Silvermeadow bak-5

by Barry Maitland

‘You cope, don’t you? You have to. We’d had our dreams of what we’d do when Jack retired, go live by the sea near our friends. But that wasn’t to be. We were needed here, to look after our grandchildren.’

  ‘This’ll give you some idea what our Naomi’s like,’ Jack Tait said. He got stiffly to his feet and went over to the mantelpiece and lifted a piece of paper out of a bowl. He handed it to Brock proudly. It was a lottery ticket. ‘Once a month she buys us one of these out of her pay from the sandwich shop. She says, one day we’ll win, and we’ll be able to buy a house in Westcliff big enough for us all. And she believes it too.’

  They heard the front door bang and the sounds of Naomi discarding her bag and coat in the hall.

  Her reaction to Brock’s questions was almost a mirror of her grandparents. She nodded sadly, and said she knew that Kerri had been trying things-speed, she thought, and Ecstasy, which she’d got from boys at parties. Lisa and herself had tried to make her stop, but Kerri said it was exciting, and they were stupid. They’d had an argument over it, which was the reason Kerri had stopped confiding in them about her plans.

  ‘We should have told someone, shouldn’t we? Her mum or something. Then maybe she’d have been all right.’

  ‘It may have nothing to do with what happened to her, Naomi,’ Brock assured her. ‘But we want to check everything. What about these boys? Do you know who they are? Do they go to Silvermeadow?’

  Naomi shook her head. Lisa and she had tried to find out, but Kerri kept it a secret.

  ‘You’re sure she said “boys”?’

  She pondered. ‘Boys, or “this boy”. I’m not sure. I thought there might be more than one, but I’m not sure. She told lies sometimes, just to wind us up.’

  As they got back in their car, Brock said to Kathy, ‘This doesn’t sound like much. What do you think?’

  ‘I agree. She was trying things, but most of them do. She wasn’t exactly a junkie. They never found needle marks on the body, did they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I feel very sorry for Mrs Tait, trying so hard to do the right thing, worn out.’

  ‘Mmm. Might be better than being stuck in a cottage with old Jack at Westcliff, though, don’t you think?’

  Kathy smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So what now? I was really hoping forensic would give us something more concrete to work on.’ Brock folded his arms and frowned out of the window as Kathy edged the car into the traffic of the high street. ‘The thought of this turning into one of those interminable cases, hundreds of fruitless leads, thousands of interviews, millions of words…’ He shook his head. ‘Have you been keeping in touch with what Leon’s been up to?’

  She nodded. ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘I hope he’s giving us his undivided attention.’

  ‘I’d say so, yes.’

  ‘Someone said they saw him laughing yesterday, and whistling, for God’s sake. Leon doesn’t whistle.’

  ‘Maybe he’s happy.’

  ‘I don’t want him happy,’ Brock growled. ‘I want him dissatisfied and frustrated, like me. I want him harrying those lab people till they find us something useful.’

  ‘Maybe the samples from the compactors will give us something.’

  ‘That’s a long shot. She was pretty well wrapped up. And clean-no semen traces, no foreign hairs, no fibres. We find a body, and then it tells us nothing. They’ve got equipment can read your life story from a single hair, and all they can tell us is that she was a teenager who experimented with Ecstasy.’

  Kathy found Speedy alone at his console that afternoon. She saw him grinning to himself as she came in the room, but he didn’t turn round. He continued ignoring her as she came to his side. Kathy looked down at the control panel, at the keyboards, the rotating dials, the sliding knobs, and spotted a simple switch at one end, marked ON-OFF. She reached forward and pushed it to off, and all the screens simultaneously went blank.

  ‘Oi!’ He blinked at the dead screens, then jerked round as if she’d physically hurt him.

  ‘I’d like your attention, Speedy,’ Kathy said softly. ‘I’d like to know what you thought you were playing at, making that tape.’

  His mouth formed into the smirk again, and Kathy wondered if he’d had facial surgery after his accident. ‘Did you like it?’ he asked, with exaggerated innocence.

  ‘I asked what you thought you were doing.’

  ‘Just a little present. I thought you’d appreciate a demo, of what we can do. Something personal, just between you and me.’ His smirk trembled on the point of becoming a sneer.

