and complicated? Try to tell me.’

Eddie stared at the picture for a long while, then lifted his eyes to Brock’s and said, sounding completely lucid, ‘But I’ve never seen her before, sir. Never.’

Kathy and Leon went down to the canteen. The tables had been arranged in two continuous parallel rows, seats ranked down each side. Kathy wondered if the cleaners or catering staff who had set the furniture out this way thought that their customers liked to be lined up in ranks. She and Desai picked up their cups from the counter and sat down on opposite sides of a table.

‘You seem a bit edgy,’ Desai said, watching the way her eyes were following the uniformed men and women coming and going.

‘Do I? Yes. I feel I should be doing something, but I’m not sure what.’

Part of the feeling, she knew, was coming from being here with Leon, behaving as if they were no more than professional colleagues rather than lovers. The functional indifference of the place seemed to mock their intimacy, and she wondered if she was being overly sensitive about it. Among the hundreds of officers who had served time here, others must have been in this situation, couples in unpublicised relationships. Did they feel out of place because of it? Did Leon? He gave no sign of it.

‘I should have thought that things were looking promising,’ he said. ‘Testor is quite a weird character, isn’t he? That stuff with the numbers. How did Brock get onto that?’

‘There was something in his file, the psychologist’s report. I didn’t really pick it up at the time. That reminds me, I have to get back to Silvermeadow to look at another file. Are you going over there?’

Leon checked his watch. ‘Brock asked me to collect Alex Nicholson for the briefing, and I need to call in at the lab first. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘No, I’ll get a lift from someone else, don’t worry.’

‘Are you all right, Kathy?’ he said suddenly, lowering his voice. ‘Are we all right?’

She looked at his face, scanning the details of eyelids, mouth, earlobes, as if needing to memorise them again. ‘Yes, yes. Sorry. I get preoccupied, you know how it is. When there are loose ends all over the place, and nothing makes much sense. You know.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I’ll catch up with you after the briefing, okay?’

‘Mm.’

‘This is an awful place, isn’t it?’ he said suddenly. ‘I keep thinking that I want to grab hold of you, pretend we’re somewhere else.’

She smiled. ‘I know. I know exactly what you mean.’