Silvermeadow

16

K athy woke in a sober mood, and sensed the same in Leon. They washed, dressed and breakfasted with care not to give offence. But there was another mood beneath the caution, which Kathy felt and kept to herself, one of private determination.

She stopped first at the incident room in Hornchurch Street to pick up some materials. There was one message for her there, several days old, marked ‘not urgent’ and therefore put aside in the panic over the hold-up. Alison Vlasich had rung. Kathy hesitated, reluctant to be distracted from what she’d planned to do that morning, then dialled the number and arranged to call in to the Herbert Morrison estate right away.

Prepared by her phone call, Alison Vlasich answered the door immediately when Kathy arrived, her face fresh with make-up.

‘I wasn’t sure if I’d catch you in when I phoned,’ Kathy said. ‘I thought you might be back at work.’

‘Yes, I am. I started back yesterday, but I’m not on till eleven.’

‘That’s good, that you’re back. And are you getting out a bit, with friends?’ Kathy looked round the living room for any signs of a male admirer, but all she could see was the striking neatness of it all, as if Alison lived here like a ghost, without disturbing anything.

‘Now and again. Sit down.’

‘Thanks. What can I do for you?’

‘It was about that story at the hospital, about the old woman with the missing daughter, that you asked me to check.’

‘Ah, yes. Did you find out any more about that?’

‘I did speak to the cook, but she couldn’t remember who she’d heard it from. She thought it might have been one of the nurses from Sister McLeod’s ward, but she wasn’t sure…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘I’m sorry. It’s not much help is it? I could have told you over the phone.’

Kathy guessed that Alison needed to feel she was doing something to help, and she said, ‘No, that’s fine. That’s useful. I can speak to Sister McLeod if I need to follow it up.’

‘Do you think you will?’

‘Maybe not at this stage. It doesn’t look a very promising line of enquiry after all.’

‘Oh.’ Alison nodded sadly. ‘I’m glad really. I wouldn’t like to think that there’ve been others. But you’re still working on the case?’

‘Still trying to tie up loose ends,’ Kathy said, and, more to sound convincing than anything more positive, she took from her shoulder bag an A4 envelope she’d picked up at Hornchurch Street. She slid out the photographs onto the coffee table, stills blown up from the security camera shots of North a week before together with file pictures of some of his old associates. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen this man before?’

She imagined what Leon would think of the question: a stab in the dark. And of course Alison hadn’t seen him before. And yet Kathy, watching her shake her head blankly, felt a small pang of irrational annoyance at fate, such as you feel when your lottery ticket doesn’t make you rich, even though you know the odds are fourteen million to one.

‘Sorry. Was it important?’

‘No, not in the least.’ Kathy gathered up the pictures and glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get going.’

‘Me too. I’ll need to go for my bus.’

‘It’s West Essex General, isn’t it, where you work?’ Kathy said. ‘I’ll drop you off if you like. It’s not out of my way.’

On the road they talked about neutral things: the hospital and the problems and advantages of working for big organisations. Then, as Kathy turned into the carpark, Alison pointed to a side wing and said that that was where Sister McLeod’s ward was.

‘I suppose… I could show you how to get there if you wanted.’

It was as if they both felt compelled to follow through with this, though neither was enthusiastic.

‘Oh, yes,’ Kathy said. ‘Yes, I suppose you could.’

Kathy studied the illuminated information map in the foyer of the hospital, trying to work out the way to geriatrics, but without success. The plan looked like a wiring diagram or printed circuit, with a maze of corridors and departments. Even with a route map she doubted if she could follow the way. Fortunately, when she asked at the enquiries desk, she discovered that the administration of West Essex General had solved this problem. The main circulation routes had recently been ‘themed’, the woman explained, to make it easy to find your way around, the themes being modelled on popular TV series. Thus you might follow the Coronation Street route to obstetrics and gynaecology, or Dr Who to orthopaedics. As she followed Emmerdale to geriatrics, Kathy began to feel that the make-believe world of the mall was leaching out into the world at large, and wondered if the nurses would be dressed like milkmaids. Thankfully they were not.

Sister McLeod was a big, black, irrepressibly cheerful woman whose principal therapeutic quality lay in her ability to dispel introspection and self-pity among the old wrecks in her care. Kathy followed her down the ward to her little office, her banter leaving a trail of wry chuckles and wincing smiles in their wake.

‘Alison Vlasich?’ She pondered as they sat down. ‘Is she a redhead?’

‘No,’ Kathy said. ‘Light brown hair, shoulder length. Thin, pale complexion.’

‘Anaemic-looking? Looks like she needs a good steak and a Guinness?’

‘Yes, I’d say she does.’

‘I think I can place her. In the kitchens, behind the counter. So it was her daughter they found? Poor woman, that’s terrible.’

‘She happened to mention to us that she’d heard stories here of another girl disappearing at Silvermeadow.’

‘Here? Really?’

‘Yes. Apparently one of the nurses on this ward told one of the cooks about a patient here, an old woman, who was saying she’d lost her daughter out there.’

Sister McLeod frowned. ‘I don’t remember that one. How long ago would that have been?’

‘We’re not sure. Maybe last spring or summer.’

