Silvermeadow

19

‘I t’s about the photographs, is it?’ Mrs Tait asked. ‘You wanted to show them to Naomi?’

‘That and one or two other things, Mrs Tait. You remember Detective Chief Inspector Brock, don’t you?’

‘Course. Come in and sit down.’

Her husband straightened himself in his armchair as they came into the sitting room. He looked out of sorts, as if he’d just lost an argument. ‘Blimey,’ he muttered. ‘How many coppers does it take to change a bleedin’ lightbulb?’

‘Jack!’ his wife hissed, and said to Kathy, ‘Did you want to speak to Naomi in her room?’

‘We’d like you to be present, if you don’t mind, Mrs Tait,’ Kathy said, although of all the interviews with juveniles she’d conducted, she suspected that this one would have been a lot easier if they hadn’t had to have the relative present.

‘Sit down and I’ll fetch her then.’ She shot a warning look at her husband and hurried out.

‘Goin’ to snow, then, is it?’ he asked belligerently.

‘Could be.’

‘Last time it snowed the central heating packed in. Sod’s Law, innit?’

Kathy smiled. ‘Has Naomi got to go to work today?’

‘Yes. All weathers. She’s not put off by a bit of weather.’

‘Do you and Mrs Tait get over to Silvermeadow to see her when she’s working?’

‘The wife goes sometimes. Not me. Can’t be bothered, waiting for a bus.’

‘No,’ Kathy said, looking aimlessly round the room, at the new lottery ticket on the mantelpiece, the photo of the other sister. ‘Must have been easier for you when Kimberley was around. I suppose she had a car.’

Jack Tait frowned suspiciously at Kathy, then looked up as his wife and Naomi came in.

‘What was that?’ Mrs Tait asked. ‘Who had a car?’

‘We were talking about getting to Silvermeadow,’ Kathy said. ‘I suppose it was easier when Kimberley could take you there in her car.’

‘Oh, yes, she had a nice little car. What was it, Jack? A Renault, wasn’t it? But she didn’t go to Silvermeadow. She worked down Barking way, and if she wanted the shops she would go to Thurrock. She took me there several times. Jack didn’t come.’

‘Did she never go to Silvermeadow?’ Kathy asked.

‘I don’t think that she ever did. Did she, love?’ She turned to Naomi, who shrugged indifferently. ‘Anyway, how can we help you?’

Kathy showed Naomi the photographs. She studied each one slowly before shaking her head.

‘What about the little girl?’ Kathy asked, pointing at the picture, but again the answer was no.

‘So what’s this in aid of then?’ Jack Tait said. ‘I thought you’d found the bastard who was responsible for Kerri. The papers said he topped himself.’

‘There are still some loose ends, Mr Tait.’ Brock spoke for the first time, very deliberately. ‘And we’re pretty sure that Naomi can help us sort them out.’ He looked at the girl, who slowly raised her eyes and met his.

‘Like what?’ her grandfather demanded.

‘The man you just referred to, he died from an overdose of a drug.’

Mr Tait snorted with disgust. ‘Figures.’

‘This drug is manufactured as an anaesthetic, for animals.’

Kathy sensed both grandparents stiffen as this sank in. But Naomi, still and attentive, her eyes fixed on Brock’s face, showed no reaction at all.

‘It’s known as Ketapet, and it’s used by vets. In fact it’s one of the drugs that Kimberley was accused of stealing from-’

‘Now just wait a minute!’ Jack Tait half rose out of his seat, face reddening with anger.

‘Jack!’ his wife interrupted sharply. ‘I’m sure they’re not suggesting there’s any connection with Kimberley.’

‘Well, yes, I’m afraid there is, Mrs Tait. We’ve established that it was exactly the same batch of that drug that Kimberley took. Isn’t that right, Naomi?’

‘Naomi?’ her grandmother cried, horrified. ‘What’s it got to do with Naomi?’