  ‘You like making demos, do you? Make a habit of it?’

  He held her gaze without answering.

  ‘You’re quite a creepy bloke, aren’t you, Speedy?’ she said. ‘What seems strange to me is that you’ve got all this talent for spying on people, but you can’t give us a damn thing about that girl.’ She stared at his expression, trying to decipher it, trying to work out if he really meant to look like that, or whether the muscles were damaged and he couldn’t do anything else. ‘You sure you haven’t got any little demos of girls in the mall? Any of her?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘I’d tell you to watch your step,’ Kathy went on, ‘only that wouldn’t be appropriate. Just be careful, eh? Or I might have to give you a demo of what I can do.’

  She pressed the switch back on and turned away as the screens flickered to life, and saw Harry Jackson standing in the doorway, watching them.

  ‘Have we got a problem, Kathy?’ he said carefully.

  ‘I don’t think so, Harry. Speedy was just showing me how things work around here.’

  After the excitement generated by the first walk-through, the second attracted an even larger crowd. Chief Superintendent Forbes, who until now had been reluctant to appear committed to the Silvermeadow connection, had decided to attend, his uniform adding an element of formal pomp to the group waiting at the west entrance in front of the TV cameras to receive the girls.

  The moment of their arrival was given some unexpected drama by the sudden eruption of a man from the crowd, who walked swiftly to Lisa’s side just as she was stepping out of the police car. Looking like a pale office worker at the end of a long week, in limp dark suit and tie, he had a placard hanging round his neck with the message I AM UNEMPLOYED BUT HAVE NOT GIVEN UP. BUY A PEN?1. He held a bunch of the coloured pens in his fist, and raised them up to the cameras as they recorded his brief moment in the spotlight before two security men bundled him away.

  Kathy turned to Sharon at her side and said, ‘Know him?’

  ‘Yes, he’s one of our regulars. We don’t let him inside, but he often hangs around the entrances, looking pathetic, until we move him on. I’ve never seen him here after dark though. It’s this walk-through, it’s attracting everyone. Bigger than the Titanic, I reckon.’

  And that was true, Kathy thought, looking at the crush of people in the mall, straining for a sight of the parade. In death Kerri was bigger than Snow White, Mauna Loa and Santa Claus combined.

  As they moved forward, Kathy caught sight of a figure in the crowd she recognised, a boy of about twelve, with long black curls coming out from under the baseball cap reversed on his head, the boy she’d seen at the bookshop on Sunday morning and at Starkey’s games arcade. She moved into the crush and worked her way to his side.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, slipping a hand under his arm.

  He looked up into her face, startled, saying nothing.

  ‘My name’s Kathy. I’m with the police. What’s your name?’

  ‘Wiff,’ he said in a soft whisper.

  ‘Wiff what?’

  ‘Wiff Smiff.’

  ‘I’ve seen you around the mall, Wiff. You spend quite a bit of time here, don’t you? Has anybody asked you if you ever saw this girl?’

  He stared at the picture for a long time without speaking. His skin was very white, as if it was never exposed to the sun.

  ‘Well?’

  He looked up, a
blank expression on his face, and shook his head.

  ‘How old are you, Wiff?’

  Wiff gazed at Kathy’s face for such a long time without replying that she wondered if he was quite right in the head. Then his eyes flicked to someone behind her, and as if he’d suddenly been switched on he gave a whoop and cried, ‘Sherro! I’m coming too!’, and before she could stop him he slipped out of her grip and went tearing off up the mall, weaving through the crowd of shoppers until he was lost to sight.

  Surprisingly, Orville Forbes and Bo Seager seemed to have hit it off, walking side by side in the wake of the little figure with the green frog on her back, and when the chief superintendent held a further press briefing at the end of the walk-through, the centre manager was there too, the pair of them standing against a backdrop of tropical palms and Christmas fairy lights.

  The hope was that on one of these two early evenings someone with a pattern of regular visits to Silvermeadow at the beginning of the week might be able to place her there with certainty. It was beginning to look like a vain hope until Gavin Lowry ushered a young girl and an older woman into unit 184 towards six p.m. They were shown into an area screened off from the rest of the unit, and used for interviews and small meetings, while Lowry briefed Brock.