The nurse shook her head doubtfully, took down a book from a shelf behind the desk and began thumbing through its pages. It seemed to be a daily record, each page a day. She worked her way slowly through the days, pausing from time to time over a name.

‘I had a fortnight in Marbella second half of August,’ she said. ‘You been there?’

Kathy shook her head.

‘Nice. Hot though.’ She turned back a page and frowned, stroking a name with her finger tip. ‘Velma. She had a photo of a daughter… about all she did have.’

‘Velma?’

‘That’s what it sounded like, but no one knew her name for sure. Admitted here on the twelfth of August. Gave us a bit of a scare at first. Thought she might be a TB case.’ Sister McLeod turned the pages. ‘Yes, here. She died during the night of the twenty-eighth of August, while I was away. Pneumonia.’

‘And you think she might be the one?’

‘I don’t know, but I remember she did go on about the girl in the photo. She was in a bad way when she came in. Been living rough. She didn’t seem to speak much English and she had no identification.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Hard to say. Her skin was weather-beaten and leathery and she looked seventy-plus. But the post-mortem reckoned she was still ovulating, or would have been if she hadn’t been in such a state. I remember we talked about it the day I came back.’

‘Who do you think might have been the nurse who spoke to the cook?’

‘Well, could be several…’ She looked through the book again and read out a few names, some of whom had moved on to other wards or hospitals, and others who were still at WEG. Finally she said, ‘Jenny Powell perhaps. She’s still here. You could try her.’

‘She was on the ward at the time the woman was here?’

‘Yes, and she likes mysteries.’ She grinned at Kathy. ‘Especially tragic ones.’

Nurse Powell wasn’t due on until the afternoon shift, but Sister McLeod phoned the nurses’ home, and after some delay Jenny Powell came to the phone, exchanged some weary curses with the other nurse and spoke to Kathy. She remembered Velma well, she said, the old, mad lady who had kept the ward awake at night speaking in tongues, none of them English. Her fretting, feverish appeals had been to God rather than the health service, for she invariably clutched a crucifix in one hand and a small framed photograph of a girl in the other. The girl was black-haired, dark-eyed like her, and in her lucid moments she had told anyone who would listen that she was ‘daughter, daughter’. In Velma’s coat pocket they had found a grubby folded sheet of paper on which someone had printed a message with a marker pen.

‘It said something like “have you seen my daughter”? or “help me find my daughter”, something like that.’

‘I see,’ Kathy said. ‘And what was the connection with Silvermeadow?’

‘That’s where they brought her from. She collapsed in the mall there, and they called an ambulance.’

Nurse Powell added that the hospital administration had notified the police and the social services about Velma and her message, in the hope of tracing her identity and family, but as far as she knew nothing had come of it.

There was a quick way to get from geriatrics to administration, apparently, but only regulars were advised to try it. Kathy took the safer route back to reception by way of Emmerdale and then followed The Benny Hill Show out to the offices of the hospital administration. After a couple of false starts she was taken through a vast open-plan office to the work station of the records manager (stakeholder services), a middle-aged woman who was focused on devouring a large cream bun. After wiping her mouth and fingers she shook Kathy’s hand and offered her a chair while she searched her computer for ‘Velma’. It didn’t take long, and when the file came up on the screen it was clear that the computer knew no more about the woman who had died on the twenty-eighth of August than Sister McLeod and Nurse Powell-no name, birth date, nationality or next of kin. It had allocated her a patient number, with a cross-reference to another number with an ‘R’ prefix.

‘R for repository,’ the woman explained. ‘Her belongings were sent to repository.’

‘Are they still there?’

‘Should be. We keep unclaimed property for twelve months, then dispose of it. It doesn’t look as if it’s been claimed, if there’s still an R number on file.’

‘Can I have a look?’

‘You can look, but if you want to remove it you’ll probably have to apply to the coroner’s office.’

The woman guided Kathy back to the lift lobby and told her how to get to the enquiry counter of the repository in the basement, where she filled in a request form and was presented with a large brown cardboard box with reinforced corners, with the R number printed on its label. Inside were Velma’s few pathetic remains. The largest item was her black coat, threadbare and grubby. Holding it up by the shoulders Kathy could see how small she must have been, the shoulders as narrow as a child’s. There was a label at the collar, but the maker’s name, korda, meant nothing to Kathy, and there was no care label or other clue as to its origins.

There was one plastic bag containing articles of ill-matched clothing which looked as if they had come from a charity or secondhand shop, and another smaller one with personal possessions. Inside was the crucifix and framed photograph of the girl, as well as a small plain wedding ring, a purse with a few coins, and a small bag of cough sweets. There was no printed message.

‘I’d like to borrow the photograph,’ she told the man behind the counter. ‘To check with our missing persons files.’

‘Yeah, don’t see why not. You’ll have to sign for it.’

She did so, and managed to find an exit to a staff carpark, from which she made her way out to the street, and eventually back to the visitors’ carpark in which she’d left her car.

She drove out to the suburb in which Speedy lived, and this time the hope of a lottery win seemed more likely, even inevitable. If there was a connection between Kerri Vlasich’s murder and the robbery, then Speedy, dying so neatly in between the two events, was surely it.

