few home truths about what was going on in this place, things I didn’t know about.
‘He told me that after our conversation in the gym, Verdi had asked him if there was anywhere at Silvermeadow where he could keep Norma Jean for a few days, to frighten her, so she’d know not to come back. They’d looked at the building plans together, and found this room at the back of the plenum that wasn’t used, because it was practically inaccessible. So Verdi did some work on it, fixing it up with a solid door and moving in furniture, and Speedy removed it from the computer plans of the building. Part of the deal was that Speedy wanted a CCTV camera installed, so he could watch what went on in the room from his control console.
‘So he was able to tell me exactly what Verdi did to the girl. I’m not sure she knew too much about it-she was doped with some stuff Speedy was experimenting with. Then after three or four days, Verdi “took her to Birmingham”. That was the phrase he used for dumping her in the compactor. And the problem was, I was implicated in it. They could say I’d put them up to it, encouraged them from the beginning. And not just in that one case, either. Some time after Norma Jean we had a similar problem with another difficult kid, a foreign girl, and I said to Verdi, sort of joking, that I wished she’d sod off to Birmingham too, and he smirked and tapped his nose and said he’d see about it.’
He paused, and Kathy saw that the pages of the notebook he held in his fingers were trembling.
‘Speedy knew Verdi was killing the girls?’
‘Yeah. He’d seen him do it on camera, and he had the evidence on tape.’ He glanced back over his shoulder at a holdall at the side of the room.
‘You got the tapes from Speedy’s house,’ Kathy said. ‘You murdered Speedy and Wiff.’
‘Greg did it,’ Jackson said softly. ‘It had to be done. They were in the way, and we needed to get you lot to leave Silvermeadow.’
Kathy tried to take in the implications of this. Her head was buzzing and sore, the noise from the TV and radio distracting. ‘And Kerri? Did Verdi kill her too?’
Jackson didn’t answer. He looked away, then North’s voice called from the other end of the room, ‘News,’ and Jackson got to his feet and went over to the TV.
While they were occupied, Kathy tried to explore what she could of her surroundings. She couldn’t reach the suitcase or other things at the top end of the bed, nor could she get anywhere near Orr. The bed frame was surprisingly heavy, and gave a loud creak when she tried to move it. She hesitated, tried again, but could only shift it with difficulty, an inch or so at a time. She felt under the mattress and sleeping bag, hoping for something she might use as a weapon, or to prise open the handcuffs, but without success.
After ten minutes Jackson returned, carrying two glasses of red wine. ‘Nothing on the news,’ he said, handing one glass to her.
‘Doesn’t he mind sharing?’ she asked, nodding at North, engrossed now in some soccer.
‘His taste runs more to the chemical than the grape,’ Jackson muttered.
Kathy sipped at the wine. It burned her split lip and the taste reminded her of her evening drinking with Brock. The thought filled her with a sense of loss and despair. He wasn’t coming to rescue her. No one was. Jackson was right: this was a truly stupid way to spend Christmas Eve. She didn’t want to listen to more of his story, yet she knew she must keep him talking.
‘So this was the room,’ she said.
‘Eh?’
‘That Verdi used.’
‘Oh, yes. When Speedy explained it all to me, I went and had it out with Verdi. I told him I didn’t want to know about Birmingham, or what he’d done with the kids. As far as I was concerned he’d taken them to a refuge, and that was that. I told him the basement room was off limits now, the locks changed, and there were to be no more disappearances.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘The way he takes most things, with that big operatic smile that means nothing.’
‘When was this?’
‘Maybe three or four months ago.’
Long before Kerri disappeared then. Kathy had the feeling she didn’t want to hear about Kerri.
‘It was some time before I put the basement room together with the perfect robbery. The problem with the Canadian hold-up Bo had described wasn’t the heist itself, but the getaway. There isn’t going to be much time between robbing a security truck and having the alarm raised, and when the robbery takes place in an out-of-town shopping centre there aren’t any surrounding city streets to get lost in. There’s great access to the motorway, but it’s covered with cameras.
‘But suppose the robbers could disappear into the centre itself-the last place people would think of looking for them. I thought it was a neat idea. I looked closely at the way Armacorp did their collections, and I reckoned I could see how it could be done, using that hidden room.’
‘But how did North get down here after the robbery? Not through the security centre door into the plenum.’
‘Same way the kid Wiff got in and out of the plenum, through the drop ducts. There’s one in each of the stairways. North climbed down the last one with the uniforms and cash, and I replaced the grille after him and spent a couple of hours locked in a toilet cubicle, out of the way.’
Harry Jackson drained his glass and glanced at his watch. Kathy didn’t want him to leave, certainly not until she had found some way to hold North at bay.
‘But why on earth involve a madman like North, Harry?’ she said.
‘Because I’d never have done it otherwise. I had a plan all right, and I was beginning to feel desperate enough to dream about the money, but I was no hold-up merchant.
I’d never done anything like that before. In my heart I didn’t believe I could do it. It was only when I recognised him in the mall that day that I thought, for the first time, that I might actually go through with it.’
He glanced at her glass. ‘You’re not drinking.’
‘No. I can’t face it.’
‘You should drink. It’ll make you feel a bit better.’
Kathy laughed. ‘It’d take more than a glass of wine to make me feel better, Harry.’
‘I could get you a bottle of something else. What do you like? Vodka? Scotch?’
He is feeling guilty, she thought. He’d feel better if I died with a smile on my face. Some hope. This was why he was talking so much-his guilt, and presumably because there was no one else to confess to, apart from North, who wouldn’t have understood his need. Kathy doubted if Connie knew much of the real story.
‘I don’t think so, Harry. Here, you have the wine.’
He shrugged and took the glass. ‘Look,’ he said, so softly she had to lean over to hear, ‘I’ll do what I can to help you, okay? Don’t worry, and for God’s sake don’t annoy him.’
‘Are you a Catholic?’ she asked.
‘Lapsed,’ he said, surprised. A sudden look of consternation appeared on his face, as if he thought she might be about to demand a priest to give her the last rites. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondered. So you walked up to North in the mall and said, I know who you are, did you?’ Kathy asked. ‘He must have been pleased.’
‘Not quite like that. I followed him out to his car and we had a conversation. I told him who I was, and said that before I decided whether to turn him in, I had a proposition to put to him. I said I was looking for a partner to help me steal a few million quid, if he was still in the business.’
‘He believed you?’
‘After a while. He told me he’d come back to the UK to see his girlfriend, Sophie, who had had his kid while he was abroad. He’d never seen the little girl, and he wanted to persuade Sophie to come away with him. His funds were running low, too, and he’d been talking to one or two old mates about doing another job. Only he was finding that people weren’t so pleased to see him, after all the publicity he’d got the last time.’
‘The bank job in the City. He killed two coppers. Didn’t that bother you, Harry? Or did your amazing discovery that everyone has to die one day make that all right?’
Kathy had resolved not to antagonize him, but there was something so self-absorbed about the way he was going on that she hadn’t been able to hold back the bitter words.
Jackson looked sharply at her. ‘I’d watch that tongue, Kathy. You won’t find North as patient as me.’