  ‘I think I’ve found a positive sighting, chief,’ he said, fairly bursting with it. ‘They usually come on Tuesdays, and only Tuesdays, only last week they were here on the Monday. I found them down in the food court.’

  Belinda Tipping was aged seven, as she immediately informed Brock when they were introduced. Her grandmother, elderly and looking overwhelmed, was her companion.

  ‘Now, you come here every Tuesday afternoon, is that right, Belinda?’ Lowry asked.

  ‘Yes, I told you. I come with my gran.’

  ‘Yes, well I want you to tell the chief inspector here, because he’s the big chief, all right?’

  Belinda looked flirtatiously at Brock. ‘I used to come with Wendy,’ she confided.

  ‘Ah.’ Brock smiled at her. ‘And who’s Wendy?’

  ‘My big sister. She doesn’t come any more, though. Not since she ran away with Mr Palmer across the street. Mrs Palmer won’t speak to us any more now.’

  Her gran coughed warningly. Belinda ignored her and smiled sweetly at Brock. ‘My gran brings me after school. I like to see the fireworks coming out of the top of the mountain.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ her grandmother confirmed. ‘Every Tuesday. Then we go to my son’s and I stay the night. Except last week it was Monday, because of my appointment with the specialist.’

  ‘And what can you tell us about this girl?’ Brock pointed to the enlarged photographs of Kerri and of the girl with the frog bag pinned on the wall.

  ‘We saw her here last Monday,’ Belinda said.

  ‘You’re quite certain it was her, Belinda?’ Brock queried, sceptical. ‘Are you good at noticing things?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ The little girl was completely confident. ‘I’m very good at noticing things. I noticed the girl, because I want to have my hair in a ponytail like that. It was tied up in a red and green ribbon. And I noticed the green bag, like a frog. I told Gran I wanted one like that for Christmas.’

  ‘Is that right? Do you remember that, Mrs Tipping?’ Brock asked.

  ‘I do remember Belinda talking about a frog bag,’ she said. ‘She talked about it all the way back on the bus. But I didn’t notice the girl. I was too busy trying to get us to the bus station before the bus left. It was definitely last week.’

  ‘And where did you see her, Belinda? Was it down in the food court, where you spoke to Sergeant Lowry tonight?’

  ‘No. We had been there. Gran and me usually sit by the side of the lagoon, where the canoe is. They keep those seats for the children. Except…’ She put her hand to her face and smothered a giggle.

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Except today, he’-she pointed accusingly at Lowry- ‘sat on one.’

  Lowry coloured. ‘Well, I wanted to talk to people like you and your gran, didn’t I, Belinda? Tell us where the girl was.’

  ‘Upstairs, on this level, near the windows that look over the pool, talking.’

  ‘Belinda showed me exactly where on our way here, chief,’ Lowry explained. ‘She saw the girl as she and Mrs Tipping passed along the main upper mall towards the east entrance where the bus station is. She looked down the side corridor towards the observation deck over the pool. The distance would have been twenty yards.’

  ‘Talking, did you say, Belinda?’

  The girl didn’t seem to mind their attention one bit, all focused on her and her little voice.

  ‘Yes. To a man.’

  Lowry’s face split in a grin of triumph. ‘Tell the chief inspector what you told me about the man, Belinda. Tell him what he looked like.’

  ‘He was a funny man.’

  ‘Funny? In what way?’

  ‘He had no hair.’

  ‘No hair? You mean he was bald?’

  She shrugged and looked at her gran, who said, ‘You know, dear. Like grandpa.’

  ‘No.’ The girl shook her head. ‘Grandpa has some hair, round his ears. This man had no hair. His head was like an egg. Mr Egghead, that’s what he was.’

  Brock and Lowry exchanged a look.

  ‘Was he an old man or a young man?’

  Her nose wrinkled up with thought. ‘Probably he wa s old. Like him.’ She pointed at Lowry, who was thirty-six. ‘Only he’s got some hair.’

  She couldn’t remember what he was wearing.

  ‘When he was standing talking to the girl, was he taller than her?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Where did the top of her head come up to on him, would you say?’ Brock stood beside Lowry and pointed his hand at the level of his eyes, then lowered it as she shook her head. She wrinkled her nose and said ‘There!’ when his hand had dropped below the shoulder.