Kathy began with the old couple next door to Speedy’s house. They examined the photographs of North and his old associates with greedy interest and a running commentary: ‘Ooh, look at this one! He’s evil, isn’t he? Wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night…’

Only they couldn’t recall seeing any of them before.

Kathy tried the whole street with no more success, and finally returned to her car, defeated. The only mildly relevant information she’d gathered had been the suggestion from a woman across the street from Speedy that he was sometimes visited by someone in an Audi, or an Opel. Kathy took out her notebook to check which it was, and opened it at the notes of her meeting with Sister McLeod.

As she scanned the pages, the date twelfth of August, when Velma had been admitted, suddenly struck her. She flicked back to earlier notes, but couldn’t find what she was looking for, and finally started up the car and returned to Hornchurch Street, where she began searching through the boxes of material that had been brought back from unit 184 at Silvermeadow. Eventually she found her photocopies of Harry Jackson’s daybooks, and thumbed through to the entry she was after.

When she reached Silvermeadow a watery winter sun was gleaming on the cars which half-filled the carpark. A van with a TV current affairs programme logo was parked at the foot of the service road ramp, and Kathy saw the solid figure of Harry Jackson further along the unloading platform with a knot of technicians, pointing out the stairway and storeroom where the two guards had been found.

She walked over to the security centre and found Sharon on duty at the control window.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Course.’

Kathy stepped inside. ‘Harry giving guided tours is he?’ she said.

‘Trying to calm them down. Some hope! They want all the nasty details. You were here last Saturday, weren’t you, Kathy? Maybe you should speak to them.’

‘No thanks.’

‘I’m really glad I wasn’t here. It makes me feel sick to think about it, them shooting those two guards like that, in cold blood, like an execution. It could have been me, or any of us.’

‘Yes, well, you lot were a bit thin on the ground that day. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m doing a follow-up, rechecking where everyone was on Saturday afternoon.’

‘I thought you’d got all that information.’

‘Yes, well,’ Kathy shrugged, ‘just making absolutely sure, you know.’

‘Sounds as if you’re stuck.’

Kathy smiled and opened her clipboard with the schedule compiled from the statements which had been previously taken from the security staff. ‘They showed you photographs, didn’t they, Sharon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just take another look, to be sure.’

Kathy opened the envelope and laid out the pictures once more. Sharon shook her head firmly.

‘All right. So where were you on Saturday?’

‘With my fiance, doing Christmas shopping.’

‘Here?’

‘No, I have enough of this place in working hours. We went into Brentwood. We were there all afternoon. It was bedlam.’

‘Right.’ Kathy checked off the entry in the schedule, then looked out of the window and pointed at the group further down the service road. ‘And Harry was in central London, at a conference…’

Sharon gave a vague smile but didn’t say anything.

‘Did he have a good time?’

Sharon shrugged and looked away. ‘S’pose. Better ask him.’

‘Didn’t you talk about it?’

‘We mostly talked about the robbery.’

‘Yes…’ Kathy looked closely at the other woman, wondering why she was sounding so evasive. ‘But…’

‘But?’ Sharon turned and stared blandly at her in an unconvincing demonstration of frankness.

‘But you also talked about Harry’s conference, right?’

‘Oh… yes.’

‘Well?’

Sharon blushed suddenly and turned away. ‘You’d better ask him.’

‘I’m asking you, Sharon,’ Kathy insisted. ‘Come on. What’s the problem?’

‘What do you mean, problem?’

‘I’ll tell you what I think: I think you don’t like telling fibs to coppers.’

Sharon’s blush deepened sharply. ‘You’ll lose me my job,’ she muttered. ‘That’s what’s the problem.’ She looked out of the control window towards her boss and the TV crew.

‘I can be discreet, you know. What’s he done?’

Sharon sighed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really, but I don’t want to sneak on him. We bumped into him when we were shopping that afternoon, about two.’

‘At Brentwood?’

‘Yeah. He said he’d got bored with the conference and come back early. But he made me promise not to let on to Bo or anyone else. Wouldn’t look good.’

‘I see. He was on his own, was he?’

‘I think he was looking for someone. That’s what it looked like, when I spotted him. He seemed embarrassed to meet us-because of the conference, I suppose.’

‘And you didn’t mention this before, when you were interviewed?’

‘I wasn’t asked, was I? Anyway, it’s not important, is it?’

‘No, no. You’re right. I think we should do as he asked and just keep it to ourselves, don’t you?’

‘Thanks.’ Sharon grinned with relief. ‘I mean, it’s not as if it’s the first time.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. He slips off for an hour or two sometimes and gets us to cover for him. Speedy used to reckon he had a secret girlfriend.’

‘What, Harry?’

‘Well, he’s not that old…’ Sharon blushed again. ‘I mean, he’s in pretty good nick. Considering.’

They both laughed and Kathy sat down beside her and they went through the list of all the security staff, checking off from the work schedules where they would have been on the Saturday.

When they were finished Kathy glanced out of the window again. Harry Jackson and his visitors had moved further on down the service road.