‘I’d like her to tell us,’ Brock insisted.

The girl continued staring at him for a moment, then lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

Jack Tait immediately said, ‘There!’ His wife just stared at Naomi for a moment, then got up and went and sat by her side, putting an arm round her shoulders.

‘Naomi,’ Kathy said, ‘please tell us everything you know. It’s very important. You remember when I told you about the drug we’d found in Wiff ’s den? And you asked what the drug was? When I told you ketamine you were shocked and upset. You knew, didn’t you? Well, we found Wiff later that night, and Speedy. Both of them were dead, from overdoses of ketamine, the same stuff your sister had.’

Mrs Tait put a hand to her mouth, looking as if some familiar horror was revisiting her, but Naomi was as unmoved as before. ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I told you what I thought. I knew that Kerri had tried K, and I thought Wiff might have been killed by the same man as gave it to her.’

‘But how could it possibly be the same batch as your sister had?’

‘I dunno. I s’pose she must have sold it to someone, and they sold it to someone else. How would I know? You can give me a blood test if you like-I’ve never touched that stuff.’

‘But your gran just told us that Kimberley never went to Silvermeadow. Whereas you-’

‘You tricked me into saying that!’ Mrs Tait said indignantly. ‘I don’t know whether she went or not. She may have done, without telling me. But Naomi’s a good girl. She wouldn’t get mixed up-’

Her husband raised himself unsteadily to his feet, face furious. ‘I’ve ’ad enough of this.’ His voice choked with phlegm and he fought to continue, his good hand pointing at the door. ‘You get out, you hear? Get out!’

Brock got to his feet. ‘No need to get upset, Mr Tait. We’re going. We had to ask these questions, you understand. Last thing we want is to cause you more upset, especially at this time of year.’ He looked again at Naomi, giving her a kindly grin when she looked up. She made a sad little smile in return, and Mrs Tait, somewhat mollified, showed them to the door.

As they made their way along the deck, Brock muttered, ‘Yes, she knows.’ ‘You think?’

‘I’m sure of it. She had the same look that those two kids had when they showed me their handiwork with the tree. She knows exactly how her sister’s Ketapet got to Silvermeadow. But she’s thought her story through, and she’s very cool.’

He stopped at the stairs, resting his hands on the concrete wall as he thought about it. From below they could hear the footsteps of someone climbing up.

‘Her friend Lisa isn’t so tough,’ Kathy said.

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

The figure of a man emerged out of the gloom of the stairway. He glanced up and they recognised Gavin Lowry, looking even paler and more pinched than usual.

‘They told me you’d be over here,’ he said, slightly out of breath, vapour rising from his mouth. ‘Thought I’d see if I could help.’

‘Thanks,’ Brock replied. ‘How are things with you?’

Lowry shrugged. ‘Oh, you know, sir. Pretty shitty.’

‘Yes, I can imagine. Have you been talking to Connie?’

‘She won’t have it. Taken the kids to her parents. Told me to move out so she can come back.’

‘Maybe when the dust settles, Gavin,’ Brock said. ‘Sometimes it’s the secrecy that holds people together. Now it’s all out in the open she may have second thoughts.’

‘But is that what I want?’ he replied bitterly. ‘Way I feel right now, they’re welcome to each other. Anyway, I want to get stuck into some work, take my mind off things.’

‘Okay. You know Naomi, don’t you? She lives at the other end of this deck.’

Lowry nodded. ‘Yeah, I know her.’

‘We suspect she may have supplied Speedy with the ketamine, flogging him her sister’s drugs. We’ve just interviewed her, and she denies it, but we’re not convinced. You could keep an eye on the place for an hour or two, until we check a few things out, see she doesn’t try to dispose of any evidence.’

‘Sure. While I’m here I might catch the little toe-rags that tried to bomb me with the TV set.’

‘If you do, old son,’ Brock said, patting his shoulder, ‘just remember that they’re not Harry Jackson, okay?’