  ‘And he had big shoulders,’ she added. ‘Like the Incredible Hulk. Only not green.’

  ‘What about the time? Can you pin-point the time?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Tipping said. ‘We’d been watching the five o’clock eruption, as usual. I had a cup of tea, and Belinda an ice-cream.’

  ‘A gel a to,’ Belinda corrected.

  ‘I was feeling tired, my veins were playing up, and I didn’t want to get up. Then I saw the time, almost five-thirty, and I realised we’d have to get a move on or we’d miss the bus. So we got up, went up the escalator and along the upper mall to the east entrance. The bus leaves at five-forty, and we got there with a few minutes to spare. So you can work it out. It must have been almost exactly five-thirty-five when we passed the spot where Belinda says she saw the girl.’

  ‘Good.’ Brock nodded. ‘And you’re sure you can’t remember anything else about the man, Belinda? You didn’t see if he gave the girl anything, or if he touched her?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Could they have been arguing, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘All right. Now we’ve got a very clever artist here, who can make up people’s faces on her computer, and I’d like you to talk to her, and help her to make a picture of this Mr Egghead for us to see. Would you like to do that?’

  ‘Oh yes. I like computers.’

  ‘Well I can see you’re a very bright girl, Belinda. Your gran can stay here and have a cup of tea while you’re busy.’

  By the time she was satisfied with the picture, Belinda had attracted a big crowd of officers, eager to see the result.

  It wasn’t Eddie Testor, not exactly, but it was very close. The girl had seemed to want to exaggerate and idealise the egg-like head shape, like Humpty Dumpty, with a small face, and the police artist had to nudge her carefully towards a realistic result without violating the obviously vivid picture in the girl’s mind.

  Taken with the bulging shoulders and the location, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that Belinda had seen Kerri Vlasich tal
king to Eddie Testor at almost exactly 5.35 on the evening of her disappearance. Brock turned away, trying to avoid showing on his face the relief he felt. It would have been better if the girl had been older, and if the grandmother had seen the green bag too, but all the same, Belinda was a convincing witness. Kerri had come to Silvermeadow that night. Now there surely could be no doubt.

  He saw Chief Superintendent Forbes entering the unit and went over to explain what had happened.

  ‘Excellent! Exactly what we needed, a witness. Thank God.’ The relief certainly showed on his face. The last press briefing had turned out to be an uncomfortable affair, since he had no real fresh information to give the reporters, who were becoming frustrated by the police’s reluctance to spell out exactly what evidence they had linking Kerri’s disappearance with Silvermeadow. ‘Pity we didn’t know this an hour ago. Premature to call the media back now, do you think?’

  ‘Let’s follow it up first,’ Brock said. Seeing Lowry looking their way, he waved him over and told Forbes, ‘Gavin was the one who found the witness.’

  Lowry accepted Forbes’s congratulations with a cool smile, then turned to Brock. ‘Pick him up, shall we, chief?’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that. You care to come along, Orville?’

  The chief superintendent checked his watch. ‘I’ve got something else lined up unfortunately, Brock. I think I can leave it in your and Gavin’s capable hands, eh?’ He gave them a confident smile. ‘You’ve got my mobile number, haven’t you? Keep me in touch. Let’s get a swift confession, shall we? I have a feeling in my bones that we’re getting close here. An excellent result. Well done again, Gavin.’

  But it didn’t prove to be that easy. Eddie Testor wasn’t to be found at the leisure centre, although he had been scheduled for duty that afternoon. After some enquiries it transpired that he’d phoned in sick the previous day, saying that he’d caught a bug and had been told to go to bed for a day or two. But he wasn’t at his home, either, a rented flat above a video store in the centre of Romford. No one in the store or the neighbouring flats and shops had seen him for a couple of days.

  Eddie Testor, it seemed, had disappeared.

  By the time Kathy got back to unit 184 that evening, after following up a number of reports from the police information desks in the malls, the excitement generated by Belinda and the hunt for Testor had evaporated. Phil, the action manager, still at his sentry post by the door, filled her in in lugubrious detail. ‘Best you pack it in for the night, Kathy,’ he concluded. ‘You’re not getting paid for this anyway, not with my overtime budget.’