exchanged a look with Jackson and nodded. ‘Yes, these could all have come from units in the middle section of the centre that would use the blue compactor. Purfleet Electrical backs right onto the blue compactor area.’
‘We’ll have to check all three compactors,’ Brock told her.
‘What, dismantle them?’
‘Probably. I’ll leave that to the experts.’
‘This is Christmas, you know. The whole basement’ll fill up with rubbish in no time.’
‘I thought Christmas was a couple of weeks away,’ Brock said mildly.
She looked at him incredulously. ‘Your wife does the shopping, right?’
‘I’m afraid not. But I do tend to avoid it whenever I can.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I should say a little bit about this place. Just so you understand our perspective, Chief Inspector.’
‘I wish you would, Ms Seager. Are those the plans of the centre?’ He pointed to two large coloured diagrams mounted on one wall, between framed certificates awarded by the International Council of Shopping Centres, the Havering Chamber of Commerce, the Ronald McDonald Charity Appeal, and many others.
‘Yes. When was the last time you were in a modern shopping centre?’
‘Ages ago. The one at Croydon, probably.’
‘Right. Before it was upgraded, I guess. A windy, open pedestrian street below the tower blocks. We don’t do it like that any more.’ She spoke rapidly, as if time was very precious, her accent distinctly North American. ‘You haven’t been to Brent Cross? Thurrock?’
Brock shook his head.
‘OK, well, Silvermeadow isn’t just a couple of rows of shops strung between a few anchor stores. It’s a whole leisure experience. It has everything in it you’d want to visit a town centre for and more, all climate-controlled, under one roof. It’s what retailing is all about these days. We got the industry award for best new European centre last year. And it’s big, over a million square feet of trading area, the third biggest retail mall in Europe, probably the best integrated retail and leisure facility this side of the Atlantic. There are two hundred and sixty-eight shops and food outlets, not to mention the cinemas, fitness centre, leisure pool…’ She pointed to coloured rectangles on the plans of the two levels. ‘At peak times, there are over a thousand employees and fifty thousand visitors under this one roof, and they’ve come from all over, not just this area of London and Essex, but the whole of the south-east and from the Continent too: France, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia. We’re more like a small city than a department store. So when you talk about closing down our compactors, or sealing off the service road, or whatever, just bear that in mind, OK? This is one big beast.’
Brock’s frown had deepened as she had described the huge catchment area, and Kathy could imagine him thinking that North might have come here from almost anywhere. He sniffed and said, ‘And a beast that has a particular attraction to school children?’
‘Well sure, the kids like it here. It’s warm, it’s cheerful, and plenty of them get part-time work here. They love the shops on the main mall, of course, and then there’s the food court and the Hawaii Experience, the leisure centre, the grunge stuff down in the Bazaar, the multiplex cinema. But more than that, it’s where the people are. It’s where the other kids come and hang out. You know what the most popular activity is in the mall? People- watching. Kids are like everybody else, they’re attracted to buzz, to life.’
‘In this case the opposite is what we fear.’
The centre manager pursed her mouth. ‘Look, I’m not being insensitive or casual about this kid, Chief Inspector. I’m trying to explain. This place has a magic of its own. The kids flock here. And where the good people come, the bad people will surely follow, like sharks following the shoals. We do all we can to make this place the safest it can be- our reputation depends on that. But you can’t keep out human nature. Every now and then some sick character will wander through our doors, and we can’t stop him. All we can say is that we invest a lot of money and effort in security, and the chances of a child meeting trouble here are a lot lower than they would be in your average high street.’
The phone rang discreetly and she reached back over her desk to answer it. ‘I’m busy right now… okay, two minutes only.’
She put down the phone and said, ‘Harry, will you talk about the layout of the place for our visitors? I have to deal with something.’ She shrugged apologetically at Brock. ‘Sorry, but Christmas is only about five minutes away in our calendar.’
Jackson stepped forward as she left the room, and began to describe the features of the plans. They were shaped rather like a coat hanger, the long mall bent in its centre where the food court was located in the main square, with other attachments along the arms. Kathy was reminded of the diagrams of futuristic space stations, bits plugged in all over the place because there was no atmosphere or gravity to make them conform to some specific shape. The security chief explained, however, that the bent form came from the fact that the centre was wrapped round the north slope of a low hill, one of the few in this part of Essex. The hill had been remodelled with earth-moving equipment so that- and this was the cunning bit, he explained-the carparks on the flattened hilltop fed people directly into the upper mall level from the south, while the carparks on the lower, north side fed into the lower mall level. In this way, both shopping levels were equally accessible to shoppers, and the flow of people to both was maximised.
The south side of the lower level was buried against the hillside, and it was along there that the basement service road was run, providing secure, enclosed access to the loading docks and storage areas of the shops, as well as to the three compactor areas which they used to dispose of their dry waste.
Jackson yawned and scratched his bum. He wasn’t a great public speaker, Kathy thought, and his account was laboured and repetitive. He pointed out other features-his security centre located at the entry checkpoint to the service road, the leisure pool and fitness centre on the north side, the cinema complex-but then ran out of steam. Brock and Kathy got up to examine the plans more closely.
‘There’s a profile of your boss in here, Harry,’ Lowry said. He waved a newspaper, Silvermeadow News, at them. ‘Born in Trinidad, daughter of an English father and Trinidadian mother, thirty-six-year-old Deborah ‘Bo’ Seager is the high-flier who leads the Silvermeadow management team. Educated at schools in England and at university in the US, Bo honed her shopping-centre management skills with the big players in the US and Canada- Trizec, Cadillac Fairview and Olympia amp; York- before coming to the UK. Bo admits her private life-’
‘Is shit!’ Bo’s voice preceded the door slamming behind her as she marched back into the room and threw some papers onto the desk. ‘Sorry about that. Harry, your trooper asked me to let you know that Kerri Vlasich worked in Snow White’s Pancake Parlour, usually two shifts a week. They haven’t seen her the past week.’
‘Right, boss. I’ll take our visitors there when they’re ready.’
‘What bugs me,’ Bo Seager said slowly, ‘is how they could have got her to the compactor.’
‘How’s that?’ Brock asked.
She seemed almost reluctant to explain, then came and stood between him and Kathy in front of the plans. She placed a carefully manicured nail over the blue compactor position. ‘The general public aren’t welcome in the service areas, Chief Inspector. There are service corridors connecting the rear of the shops to the delivery loading bays, and service lifts to take goods up to the upper-level shops, but all these corridors are out of bounds to the general public. True, there are passages that connect the rear areas to the main mall’- she pointed them out on the plans-‘and in the event of a fire the public could escape down these passages and out through the service road. But there are security doors blocking these corridors, controlled by locks which open automatically in the event of a fire alarm. These locks are also controlled by keypads, and traders and staff are allocated security numbers to open the doors in case they need to have access that way. What I’m saying is, the only ways into the compactor area are through the rear service door of a shop unit or down a common service corridor protected by a security code.’
‘An inside job, you mean?’ Brock said quietly. ‘Someone on the staff?’
She frowned and bit her lip.
‘That’s not quite true, boss,’ Jackson said. ‘There’s the people who come in through the vehicle entrance- the delivery drivers.’
‘Oh yes, of course!’ Bo’s face brightened.
‘She could have been picked up and murdered somewhere else entirely,’ Jackson said to Brock. ‘Then brought here in a delivery truck, and dumped in the compactor when the coast was clear. That would be my bet.’
‘Yes, Harry!’ She nodded vigorously. ‘That must be it!’
‘Interesting,’ Brock said, ‘but we’re running ahead of ourselves. Ms Seager, unless something breaks quickly,