Lowry grinned and dug a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket. ‘Started again,’ he said ruefully.

*

Lisa’s mother groaned as she saw them standing there at her door, and asked them in reluctantly. ‘I’m on my way out,’ she said. ‘Sorry about that.’ She was wearing a short black leather skirt with matching jacket and boots, and enough make-up, Kathy noted, to light up Oxford Street.

‘This is very urgent. We need to speak to Lisa again.’

She sighed. ‘Well, if my friend comes you’ll just have to speak to her on your own.’

‘That’s not possible, I’m afraid. There has to be what we call a “responsible adult” present while we talk to her. If you prefer we can take her to the police station and get a social worker to sit with us.’

She wasn’t sure about that. She puckered her scarlet mouth and said, ‘Won’t take long, will it?’

‘That rather depends on Lisa,’ Kathy said, looking at the pale face watching them through the gap in a bedroom door which had just opened a few inches. ‘If she can tell us what we need to know, we won’t be long at all.’

‘Well, come on then. Lisa! Come out and answer their questions. Hurry up.’

They sat down, and Kathy said simply, ‘We’ve discovered where the ketamine came from that killed Wiff and Speedy… and Kerri,’ she added, watching the girl’s eyes grow large. ‘It’s time you told us what happened, Lisa.’

The girl’s lips set in a tight line, and for a moment it seemed that she would defy them as Naomi had done, but then the line curled down at the ends, tears appeared at her eyes, and her whole body began to shake.

Perhaps the secret of telling the difference between false and true confessions, Kathy thought, lay in the fact that the first were designed to prolong matters, whereas the second were made to bring things to an end-an end long avoided, long postponed and now desperately sought. And she had no doubt that Lisa’s confession, when it eventually came, was of the second kind. It came out with an almost physical force, making the girl’s face grimace in pain, as if it were something bad she’d swallowed some time ago which had been sitting like a cold stone in her stomach, and now at last could be brought up.

It was very short, just three words.

‘We killed Kerri.’

Then she burst into tears.

Her mother stared at her with a look of astonishment, the two detectives with something like regret.

The tension was broken by the front door bell, absurdly playing the opening bars from ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. Lisa’s mother jumped to her feet, muttering, ‘Bleedin’ heck,’ and raced out to answer it. The others waited without speaking while there was a short exchange on the doorstep, punctuated with expletives. Then the front door slammed and the woman returned to the room, her heels clacking on the plastic tiles in the hallway.

Now that the words had been said, the awful words she must have had to bottle up inside herself for almost three weeks, Lisa let the rest pour out, interrupted only by her sobs and moans.

The trouble with Kerri was that she had become unreliable and greedy. In the beginning, after Naomi had found where her sister was hiding the drugs, and had begun to steal them and sell them in a small way to friends, and then through Lisa and Kerri to friends of friends, they had worked together like a team, a small business venture, as Naomi had put it, for a modest but regular commission. After Kimberley was arrested and put away they thought their venture would come to an end, but Naomi seemed more determined than ever to keep it going. She managed to contact her sister’s sources and persuaded them to deal with her. Instead of fading away, their business flourished, their network of customers at the mall increasing month by month. It didn’t seem wrong. As Naomi had said to them, they were supplying a need, a market, just like all the other traders in the mall. And the mall people knew about it, or at least Wiff ’s patron and protector, who saw everything going on at Silvermeadow, knew about it, and he was paid a regular fee in kind for his co-operation. Early on he became interested in K, and took it on a regular basis. He had also requested Ecstasy, speed and poppers at various times.

‘And you have no idea who this was?’ Kathy pressed her. ‘Wiff never mentioned a wheelchair?’

Lisa shook her head, wiped her nose and continued.