‘Okay, now I’d like to ask you to be discreet, Sharon.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘I still have one or two loose ends from the Kerri Vlasich case that I should have tied up days ago, and I don’t want Gavin Lowry and the others knowing I forgot. I don’t think it’s important, see, but I have to put in a report. Maybe you could help me.’

‘Yeah, if I can.’

‘Okay, well, there was an entry in your daybooks for last August I needed to check.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Sharon offered, but Kathy took the photocopy of the missing page from her bag and showed it to her.

‘This is the one. Were you around on that week, do you remember?’

Sharon studied the entries. ‘That’s my handwriting and initials. The two cars broken into on the Wednesday. I remember now. It was hot. People were leaving their car windows cracked open.’

‘Right. What about the entry on Thursday, the confused woman?’

Sharon frowned, thinking. ‘Yes, I remember. We’d had problems with her before. She was mental, I reckon. Nobody could understand what she was saying. She passed out in the mall, and we called an ambulance.’

‘How big was she?’

‘Oh, tiny. Fierce dark eyes. She had a bad cough, too. Spitting and coughing over everybody. Yuck.’

‘Black coat?’

‘Ye-es. I think she did.’

‘Did she have a sign?’

‘A sign?’

‘Yes. A message on a piece of paper?’

Sharon shook her head. ‘Don’t remember that. Mind you, she tried to hide or run whenever anyone in uniform appeared. Oh yes, I remember! She was begging, that was it. Stopping people in the mall and pestering them. Speedy caught her on tape.’

‘Did you get a name?’

‘No idea, sorry.’

‘You say there’d been trouble with her before, but I didn’t notice any other daybook entries.’

‘Well, sometimes Harry would say not to bother putting trivial things in the book. Why? What’s the interest?’

‘She had a daughter we were trying to track down. This is her picture.’ Kathy took the photograph from her bag.

‘Oh, I think I know her…’ Sharon squinted at the portrait. ‘She looked a bit older than this. Hang on a tick.’ She got up, brought over a couple of the daybooks and began to turn the pages. ‘Somewhere…’ It took her a few minutes, but eventually she found the entry, almost illegible, in late May.

‘That’s Carl’s writing. He’s hopeless.’

‘What does it say?’ Kathy asked, peering at the scrawl.

‘“Cash theft at supermarket, f. employee, police called.” Carl and I both went. One of the girls who restocks the shelves was caught taking money from the handbags of other women who work there. This was her.’ Sharon nodded at the photograph. ‘She was thin as a rake, and refused to say a word. The store insisted on making a formal complaint so they could get rid of her, but in the end it was them who got into trouble.’

‘How come?’

‘They said the girl was called something ordinary, like Mary Smith or something, but they couldn’t provide proof of identity, or age, and when they checked her social security number it was wrong. Social services and the tax people got onto it. Someone said the girl was on the run, or an illegal immigrant.’

Kathy thought, Wiff Smiff and Mary Smith. ‘What happened to her?’

‘Dunno. We saw her in here a couple of times afterwards, I remember, and kept an eye out for trouble. Then she stopped coming, I suppose.’

‘Like Norma Jean,’ Kathy said.

‘Norma Jean?’

‘Oh, she was another trouble-maker in the daybooks, Sharon. Before your time. You’ve never heard the others talk about her?’

‘No, can’t say I have. Have you asked Harry?’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s all history now. I just had to cover any possible similar incidents in my report. You don’t know of any, do you? Girls reported missing?’

‘You don’t think Speedy-’

‘No, no. The case is closed. And as I say, I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention to anyone that I was in here tying up these loose ends. I should have done it before.’

Kathy left, avoiding Harry Jackson and the TV people.

At Hornchurch Street she found Bren and Gavin Lowry together in the incident room, checking through interview statements. They looked up as she came in, and Bren said, ‘Something going on, Kathy? You look pleased with yourself.’

‘Not sure,’ she replied. ‘Have we got Harry Jackson’s statement about last Saturday here?’

‘Yeah,’ Lowry pointed at a pile of paper. ‘Silvermeadow staff statements. Why? What’s up?’

‘Tell you in a moment.’ Kathy pulled off her coat and sat down at the table, searching through the papers until she found what she wanted. The two men waited in silence while she read, nodding as she scanned the single page.

‘Right,’ she said, handing it across to Bren. ‘Harry Jackson says that he was at the conference at the Barbican all day Saturday until five p.m., and then caught a train out to Upminster where he’d left his car. He then drove home, arriving there about six-thirty.’

‘Well?’

‘I have a witness who saw him in Brentwood high street at about two o’clock. They say he looked as if he was waiting for someone he’d arranged to meet.’

Bren said, ‘Interesting,’ but Lowry looked incredulous, shaking his head. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not Harry. They’ve mistaken him for someone else. Who is it anyway?’

‘Someone who works with him every day, Gavin. Sharon, one of his security staff. And she and her boyfriend talked to Harry in Brentwood, and he was embarrassed and told them to keep it quiet that he was there instead of at the conference.’

Bren was on his feet. ‘I’ll get Brock.’

Kathy and Lowry remained sitting at the table in silence for a while, then Lowry, scowling, shook his head and said softly, ‘No. Not Harry.’

