‘She wasn’t reported missing?’
‘No way. Nobody gave a damn. I just phoned her last social worker. She said the same thing. Sometime around March, Norma Jean stopped being a bother, and everybody breathed a great big sigh of relief. She’d tried to follow it up, but couldn’t find out anything. In theory, Norma Jean is still on her load.’
Kathy didn’t say anything at first, not wanting to sound dismissive. Miriam Sangster was clearly taking this very much to heart.
‘Yes, all right,’ the constable said, ‘there are hundreds of Norma Jeans, thousands.’
‘She probably just moved on, Miriam. Decided to go somewhere she wasn’t so well known.’
‘Yes. But still, I thought our records showed that no one had disappeared from Silvermeadow. Now I can’t be certain, can I?’
‘Tell you what. I’ll check her out in the Silvermeadow security records. They may have something on her that we don’t.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And let me know if you find anything else. You said that Mrs Vlasich had heard some stories at the hospital?’
‘Yes, but I think she got it confused. A cook had heard it from a nurse who’d supposedly heard an old woman say she’d lost her young daughter at Silvermeadow. Sounded like classic urban myth stuff.’
‘Yes, well, frankly I’d forget about it. You’ve done about as much as you can.’
The other woman nodded reluctantly, relieved all the same. ‘I hope you get something soon.’
The girls seemed to brighten a little once they were under the dappled artificial sunshine of the mall, as if this was where they were most at home, whereas Kathy felt the same sense of disorientation as before. It was full of people again now, not as in a city street hurrying past without eye contact, but a relaxed crowd such as one might find at a fairground, perhaps, or a fete, sharing some implied sense of community and well-being. Yet there seemed no substance to it here, no relationships and ties that one might hope to uncover between people in a real street or town. Here everyone was afloat, gliding through a fantasy. She recalled Bo Seager’s remark about sharks following the shoals. A shark could easily pass unnoticed here.
They walked down the main mall, the girls pointing out the stores where they liked to window shop, the characters they knew by sight or reputation, and gradually the shock of Kerri’s murder seemed to fade from their minds, as if time and reality were suspended in the magic grove, and all the intractable grubbiness of life dissolved away in the glowing golden light. From time to time their eyes would be drawn to a sparkling shop display, and Kathy would pause with them and find herself drawn into their conversation, checking out some lovely thing that none of them had a use for. Then she would have to turn away, and remember what they were supposed to be doing, and get them moving again. Lulled by the scented air, the music not too loud or too soft but just right, it was hard to imagine that anything unpleasant could ever have really happened here-an abduction, a murder. In here the foetal figure waiting for the incinerator was no more than a chimera, a bad dream.
They stood at the balcony overlooking the food court for a while, listening to the sounds of fountains and waterfalls from the rain forest on this side of the lagoon, and the girls pointed out where they worked, and the other food stalls that formed the perimeter of the court. Between Mexican Pete’s and the Peking Duck was the Soda Factory, done up like an American drugstore counter in stainless steel and red leather stools. Then there was Snow White’s Pancake Parlour, and they were silent for a moment as they watched the girls on their roller skates, gliding skilfully on long legs between the tables.
They descended on the escalator and came to the shore of the volcanic lagoon. There was a uniformed copper standing there in conversation with one of the locals, who was explaining what happened.
‘Yeah, well, first you get yer warning tremors and rumblings see.’
‘Right, right.’ The officer nodded seriously, as if this was significant evidence.
‘Well then yer water starts moving, ominous right, and you ’ear the sound of frightened birds. Then the eruption starts-bangs and roars from the mountain-then smoke and sparks comin’out from the peak, and after a while molten lava starts flowing down the sides.’
‘Molten lava! You’re having me on.’
‘No, right up. Course it’s not yer actual molten lava, naturally. It’s an illusion, see, made with coloured lights hidden down the sides of the volcano. But it’s convincing. Then the water foams up, and that native canoe over there tips up in the air and sinks under the waves, like a whirlpool’s sucked it down. You should see it, mate. You’ll be impressed. Get your mates down here, on the hour.’
‘Yeah.’ The policeman nodded thoughtfully. Kathy could imagine the scene that afternoon: small children and grannies complaining that they couldn’t see for all the hulking great coppers in the front row.
But Lisa and Naomi were bored by this. They’d seen Mauna Loa erupt so many times. They led Kathy across to the far side of the food court, where an abrupt leap took place from the Pacific to Ali Baba’s Arabian Nights. Large pots belonging to the Forty Thieves stood at the entrance of the Grand Bazaar, the name written in Arabic-style neon lettering over the cave-like entry, guarded by a turbaned mannequin with a flute frozen in the act of charming a cobra out of its basket.
‘Do they have snake-charmers in Arabia?’ Kathy asked, then saw from the look on the girls’ faces that the question made no sense.
Inside the Bazaar the lighting levels dropped sharply, small spotlights dazzling like stars overhead against a black ceiling, a theme taken up in many of the shops. These were clearly aimed at the teen market-lurid T-shirt boutiques, a Doc Martens store, pop CDs, an electronic games arcade and a salon offering challenging concepts in hair and the piercing of body parts.
There seemed to be something going on here, voices raised above the general noise. Two uniformed officers, a man and a woman, were talking to the agitated tenant of the games arcade, a black man with dreadlocks.
‘Look!’ he yelled at them, brandishing his arms, rattling the gold bangles on his wrists. ‘You lot think that every black guy wearing a bit of gold jewellery is nicking stuff or selling drugs, don’t you? That’s what it is, innit?’
‘Keep your voice down please, sir,’ the male officer said.
‘No, I won’t shut up, ’cos it’s true, innit? I get this all the time, don’t I? You think I’m selling these kids drugs, is that it?’
‘Are you?’ the woman cut in.
All around them in the unit, teenage boys were easing away from the machines they had been playing and slipping away into the mall. Among them Kathy saw the boy she’d seen that morning outside the bookshop. He glanced back over his shoulder, then skipped into a run and disappeared into the crowd.
‘Hang on, you stay right there.’ The male officer left his colleague and moved over to two boys trying to leave. He bent forward and started talking to them. One of them shrugged and reluctantly began to turn out his pockets.
Kathy didn’t know the officers. The woman was trying to make some point with the operator of the arcade, who was now adopting an exaggerated pose of silence. Kathy walked over and showed the woman her warrant card. ‘Can I help?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ The woman smiled. She seemed calm and in control. ‘We’ve received some information regarding Mr Starkey, and we’re just persuading him to close up shop so we can talk to him. We can manage, thanks.’