‘What relation is he to your ex-husband, Alison?’ Kathy said, trying to sound as if it were a matter of no great significance.
‘He’s Stefan’s brother.’
‘Stefan’s brother works at Silvermeadow? What does he do there?’
Kathy heard her sigh, then, ‘He runs an ice-cream shop.’
‘And he’s called Vlasich?’ Kathy persisted.
‘Not any more. He used to be Dragan Vlasich. Now he’s Bruno Verdi.’
Kathy stared at the notepad in front of her, shook her head. ‘Alison, you never mentioned this before.’
‘Didn’t I? No… it didn’t seem important.’
And Bruno Verdi hadn’t mentioned it either, she thought, nor Stefan Vlasich. What the hell’s going on?
‘Did Kerri and her uncle get on, Alison?’
‘He helped her to get her job,’ she whispered.
‘But did they get on? Were they on good terms?’
‘I’m tired now. I’ve taken a sleeping pill.’ And the line went dead.
Kathy thought. She remembered someone, early on, referring to another Vlasich with a record, apparently unconnected with this family. She went over to the computer and logged in, and tapped her request, and waited, until it came up on the screen: Dragan Vlasich, charged in June 1992 under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, the charge dropped in September of that year.
She tried to ring Brock, but his mobile requested her to leave a message, and she put down the phone and thought some more. Well, that was why they’d kept quiet, wasn’t it? Knowing what was on his file, they must be trying to protect him, Alison and Stefan. And surely neither of them would do that if they thought it remotely possible that he could have harmed their daughter. Looked at in that way, their silence seemed to vindicate him rather than the opposite.
She stretched, feeling the tension in her back from crouching over the phone, when it rang.
‘Kathy! Hi, it’s me.’
She smiled, hearing his voice. ‘Hi, Leon,’ she said softly. ‘Where are you?’
‘Your place. And I’m cooking, and if you’re not home in an hour you’ll regret it.’
She laughed. She’d given him a key, and introduced him to Mrs P. ‘Well, I don’t want to have any regrets. So I’d better come home.’
But she did detour by way of the food court, not with any intention of approaching Verdi yet, but just to get another look at him. Only he wasn’t there, the place was being run by the old gondolier and a youth. Kathy watched them for a while from the upper level, then went down on the escalator and spoke to the man in the striped T-shirt and scarlet bandanna.
‘Mr Verdi about?’
‘Not tonight,’ the gondolier said, with an incongruous cockney accent. ‘Mondays and Tuesdays he leaves early.’
‘Every Monday and Tuesday?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘I wanted to ask him something. He’ll be at home, will he?’
The man took off his boater and scratched his head. ‘Don’t reckon so. He visits his mother, I think. In a hospital or something.’
‘Ah. Doesn’t matter. I’ll get him another time. Thanks.’
Kathy walked away. She recalled the file entry about Stefan Vlasich, and how he now lived in Hamburg with his mother.
Leon had prepared veal escalopes in a cream and mushroom sauce, with boiled potatoes and broccoli, and was immensely pleased with himself.
‘This is wonderful,’ Kathy said, as he poured her a glass of wine and sat down.
‘I really enjoyed doing it,’ he beamed. ‘It was so nice to be able to cook for someone else. So therapeutic. I forgot about everything else.’
Kathy laughed, then yawned.
‘You’re tired.’
‘No, just relaxed, coming back to this. Thanks.’ She took his hand.
‘Tough day?’
‘Not really. I had a word with Speedy over that tape. He claimed it was just his mischievous sense of humour. Wheelchair or not, I reckon he’s pretty good at making people feel uncomfortable. Anyway, looks like we’ve got a prime suspect. You remember the lifeguard in the pool that Gavin Lowry questioned earlier? We’ve got a witness that saw him and Kerri together on the evening of the sixth.’
‘So she really was there. I’m glad of that, Kathy, because the forensic evidence has been pretty useless so far.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘Maybe you won’t need Alex Nicholson then.’
Kathy looked up from her veal. ‘What?’
‘You remember her? From the Hannaford case?’
‘Of course. The forensic psychologist.’
‘Yeah. Well, she’s in London, and Brock’s arranged for her to come down to Silvermeadow to talk to us. Didn’t he mention it?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ You know damn well so, she thought. Dr Nicholson was young and attractive and on that last occasion had seemed, to Kathy’s way of thinking, to have had her eye on Leon Desai. She would certainly have remembered if Brock had mentioned it.
‘Do you keep in touch with her, then?’ she asked, toying with her broccoli.
‘Alex? Yes, now and then. She went to Liverpool soon after the Hannaford case to join the forensic psychology unit at the university. She phoned me last week to say she’d be in London. I told Brock, and he got in touch with her.’
Stop it, Kathy thought. Tell him what you think.
‘I thought you fancied her,’ she said. ‘On the Hannaford case.’
‘Did you? Why did you think that?’ He grinned, and the way he grinned told her that maybe it was true.
She smiled back. ‘I don’t know. I just thought that. Anyway, she’s going to give us her thoughts, is she?’
‘She told Brock she’d be interested to have a look, because of the setting. That interested her, apparently. So I’m glad at least that we’ve established that Kerri really was there, otherwise it might have been a waste of time.’
Kathy wiped the last sauce from her plate and put down her knife and fork. ‘Well, that was wonderful. If you ever decide to run off with someone else-Alex Nicholson, say-promise you’ll leave me your recipes.’ She thought she got the tone about right-light-hearted banter.
‘Kathy,’ he said seriously, reaching forward and taking her hands, ‘I’ve still got lots of recipes to try out on you. You’ve no idea.’
8
T he hunt for Eddie Testor resumed the following day. It was spurred on by information given by another employee at the leisure pool, a young man whose shifts ran from Monday to Friday, so he hadn’t previously been interviewed. He recalled that he had seen Testor on the afternoon of the sixth. They were both rostered from midday to nine p.m. that day, and Testor had been due for a one-hour meal break from four to five p.m., and this was confirmed by his supervisor. But Testor had wanted his break later for some reason, and had arranged with the other lifeguard to cover for him between 5.30 and 6.30 p.m. The man remembered it particularly because it had messed up his previous arrangements to meet a girlfriend during his break. He also suggested that, although Testor had never confided in him, he thought he might have had a close friend at the Silvermeadow Sports Club and Fitness Salon, where he seemed to spend much of his free time.
‘Fitness salon?’ Kathy said, taking the note from Phil. ‘What’s a fitness salon?’
‘It’s where they make you look fit, as opposed to actually being fit, Kathy,’ Phil explained patiently. ‘Sun lamps and stuff. Liposuction too, for all I know.’
‘That figures,’ Gavin Lowry growled at Kathy’s shoulder. ‘That wanker Testor would go for that. I’ll come with you.’
On the way down to the lower level, Kathy said, ‘Haven’t seen much of you recently, Gavin. How’s it going?’
He blew his nose loudly, looking out of sorts. ‘Bit hung over, actually. Me and a few of the lads went down the pub last night, after it became obvious we weren’t going to find that bastard. Drown our sorrows.’ In any ordinary town street on a wet December morning his scowling discontent would have seemed entirely normal, but here, in Silvermeadow’s perpetual Indian summer, he looked menacing and out of place, and people glanced at him uncertainly as they passed.