This produced a spluttered protest.
Brock let it run for a moment, then lifted his eye to see Bo Seager’s reaction. She was considering him closely. She shook her head and said, ‘No.’
‘The problem is that some of your tenants seem to have been building rabbit warrens inside their tenancies, without getting approvals. I have to say that the fire brigade might be concerned at some of the things we’ve seen. Without a definitive plan-’
‘How long?’ Bo said.
‘We might be able to do enough to satisfy the coroner in, say, twenty-four hours. But we’d need complete access.’
Bo looked at him coolly for a moment, then turned to the solicitor and murmured something about peanuts. He shook his head sharply, and Bo looked back at Brock without a trace of expression on her face.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘let me consult with my colleagues here and get back to you. We may have to get approval from above. Will tomorrow morning be okay?’
‘Tonight, Bo. There are some areas we want to check tonight.’
‘Leave it with me.’
12
K athy thought she understood Brock’s mood well enough as they waited. He was annoyed with Lowry, but most of all with himself, for the way in which the initial search of the huge building had been conducted. It was difficult now to know what would be worse: finding nothing after yet more wasted effort, or turning up something that should have been discovered five days before. She watched him stomping among the teams as they assembled and studied the copies Allen Cook had provided of the most current plans. They fell silent as he joined each in turn, hands in pockets, face dark, making them feel edgy.
While they waited they were joined by a dog handler and also by a small SOCO team accompanied by Leon Desai. Kathy felt an odd sense of embarrassment at waiting in the crowded room with him, as if somehow their private life, as well as Silvermeadow’s, was under scrutiny. She was aware of him trying to catch her eye, and of herself finding ways to avoid it.
Bo Seager’s call finally came, and they filed out. Lowry was to take most of them down to check the smaller units in the food court and Bazaar areas, while the remainder, including the handler and his dog, took the stair down to the service road and along to the security centre, where Cook was waiting for them with a box of hard hats. The two security staff on duty watched them with vague curiosity as they tried out the hats, and some put on overalls and boots, before following Cook through to the back of the centre and down a corridor which brought them to a locked door marked AUTHORISED ENTRY ONLY. He unlocked it, hit a light switch and led them down a sloping ramp.
Kathy found it hard to say what made the place seem suddenly so different. The harsh bulkhead lights, the bare concrete tunnel descending into darkness, the silence disturbed only by their footsteps and the distant murmur of machinery, all made it feel as divorced from the bustle of the service road as that had seemed from the life of the mall. It really did feel like descending into an ancient tomb or catacomb.
They reached a space at the bottom of the ramp, a kind of chamber whose walls contained a number of doors. Cook used his key to open them, and people moved off into the plant rooms that lay beyond. Kathy, Brock, Leon, the dog handler and two SOCO men remained. Cook took them to the last opening, a low double doorway of louvred panels, and said, ‘No lights beyond here, folks. Watch your heads. We’re going into the lungs of the beast.’
Kathy stooped and followed Leon through the opening and into the pool of light formed by Cook’s flashlight as he helped them through. As he straightened, Leon, the tallest one among them, hit his hard hat against the low concrete roof with a clunk.
‘Watch yourself,’ Cook warned, and Kathy grinned at Leon, her earlier reserve gone. He smiled ruefully back.
Their torches showed them to be inside a concrete tube, wide enough for half a dozen people to walk abreast, and extending as far into the distance as their torch beams could reach, the grey concrete walls and ceiling punctuated by grilles for incoming ducts. The murmur of hidden machinery was louder now, and as they moved on they felt a steady gentle breeze of warm air being drawn past them towards the main extract fans at the far end of the duct.
Kathy, thinking again of Wiff ’s disappearing act, said, ‘From what you said, this duct connects into every shop in the centre. It’s like an underground mall system. Couldn’t intruders use it?’ To her ear her voice sounded hollow, echoing in the air inside the tube with its acidic concrete taste.
Cook answered, ‘Yes and no. The air exhaust system, as I said, links all the spaces of the building from the rear of the shops through to the plenum. It’s low pressure so the ducts are quite large, and they penetrate all the fire divisions of the centre, so that potentially they could completely bypass the fire safety system which divides the centre into manageable compartments. A fire starting in one part of the centre could pass through the ductwork and send the whole place up in no time. So to avoid that possibility, the ducts are fitted with intumescent grilles every time they penetrate a fire division wall or floor.’
He pointed to the succession of grilles filling the holes along the ceiling of the tunnel.
‘An intumescent grille is like a sort of open honeycomb, coated with a material which intumesces-that is, foams up-when it gets hot. So, as soon as the hot smoke and gases from a fire pass into the ducts, the grilles foam up and seal themselves and the fire is contained. By the same token, the grilles would prevent a mouse, let alone a person, making their way through the ducts.’
They came to a corner where the plenum took a swing to the left. As they rounded the bend and the torch beams swayed across the dark space ahead, the engineer gave a muffled exclamation. Kathy followed the direction of his beam, and saw the black voids in the ceiling where a succession of grilles had been removed and stacked against the wall. Halfway down this length of tunnel, about fifty yards away, a stepladder was set up beneath one of these openings. As they walked towards it Kathy heard the faint muffled sound of each shop in turn coming through the holes in the ceiling: pop music, voices, mechanical humming. At the stepladder she caught the distinct pings and raucous electronic fanfares of the games arcade overhead.
The engineer went up the ladder, hauling himself up into the hole and disappearing for several minutes. When he returned he looked shaken.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible,’ he said. ‘Someone’s cleared a way right up into the unit.’
‘Could they get in and out?’ Kathy asked.
‘A small person, yes. Through the grilles. You can lift them out if you know how to do it.’
Another twenty yards and the plenum changed direction again, reflecting a crank in the plan of the mall above. Nearby was a short branch tunnel off to the right, and Kathy turned that way to check it.
She would have missed Wiff ’s den, tucked away to one side at the end, if the dog, which had followed her, hadn’t started barking excitedly. Wiff had transformed a corner of the duct into a teenager’s bedroom. Everything was there: a sleeping bag, clothes, posters, small pieces of furniture, a battery-powered light, junk food and drink containers all over the place. Most of the stuff looked new, many items still with security tags and price labels. From the variety of labels, he had looted many different stores in the centre to build his nest. Next to the sleeping bag was one of the Manchester United books she had seen him studying in the bookshop in the mall the previous Sunday morning.
‘Brock, here!’ she called.
As he joined her, followed by the others, she was suddenly aware of a rhythmic sound. She swung her flashlight towards its source and saw a clock with a happy Mickey Mouse face and a comforting tick.
‘All right, hands in pockets if you please, Mr Cook,’ Brock said.
The engineer stared at him blankly.
‘Don’t touch anything. It would be best if you would retrace your steps, and leave us to carry on the search down here.’
The man nodded and withdrew, his light beam and silhouette disappearing down the tunnel, while the
