By rights, she thought, there was only one place it should be, this hidden room, and that was at Silvermeadow itself, the focus of everything. Yet this was the one place it couldn’t be, surely, the place that had been searched not once, but twice.
She suddenly found the idea of Silvermeadow, its lights and warmth and bustle, rather appealing, which was a measure, she assumed, of how depressed she must be feeling. A shriek of drunken laughter echoed from the corridor. Better there than here, anyway. She would get a card and present for the relatives, and a single cracker, funny hat and microwave Christmas dinner for herself.
21
T he mall was packed with a seething, anxious mob. The customary trance-like atmosphere had given way to a mood of urgency, as last-minute shoppers, heads down, frowning, rushed from shop to shop, scoring names off lists. The carols sung by a local school choir, amplified throughout the centre, had to compete with the wailing of over-excited children and the furious hubbub of raised voices.
Halfway along the mall Kathy spotted Harriet Rutter seated at a cafe table. Her heart sank, and she stopped. At that moment the phone in her bag began ringing. She turned against a shopfront to answer it, putting a hand to her other ear. Through the glass she could see a child strapped into a pushchair angrily battering a rack of wrapping paper with its tiny red boots.
‘Kathy? Brock here. What on earth’s that noise?’
‘The roar of rampaging shoppers. I’m at Silvermeadow.’
‘Really? What are you up to there?’
‘I forgot to get presents for my relatives in Sheffield.’
‘Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom? You’ll be in deep trouble.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘What? Can’t hear you. Look, the reason I called was to check you were still all right for Christmas lunch tomorrow.’
‘Really?’ Kathy brightened. ‘Is it still on?’
‘Of course. Unless you’ve had a better offer?’
‘No. You neither?’
‘No. We can call it the Rejects’ Lunch. The Salon des Refuses.’
Kathy laughed. ‘What can I bring?’
‘Well, since you’re at the shops, you could see if you can find a Christmas pudding. I’ve already got the duck.’
Kathy rang off and smiled to herself. A duck. So he’d been shopping too.
She continued along the mall, and reached Harriet Rutter. She seemed to be alone, only one plate and cup in front of her, her gaze aimlessly scanning the moving crowd. Kathy paused reluctantly and said, ‘Hello Mrs Rutter. How are you?’
The other woman turned with a vague smile that chilled as soon as she realised who had addressed her. ‘Ah… Sergeant.’
‘Are you on your own? Is Professor Orr not with you?’
Harriet Rutter shook her head abruptly. Kathy noticed that she seemed to be holding herself stiffly upright, like a widow at a funeral. And now she looked more closely, she was almost sure that there was moisture gleaming in the corners of the woman’s eyes.
She really didn’t want to stop and hear the story, whatever it was, but she felt compelled to ask. ‘Is something the matter? Are you all right?’
Mrs Rutter shook her head, speechless, and this seemed so completely out of character that Kathy was taken aback.
She took the other seat at the table. ‘What is it?’
‘Robbie and I… have had a falling out. That’s all.’
‘Oh. I am sorry. Do you know, I think it’s Christmas that does this. Everybody seems to have the same problem.’
The other woman looked at her doubtfully, as if to see if she was making fun of her.
‘It’s got nothing to do with Christmas. It’s my fault. I should have been more patient… more sympathetic.’
‘Oh dear. Do you want to tell me? Is there anything I can do?’
Mrs Rutter’s eyes widened. ‘You!’ she whispered, and turned abruptly away, behaving almost as if it was all Kathy’s fault.
Kathy was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
Mrs Rutter slowly turned back to face her, mouth set defiantly. ‘I mean that Robbie was devastated, utterly devastated, by the treatment he got from you people.’ She spoke in an uncharacteristically low tone, almost a whisper, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. ‘You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’
‘No, no I don’t.’
‘I suppose you deal with hardened criminals all the time, don’t you? And you assume that everyone’s the same. Well I can tell you, by the time you and that Sergeant Lowry had finished with Robbie, the poor man was a wreck. He hasn’t been able to sleep, or eat. And he’s not a weak man…’ The tears were flowing freely now. ‘He was in the army, long ago, and he’s coped with all the usual trials of a long and useful life. But you humiliated him. You made him out to be rubbish. You hurt him.’
Kathy was stunned, and felt herself wilting before the ferocity of the woman’s outrage. ‘Mrs Rutter, Professor Orr seemed quite all right when I last saw him. He didn’t like being questioned, of course, but he was co-operative, and didn’t seem too distressed.’ But that was before Gavin Lowry had had a go, and she remembered how angry Lowry had seemed afterwards.
Mrs Rutter wasn’t interested. She turned away and wiped her eyes and nose with a small handkerchief and recomposed herself. ‘What’s really galling is that that awful man has got away with it. That’s what Robbie can’t abide.’
‘DS Lowry?’ Kathy asked.
‘No! Bruno Verdi!’ She curled her lip as she pronounced the name like an obscenity. ‘He put those things in Robbie’s filing cabinet. Any fool could have worked that out in one minute. Even the police. He’s an evil and spiteful little man… But, I’m afraid.’
‘You’re afraid of Verdi?’
‘Of what Robbie may do. That’s why we quarrelled. I wanted him to put it out of his mind, forget about it, but he can’t. He says he’s going to expose Verdi. He’s become obsessed by the idea.’ She shook her head hopelessly. ‘How can he?’
Kathy had the sudden notion that Orr’s outrage at being accused of possessing a dirty video might just be because it had touched a nerve, and perhaps one that Mrs Rutter might have recognised. Maybe she had had her own suspicions about the great man’s proclivities. Didn’t they used to chat up the young people in the malls together? And then there was the matter of the coins.
Kathy mentally kicked herself; she had forgotten about the coins. What was happening to her memory? Maybe sex and shopping affected the brain.
‘Do you think, if I spoke to him, apologised?’
‘Oh, I really don’t think that would do any good. Not now.’
‘Is he at home?’
‘No, we came here together. That’s when we quarrelled.’
‘He’s here, is he?’
She nodded. ‘I think he’s gone to that hut.’
‘Well, I might call in on him and see if I can calm him down.’
Mrs Rutter looked doubtful, then relief began to soften her face. ‘Would you? It might help.’
As she continued along the mall Kathy passed a deli, and selected one of the small gourmet Christmas puddings they had on offer, and a box of mince pies. She also noticed a sign advertising a delivery service to anywhere in the UK, and with relief ordered a presentation box of delicacies to be sent up to Sheffield, with a hurriedly written card which she backdated to the twentieth. She had a moment of anxiety as the machine scanned her card, but some residual credit still apparently remained, and she emerged from the shop contented.
The icy wind caught her breath as soon as she stepped out of the shelter of the east entrance. She lowered her head, turned up her collar and strode towards the top of the grass bank that separated the upper and lower carparks, where she could see down the bare flank of the centre to the two steel containers in their water-logged compound at the far corner. It occurred to her that Orr couldn’t be in his hut, because they had put a new padlock on the door, one to which only the police had a key. And yet, screwing up her eyes against the wind, Kathy was almost convinced that she could see a glimmer of light reflecting from the puddle at that end of the container. Puzzled, she began the tricky descent down the slippery grass slope and across the muddy ground below.