‘Security?’ Kathy froze. The guardians of the entrance to the plenum.
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve no idea who?’
The girl shook her head. Lisa looked from Naomi to Kathy and renewed her weeping.
Kathy took out her notebook and waited. Harry Jackson sat at the desk in his office in the security centre, head bowed. She had expected denial and protest at the integrity of his staff being questioned, but instead he had turned away and lowered his head as if some private nightmare was turning into reality. Brock stood in front of him in the centre of the room, hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat.
‘Couple of days ago,’ Jackson began heavily, ‘I’d have said no, no way. Then Bruno came to me. He’d overheard a couple of kids talking in his shop. They were discussing getting hold of some stuff for the weekend. They wanted Ecstasy, to take to some big gig that was on. At first he thought they were talking about amphetamines, because he heard the word “speed”, but then he realised they were talking about where they were planning to get it from. From a big supplier called Speedy. I told Bruno he’d got it wrong. It couldn’t be our Speedy. Hell,’-he gave a flat laugh-‘he can’t even walk. How could he be in business?’
‘How does he get around?’ Brock asked.
‘He’s got a van, specially modified, paid for from his compensation from his accident. He can get in and out and drive it himself. And he’s got a bungalow, no steps, where he looks after himself. His de facto left him with their little boy when he had the smash. But how could he run a business? He never even went out into the malls where the kids were.’
‘It seems he had help,’ Brock said. ‘The boy, Wiff, was his legs. Maybe there were others.’
‘While he watched them at work on his screens,’ Kathy added.
‘Christ.’ Jackson shook his head, rubbing his face in disbelief.
‘Where is he now, Harry?’
‘He left hours ago. I came down here after I spoke to you on the phone this afternoon, and he was on duty then. I got talking to him about which parts of the building you lot had searched last weekend. He wanted to know why I asked, and I said you were thinking of doing a new search, into places you’d missed last time.’
‘He seemed interested, did he?’
‘Yeah, very.’
‘Then what?’
‘I went back upstairs, then returned down here about five p.m. Speedy had gone-home they said. Finished his shift early. I was a bit pissed off, because half our people are down with flu, and I’d wanted him to work late.’
‘Was he alone down here when you spoke to him about the new search?’
‘Yeah. The next lot weren’t due on for half an hour. Want me to try him on the phone? I can say I’m checking tomorrow’s roster.’
‘Yes, why don’t you do that.’
Jackson checked the number on a list pinned over his phone, then dialled. He listened for a while to the number ringing, then hung up. ‘Not even an answering machine.’
‘Do you have the number of his vehicle? What about relatives? Friends? Next of kin?’
Jackson got up and went over to a filing cabinet and began to thumb through a file.
Kathy said, ‘How about I get over to his home and start asking the neighbours?’
Brock nodded. ‘Take Lowry if he’s around.’
She ran up the service stairs and along the corridor to unit 184, but he wasn’t there. In fact no one was there except the immovable Phil, bent over his schedules. She told him where she was going and went on out to her car.
Kathy turned into the street and slowed the car down to walking pace. All the houses were bungalows, set back behind hedges and ornamental trees. She picked out a number and worked out which one must be Speedy’s. It was in darkness, no lights showing at any of the windows. With barely a sound she crept the car to the kerb outside the house next door, and switched everything off. Almost immediately she noticed the corner of the curtains in a lighted window of the neighbour’s house inch open, and a suspicious face spy out at her.
So much for the inconspicuous arrival, she thought.
She got out of the car, pulled her coat tight around her against the wind, and walked to the gate of the neighbour’s house and up the front path. The curtain flicked down. Her finger had barely touched the button of the doorbell when the door came open on a chain.
‘Yes?’
Kathy saw nothing, then dropped her eyes two feet and saw an elf-like face. She showed her warrant card.
‘Oooh! It’s the police, Walter!’ the little woman called over her shoulder. ‘I think.’ She turned back to Kathy and squinted at her fiercely. ‘How do I know you’re not a fraud?’
‘I’ll give you a telephone number to ring, if you like. The Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard.’
‘Oooh! Scotland Yard! What do you want?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Tell me what you want to talk about first.’
‘Your neighbour, Mr Reynolds.’
The door opened in a flash.
‘What has he done? You know he was a biker once? A Hell’s Angel.’ She said the name with hushed relish.
Kathy stepped into a hallway heavy with the smell of fried fish, and was led by the little woman into the front room from which she had been observed. An equally tiny man was in there, working intently with a pile of matchsticks, from which he was constructing a huge model of a sailing ship.
‘Good evening,’ he said without interest, and without looking up from his task.
It occurred to Kathy that it was almost big enough for the pair of them to climb on board the ship when it was finished, and sail away.
‘I just wondered if you’ve noticed any movement from next door this evening,’ Kathy asked.
‘Movement?’ the woman said, eyes gleaming, as she switched off a small TV set in the corner. ‘Drug dealing, do you mean?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Oh, it’s what you read in the papers, isn’t it? Everybody does it these days.’
‘Have you noticed anything?’
‘Well, we did see Speedy coming home in his van. When was that, Walter? About five, or six?’
Walter grunted noncommittally. He was preoccupied, checking his matchstick construction against drawings and photographs spread out on the table.
‘After that I went into the kitchen to cook dinner. But Walter saw someone else arrive, didn’t you?’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, you know you did. You said, Speedy’s got visitors.’
Walter didn’t seem inclined to make the effort to confirm or deny this, and Kathy had to ask him to please think back. He put down his minute tools with a sigh of resignation.
‘I heard a car engine, but I don’t know if it was Speedy’s or someone else’s. I looked out the side window’-he nodded at a small window whose curtain was drawn back- ‘and I thought I saw someone out there.’
‘With a box,’ his wife prompted him.
‘How large a box?’
‘A big one,’ the wife jumped in. ‘Walter said, “Looks like they’re getting rid of a body”.’
When she saw the look on Kathy’s face, the woman sucked in her breath. ‘Oh, you don’t really think…?’
‘It may just have been Speedy,’ Walter said. ‘You can’t see very clearly. Look for yourself.’
‘Yes, but his kitchen light was on then,’ his wife objected. ‘And you said-’
‘I know what I said.’ Walter sighed. ‘But I couldn’t really be sure.’
‘But Speedy would have been in his chair, Walter.’
Walter shrugged.
‘Do you remember when the house lights went off next door?’
‘I think that must have been while we were having our dinner. I don’t remember them being on when we
