Kathy sipped at her coffee, watching the early shoppers now drifting along the mall. Across the way was a bookshop, and outside it a small boy studying a pyramid of books about Manchester United. He didn’t look like the type you’d usually find near a bookshop: baseball cap reversed over longish black locks, baggy jacket and pants, dark eyes watchful in a thin pale face. And a mobile phone clipped to his belt, of course. The essential teenage fashion accessory. She wondered if she might be witnessing one of Harry Jackson’s ‘exception events’ in progress, and she looked around for a ‘hot spot’ camera, imagining Speedy in the basement silently panning in on the boy. Maybe all this time he’d been watching Lowry and herself, reading their lips.
‘What about Brock, then?’ Lowry said.
‘You want to kill him too? I don’t think he’d fold so easily, Gavin.’
‘Getting a bit old for this lark though, isn’t he? Why isn’t he higher than DCI?’
‘He’s what he wants to be. He doesn’t want to spend his life chairing meetings.’
‘Bollocks. People only say that sort of thing when they haven’t been given the option. Maybe he did something naughty once…’ He sat back, musing, stroking the back of his head. ‘Something they buried. Something that might come to light again if he tried to go higher… Maybe we should look.’
Kathy shook her head, suddenly tiring of this. She had thought of asking him what he thought of the possibility that Kerri Vlasich might not be the only one to have disappeared through the blue compactor, but now she decided to say nothing. ‘Forget it, Gavin. Come on, we’d better see how things are going.’ She got up and went to the counter to pay Sonia.
They found Brock seated at a desk at the back of the unit, his jacket off, sleeves rolled up, talking into a mobile phone while he signed a requisition form on a clipboard that a clerk held out for him. All around him unit 184 was being rapidly transformed, and Kathy had to step back to allow furniture removers to pass by with desks and chairs. The patterns left by shelving and display racks stripped from the pinboard walls were being obscured by enlarged plans of the centre and of the surrounding area, schedules and gridded roster sheets. A couple of electricians were working on ladders up in the suspended ceiling void, other technicians were setting up computer workstations. A dozen uniformed men and women were already there, standing chatting together, and a second group had followed Kathy and Gavin Lowry inside.
Brock nodded as he saw them approach, finished his call and said, ‘Gavin, help our action manager organise the search teams over there, will you? We need to get these characters moving. Kathy, you haven’t seen Leon Desai by any chance?’
‘Yes, ten minutes ago.’
‘How’s he doing? I can’t raise him on his mobile-there seems to be a dead spot down there.’
‘He thinks another hour before they’ve finished dismantling the machine. I don’t think they’ve got anything yet.’
‘Hmm. OK, well, we can’t wait. Let’s get this thing moving.’ His brow furrowed, a last moment of uncertainty. Kathy had seen that look before. ‘Always difficult to be sure,’ he said. ‘Go in too early and you don’t know what questions to ask, too late and the trail may be cold, the answers faded away. I’d like to have given them pictures of the girl’s father to take round with them, but I don’t think we can wait.’ He grunted and shook his head, as if to shake the doubts away, then got to his feet and called for their attention.
He was good at this, Kathy thought, striking the right balance between recognising the sombre mood of a murder inquiry and giving them the taste for a hunt that might last a long time. He announced that the pathologist had now confirmed the identity of the body as Kerri Vlasich, through her dental records. He then gave a very brief account of the background, with the calm of someone who had been down such tracks many times before, and spoke of the incinerator and compactor with just an edge of outrage in his voice, so that the frisson would be implanted and maintained, even though they were forbidden from mentioning these details to the public, and above all to the press.
They would begin by dividing their forces, Gavin Lowry taking some to continue the search begun by the SOCO team, spreading out through the huge centre and beyond into the surrounding carparks and service areas, the remainder interviewing the staff in the shops.
The questions: names, addresses and phone numbers of all employees; names, addresses and phone numbers of all suppliers who made deliveries between the nominated dates; possible sightings of the girl in the photograph during this period or before; accounts of any unusual incidents in or around the shop during the period; accounts of any unusual incidents in the service road areas and service corridors during the period. Questions with both open and hidden intent, hoping to draw out witnesses, observations, insights, but also designed to sniff out discrepancies, and to harvest names to match against the roll-call of known offenders.
Then Brock asked Phil, their action manager, to distribute the plans provided by Harry Jackson, and to read out the lists of officers’ names and the sections of the centre each would cover. Later there would be an exhibits officer and a statement reader and all the other stock characters from the cast of a major investigation, if indeed that was what this was to be. Because of course it could still turn out to be something altogether simpler and cruder than they were assuming. A tiff, a rape, even a mugging, done on impulse and readily uncovered, the compactor a panicked improvisation.
As the briefing broke up, Lowry said to Brock, ‘Could I have a quick word, chief, off the record?’ He sounded uncharacteristically tentative.
Brock looked up. ‘Certainly.’ He raised his eyebrows at Kathy beside him, who began to move away.
‘No, I don’t mind Kathy hearing it. In fact I’d prefer if she did.’
‘All right. I know the problem. You haven’t got enough men to do a thorough search.’
Lowry shrugged. ‘That’s true.’
‘Do what you can, Gavin, and as quickly as you can. If the killer took that much trouble to dispose of the body, the chances of him leaving her clothing behind are slim. It also seems unlikely that there would have been blood stains. Our best chance is that someone noticed something unusual, so I want your team to do a reasonable search as fast as possible, then join the others interviewing staff.’
‘Sure, I understand. That wasn’t what I wanted to ask you. It’s awkward really. I’m in a slightly difficult spot.’
Lowry stared at his shoes. Brock said nothing.
‘Mr Forbes has asked me to report to him, on a daily basis, chief. On the progress of the investigation. Without reference to you. I don’t feel comfortable about it.’
‘I see.’ Brock looked annoyed. ‘Did you tell him that?’
‘No, sir. At the time I didn’t think too much about it. We’ve known each other a few years, him and me. But I can see now that I’d be putting myself in a false position. Like a spy.’
‘Yes… well, I’ll speak to him. All right?’
Lowry hung his head. ‘Thing is, he’ll be annoyed I mentioned it to you. I wondered if you might put it to him that you brought the subject up first-asked me straight out if I’d been asked to report independently, and I had to admit that I had.’
Brock gave a little snort. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it tactfully.’
‘Thanks, chief. Thanks a lot.’
Lowry nodded and left. When he was behind Brock he glanced back and gave Kathy another of his guarded little smiles.
‘Well,’ Brock grunted at Kathy. ‘What do you make of him?’
‘I think we’re making him nervous. Bren knows him, apparently. Maybe you should ask him. Lowry thinks they’re very alike.’
Brock caught the intonation, raised his eyebrows and turned back to his paperwork.