them, can you? Poor Suzanne. She tries so hard to do the right thing.’
‘You’re not going to give up, are you?’ Kathy said, surprising herself with the force of her question.
‘Give up? No. But I’d better let things calm down. Be patient.’
‘Maybe you can be too patient…’ she said, then stopped herself. ‘Anyway, that’s sad. And you’ve been sitting here working this out.’
‘Oh, it didn’t take long to work it out. No, mostly I’ve been sitting here wondering what else it can tell me.’
‘What else?’
‘Well, their story is Naomi’s story, isn’t it? Parents don’t cope, grandparents have to take over. It’s not uncommon. There’s a lot of it about these days.’
Kathy said nothing. In a way it was her story too.
‘But it brought it home to me what it does to the kids. They took quite a risk, after all. They could have alienated their grandmother and made her side with me. But they had to trust that they weren’t too late. They were prepared to do almost anything to hang onto her, what was left of their family.’
‘And Naomi?’
‘Yes, Naomi… A very determined young woman, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Tough, her grandparents called her.’
‘Tougher than them, certainly. They’re quite frail, aren’t they? While Naomi goes out to work to buy them lottery tickets, to keep alive their impossible dream of getting out of that estate and living in a cottage by the sea.’
‘I’m not sure…’ Kathy said tentatively. The wine and the shock on an empty stomach were making her feel dizzy, and she was becoming increasingly uncertain that she was following Brock’s train of logic, or even that there was one.
‘Where it takes us? Well, it took me somewhere I should have gone long ago. Do you remember the picture of Naomi’s elder sister on the wall of the Taits’ sitting room?’
‘Er… with the two dogs?’
‘Yes, that’s it. I got to wondering about the dogs.’
‘The dogs?’ Kathy stared at him, quite lost now.
‘Mmm. Goodness, we’ve nearly finished this bottle already, and I haven’t got a thing for you to eat. I was going to take you and Leon out to dinner somewhere. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure I could get up from this chair and go out into that cold night again,’ Kathy said.
‘Pizza?’
‘That sounds good.’
‘Excellent.’
Brock got to his feet and went over to the phone. The pizza delivery number was on one of a number of cards pinned above it. It looked well thumbed, Kathy noticed.
‘So…’ Brock settled himself again in front of the fire. ‘The sister, Kimberley, I looked up her record.’ He waved a hand at the computer.
‘Drugs, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, possession and supply. Also theft, from her employer, a veterinary practice.’
‘A vet?’ Kathy looked up sharply.
‘Hence the dogs, presumably. Perhaps the picture was taken at her work.’
‘Not the ketamine?’
‘Exactly. As well as cash, her employers accused her of stealing certain animal drugs: Stenbolol, an anabolic steroid, as well as a consignment of Ketapet which was never traced. She was also found to have supplied amphetamines and Ecstasy to two other employees.’
‘You think Naomi took over her sister’s drugs and sold them at Silvermeadow?’
‘I’m getting the batch numbers checked. If it is the same stuff, it’s just possible that Kimberley herself supplied Speedy before she was caught, but Naomi seems more likely. We know that she knew all about ketamine, and she knew Wiff.’
‘Yes.’ Kathy remembered how shocked both Naomi and Lisa had been when she’d told them the name of the drug they had found in Wiff ’s den. ‘She told me that Wiff was selling ketamine for someone else.’
‘Maybe he was buying it for someone else, from her.’
‘Naomi was supplying to Wiff and Speedy? And Kerri too?’
Brock stared at his glass. ‘That was the other reason I was feeling glum when you arrived, Kathy.’
They went over it again and again as they worked through the pizza and the second bottle, but got no further than the conviction that Naomi knew more than she’d let on. Finally Brock wiped his mouth and said, ‘I was sceptical at first, Kathy, but now I’m prepared to believe that you may be right, that everything is connected to everything else. That place… Bo Seager described it as a dream that had turned sick, and it is a bit like that. Like one of those buildings that gets legionnaires’ disease in its air-conditioning, or golden staph in its plumbing. Only this isn’t a virus. Once upon a time they’d have probably called in an exorcist to purge it. Now they give it to us.’
‘Mmm.’ Kathy felt her eyelids drooping. ‘Sorry I didn’t get to meet Suzanne.’
‘Another time… hopefully.’
‘At least you must have plenty of spare beds here now.’ She remembered crisp white sheets from an earlier visit.
‘Absolutely. And I can manage to supply breakfast. But I make toast in an electric toaster these days.’
‘Thank goodness for that.’
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