Lowry sat with his hands locked together on top of his crisp haircut. Brock took delivery of more coffee and a plate of sandwiches and closed the door again, catching a glimpse of the faces in the outer office, peering over to see what was going on.

‘You must know him as well as anyone,’ he said, putting the plate on the table between them.

‘He was my DI for four years at West Ham when I was getting started. He looked after me. More than that, he was a mate. And I think you’re wrong about this,’ Lowry added, eyeing the file that lay closed in front of Brock’s place. ‘There’ll be an explanation. Ask him.’

‘I shall, but not yet. You’d describe your DI as a mate, would you?’

‘I was newly married at the time, and Connie, my wife, got to be friends with Harry’s wife, so we got to know each other socially.’

There was something, the hint almost of a sneer, Brock thought, as if Lowry didn’t approve of Harry’s wife.

‘He and I played snooker, though he was out of my league. We just hit it off. Yeah, he was a mate. Still is.’

‘Did you remain friends after you moved to Dagenham?’ Brock asked, helping himself to a sandwich.

‘At first, then they got divorced. You know how it is. We were friends with them both, felt awkward about them splitting up and ended up losing touch with both of them. We met up again with Harry by accident, when he left the force and went to work at Silvermeadow. Connie went out there soon after it opened. Couldn’t keep away, could she?’

There it was again. Perhaps it was his own wife he despised, not Harry’s, and he had fallen into that little habit, the tiny curl of the lip, the put-down remark, whenever he mentioned her.

‘There’s worse things than shopping, I suppose,’ Brock said absently.

‘Depends what she spends!’ The response came back too fast. ‘Anyway, Harry came up to her in the mall. Said he’d recognised her on the security camera. Since then we’ve been out together a few times, and we keep in touch through work as well. I’ve become a sort of informal liaison with Silvermeadow.’

‘Have a sandwich.’ Brock pushed the plate across, but Lowry shook his head. ‘He didn’t remarry? What about a girlfriend?’

‘No. He’s past that.’

Brock smiled. ‘We’re never past that, Gavin.’ He watched Lowry’s face relax a little.

‘Well, he’s never let on to us.’

‘Expensive tastes? The horses?’

‘Nah, not Harry, chief. He’s steady, steady as a rock.’

‘Has he been pumping you while we’ve been working on the Vlasich case?’

Lowry looked uncomfortable. ‘No more than you’d expect. It’s his patch. Of course he’d want me to keep him informed of what we were doing.’

‘Naturally. But nothing you recall that seems significant, now, thinking back?’

Lowry shook his head, then said tightly, ‘If he’s been up to something, I’d like to be the one to nail him, chief.’

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

‘Why not?’ Lowry demanded.

‘Because the most important thing now is finding North. If Harry is mixed up with him in some way, we’re not going to get any closer by letting him know we’re onto him. I’m actually thinking, Gavin, that we might have to send you on a course somewhere far away. Or you might take Connie away on a surprise holiday until this is over.’

‘What?’

‘He’s an ex-copper, and he knows you well. You’re going to bump into him, and he’ll see it written all over your face. He’ll know, and our best chance of tracking down North will be gone.’

Lowry looked devastated. ‘Don’t you think he might be suspicious if I suddenly disappear in the middle of the investigation?’

Brock shrugged and took another sandwich. He was interested to see how far Lowry would press this point.

‘Look, chief,’ Lowry protested. ‘I’m the one who knows him! If he knows where North is, I’ve got the best chance of finding out.’

‘And how would you do that, Gavin?’

Lowry thought for a moment. ‘Maybe… maybe there’s some link between North and Harry that I could spot. Someone they both know, or a place. I don’t know. I could talk to Bren, go through everything he’s gathered on North.’

Brock considered this. ‘Maybe. But I don’t want you running any risk of meeting Harry. You stay here. Don’t go near Silvermeadow, okay?’

Lowry nodded.

‘You might think about places he may have mentioned to you in the past. A property somewhere? A caravan maybe, a place he used to rent?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘What about Connie? Could he have mentioned something to her?’

‘Possible, I suppose.’

‘Speak to her. Get her to think back. Then keep your head down. Warn Connie to tell him you’re out if he rings. If you have to speak to him on the phone I want to be beside you with a recorder going.’

After Lowry left, Brock opened the file and pondered. He felt reasonably sure that the help Lowry had given Jackson arose out of nothing more than innocent loyalty to an old friend. But if it was more than that he would certainly alert Jackson now. What would happen then? How steady was Harry’s nerve these days?

He scanned the page in front of him until he came to the note about Ilford. Two years before he retired from the force, DI Harry Jackson had been transferred to Ilford. He had been there when North and his gang had robbed the local Midland Bank, knocked out Pauline Lewins’s front teeth, and shot Fairbairn the branch manager dead. That was surely why Brock had recognised Jackson on their first meeting, for although Jackson hadn’t been directly involved in the hunt for North, there had been considerable contact between Brock and his team and local officers in the days after the robbery.

So what? North had committed armed hold-ups in a dozen different police divisions before he fled the country, and hundreds of officers would have had direct experience of his handiwork. All the same, Brock would have been happier if Lowry had mentioned Jackson being in Ilford, although he may not have known. But surely Jackson would have remembered why Brock recognised him?

