‘Has he finished the search here?’
‘Pretty much. A few of them are still checking outside.’
‘That was quick.’
‘Yes, he doesn’t waste time. I’m on my way over to see how he’s getting on, but I’d like to talk to Kerri’s friends, see if she ever took swimming lessons from this character.’
‘I’ve just brought them in,’ Kathy said, ‘Naomi and Lisa.’
‘They’re here? You must have read my mind, Kathy.’
She told him about their change of story, showed him the green frog bag and mentioned Lisa’s physical similarity to Kerri. ‘I thought, if we wanted to stage a reconstruction…’
‘Yes, yes. Good idea.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I’ll talk to them.’
‘They’re a bit overwhelmed at present. I might organise some lunch for them.’
She led them over. Naomi shook Brock’s hand solemnly, but when he leant across the desk to take Lisa’s she began making little gulping noises, and with a sudden jerk of her head ejected a bolt of mushy material onto the middle of his desk. Cornflakes and toast, Kathy noted. So she had had breakfast.
‘Oooh…’ the girl wailed, and Brock, looking benignly unconcerned, as if this was always happening, murmured, ‘There, there. Don’t worry.’ He refrained from wiping the splashes off the front of his shirt and trousers while Kathy sat the girl down and gave her tissues.
‘Maybe we should take Lisa home,’ Kathy said.
5
K athy was beginning to feel that she was condemned to repeat this journey backwards and forwards endlessly, between two worlds, Silvermeadow and Herbert Morrison, that couldn’t possibly coexist, like whoever it was, the god of thresholds, who looked both ways at once. Or the ferryman who took the dead across the river to Hades. Question was, which of them really was Hades, in this case?
She saw Lisa safely back to her flat, whose threshold mat proclaimed BASS, and looked very much as if it had been acquired from the local.
Then she went to Hornchurch Street to see how DS Lowry was making out with the hammer man. Gavin was taking a break from his exertions when she arrived, supping from a polystyrene cup of tea and looking introspective and thoughtful, especially when he caught sight of Kathy.
‘He’s a nutter,’ he observed without malice. ‘You don’t realise it at first. But then the signal lights start flashing: the repetitions, the forgetfulness, the displacements.’
‘Displacements?’
‘Yeah. Like, now he comes to think of it, there is this other guy he’s seen eyeing up the girls, this other body builder, this other steroid junkie. Not him of course.’
‘Ah. Well, Brock should be along shortly. He’s talking to one of the girl’s school friends. She may know something about this bloke.’
‘Hmm. And what about you? What’ve you been up to?’
‘Just that. The school friends. They admit now that Kerri was planning to run away to see her father.’
‘So how did she end up in the Silvermeadow compactor?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Anything else I should know about?’ he asked, and drained his tea slowly.
‘Don’t think so.’
He gave a weary sigh, crushed the cup in his fist and tossed the bits into a bin. ‘Oh well. Such is life.’ He turned and walked away.
Kathy shuttled back, along quiet Sunday streets, then the link road to the motorway, the motorway itself busy now with weekend traffic, and finally the Silvermeadow turnoff and the expanse of carpark getting fuller all the time, drawing life in from the highways. She went in by way of the service road ramp again and found the blue compactor reassembled and in use, the SOCO team having moved on to the orange machine deepest inside the basement.
They’d taken their overalls off and were sitting together on the edge of the loading dock, eating pizza, and the smell made Kathy feel hungry.
‘Pepperoni,’ Desai said. ‘Have some. We won’t finish this. If you don’t have it it’ll just end up in the compactor.’
He gave her a slice.
‘Any progress?’ she asked.
‘We’re getting the hang of it now. By the time we get to the third one we’ll be stripping it down in no time. But I don’t know if we’ve got anything useful. Dozens of samples, but who knows what of?’
He took her over to the compactor, its bright orange panels half-dismantled, and showed her where the deposits had gathered in the corners and seams of the compression chamber. ‘Oil, hydraulic fluid, fibres, gorgonzola cheese, who knows?’ He straightened and added, ‘What’s it like outside?’
‘Cool, dull.’
‘I wouldn’t mind some fresh air. You want a stroll?’
They walked back along the service road to the ramp, then up into the grey December afternoon and began to follow the pavement that skirted the perimeter of the building.
‘Getting on all right with DS Lowry, are you?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Not too bad. Why? Do you know him?’
‘Not personally. But the guys I’m working with do. I’ve been listening to them talking about him. He’s ambitious. Looks after number one. Maybe you should watch your back.’
Kathy looked at him sharply, wondering if he was having a dig at her. The question of trust.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know me. Trust nobody.’
He gave a wry smile. ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said softly.
‘I’ll bear it in mind. Thanks.’ They stepped aside for a couple pushing twins in a double stroller, then Kathy added, ‘I didn’t think you’d speak to me again, when I saw you down there this morning.’
He shrugged and gave a sigh that formed a small cloud of breath in the cool air. ‘Oh, look, that was months ago, and you know how it is when you’re lying in a hospital bed, feeling fragile and sorry for yourself… or maybe you don’t.’
‘You didn’t sound fragile, Leon. You sounded lucid and angry, and I deserved it. So thanks for talking to me again.’
They walked on in silence, thrusting their hands deeper into their pockets and hunching up their collars as they rounded a corner and met the north-east wind head on. The contours of the hill, carved up by the earthworks for the shopping centre, dropped sharply here to the lower half of the site. A derelict corner lay below them, a couple of deserted builders’ huts in a wire compound, weeds struggling up through raw clay, a battered sign announcing the next development phase.
Desai laughed softly.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I was just thinking, about that time. The thing that really pissed me off, lying there with tape over my eyes and mouth in that derelict flat with Sammy Starling and his gun, the thing that most bothered me… Well, no, the thing that most bothered me was that I might be sick and choke myself, like that bloke last year. But after that, the thing that annoyed me was the thought that you would go to my funeral thinking I was gay. You remember, the conversation in the pub?’
Kathy smiled. ‘When I discovered you were living with your mum, and that you’d taken me for a quiet drink to a pub where all the most glamorous girls turned out to be fellers. Yes, I remember. I did wonder. But I decided you probably weren’t.’
They turned about and began to retrace their steps, walking slowly.
‘When you’re in a situation like that,’ he went on, ‘you tend to rethink your priorities. When I was lying there, and I realised how much it did bother me what you thought, I decided that, if I ever got out of it and saw you again, I’d make sure you knew exactly where I stood, regardless of what Bren had said. But of course it didn’t work out like that. Instead I got stuck into you for not trusting me.’