‘Just take another look, to be sure.’
Kathy opened the envelope and laid out the pictures once more. Sharon shook her head firmly.
‘All right. So where were you on Saturday?’
‘With my fiance, doing Christmas shopping.’
‘Here?’
‘No, I have enough of this place in working hours. We went into Brentwood. We were there all afternoon. It was bedlam.’
‘Right.’ Kathy checked off the entry in the schedule, then looked out of the window and pointed at the group further down the service road. ‘And Harry was in central London, at a conference…’
Sharon gave a vague smile but didn’t say anything.
‘Did he have a good time?’
Sharon shrugged and looked away. ‘S’pose. Better ask him.’
‘Didn’t you talk about it?’
‘We mostly talked about the robbery.’
‘Yes…’ Kathy looked closely at the other woman, wondering why she was sounding so evasive. ‘But…’
‘But?’ Sharon turned and stared blandly at her in an unconvincing demonstration of frankness.
‘But you also talked about Harry’s conference, right?’
‘Oh… yes.’
‘Well?’
Sharon blushed suddenly and turned away. ‘You’d better ask him.’
‘I’m asking you, Sharon,’ Kathy insisted. ‘Come on. What’s the problem?’
‘What do you mean, problem?’
‘I’ll tell you what I think: I think you don’t like telling fibs to coppers.’
Sharon’s blush deepened sharply. ‘You’ll lose me my job,’ she muttered. ‘That’s what’s the problem.’ She looked out of the control window towards her boss and the TV crew.
‘I can be discreet, you know. What’s he done?’
Sharon sighed. ‘Oh, it’s nothing really, but I don’t want to sneak on him. We bumped into him when we were shopping that afternoon, about two.’
‘At Brentwood?’
‘Yeah. He said he’d got bored with the conference and come back early. But he made me promise not to let on to Bo or anyone else. Wouldn’t look good.’
‘I see. He was on his own, was he?’
‘I think he was looking for someone. That’s what it looked like, when I spotted him. He seemed embarrassed to meet us-because of the conference, I suppose.’
‘And you didn’t mention this before, when you were interviewed?’
‘I wasn’t asked, was I? Anyway, it’s not important, is it?’
‘No, no. You’re right. I think we should do as he asked and just keep it to ourselves, don’t you?’
‘Thanks.’ Sharon grinned with relief. ‘I mean, it’s not as if it’s the first time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He slips off for an hour or two sometimes and gets us to cover for him. Speedy used to reckon he had a secret girlfriend.’
‘What, Harry?’
‘Well, he’s not that old…’ Sharon blushed again. ‘I mean, he’s in pretty good nick. Considering.’
They both laughed and Kathy sat down beside her and they went through the list of all the security staff, checking off from the work schedules where they would have been on the Saturday.
When they were finished Kathy glanced out of the window again. Harry Jackson and his visitors had moved further on down the service road.
‘Okay, now I’d like to ask you to be discreet, Sharon.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I still have one or two loose ends from the Kerri Vlasich case that I should have tied up days ago, and I don’t want Gavin Lowry and the others knowing I forgot. I don’t think it’s important, see, but I have to put in a report. Maybe you could help me.’
‘Yeah, if I can.’
‘Okay, well, there was an entry in your daybooks for last August I needed to check.’
‘I’ll get it,’ Sharon offered, but Kathy took the photocopy of the missing page from her bag and showed it to her.
‘This is the one. Were you around on that week, do you remember?’
Sharon studied the entries. ‘That’s my handwriting and initials. The two cars broken into on the Wednesday. I remember now. It was hot. People were leaving their car windows cracked open.’
‘Right. What about the entry on Thursday, the confused woman?’
Sharon frowned, thinking. ‘Yes, I remember. We’d had problems with her before. She was mental, I reckon. Nobody could understand what she was saying. She passed out in the mall, and we called an ambulance.’
‘How big was she?’
‘Oh, tiny. Fierce dark eyes. She had a bad cough, too. Spitting and coughing over everybody. Yuck.’
‘Black coat?’
‘Ye-es. I think she did.’
‘Did she have a sign?’
‘A sign?’
‘Yes. A message on a piece of paper?’
Sharon shook her head. ‘Don’t remember that. Mind you, she tried to hide or run whenever anyone in uniform appeared. Oh yes, I remember! She was begging, that was it. Stopping people in the mall and pestering them. Speedy caught her on tape.’
‘Did you get a name?’
‘No idea, sorry.’
‘You say there’d been trouble with her before, but I didn’t notice any other daybook entries.’
‘Well, sometimes Harry would say not to bother putting trivial things in the book. Why? What’s the interest?’
‘She had a daughter we were trying to track down. This is her picture.’ Kathy took the photograph from her bag.
‘Oh, I think I know her…’ Sharon squinted at the portrait. ‘She looked a bit older than this. Hang on a tick.’ She got up, brought over a couple of the daybooks and began to turn the pages. ‘Somewhere…’ It took her a few minutes, but eventually she found the entry, almost illegible, in late May.
‘That’s Carl’s writing. He’s hopeless.’
‘What does it say?’ Kathy asked, peering at the scrawl.
‘“Cash theft at supermarket, f. employee, police called.” Carl and I both went. One of the girls who restocks the shelves was caught taking money from the handbags of other women who work there. This was her.’ Sharon nodded at the photograph. ‘She was thin as a rake, and refused to say a word. The store insisted on making a formal complaint so they could get rid of her, but in the end it was them who got into trouble.’
‘How come?’
‘They said the girl was called something ordinary, like Mary Smith or something, but they couldn’t provide proof of identity, or age, and when they checked her social security number it was wrong. Social services and the tax people got onto it. Someone said the girl was on the run, or an illegal immigrant.’
Kathy thought, Wiff Smiff and Mary Smith. ‘What happened to her?’
‘Dunno. We saw her in here a couple of times afterwards, I remember, and kept an eye out for trouble. Then she stopped coming, I suppose.’
‘Like Norma Jean,’ Kathy said.
‘Norma Jean?’
‘Oh, she was another trouble-maker in the daybooks, Sharon. Before your time. You’ve never heard the others talk about her?’
