Lowry didn’t answer straight away. ‘I… Yes, they must have been.’
‘You don’t sound very confident.’
‘I was inside the building when we did the initial search, chief. Another team worked the carpark and external site areas. They’d have covered the site huts.’
‘Get Harry Jackson to open them up for you when we get back. You and Kathy. Just to be on the safe side.’
11
H arry Jackson appeared to be unusually unco-operative and out of sorts. He was barking at someone on the phone when they looked into his office, and slammed down the receiver angrily when he finished the call.
‘Half my bloody staff are down with colds and flu. It’s this bleedin’ weather. And they’re forecasting snow. Why are you interested in those flamin’ huts?’
‘Just checking, Harry,’ Lowry told him soothingly. ‘DCI Brock wants us to do it personally. Just give us the keys and we’ll get out of your way.’
‘Can’t do that, Gavin. One of us’ll have to accompany you. New policy from senior management. And I can’t spare anyone.’
‘New policy? You having us on?’
‘Straight up. They’re getting pissed off with you lot, I reckon. And I can’t say as I blame them.’
‘What’s brought this on?’
‘Your guvnor’ll have to take it up with mine.’ He glared angrily through the glass window into the general office beyond, then swore. ‘Oh fuck it.’ He looked at Kathy, who shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ll go with you. Is it raining?’
‘Bucketing down.’
‘Great!’
They walked the length of the service road to the far end of the basement, where a fire exit door gave access into a corridor which eventually discharged at the extreme east end of the building. They hesitated in the shelter of the doorway, bracing themselves before braving the rain cascading out of the louring sky. This area was remote from the mall entrances and no money had apparently been wasted on landscaping or on softening the functional shell of the building. The lower part of the wall alongside them was filled with steel louvres from which came a low mechanical murmur. An electric cable looped out through the louvres and stretched out to the first of two rusty orange steel containers of the kind used for bulk transport on ships and trains, which stood a dozen yards away across a mess of puddled clay. Wooden palettes had been laid on the ground to form a makeshift path to the doors of the containers.
‘I’ll let you two get wet,’ Jackson said, handing the keys to Lowry.
‘Who uses them?’ Lowry asked.
‘The far one was used by the builders, and is empty now, or should be. The archaeologists were given the use of the near one when they found some human remains here, early on in the construction.’
‘Is it still in use?’
‘The old geezer, Professor Orr, still has some gear in there, as far as I know. We don’t have a use for it until they decide to build the next stage of the centre, and Bo lets him potter about. She reckons it’s good PR to keep him and Mrs Rutter happy.’
‘It’s got electricity?’ Kathy asked, pointing at the cable.
‘Yeah. All modern conveniences. Some, anyway.’
Lowry ran out into the rain, jumping to avoid a broken piece of timber and coming down in a puddle, splashing the legs of his suit with yellow mud. As she watched him struggling to open the padlock on the steel door, the rain drenching him, Kathy felt a surge of sympathy. It hadn’t been his week: a TV thrown at him, his car wrecked, now his suit.
‘Is Gavin unlucky, would you say, Harry?’ Kathy asked. It was a spontaneous remark, lightly meant, but she was surprised to see the look on Jackson’s face, almost of alarm.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Nothing really. He just seems to be having things go wrong for him.’
‘Really? Gavin always had a reputation for being a lucky bastard.’ And he glanced across with a look almost of sadness at the figure tugging in frustration at the padlocked door.
Lowry got the door open at last and went inside. Kathy took the other key and followed across the palettes, avoiding the puddle, and opened the door of the other container without difficulty. It was empty, as Harry had said. She locked up again and ran back to help Lowry.
‘This is cosy,’ she said, looking around at the table and chair, the filing cabinet and shelves of small cardboard boxes neatly labelled. It was much more comfortable than she’d expected, and even had a camp bed squeezed across the end of the room, and next to it a tall grey metal cupboard. A crudely wired distribution board was fixed to the wall above the table, and there were several electrical appliances: a desk light, two-bar fire and kettle. But cosy wasn’t the right word, she decided. Actually, it made her think of a claustrophobic, windowless prison cell.
Lowry had hung his dripping raincoat on a hook by the door and was pulling on latex gloves. He was looking vaguely worried, Kathy thought, perhaps unsure how well his team of searchers had covered this in the first place. She also pulled on gloves and they began their search. On the table there were three small glass jars, one holding paper clips, another ball-point pens, and the third an assortment of coins. In the metal cupboard she found male clothing, old work clothes, a windcheater and a battered hat. A pair of wellington boots stood beneath them, thick woollen socks stuffed in the tops, and next to them an assortment of tools standing against the side, shovels and hand trowels.
Lowry was working through the filing cabinet, discovering a half bottle of whisky among the files of work schedules, reports and letters. When he reached the bottom drawer he stopped suddenly and said, ‘Oh-oh.’
Kathy turned and saw him reach into the back of the drawer and pull out a black rectangle. He pulled the video out of the sleeve, examined it briefly and handed it to her. She read the title on the spine: Teenage Sex Kittens. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, and slipped it into an evidence bag. She felt disappointed but not especially surprised, like a nurse cleaning up after someone who might have been expected to behave better.
Lowry turned back and groped around some more, and after a moment sat back on his heels and offered her a second trophy, this time a coloured loop of elasticised ribbon, such as Kerri had used to hold her ponytail in place.
‘I think that’s all down here,’ he said grimly.
‘It’s enough,’ Kathy said.
They did a rapid search of the rest of the space without uncovering anything more, then put their coats on again and closed the place up.
Jackson was still standing by the open door, looking miserable. ‘Finished?’he grumbled.
‘We’ll need to put a new lock on that one, Harry,’ Lowry said. ‘We’ll be getting forensic down here.’
‘How come? Find something?’
Kathy would have said nothing, but Lowry immediately showed him the two evidence bags, which Jackson peered at intently.
‘Bloody hell,’he muttered. ‘In there? I don’t believe it. That old bastard.’
‘Keep it to yourself, eh Harry?’
‘Gavin!’ Jackson said reproachfully. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’
The sky looked dark and threatening as Kathy pulled in at the kerb opposite the high street entrance to the estate. The rain had stopped, but few people seemed willing to come back out into the raw afternoon. A double- decker splashed up to a bus stop and a few bowed figures jumped off and hurried away. In the first courtyard the old man who had spoken to them after Lowry’s near miss with the TV was outside his door, wheezing as he swept the paving. Kathy called good evening to him, and got back a suspicious glower.
Alison Vlasich was looking a little better. At least her expression was more lively, though she too had developed a cold, and this, coupled with tears and loss of sleep, had turned her pale skin raw pink beneath her eyes
