‘Five-thirty till six-thirty. I seem to remember he was a few minutes late arriving.’
‘And this has just come back to you, Ms Hislop?’
‘Yes.’ She looked away. ‘Sorry if it’s confused things. You can see the desk diary if you like.’ She passed it over to Kathy, pointing out the altered entries.
‘I’d like to borrow this,’ Kathy said.
Hislop looked unhappy. ‘Do you have to?’
‘It’s evidence that could clear Eddie of a serious charge. I’ll let you have it back this afternoon.’
There was a phone number written against the name of the woman who had been crossed out for the 5.30 appointment on the sixth. Kathy rang it when she got back to the unit. The woman answered and after checking her own diary confirmed that she had cancelled that appointment because of a clash with something else. The name written into Eddie’s original time slot on the seventh was indecipherable, and had no phone number, and Kathy decided to let it go. She rang Hornchurch Street and asked for Brock. After several minutes Gavin Lowry answered.
‘He and Forbes are on their way over here, Kathy. Anything I can do?’
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘No change.’
‘Has Testor come up with any story about what he was doing for the hour after five-thirty that afternoon?’
‘No. We keep pressing him, and he just keeps repeating that he can’t remember specifically, and he must have been working in the pool.’
‘It looks as if he’s got an alibi now.’ She told him Hislop’s story.
There was a long silence, then a slow, deliberate, ‘Shit.’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you’d better get over here and tell Brock yourself. He’ll probably want to see the book. So will Forbes. His press conference starts in an hour. His silver braid is all laid out for him.’
When they told Eddie the good news, he seemed no wiser than before. ‘Oh, really?’ he said blankly. ‘Well, that must be it then.’
‘That doesn’t mean you didn’t speak to Kerri,’ Brock pressed him. ‘We know you did. It just means you didn’t speak to her for long on that occasion. You arranged to see her again later, is that it? You made a date for later?’
‘Mr Brock,’ Eddie said with the same patient tolerance, ‘I told you already. Maybe I can’t remember exactly what I was doing that afternoon, but I’m quite sure I never saw that girl before in my life.’
Since there were already press cameras and reporters arriving at the building they decided to wait until the press conference was over before releasing him.
Forbes began by introducing himself and then Stefan and Alison Vlasich, sitting on each side of him at the long table which faced the crowded room. The purpose of this press conference, he said, was to renew the appeal to the public for information concerning the whereabouts of Kerri Vlasich after she left school on the afternoon of the sixth of December. He briefly outlined the circumstances and underlined, reading from his prepared statement, the seriousness with which the police regarded such cases. This went on for a little too long, and he stumbled several times and paused for sips of water, his throat unaccountably dry. To Kathy he gave the impression of nervousness, despite the well-tailored uniform and air of command. She was aware of others in the room beginning to stir, restless.
He then asked Mrs Vlasich to say a few words, or rather, he referred to her as ‘Mrs Kerri’, and couldn’t understand why she stared at him, wide-eyed, before she turned unsteadily to face the cameras. She winced as the lights focused on her, and made an agonising appeal, barely audible, for anyone who knew anything about her daughter’s disappearance to come forward.
Everyone was relieved when she finished and Forbes turned to Stefan Vlasich, who delivered a couple of brief sentences in a low monotone.
Chief Superintendent Forbes then cautiously invited questions, and there was an immediate response from all sides of the room, everyone apparently trying to ask the same thing. Eventually one managed to speak for the rest. ‘What about the man you arrested yesterday? We were expecting an announcement of charges being laid.’
Forbes cleared his throat. ‘There seems to have been some misunderstanding. No one has been arrested. A man has been helping us with our enquiries, but no charges are being laid at this time.’
‘But he’s a prime suspect, isn’t he?’
‘Not necessarily, no. There’s nothing I can add about that at this time.’
There was a hubbub of disappointment, then the crime reporter for the Guardian, a sharp young woman with a deceptively friendly smile, spoke up.
‘Are you able to give us details yet of the cause of Kerri’s death, or the circumstances?’
‘We’re not able to release that information yet, no.’
‘Are you even certain she was murdered?’
Forbes hesitated. ‘We’re treating this as a murder inquiry.’
‘That’s not quite an answer, Chief Superintendent,’ the reporter said with a smile. ‘I understand this is being classified as an Area Major Investigation,’ she went on, although it hadn’t been announced, ‘and we have Chief Inspector Brock here, and other officers from Serious Crime Branch.’ She sounded puzzled. ‘Isn’t this level of response a bit unusual? Is there something you’re not telling us?’
Forbes cleared his throat and launched into a laboured account of the seriousness with which crimes against children were regarded by the authorities.
‘You think this sort of thing’s getting out of control, do you?’
Forbes didn’t like the use of that phrase, not at all. The police took all these cases very seriously, he explained, but independent analysis of crime statistics showed that the increase in reported assaults on children during the past five years was probably the result of increasing public sensitivity to the problem, rather than an actual increase in assaults per se.
‘Well, not exactly, Chief Superintendent,’ the Guardian reporter objected calmly, as if she’d known he’d say that. ‘The figures for assaults by strangers tend to be obscured by the much larger number of assaults within the family, which tend to be more readily reported now. But if we extract the family assaults, it’s clear that stranger assaults have been increasing at a fairly alarming rate, isn’t it? Practically an epidemic.’
Forbes looked startled. It seemed as though he hadn’t been told about the breakdown of the statistics. It occurred to Kathy that the reporter had been better briefed by somebody than he had.
Then he recovered. ‘We can argue about statistics,’ he glowered at the reporter, ‘but meanwhile, Mrs Vlasich’s daughter has been found dead in suspicious circumstances. Let’s just concentrate on that, shall we? We’d like you to emphasize that we’re particularly looking for witnesses who were in the Silvermeadow shopping centre and in the carpark outside from about five-fifteen p.m. onwards on the sixth, especially within an hour of that time.’
‘Did Kerri have a medical condition, Mrs Vlasich?’ someone called out.
‘Who was her favourite pop group?’
The questions, innocuous and inane, flitted backwards and forwards for a while, and then the Guardian reporter put up her hand again. Forbes avoided noticing her for as long as he could, but eventually her voice cut in. ‘Can you tell us when you last ran a major crime investigation, Chief Superintendent Forbes?’
The room went dead quiet. Forbes looked stunned.
‘Only, there’s been a suggestion that the force is so top-heavy with senior officers who haven’t been actively involved in crime-fighting for years that they can’t afford to put young officers, more in touch with the latest methods, in charge of important investigations like this. Is there any truth in that, would you say?’
Forbes stared at her for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath, drew himself up straight and said, ‘If there are no more relevant questions, I believe Mr and Mrs Vlasich have had enough,’ and he swept up his papers, rose to his feet, and escorted the couple out of the room.
When they were all safely back in the office next door, Lowry beamed at his chief. ‘Well done, sir. You dealt with her really well.’
Forbes shook his head. He looked flushed, wiping a handkerchief across his brow. ‘She seemed bloody well prepared. Hell’s teeth, what a bitch!’ Then he looked at Brock. ‘Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps this is all getting out of
