What made it odder was that there seemed to be nothing of interest in the missing entries. They recorded a mild heart attack on the Monday, nothing on Tuesday, two cars broken into in the carpark on Wednesday, a confused woman taken home on the Thursday, and some graffiti sprayed on one of the perimeter signs on the Friday night. All in all, a typical, uneventful Silvermeadow week.
Brock was very interested in Desai’s report, and he and Kathy decided to drive over to speak to Kerri’s mother again. A social worker was with her this time, and she was much more composed than before, but still very pale and fragile.
‘I think it helped, seeing Kerri,’ she whispered. ‘I knew then that it was true that she was dead. It helped me to face it. Has Stefan been to see her?’
‘Yes,’ Brock said. ‘You haven’t seen him?’
‘No. I heard he was over here, but we won’t see each other, except at the funeral.’ She turned quickly away and wiped a hand across her eyes. ‘Did you want to ask me something?’
‘Yes. It isn’t an easy thing to raise with you, Mrs Vlasich, especially so soon, but I think we must.’
‘Oh…’ The woman lowered her eyes to the carpet and waited without expression for whatever was coming.
‘Kerri was a sociable girl, I remember you saying, Mrs Vlasich. And I suppose she and her friends would go to parties and so on.’
Alison Vlasich gave an uncertain shrug.
‘And I daresay that Kerri was, like all kids, trying things, experimenting, eh? They have to try smoking, don’t they, and alcohol? And these days other things too.’
She looked up warily. ‘What are you saying?’
‘What I’m saying is,’ he said gently, ‘that we know Kerri had been experimenting with drugs for some time, several months, and we’d like to know a bit more about that.’
Mrs Vlasich put her hand to her mouth, shaking her head.
‘It may have nothing to do with her death, but we need to be sure. Can you help us?’
He let her take her time, and eventually she said, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Not even a guess? A hint?’
She shook her head. ‘But I was always afraid. It’s what you hear, isn’t it? Teenagers, round here especially. I used to ask her at first, when she started going out: do the others take drugs, Kerri? She always said no. She didn’t like me asking though, said it was stupid, and so after a while I stopped.’ Her voice trailed away. Then she blinked as if an uncomfortable thought had just surfaced. ‘She never had any money. She didn’t earn a lot at the food court, but I never really knew what she spent it on. She never brought any home.’ Another long silence, then, ‘You should speak to her friends, to Naomi and Lisa. They might know.’
Brock nodded. ‘We’re going to ask them. But it’s just possible that we may have overlooked something that Kerri left behind here. I know we have already had a good look at her room, but we didn’t know then what we know now, so we’d like to check your flat again, with your permission.’
Mrs Vlasich agreed, and they spent an hour going through the place again, but found nothing. If Kerri Vlasich had possessed drugs at the time of her death she most probably had taken them with her.
Naomi hadn’t yet returned home from school, so her grandparents invited Brock and Kathy to come in to wait for her.
‘They’re coping as well as might be expected,’ Mrs Tait said. ‘Poor Lisa is taking it especially hard. She says she’ll never go back to Silvermeadow when this is over. She’s going to give up her job there. Naomi doesn’t show it so much, on the surface…’
‘Sterner stuff,’ her husband muttered.
‘But underneath she’s shattered too, I can tell.’
They listened in sombre silence to what Brock had to say, and didn’t seem surprised by his suggestion that Kerri had been using drugs.
‘I don’t think poor Alison can really have been surprised,’ Mrs Tait said eventually. ‘It’s everywhere these days. So hard for the children to avoid.’
‘Especially over there in Primrose,’ Jack Tait growled.
‘Everywhere, Jack. We, of all people, know that.’ She looked steadily at Brock and said quietly, ‘That was how our daughter, Naomi’s mother, died, you see. She tried so hard, but she kept going back to it. Things would get her down, and then she would go back to it. You know, don’t you? You must see it every day.’
Brock nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘A scourge,’ Mr Tait said. ‘A curse.’
‘And now Kimberley, Naomi’s elder sister, is in the same trouble.’ She glanced across at the photographs on the wall. ‘The one on the left.’ To Kathy it seemed as if the family portraits were taking on the character of a gallery of missing persons, or perhaps a shrine. Brock got up and looked at the pictures dutifully.
‘Always like her mother,’ Mr Tait said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Brock said.
‘So we can understand how Alison must feel. But was it a serious problem? Kerri was so young. Did it contribute in some way-’
‘We’re not sure yet. We need to find out as much as we can about it.’
‘Yes, well, Naomi may know something.’ Mrs Tait stopped and looked fixedly at Brock. ‘You’re wondering, aren’t you, about Naomi? You’re wondering if she’s in the same boat? Well I can tell you straight away, she’s not. Naomi has not touched drugs.’
Brock shrugged. ‘Well, I know how difficult it is to be sure-’
‘No.’ She shook her head determinedly. ‘I know. We’ve been through it twice already. We know the signs all too well, believe me, Chief Inspector. We had it all from our daughter: the little lies to borrow money, the money gone from your purse, the strange phone calls at odd hours, things missing from the house, the moods. We got to know those signs very well. And when Kimberley started we knew straight away, although she denied it till she was blue in the face and convinced everyone else, her sisters included, everyone except Jack and me. And Naomi’s seen it too, and she knows what happens. She’s not like Kimberley. She won’t end up the same way.’
‘She never borrows no money,’ Jack Tait said, leaning forward to emphasise the point. ‘She saves every penny of her work money. Every penny.’
‘It must be tough for you both,’ Brock said.
‘You cope, don’t you? You have to. We’d had our dreams of what we’d do when Jack retired, go live by the sea near our friends. But that wasn’t to be. We were needed here, to look after our grandchildren.’
‘This’ll give you some idea what our Naomi’s like,’ Jack Tait said. He got stiffly to his feet and went over to the mantelpiece and lifted a piece of paper out of a bowl. He handed it to Brock proudly. It was a lottery ticket. ‘Once a month she buys us one of these out of her pay from the sandwich shop. She says, one day we’ll win, and we’ll be able to buy a house in Westcliff big enough for us all. And she believes it too.’
They heard the front door bang and the sounds of Naomi discarding her bag and coat in the hall.
Her reaction to Brock’s questions was almost a mirror of her grandparents. She nodded sadly, and said she knew that Kerri had been trying things-speed, she thought, and Ecstasy, which she’d got from boys at parties. Lisa and herself had tried to make her stop, but Kerri said it was exciting, and they were stupid. They’d had an argument over it, which was the reason Kerri had stopped confiding in them about her plans.
‘We should have told someone, shouldn’t we? Her mum or something. Then maybe she’d have been all right.’
‘It may have nothing to do with what happened to her, Naomi,’ Brock assured her. ‘But we want to check everything. What about these boys? Do you know who they are? Do they go to Silvermeadow?’