‘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.