Kerri was becoming unreliable, she said. She was taking stuff herself with increasing regularity, especially Ecstasy, and when she became fired up she would say things she shouldn’t, showing off to the boys. She had fights with Naomi over this, and then they discovered that she was stealing from their stock for her own use. When Naomi confronted her they had a big row, and Kerri made her threat. She said that one day soon she would be out of there, going to live with her dad in Germany, and when she did she’d blow the whistle on Naomi’s ring, and make sure she went to jail just like her sister.

Naomi said they had no choice. She spoke to Wiff, who had told them stories in the past about girls disappearing from the mall. They weren’t fairy-stories, he’d assured them. In fact his boss, who saw everything, knew who was responsible but didn’t interfere because the girls were rubbish, causing trouble. Naomi said that Kerri was trouble too, and that she had threatened to expose them all, which wouldn’t suit Wiff ’s boss. She told Wiff that Kerri was a danger to them all, and that he should tell his boss, and have him arrange for Kerri to disappear like the others.

That was how they’d killed Kerri.

Later, at Hornchurch Street, in the presence of a solicitor and a psychologist, Lisa repeated her story in a more coherent version, her tears exhausted now.

When Brock and Kathy were satisfied that they had heard as much as they were likely to get from her, they joined a waiting group of detectives, collected the warrants and returned to Crocus Court. Gavin Lowry was in the same place, a scattering of cigarette stubs at his feet. There had been no movement from the Taits’ flat.

When they knocked on the door it was as if they were expected. Brock explained that he had a warrant for the arrest of Naomi on suspicion of possession and supply of a class B controlled drug, and a second warrant to search the Taits’ flat.

During her formal interview at the station, Naomi began by repeating her earlier denials. When they told her something of what Lisa had said she replied that her friend lived in a fantasy world and made up ridiculous stories. Even when they told her that they had found an assortment of controlled drugs hidden inside the base of the bed in her sister’s bedroom, she maintained her innocence, claiming that they must have belonged to Kimberley.

Her performance was impressive, and some of those listening to the interview were convinced by it. It was only when Brock told her that they had opened up the portable radio/CD player in her room, and found the banknotes packed tight in the back of the speaker compartments, and told her the exact amount-?31,548-that she broke down.

The money was the thing, the beginning and end of it all, the profits that she had been patiently accumulating for over a year, the lottery win with which her grandparents would buy their dreamed-of cottage and take them all away from Herbert Morrison and London for ever.

Her account, when it finally came, tallied closely with Lisa’s, but with one dramatic additional piece of information. At one point, when she had been talking to Wiff, she had expressed doubts about the tale of the monster of the mall who made people disappear, and had suggested that this was a story his boss had invented to keep him frightened and obedient. Wiff had been affronted and had told her things about the man. Naomi said she hadn’t told Lisa about this, because she was frightened about what she was told, and was worried about Lisa keeping it to herself.

He had a special room, Wiff said, a secret place, a den, where he took the women and kept them before he got rid of them. And Wiff knew who the man was. His boss, who was also scared of this man, had video tapes of him, which he called his insurance. From these tapes he had made some still photographs, one of which Wiff had acquired, as his insurance. Naomi said that he had shown her the picture.

‘You’ve seen a photograph of this man?’ Kathy queried.

Naomi nodded, eyes down. ‘He was with one of the girls who disappeared.’

‘With her?’ Kathy repeated carefully.

‘Yeah, you know, on top of her, doing it to her.’

‘Can you describe the girl?’

‘Black hair, thin face, pale, bit older than me. I didn’t recognise her. She looked as if she was asleep, or dead, even though he was on top of her.’

‘And the man, can you describe him?’

‘Oh, I knew who he was.’

They weren’t conscious of it, but everyone listening held their breath for the moment she hesitated before saying the name.

Later, any lingering doubts were dispelled when she was given a file of photographs of missing women, and picked the portrait of the dark-haired girl that Kathy had found among Velma’s belongings at the hospital.

‘This is her,’ she said. ‘This is the girl Mr Verdi was fucking.’