‘No, not to us. But Naomi would be the one to ask. She would know. Shall I get her for you?’
While she went to fetch her grand-daughter, Kathy said, ‘It must be difficult for you, Mr Tait, taking on a family again.’
‘We manage,’ he said stiffly. ‘Don’t you worry about that. And we’re not the only ones. You’d be surprised how many of us there are, grandmums and dads, lining up to collect the kiddies from playgroup and school. That’s the way it is these days.’ He looked grimly at the photograph of the lost daughter. ‘Something seems to have happened to the generation in between. Do you know what it is?’ He glared at Kathy, who wasn’t sure if he was really asking for her opinion.
‘No… not really. What do you think?’
‘I haven’t got a clue. Not a bleedin’ clue.’
He shook his head, baffled. Kathy got to her feet and went over to look at the photographs on the wall. They formed a triangle, the Taits’ dead daughter at the top, her three girls below her.
‘Is this Naomi?’ Kathy asked, pointing to the eldest, a bright, cheerful-looking girl with long black hair, very like her mother, kneeling between two panting golden retrievers.
‘No, that’s her big sister, Kimberley. Naomi’s the middle one.’
She had square, plainer features, her dark hair cut short like a boy’s, a stubborn set to her mouth. And as Kathy looked at the picture the girl herself came into the room behind her and said hello at her grandmother’s prompting. Then she sat down, face pale, eyes lowered, and Mrs Tait said softly that she would make them all a cup of tea.
‘Are you feeling all right, Naomi?’ Kathy said. ‘It must have been a terrible shock.’
The girl nodded, not looking up.
‘We very much need your help, to find who may have done this.’
‘Done…?’ The girl raised her eyes to meet Kathy’s, her voice little more than a whisper.
‘We’re still trying to work out the details of what happened, Naomi, but it seems likely that Kerri was murdered. Probably at or near the Silvermeadow shopping centre.’
‘How do you know that?’
Kathy frowned, surprised by the question. There was something obdurate about Naomi, as if determined to believe nothing without the hard evidence under her nose.
Her grandfather had caught the tone of scepticism in her voice too, and said, ‘Don’t you be cheeky, young lady.’
‘Well, that’s the best indication we have so far as to how she met her end,’ Kathy said. ‘Why? Does it surprise you?’
‘Only, we were at Silvermeadow that afternoon, the Monday she went missing, and we didn’t see her there.’
‘We?’
‘Lisa and me. We caught the four-fifteen bus. We didn’t see Kerri.’
‘You’d seen Kerri at school that day, hadn’t you, Naomi? How did she seem?’
Naomi frowned at her feet. ‘We didn’t talk much.’
‘Did she seem different from usual in any way?’
A shrug.
‘Speak up, girl, when the detective asks you something,’ her grandfather grumbled.
‘Wouldn’t she normally have gone to Silvermeadow with you?’ Kathy went on. ‘Didn’t she give a reason for not going with you?’
The girl’s expression had become a scowl, fixed on one toe. ‘We were going to work. She wasn’t on that afternoon. I dunno.’
‘Where do you two work then?’
‘Lisa wipes the tables in the food court, and I help in the sandwich bar, on the preparation mostly.’
Kathy wondered if it was accidental that Kerri, the pretty blonde, was out front with the customers, in her short skirt and roller blades, while the stolid Naomi was back in the kitchen. ‘The thing is, Naomi, she went home that afternoon and packed a bag as if she was planning to go away somewhere. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she would have said something to her closest friends. Some hint, surely?’
Silence.
Jack Tait said, ‘Speak up, girl,’ rapping his fingertips on the newspaper.
Mrs Tait had come into the room with a tray. She set it down and stooped beside Naomi and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Come on, love,’ she urged. ‘Do try to think.’
The girl relented, gracelessly. ‘Yes. She told us. She said she was planning to go away.’
Mrs Tait drew back, looking worried.
Kathy said, ‘That isn’t what you told the officer who came to see you before, is it, Naomi?’
‘She made us promise not to tell anyone, see. She said she was going to Germany to stay with her dad.’
‘Oh bleedin’ heck,’ Jack Tait muttered. His fingers abruptly stopped tapping the newspaper.
‘Well, what else could I do?’ Naomi glared defiantly at him, and Kathy caught a glimpse of his eye meeting his grand-daughter’s and then sliding away, so that for a moment she seemed the adult, the one with the difficult responsibilities to deal with.
‘Had she arranged this with her father?’ Kathy asked. ‘Was he going to meet her somewhere?’
‘I don’t think so. She said it would be a surprise. She said she’d saved enough money to buy a ticket for the Channel ferry.’
‘Just the boat? Was she going to hitch-hike?’
‘I think so. But she wouldn’t tell us what she was planning exactly, like it was a secret. Just that she was going to see her dad. But we thought that was what she was planning to do, hitch-hike.’
Her grandmother shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, that’s terrible, Naomi. A young girl like that on her own! Didn’t you try to stop her? Promise me you’ll never do anything so stupid.’
Naomi ignored her. ‘She said, after she got to Germany and sorted things out, she’d ring her mum and put her mind at rest. But we weren’t to say nothing, not to nobody.’
Mrs Tait passed round their cups of tea, fussing slightly, mollifying, removing her husband’s newspaper and positioning his saucer securely on a special rubber mat attached to the chair arm. ‘They’re good girls. They work hard and do their best, Sergeant. You can’t blame them. But I just wish you’d told us, love. I really do.’
The girl lowered her head, bottling up any reply.
‘Anyway, you want to help us now, don’t you, Naomi?’ Kathy said.
‘Of course she does!’
Naomi gave a reluctant little nod.
‘I’d like to take you, and Lisa too, over to Silvermeadow, and get you to show me round. Show me the places you and Kerri liked to hang out, the people you know there. Will you do that?’
‘Okay.’ The idea seemed to perk her up a little.
‘Of course she will!’ Mrs Tait passed round the shortbread, eager for Naomi to have a chance to make amends.
‘What about Kerri’s bag, the one like a frog, do you know where she got that from?’
‘Yes, a place in the mall. A bag shop.’
‘Good. Maybe you can help me find another one like it.’
‘That’s the way, old girl,’ Jack said, a little restored, lifting his cup to his mouth and blowing on his tea.
Lisa lived in Jonquil Court, distinguished from Crocus by the wrecked children’s play equipment corralled within a high chain-link fence in one corner. She was a paler, less confident version of Kerri’s picture, with the same length of fair hair cut in the same way, almost as if she had modelled herself on her friend. She confirmed Naomi’s account practically word for word, and agreed to come to Silvermeadow on condition Naomi was going too.
As Kathy took the girls back to her car she turned it over in her mind. Both of them seemed certain that Kerri had planned to surprise her father. Or perhaps to test him, Kathy thought, picking up on something Lisa had said, that Kerri idolised her dad and made excuses for his absence. For the girl would know, as soon as he opened his front door and saw her standing there, she would know from his expression if he really loved her. What if he’d got wind of it beforehand? Maybe she’d written, hinting at what she intended, and he’d tried to stop her. Or maybe she had reached him and he had tried to bring her back.