The unmarked car had slowed as Harry Jackson’s Opel showed its brake lights a hundred yards up ahead and pulled over to the kerb. As they cruised past, the two men had seen Jackson behind the wheel, a mobile phone to his ear. They stopped just short of the next corner and waited, distracted for a moment by the karaoke din coming from the crowd in the Red Lion, audible even through car windows closed tight against the cold wind.

‘How long did he talk?’ Brock asked.

‘Not long, sir. No more than a minute.’

He recognised the ponderous, formal manner of the two men as their defensive reaction to the mortification they must be feeling.

In the mirror the driver had seen Jackson’s indicator, and then the Opel moving forward again. He’d let it go well past before he pulled out after it. A second time it had stopped, and again they’d overtaken it. But this time it had made a rapid U-turn and disappeared fast back the way they had come.

‘I pulled over,’ the driver reported, ‘and waited till Jackson’s tail lights had rounded the bend in the road, then swung round after him. When we reached the bend, the road ahead was empty. I put my foot down until we were stopped by the next set of lights. Then I saw him in the mirror, sitting on my tail.’

‘He’d spotted you?’

The driver gave a stiff nod, as if the gesture hurt. Brock knew that it wasn’t necessary for him to labour the point. These two were from TO14, specialists in covert surveillance.

‘When the lights changed I drove slowly back the way we’d come, to his flat. He followed on my tail all the way.’

Harry had had a little game with them, Brock thought. Why would he do that?

‘Sorry, sir,’ the driver said, through clenched teeth. ‘I’d swear he changed his pattern after the phone call, as if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to do. It’s possible he spotted us then, because the traffic was thin.’

Brock sensed the ‘but’, unspoken because the man didn’t want to sound as if he was making excuses.

‘I need an honest assessment,’ he said. ‘I’m not interested in anything else. You were there, I wasn’t.’

The other man spoke up. ‘He was tipped off, chief. That’s my honest opinion. Whoever phoned him told him he had a tail.’

Brock nodded. There wasn’t much point in being coy with Harry Jackson any more.

*

He seemed in cheerful mood as he was shown into the interview room, his face fresh and pink as if he’d just had a run or a good laugh.

‘Evening, Mr Brock,’ he said, taking the offered chair. ‘Your lads were very silent on the way in. I was trying to tell them they didn’t need to pick me up. You should have given me a bell and I’d have come straight over. Is it about my little game with your boys in the Astra? Couldn’t resist it.’

‘Has he been cautioned?’ Brock asked. Bren shook his head.

‘Cautioned?’ Jackson said, shocked, and Brock began to intone the formal words, ignoring his protest.

‘That’s well out of order, chief,’ Harry said. ‘Okay, I had some fun, but it’s me you’re talking to, Harry Jackson, twenty-one years in the force.’

‘Who rang you in the car this evening?’ Brock said sharply. ‘Who warned you about the tail?’

Harry smiled. ‘Don’t know what you mean there, chief. I spotted the Astra myself, no bother.’

‘Who was on the phone?’

‘Some call centre, doing a survey on voters’ attitudes. I told them to get stuffed.’

‘Where were you on the afternoon of Saturday last, the eighteenth of December?’ Brock said abruptly, and watched Harry’s face go pale.

‘Oh.’

They waited in silence as he looked from one to the other.

‘Caught me out, have you, chief?’

Brock said nothing.

Harry bowed his head, groaned softly and said, ‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? That’s me finished.’

‘I want a statement,’ Brock said. ‘Last Saturday afternoon.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Jackson sighed, turned towards the tape machine and began to speak slowly, eyes lowered. ‘I left the conference in central London at about twelve-thirty, and caught the tube out to Upminster, where I’d left my car. I drove over to Brentwood and parked in the town centre. I got a sandwich at a pub, then went to Boots, where I stood outside on the pavement and waited.’

‘What time was that?’ Brock said.

‘I got to Boots at five to two. I’d arranged to meet someone there at two. They were late. At about a quarter past, I was seen there by Sharon, who works for me at Silvermeadow, and her male companion, don’t know his name. My rendezvous arrived soon after they left, around twenty past two.’

He stopped and seemed disinclined to go on.

‘Come on, Harry,’ Brock said wearily. ‘Get it over with.’

‘Yeah… We walked to my car-’

‘We?’

A scowl came over Jackson’s face. ‘No names, Mr Brock. I won’t tell you that.’

Brock looked at him, thinking that he was to be pitied. ‘Go on then.’

‘We walked to my car, and I drove us home to my place in Dagenham, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon.’

‘Eh?’ Brock said, as if he’d misheard. ‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’

Jackson flushed, glared at Brock, then said. ‘What do you think? We went to bed.’

‘You what?’ Brock said. He tried to get his mind around the idea of Harry Jackson and Upper North in bed together.

‘You heard,’ Jackson said truculently. ‘I took her back to pick up her car at Brentwood at about six, maybe a bit later.’

‘Her?’

‘Yes, her. Jesus, what do you think I’m saying? Her, my girlfriend. Who do you think?’

