‘Ah.’
‘You’ve come for Brock’s briefing? You’ll need a security code to get into the centre from here. Do you have one?’
She shook her head.
‘Use the one they’ve given me. Two-one-eight-nine. Want to write it down?’
‘No need. That’s the last four digits of your phone number.’
‘You’re right. Amazing memory.’ He smiled and turned back to his work.
She went down the service passage they had used the previous evening, using the security code to emerge into the lower mall as before. The emptiness and silence were uncanny, no background music or birdsong, no movement on the escalators, no people on the gleaming terrazzo, but still something, the building’s own presence, saying yes, I’m still here even when you’re not, I still exist and maybe have secrets.
Then a cleaner came buzzing round the corner on a ride-on floor polisher. The building reverted to background and the illusion evaporated.
Kathy walked up the dormant escalator to the upper mall, past the deserted Christmas tree, and looked for unit 184 in the side mall beyond. She spotted Gavin Lowry outside a shopfront filled with promotional posters for Christmas in the mall, hiding the unit’s interior, and assumed this must be the place. He was tugging a cigarette out of a packet, and when he saw her he said, ‘It’s chaos in there-electricians causing havoc.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Couple of hours. Come on, I need a coffee.’
They found a cafe nearby, just opening, and sat outside in an area of the mall defined by low clipped hedges in tubs. The cafe itself was tiled to resemble a Turkish bath house and the waitress who came to their table had her thick black hair tied up in a bandanna, and wore a scarlet blouse that might have suggested something oriental.
‘You Sonia?’ Lowry said.
‘That’s right,’ she said, suppressing a yawn.
‘Harry Jackson told us you’d look after us, Sonia. He said your coffee’s the best in the mall.’
‘Oh yes. I know Harry all right. Are you in his line of business, then?’
Lowry nodded and showed her his warrant card. ‘You’ll be seeing quite a bit of us. We’re taking over that unit down there for a while. Should be good for business. Our boss is a coffee connoisseur, isn’t that right, Kathy?’
‘That’s nice,’ Sonia said warily. ‘What you here for anyway? Is it public relations?’
Kathy watched Lowry tell her, show her Kerri’s picture, Sonia’s look of disgust, thinking how many times they would have to go through this, with hundreds of shopkeepers, thousands of customers. It made her feel depressed, but Lowry seemed to be enjoying it. He ended with something that sounded like a chat-up line.
‘You from the exotic east yourself then, Sonia?’
‘Yeah, Bermondsey. What’s your fancy then?’
Looking up through the tinted acrylic vault high above their heads, Kathy caught the glimmer of sunlight on cloud, too weak to compete with the warm intensity of artificial sunlight in the mall. A group of elderly people bustled past, kitted out in tracksuits, sweatbands and dazzling white shoes as if they really meant business. The pace was set by the joggers, moving marginally more slowly than the walkers, though with greater show. On their backs they bore the motto SILVER MEADOWLISTS.
‘Weird sort of place, isn’t it?’ Lowry said, blowing smoke after them. ‘Connie raves about it.’
‘Your wife?’
He nodded.
‘You have kids?’ Kathy asked.
‘Last time I looked,’ he said, off-hand. ‘They hated it here, for some reason. Now Connie comes on her own, when they’re at school.’
‘And you know Bren Gurney.’
Lowry turned back from watching Sonia making their coffees behind the counter. ‘Yeah. Used to play rugger with him. And we went on the inspector’s course together. He came out top, and I was second. We’ve got a lot in common, I reckon.’
Kathy doubted that, but said nothing.
‘How do you work with him, the old man?’ Lowry continued, voice becoming more intimate. ‘Your boss. Keeps a close eye on you, does he?’
‘Not really.’
‘Cunning old bugger, Bren said. Close.’
‘Did Bren say that?’
‘Something like that.’
With a soft clash of seraglio bangles Sonia appeared with their coffees, a thimbleful of espresso for Kathy, caffe latte for Lowry.
‘Thanks darling,’ Lowry said, then to Kathy, ‘You haven’t met our SIO, have you?’
‘Forbes? No, never heard of him before. Harry Jackson didn’t seem impressed. You don’t like him?’
Lowry smiled grimly. ‘Orville M. Forbes. Old Mother Forbes. Doesn’t matter whether I like him, Kathy. The problem is, as everybody’s so well aware these days, there are just too many chiefs in this force and not enough fucking Indians. So the people who are paid to think about these things imagine they can recycle old papershufflers like Forbes into born-again coal-face detectives and leaders of major investigations.’ He shook his head grimly. ‘Snowball’s chance. He wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to begin. And he knows it. That’s why he’s persuaded them to bring in your guv’nor, to save his skin.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I’m certain of it. He’s scared shitless that he’ll screw up his first major crime investigation with the eyes of the world focused on him. He told me once he has a recurring nightmare. He’s a schoolboy again, playing cricket, standing in the outfield with a long easy catch coming straight at him, and he drops it and loses the match, and all his friends and teachers and family are there to see it.’
They watched a tall elderly man, bewhiskered, stiff-backed, marching by. He was wearing a heather-green Harris tweed jacket and matching cap, and swinging a gnarled walking stick, a laird taking a brisk constitutional through his glen. As he passed he doffed his hat to them.
‘Jesus…’ Lowry muttered. ‘This place is full of weirdos.’
‘Does it matter, about Forbes? As long as he keeps out of our way.’
‘But he won’t, he can’t. He’s petrified by failure and greedy for success. He’ll worry, and dabble, and interfere, and stuff us up. People like us have got to persuade people like Forbes, the grey crust through which we must eventually rise if we are ever to achieve seniority in this lifetime, that they should pack it in and bugger off to Bognor.’
‘How do we do that?’
‘By subjecting them to stress. They don’t like stress. Can’t take it any more. If you load them up with stress, they soon begin to dream of early retirement… or something else.’
‘Something else?’
Lowry stretched his arms out and ran the flat of his palm down the short hair of his nape. ‘My last boss passed away on the job, Kathy. His secretary came in with his coffee one morning, and there he was, stretched out across his desk, cold as yesterday’s toast. Stroke, probably down to stress, the doctor said.’ He paused, glanced at Kathy, then picked up the glass of creamy liquid that Sonia had placed in front of him. ‘I like to think that was my personal contribution to resolving the unbalanced staff profile of the Metropolitan Police.’
‘You killed him with stress?’ She stared at him, trying to decipher his expression.
Lowry licked his lips, then allowed them to form a little smile. ‘He didn’t realise it, of course. He thought I was trying to help.’
Kathy decided this was some kind of test of her sense of humour. ‘Well, well. So now you want to kill Forbes the same way?’
He nodded thoughtfully.
‘Brock knows, you know,’ Kathy said.
That made him sit up. ‘What?’
‘That you’ve been told to report directly to Forbes. Without telling Brock. Forbes did tell you to do that, didn’t he?’
Lowry stared at her for a long moment before the little smile reappeared. ‘What made you think of that?’
‘It occurred to me down below last night, when Jolly Harry asked you to bypass his boss in the same way.’
Lowry’s grin broadened. ‘You’ve got the advantage of being a woman, Kathy. You’ll have your own way to get through the grey crust. They’ll pull you up in the name of gender balance. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give each other a helping hand, does it?’