of the frame, while in the previous clip, ten seconds before, he was still invisible in the crowd.
As she searched through that and the other tapes, trying to find any signs of North before and after her sighting, and getting annoyed with herself for the slow and inefficient way she was working the machine, and frustrated by the mechanical way in which the cameras cut in and out of scenes regardless of their possible importance, she realised how much easier this would have been with somebody like Speedy at the controls. Without his inquisitive eye to guide it, the whole system was clumsy and arbitrary, as likely to miss a crucial event as capture it. How fortunate for North and his accomplices then that Speedy hadn’t been around. And who knows but that Speedy’s cunning, prying eye might even have recognised someone among them, and zoomed in and followed the suspect, maybe right out to their car, and caught their registration number, and the faces of the others…
But he hadn’t, and without that guiding hand the tapes were frustratingly unhelpful, the external ones completely useless, with only distance shots of acres of rain-battered cars, dazzling headlight flashes, and tiny black figures scurrying through the darkness.
The removal of Speedy had been very lucky for the robbers in another way too, of course, for it had closed the Vlasich murder case and with it unit 184 and the police presence at Silvermeadow. North would presumably have seen the press reports of Speedy’s death on Friday, but would he have realised its implications for his operation?
Kathy returned to scanning the tapes, but without much enthusiasm. She found it hard to concentrate in the way that was necessary, as the others were doing, systematically freezing frames and identifying figures to be later enlarged and enhanced and printed out for identification. After a while her mind returned to Speedy.
Because they had only been aware of the first crime, Kerri’s murder, when Speedy died, they had never really doubted the connection between those two events. But suppose Speedy had been removed in order to clear the way for the second crime, the robbery? Perhaps he had even seen something on his screens to warn him of what was coming, as Sharon had hinted, and had had to be disposed of, and in a way that would make the police assume a connection to Kerri’s murder, rather than forewarn them of the robbery.
This was fanciful, she told herself, and she was getting tired. There had been ample forensic and other evidence to link Speedy to Kerri’s murder, from her backpack to the ketamine and hair samples-although Leon had seemed concerned at the absence of Kerri’s fingerprints at either Wiff ’s den or Speedy’s house.
Kathy tried his mobile again. It was switched off. Her phone at home was on the answering machine. She sighed and returned to her task.
In another office, Brock was sitting down with Bo Seager. Like Harry Jackson, she too had been away from Silvermeadow when the robbery had happened, and had phoned Brock soon after learning of the details, insisting that she come to Hornchurch Street rather than meet at the shopping centre. She was tense, agitated even, and asked if she could smoke a cigarette. When it was alight she continued fiddling with the gold lighter while she asked Brock to describe to her exactly what had happened.
At the end of it she said flatly, ‘This is terrible.’
Brock said nothing, watching as she slapped the lighter down on the cigarette packet on the table, then tapped the filter tip of her cigarette up and down on the lighter, her eyes fixed on it without seeing, eyelids blinking rapidly.
‘Now we have five dead,’ she said. ‘They’re really going to have my ass.’
‘They?’
‘The board.’ She took in the questioning look on his face. ‘Oh yes. This will be my fault. Nathan Tindall is desperate to have my job. He feeds poison to all the other money men on the board.’
‘It’s hard to see how they could blame you for any of this.’
‘I get the blame for everything that happens inside those eighty acres, David. That’s my job.’
She took a deep lungful and then exhaled, speaking through the smoke. ‘They had inside help, did they?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘But you think?’
‘I’d rather not say at the moment.’
She nodded, as if he’d confirmed it. ‘Of course they did. And I guess it could be me, right?’
‘Could it?’
‘Why not? We’d all think about it for a million or two. I got Harry Jackson out of the way, didn’t I?’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah. I sent him to a security conference that’s on in London at the moment. We agreed months ago that he should go. Really bad timing, so close to Christmas.’
‘Where was this?’
‘At the Barbican. Ironic, isn’t it? He missed his own case study.’
‘Is there any other reason I should suspect you, Bo?’ Brock asked, smiling.
‘Actually there is.’ She took another deep draw on her cigarette. ‘You see, I’ve seen this done before.’
The smile vanished from Brock’s face and he leant forward. ‘Go on.’
‘In Canada. About two years ago I spent a month in Toronto, as part of a centre management course. I was mainly based downtown, in the Eaton Centre, but while I was there there was a big hold-up at one of the suburban shopping malls, at Yorktown. Most of the big out-of-town North American centres don’t have the service tunnel arrangement we have at Silvermeadow because it’s relatively expensive to build and maintain, but Yorktown was like us, too big for its site, so they put the service bays underneath to save space. One day some bandits got into the service areas and hid out until a security truck arrived and gathered up the cash from all the stores. On the final pick-up they jumped the guards, took their uniforms and calmly climbed into the truck, and the driver drove off with them inside. They hijacked him once they were out in clear country. But they made a mistake.’
‘What was that?’
‘They tied up the guards and locked them in a storeroom, but one of them managed to make enough noise to attract help. The cops caught up with the truck before the gang could clean it out, and they nailed them all. This lot didn’t make that mistake.’
‘No, they made very sure that couldn’t happen. Interesting. And the Canadian gang had inside help?’
‘The security man at the service road entrance checkpoint. He’d got bored with his job, and had passed the time working out how it could be done. He mentioned it to his brother-in-law, who knew some bad people. But for a time it looked as if someone in the centre management office had been involved, maybe even the centre manager himself. The police gave him a tough going over, and afterwards the centre owners got rid of him anyway, just in case.’
‘I see.’ Brock rubbed a hand through his beard thoughtfully. The connection with Toronto corresponded chillingly well with what they suspected of North’s movements. It sounded as if he hadn’t been idle while he’d been away.
‘If our case did follow your Canadian model, who would you nominate as the insider?’ he asked. ‘Assuming it isn’t you.’
She shrugged. ‘Speedy? Who else?’
‘Yes. Well, with or without your help, that place of yours seems to have become a magnet for killers, Bo.’
‘Yeah.’ She stubbed the cigarette out angrily. ‘It’s a nightmare, Brock. A dream that’s turned sick. I’ll tell you that for nothing.’
It was after midnight when Kathy got home. There were the remains of a take-away Chinese meal on the table, an empty bottle of Chilean red beside it, and Leon asleep on the sofa. He opened his eyes and watched her for a moment as she stood at the table scavenging the remains of the beanshoots and noodles.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’ She shot him a smile as she lifted the fork to her mouth. ‘Sorry about the meal,’ she mumbled, mouth full.
‘Haven’t you eaten?’
‘Not much. You know how it is.’
‘Serious, is it?’ He yawned and slid a hand across his hair.
‘Ten million quid. Two dead.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what they said on the news.’
‘Then you know about as much as me,’ she said, and turned back to scrape at the foil container.
