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.’
His phone rang and he cupped it to his ear while Kathy stood there wondering what on earth he was talking about. Where he stood? What Bren had said?
‘Yes Phil, she’s here with me… The reception’s better because I’m outside in the carpark, that’s why… Yes, I’ll tell her… Fine.’
A savage little gust of wind whipped the hem of Kathy’s long coat and ruffled Desai’s black hair like raven’s feathers, and she thought there was something different about him now apart from the little scar, something easier, less arrogant, not quite so anally retentive, as Bren used to put it, as if his experience had reconciled him to himself in some way.
‘Phil checking up on you,’ he grinned. ‘Brock has left some document from the security manager on his desk, and would like you to have a look at it. If you go in this entrance here you’re only fifty yards from our unit.’
‘Leon, what did you mean just now, about telling me where you stood, regardless of what Bren had said? What had he said?’
‘Oh… that’s all in the past, Kathy. Water under the bridge. Evocative, that expression, don’t you think? It’s one of my father’s favourites. I remember he took us to the Victoria Falls one year, when I was a very small boy, before we got kicked out of East Africa, and we all stood there watching the water thundering below us, and he said, now that’s what I call water under the bridge.’
‘You’re being whimsical and evasive. What did Bren say to you?’
‘He spoke in confidence, Kathy, and he would be embarrassed if I told you. He’s very protective of you, you know. He’s a good friend.’
‘Yes, I know that. But I still want to know.’
He frowned down at his trainers. ‘Now I’m embarrassed, Kathy. This is all in the past. He… he was aware of a certain interest on my part… a certain leaning, and he felt obliged to put me right.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Desai spread his hands, exasperated, as if she was being obtuse. ‘All right, if you’re going to give me the bloody third degree, he told me about your continuing obsession with this lawyer chap, whatever his name is, Connell, and advised me not to waste my time. Get a life, Leon were his exact words-rather ironic, I thought later when I was lying on Sammy’s floor with a gun at my head.’
Kathy stopped dead and stared at him. ‘Bren told you that?’
But Desai was already on his way. ‘Better get on,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Got to get this job finished. See you later.’
Phil called out to her as she walked passed his desk. ‘Oi! Kathy! Keep me informed of your movements, eh? I run a tight ship, all right?’
‘Yes, Phil.’
‘You okay? You look a bit peaky. Haven’t caught something from that kid you brought in earlier, have you? Only if you’re going to throw up somewhere I’d advise against the DCI’s desk. Once is enough for one day.’
‘Very funny.’
She sat down at Brock’s desk, which did still reek mildly after Lisa’s accident. At an adjoining table two clerks were working their way through a print-out of the door access codes used during the period Kerri might have been taken to the service road, and putting names against them from a second print-out listing authorised code users. Kathy barely registered what they were doing, thinking instead of what Leon Desai had said. She shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on the report lying on Brock’s desk from Harry Jackson, itemising incidents at Silvermeadow.
It was an impressive document, with spreadsheets and dot points and 3D pie charts of incidents by type, and participants by postal area, age and gender, and coloured AutoCAD plans of the centre with numbered stars for locations, and even a couple of scanned crime-scene images for those readers with a short attention span. All in all, considering the time available, it was a tribute to the computer facilities and skills of Harry’s team. But it only went back six months, and for all its apparent wealth of data it contained no real details, such as names.
‘Security centre, Phil,’ Kathy said as she passed his desk. ‘Going to talk to the staff. Is Harry Jackson around, do you know?’
‘I believe he’s salvaging what’s left of his weekend.’
‘Good.’
Sharon was there, however, keeping an eye on the screens. She was more confident and chatty without the men around, and she made a cup of tea for them both.
‘I’ve been reading the report that Harry prepared for DCI Brock,’ Kathy said. ‘Really impressive.’
‘Oh yeah, it’s good isn’t it? He and Speedy were at it till late last night. The data room was a mess this morning.’
‘Where’s that? I don’t remember seeing it before.’
‘It’s just through there…’ Sharon showed Kathy a small windowless room off the main office crammed with computer equipment. ‘Speedy’s the ace with this stuff. The rest of us don’t know how to use half of it. He does special jobs for Ms Seager, like her business reports and stuff, and for the maintenance engineer too, circuit diagrams and I don’t know what.’
‘So Speedy’s pretty bright, is he? He doesn’t just stare at the screens all day.’
‘Oh yeah, he’s good. He says you don’t need legs when you can drive this stuff.’