‘Whose name you can’t reveal for fear of compromising her reputation.’ Brock shook his head sadly. He felt genuinely upset that a man with Jackson’s experience could offer him such a pathetic cliche. ‘Gavin Lowry told me you were too old to have a girlfriend, Harry.’ Jackson looked at him with a startled expression. ‘I disagreed with him, but maybe I was wrong. If you think anyone’s going to swallow that old line you must be well past it.’

At that moment there was a tap at the door and Kathy looked in. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. There’s something I need to check with you.’

Brock got to his feet. ‘Don’t say a thing until I get back, Harry. I wouldn’t want to miss a word of this.’

Outside the room, Kathy said, ‘We’ve traced the number that rang Jackson’s mobile at twenty to eight this evening, Brock. This is the number, and the name and address of the subscriber.’ She gave him a slip of paper.

He read it and felt that chill that comes when some unavoidable truth finally has to be confronted. It was Gavin Lowry’s name and address.

‘You’re not surprised?’ she asked.

‘It was one of the possibilities,’ he said, though he had never really believed it. He had given Lowry the opportunity to betray them, confident that he would not. He had been wrong.

‘I got them to double-check. There’s no mistake.’

‘The bloody fool.’

‘Yes.’ He felt Kathy’s silence as he came to a decision. ‘Get him in here.’

He could see Lowry was puzzled that they should meet in an interview room, and that Kathy should be loading the recorder with a fresh tape. He looked tired and there was a smell of whisky on his breath.

‘I was just about to hit the sack, chief,’ he said, yawning broadly. ‘Something up?’

‘Yes,’ Brock said grimly, and began to recite the caution while Lowry stared first at him, then at Kathy, stunned.

‘Where were you at twenty to eight this evening, Gavin?’

‘What?’ He blinked stupidly like a man trying to force himself awake from a dream.

‘Seven-forty. Think.’

‘Sir, I don’t understand-’

‘Just answer.’

Lowry gaped for a moment, then said, ‘At home.’

‘You’re quite sure about that?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘Did you make a phone call at that time?’

‘No… no I didn’t. What is this, chief?’

‘I’m going to repeat that question just once. Think before you answer. Did you make a phone call this evening at seven-forty?’

Lowry flushed. ‘I just said no.’

‘Someone rang Harry Jackson on his mobile at that time and tipped him off that he was being tailed. Why did you do that, Gavin?’

‘Me! Don’t be daft, chief! I wouldn’t have done that, would I? Did he say I did?’

Brock handed Lowry the sheet of paper Kathy had given him.

‘What’s this?’

‘Mercury’s record of the call. That is your home number isn’t it?’

Lowry stared at it, eyes wide, then shook his head. ‘I don’t know what this is, Brock. Have I been set up?’ He looked in turn at Brock and Kathy. ‘Look, look, look… when I got home this evening, Connie had the meal ready. We ate, then I talked to her about Harry, just like we agreed. We discussed it. She was upset and couldn’t believe he was bent and I had to go over it several times. Around seven-thirty she took the boys up to bed. She’d planned to go out to the pictures with a girlfriend from work, but she said she didn’t feel like it any more, after what I’d told her about Harry, so she had a bath instead.’

‘After she phoned her friend?’ Kathy said quietly.

‘Her friend?’

‘To tell her that she wasn’t going to the pictures.’

‘Oh, yeah…’ Lowry’s mouth hung open, and he looked as if someone had smacked him on the head quite hard. ‘You’re joking. She wouldn’t have…’ Brock recognised the note of contempt again. ‘The stupid bitch. I told her. I explained! The stupid, stupid bitch!’

‘You’re suggesting what, exactly?’

He shook his head in exasperation. ‘She was upset that you suspected Harry. She was sorry for him. Connie must have rung him up and tipped him off.’

Jackson looked up as Brock and Kathy came back into the room. He was looking wearier now, tie loosened, shirtsleeves rolled up in the over-heated room.

Brock placed the record of the Mercury call in front of him. ‘The number that rang you at seven-forty this evening.’

‘Oh Christ.’ Jackson lowered his head abruptly, shoulders sagged. ‘He knows, does he, Gavin?’

‘Know what? Come on, Harry. I need it for the record. All of it.’

Jackson closed his eyes and took a deep breath before replying as if delivering a formal report. ‘The woman who spent the afternoon of last Saturday with me was Connie Lowry, DS Lowry’s wife. We’ve been seeing each other now for over two years.’

‘You’re lovers?’

‘Yeah.’

All the fight seemed to have gone out of Harry. He slumped forward on his elbows. Brock thought, Gavin knows she made the call, but the idea that the two of them-his stupid wife and his friend who was past it- might be having an affair had never entered his head.

‘Tell the truth, it feels good to say it out loud. Get it out in the open. Two years of bliss and quiet desperation… Christ, she and Gavin only went out for six months before they got married, and we’ve been lurking in the bleedin’ shadows for four times as long.’ He looked at Brock, wanting to explain. ‘It’s a rotten thing to do to a mate, but we never planned for it to happen. Gavin took her for granted, usual thing, just assumed he could live his life the way he wanted and she’d cope. He didn’t even notice she was miserable, needed help. She started coming to the mall, regular, and we’d have a coffee, and talk. After a while, well… I was the one who was there for her.’

