Barry Maitland - Silvermeadow

Forbes made renewed apologies and departed. Brock accepted Lowry’s suggestion to go down to the canteen for something to eat while they waited for Kathy to arrive. The emergency building work had cut off the gas supply to the kitchen, however, and disgruntled groups of uniformed men and women sat at the tables poking at solitary-looking sausage rolls and pasties. Brock ordered an improvised toasted sandwich and mug of tea, without sugar.

While they ate, Lowry maintained a courteous but careful conversation. He knew Bren Gurney, it transpired; they had played rugby together for the Met, Bren in the pack and Lowry, leaner and slighter of build, at fly half. He mentioned this a little too casually, Brock thought, as if implying that he had a wide circle of contacts in the force and wasn’t in any way overawed by an attachment from SO1. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. The man was certainly sharp and it was too early to judge him. Brock tried to discount the uncomfortable impression that everything Lowry said had a hidden agenda, as if he was testing everyone in some way.

After half an hour Kathy appeared in the canteen. The sight of the familiar face looking around the room, fair hair glistening with rain, her grin when she spotted him, cheered Brock considerably. He waved her over, introduced her to Lowry, and gave her a rapid briefing.

When he was finished Lowry led them out to his car. He took them first to the far side of the Herbert Morrison estate, leaving his car under a street light on the main road rather than on the estate roads that led through the large courts. These courts appeared to Brock to be identical, so that although the layout seemed simple, it was easy to lose a sense of direction once landmarks on the surrounding streets were left behind. Lowry, leading the way, soon became a victim of this effect.

‘I think we’ve been through this one before,’ Kathy said after a few minutes. ‘I remember that tree in the middle, with the broken branches.’

‘Hell.’ Lowry looked around in frustration at the bleak, darkened concrete grids. ‘We want Primrose Court. They’re all named after spring flowers: Bluebell, Jonquil, Tulip… Bloody tragic, isn’t it?’

There was no one about, the shadowy decks deserted, the courts silent except for the dripping of the rain, a burst of TV from an open window, the muffled sounds of traffic somewhere beyond. Lowry was eventually obliged to ring a doorbell. After a rattling of a chain a nose appeared cautiously in the crack. The minimum of information was hurriedly exchanged and they went on, coming finally to Alison Vlasich’s front door. Although the decks were identical bare concrete throughout the estate, Brock had noticed that many of the residents had put small rectangles of carpet or vinyl floor-covering outside their front doors to individualise their address, or perhaps because they too had trouble finding their own front doors. Mrs Vlasich’s threshold was marked by a piece of flowery Axminster, an offcut from her living-room carpet, as they soon discovered.

It was immediately clear to Brock that she felt uncomfortable with Lowry. She avoided his eye and when he opened the conversation, introducing him and Kathy, she turned away and asked what had happened to Miriam, and when he said that PC Sangster was no longer working on this investigation she looked anxiously at Kathy.

‘Are you on your own, Alison?’ Kathy asked, as they sat down.

The woman gave a little nod.

‘Is there anyone we can call, to be with you?’

They watched her reaction, numbness spreading through her. ‘You’ve found Kerri?’ she asked, very slowly. ‘Is that it?’

Lowry took the plastic bag containing the ring from his pocket, and handed it to her. She stiffened and nodded immediately.

‘You’re sure it’s hers?’

‘Yes.’ Her responses were becoming slower and slower, as if she might save her daughter by delaying their news.

‘Might she have given it to someone else? Swapped it with a friend?’

‘No, that’s impossible. Her father sent it to her, for her last birthday. She’s worn it constantly since.’ Alison Vlasich stared at the floor in front of her, at the flowery Axminster, and added dully, ‘Have you come to take me to see her?’

‘No,’ Brock told her gently. ‘We have found someone, a girl of Kerri’s age, with this ring. She seems to have been involved in an accident. It would be better if we make sure who she is before you see her. Has Kerri been to the dentist recently?’

The question made no sense to her, but Mrs Vlasich answered anyway, giving the name of a local practice.

‘Is she dead, this girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where… where was the accident?’

‘We’re not certain. But it may have been at Silvermeadow…’

The name had an effect like an electric shock. She went rigid, staring at Brock for an instant, then folded abruptly in half, her hands over her face, sobbing hysterically.

It took a little while to organise a neighbour to stay with Alison Vlasich before they headed off again along the deck around Primrose Court. Their visit had stirred activity. Voices could be heard in the cold night air, and from time to time the patter of running footsteps on the upper deck above them. They took a staircase, comprehensively tagged with graffiti, to the ground. Lowry was ahead of them, hurrying, and as he stepped out into the open a weird sound of whistling made him stop and look up. Out of the darkness overhead Brock was briefly aware of a black object tumbling down through the rain. Before Lowry could move, it smashed to the ground beside him with a shattering explosion. He leapt away and stood staring at the debris.

‘A television set,’ he said, breathless. ‘A fucking TV!’

From overhead they heard a shout, some laughter, then running feet again, like the sound of scurrying rats.

Light suddenly flooded out from one of the front doors and the small figure of an old man lunged forward, bellowing, ‘What? What did they use this time?’

Lowry told him, ‘A TV.’

‘Oh, you’re lucky, mate! Last week it was a bleedin’ dog. From the top deck. What a bleedin’ mess that was!’

‘Who?’ Lowry asked. ‘Who was it?’

‘Kids,’ the man said dismissively. ‘They’ll have calmed down in a year or two. Be full of ’eroin by then, eh? That’ll keep the little bastards quiet.’

There was a further delay while Lowry reported the incident on his phone, demanding a full-scale raid on the estate from an uncooperative duty sergeant.

While they waited, sheltering under an overhang from the sleeting rain, Kathy said to Brock, ‘Two things. The way she reacted to the name Silvermeadow.’

Brock nodded. ‘And the other?’

‘PC Sangster. I’d like to talk to her.’

‘Good idea.’He rubbed a hand across his beard. ‘Never mind, Kathy. It could be worse. You could be stuck in some hideously comfortable room, eating and drinking too much, being chatted up by a ridiculously handsome merchant banker with a yen to get you across his pillion.’

‘An airline pilot. That’s what he was. But it would never have worked. I don’t have the leathers, see.’

T raffic was heavy on the motorway, the freezing rain continued to gust in across the Essex flats, and Kathy had difficulty keeping Lowry’s tail lights in sight through the sluicing water. Along the way Brock briefed her on North, the real reason why they were there. She felt a disconcerting sense of having been through this before, for in her first encounter with Brock he had been doing exactly this, using the cover of another murder investigation in order to get a lead on this same elusive North. It had been her first murder case as investigating officer, and she had been both flattered and intimidated to have a senior Yard detective like Brock looking over her shoulder. After she got used to him he had seemed benign, fatherly and harmless. Later she had discovered that he had been trying to track down whoever it was in her division who was supplying information to North’s lawyer. Since she was having an affair with the lawyer at the time, she had been the unwitting prime suspect.