‘What information?’ the man shouted. ‘What you fucking talking about?’
‘Watch your language, Winston,’ the woman PC said sharply.
Kathy turned back to the girls, and they continued on through the Bazaar until the dark mall opened into a small square from which another set of escalators led upwards towards light and another abrupt change of scene. Here they were on a gallery with large observation windows along one wall, overlooking the leisure centre and pool. It was busy down there, full of little kids with their dads, grandparents sitting under the palm trees and striped umbrellas on the astroturf waving encouragingly to the bodies in the surf, children sliding down the curling multi-coloured intestines of the water chutes, whooping and screaming silently beyond the glass. And there was surf too, surging from the wave machine at the deep end of the huge pool and spreading out across its surface to lap finally on the sandy beach.
‘You come up here do you?’ Kathy asked, looking at the benches for spectators along the gallery.
‘Sometimes, when we have a break at work.’
‘What, to check out the good-looking boys?’ Kathy suggested.
Lisa giggled and Naomi glowered disapprovingly at her.
‘What’s down there?’ Kathy asked. To the right she could see the shops of the main upper mall, but to the left the gallery continued across the end of the leisure centre, then narrowed to a set of glass doors.
‘That’s the gym and fitness centre,’ Naomi said, offhand.
‘Can we go in?’
‘If you want.’
Through the glass doors the public gallery continued as a narrower bridge, with a view on one side over squash courts, and on the other into a gymnasium full of machines. The floor of these rooms was only a few metres below the gallery level here, and the people working out below seemed almost close enough to touch. They stood for a while watching a couple of young women capably thrashing a ball around one of the squash courts, then turned to view a muscular male through the other window, pounding the leather arms of the machine in which he lay. He was almost directly below them, the beads of sweat visible on his body as he lifted and dropped, an expression of intense effort on his face as the column of weights behind his head rose and fell with every grunt.
He stopped abruptly, opened his eyes and sat up. Then, as if he could sense that he was being observed, he turned his head and looked up and gave Kathy and the girls a sly grin. She watched his eyes track down each of their bodies in turn, and she turned away from the glass and they walked back the way they had come. She noticed a red blush on Lisa’s cheek, and saw Naomi mutter something in her ear which made the other girl pull away with a complaining, ‘Naomi!’
‘So, where else do you go?’ Kathy asked.
‘That’s about all,’ Naomi replied. ‘Sometimes we go to the cinema down on the lower mall, just off the food court the other way. They have eight screens.’
‘Ten,’ Lisa corrected.
Naomi shrugged.
‘Are there any pubs, clubs?’
‘Yeah, down past the cinema, but we don’t go there.’
‘Never?’
They shook their heads.
‘Do fellers come into the food court from the pub? Having had too much to drink?’
‘The security are very hot on that. Mr Jackson.’
‘You know Mr Jackson, do you?’
‘He’s nice,’ Lisa said. ‘He gives us sweets, and vouchers for things on offer.’
Naomi rolled her eyes. Big deal.
‘What about the shop where Kerri got her bag?’
‘Oh yes, it’s on this level. We’ll take you there.’
Along the way they were stopped by a silver-haired woman wanting their signatures on a petition. Though small, she was formidable and not easily bypassed. Pinned to her cardigan was a printed identification which covered a significant portion of her chest on account of the length of its message and the size of the letters:
HARRIET RUTTER, PRESIDENT, SILVERMEADOW RESIDENTS’ ASSOCIATION.
The woman beamed up at Kathy. ‘We are petitioning for significant improvements in the choice of music which is played here in the centre,’ she said briskly, with a piping Home Counties accent. ‘It is currently repetitious and bland, and we are pressing the management for a more enlightened choice, encompassing a mixture of classical and popular works, selected by a democratically elected committee.’
‘A residents’ association?’ Kathy said. ‘Do people actually live here?’
‘Aha, well, no, not exactly. We had a great deal of debate over that word. A great deal.’ Mrs Rutter raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips in a way that managed to suggest that there had been a great deal of foolishness spoken before her own view on the matter had prevailed. ‘You see, there’s really no appropriate word for what we are. We don’t live here, no, of course not. No one could live here.’ She looked about her with a smile at the absurdity of the idea. ‘We come from all around, many from miles away. On the other hand, we are not just customers or consumers or users or stakeholder s-such dreadful terms! We don’t come here just to buy things, you see. We toyed with the Friends of Silvermeadow, but that makes it sound like an orphanage, don’t you think, or a zoo. We’re simply concerned citizens, for whom Silvermeadow has become a kind of focus in our lives, and it occurred to us, after we’d bumped into each other in repeated encounters such as this, that we should form an association.’
‘I see,’ Kathy nodded, thinking that this might have its uses. ‘And you’re the president.’
‘Yes. Here, let me give you one of our leaflets. You may be interested in joining us. You’ll find our mission statement on the second page, and an application for membership section at the back. We’ve won a good many victories for improvements here over the past eighteen months, and enjoyed ourselves enormously in the process.’ She chuckled combatively and thrust a leaflet into Kathy’s hand. ‘And the petition?’
‘I’ll think about that,’ Kathy said. ‘I haven’t really formed a view about the music.’
‘We’ll sign,’ Naomi said. ‘The music’s crap.’
‘Oh.’ Mrs Rutter was startled, but only for a moment. ‘That’s nice, dear. Here you are.’
They moved on to the bag shop, in which they found one last remaining frog bag, identical, so the girls said, to the one Kerri had bought on her last birthday with money sent by her father. Kathy bought it and they went back out into the mall.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Now I’d like to take you to meet my boss, Detective Chief Inspector Brock.’
Their faces fell.
‘What’s the matter? You’ll like him.’
‘We’re not in trouble, are we?’ Naomi said.
‘No, it’s all right. I think he’ll understand why you did what Kerri asked. But he’ll want to hear it from you.’
‘He’s a big wheel, is he?’
‘Yes. He’s one of the top detectives in Scotland Yard, Naomi. If anyone’s going to find out what happened to Kerri, he will.’
‘I feel sick,’ Lisa said, and looked it.
‘She felt sick last night,’ Naomi said. ‘It was hearing about Kerri. She hasn’t eaten since. Neither of us has.’
‘Well look, why don’t you come with me to meet Mr Brock, and you can sit down there, and we’ll get you something nice to eat and drink, and you’ll feel a lot better.’
Phil, the action manager, was now firmly established at a desk just inside the front door, so that no one could come or go without being checked off on his spreadsheets and schedules. Kathy reported to him with the girls in tow, staring wide-eyed and intent at all the activity inside the shop unit. She sat them down beside Phil and got a paper cup of water for Lisa, then went through the unit to Brock’s table, now looking considerably more cluttered. He looked up from the papers he was reading and waved her to a seat.
‘Progress?’ she asked.
‘Six staff so far with records, one promising.’ He passed a fax across to her. ‘Eddie Testor, six months for assault and criminal damage two years ago. Road rage-he forced the other driver to pull in, then battered his car to a crumpled heap with a couple of five-pound hand-weights he happened to have with him. Offered steroid abuse in mitigation. He’s been working at the leisure centre as a lifeguard and swimming instructor, based on false references and credentials. Gavin Lowry’s interviewing him at Hornchurch Street now.’