Brock looked down at his blank note pad, trying to suppress a momentary vivid picture of Suzanne. He had no doubt at all that Harry was telling the truth.

‘I didn’t think it could happen at my time of life, Mr Brock, but it did. It crept up on me. One day I was pouring out a cup of tea, and I realised that I was thinking about her all the bleedin’ time. Couldn’t help myself. Like some pathetic teenager. But that doesn’t stop you feeling guilty. Yeah, I’m glad it’s out in the open now.’

‘What did you mean earlier, when you said that now you were finished?’

‘My job, at Silvermeadow. I’m already under a cloud with everything that’s been happening, and this’ll be the final straw, I reckon. They’ll have my guts, mine and Bo Seager’s.’

‘Why her?’

‘Politics, chief. Nathan Tindall wants her job, and now’s the time for him to make his move.’

Connie Lowry guessed why they’d come as soon as she saw them standing there on her doorstep. Brock could see it written all over her face. She was in her dressing gown, for it was after midnight, but she didn’t look as if she’d been asleep.

‘Yes?’ she said cautiously.

He introduced himself and Kathy, and she led them into the front living room of a neat, well-cared-for home, made comfortably untidy by the wooden train set the little boys had been playing with earlier, while she and Gavin had been discussing Harry Jackson.

‘I wondered… when you called Gavin in,’ she said. ‘You’ve come about Harry, haven’t you?’

Brock nodded, and she did the same, a mutual understanding. ‘You know then, about him and me.’

‘He told us you’ve had a relationship for a couple of years.’

She coloured slightly. ‘Yes… well, it’s a relief, really, to have it out in the open at last.’ She didn’t sound entirely convinced about that. ‘Does Gavin know?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I don’t want to see him. Will you tell him that? Tell him I don’t want him to come back here tonight.’

‘Why don’t you tell him yourself, Connie?’ Brock said quietly. ‘He’s at Hornchurch Street station. Why not give him a ring?’

‘No. I don’t want to talk to him. I couldn’t. Not yet.’

Brock shrugged. ‘Can you tell us where you were last Saturday afternoon, Connie?’

‘With Harry. We met outside Boots in Brentwood shortly after two, and went back to his house. We try to see each other at least twice a week.’

‘What about your boys?’

She blushed, but her voice remained firm. ‘A friend of mine looks after them. She knows about Harry and me.’

‘How long did you stay with him?’

She thought. ‘Till after six. We listened to the end of the six o’clock news on the car radio when Harry drove me back to Brentwood. Gavin wasn’t due home till nine that night.’ She looked at them defiantly. ‘You have to live like that, when it’s a secret. But not any more.’

On the road back, Brock said, ‘Oh well, another false trail.’

‘Yes,’ Kathy said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Not at all. It looked very promising.’

‘Poor Gavin. He must think I’m bringing down some kind of curse on him. First his car and now his marriage.’

‘Yes, you do seem to be his nemesis, don’t you? Well, I’m having a day off tomorrow. If they discover anything interesting on the security tapes they can phone me. But not during matinee hours.’

‘You’re going to see a show?’

‘Yes, Peter Pan.’

‘Really? Appropriate.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, that’s what Harry’s trying to be, isn’t it?’

Brock wasn’t too impressed by that observation, and decided to change the subject. ‘I heard a rumour that you and Leon are going up north for a couple of days. Is that right?’

He noticed Kathy’s grip tighten abruptly on the steering wheel, and followed her eyes flicking down to the car clock. He felt the car give a little swerve on the road.

‘You all right?’

‘Oh… yes,’ she said. ‘I just forgot something. Doesn’t matter. What were we talking about?’

‘About you going up north.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Not this week anyway.’

Brock looked over, curious, but she said no more, her face giving away nothing of what was going on inside her head.

When she got home to the deserted flat she still couldn’t really believe that it could have happened. He hadn’t phoned. Presumably he had assumed she’d deliberately not come. Well, of course he would. What else could he think? That she’d forgotten? The idea was absurd. DS Kathy Kolla didn’t forget appointments.

She looked at the time yet again. The train would have reached Liverpool long ago. Reluctantly she tried his mobile number, but got the message that it was switched off. Then she got the number of the Adelphi Hotel and rang that. She asked reception if they had a room in the name of Desai and the woman said yes. She imagined him in the room, tired and angry with her, and her courage, or perhaps it was her stamina, failed. She rang off before she could be connected, and turned to a small pile of mail. Among the junk was a Christmas card from her aunt and uncle in Sheffield, and a separate small package containing a Christmas present from them which she didn’t open. She winced, realising that that was something else she’d forgotten. There was also her credit card statement, the size of which gave her a small shock.

On the other side of London, as far to the south of Eros as Kathy was to the north, Brock was working his way through his house, tidying stuff away and putting potentially dangerous things-the toasting fork, the carving knife, the can of rat poison-and fragile things- the sole artwork (a Schwitters tram ticket collage), the laptop, the wine glasses-out of reach of small children, and wondering as he did it if all this was really necessary. He discovered, when he finally sank below the surface of a hot bath, that he really was looking forward to being invaded.