He sniffed and wiped and finally nodded. ‘I was just doing a favour for Mr Verdi, that’s all.’
‘You know Mr Verdi, do you?’
‘A bit,’ he said cautiously. ‘He works out at the gym. He… he’s friendly to me.’
Kathy thought that the word ‘friendly’ didn’t come out very easily. And she also remembered that Verdi had denied recognising Eddie’s picture.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he wanted to do a favour for this girl he knew, only he didn’t want nobody to know.’
‘What sort of favour?’
‘Her mum and dad had split up, and she wanted to go and see her dad in Germany, only her mum wouldn’t let her go, which was really unfair, he said. So Mr Verdi agreed to help her, give her a ticket and some cash. He said he’d get into trouble if her mum found out, so he wanted me to give her the envelope one Monday evening, when he would be at the hospital with his wife, and nobody could say he had anything to do with it.’
‘What exactly did you do?’
‘She was going to come in to Silvermeadow on the bus that arrives at five twenty-five. I was to change my shift break around so I could meet her at five-thirty at the windows overlooking the pool, and give her the envelope. That was all. And that was what happened. This girl with the green frog bag, like Mr Verdi said, came in right on time, and I waved the envelope and she came over and said, “Hello Eddie, I’m Kerri. Is that for me?” and I gave it to her, just like Mr Verdi had said.’
‘You hadn’t met the girl before?’
‘No.’
‘And it was the girl in our photographs?’
He looked sheepish. ‘I suppose.’
‘Did you see what was in the envelope?’
‘I didn’t actually see. It was sealed up, but it was tickets and some money-Mr Verdi said.’
‘Mr Verdi trusted you with money, Eddie? He wasn’t afraid you might take it for yourself?’
‘Oh no!’ He looked shocked at the idea. ‘I wouldn’t do that to Mr Verdi.’
‘You know him pretty well then?’
Eddie shrugged. ‘He’s an important man at Silvermeadow. He knows the people who run things.’
‘I see. And what happened after you gave the girl the money?’
‘She left. I don’t know where… along the mall.’
‘And you went to your waxing.’
Eddie shook his head sadly. ‘No. I went and got a hamburger in the food court.’
‘But Kim Hislop said-’
He looked very uncomfortable. ‘I ’spect she was trying to help me. Maybe she got it mixed up. I don’t know. I don’t want to get her into no trouble.’
Kathy shook her head. ‘Eddie, why the hell didn’t you tell us this at the beginning? You’ve caused lots of people trouble by lying like that.’
‘Sorry,’ he whispered, squirming in his seat. ‘I couldn’t, see. Cos I’d promised Mr Verdi.’
‘I understand. But now you must put things right, by telling Mr Brock everything. Okay? Mr Brock is a much more important man than Mr Verdi, believe me, and he can make a lot more trouble if you don’t come clean.’
He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, yeah. I want to do that. I couldn’t keep it in no more.’
The press had gone from Hornchurch Street by the time they got back, and Kathy was able to drive in without difficulty. She took Eddie to an interview room to make his statement to Brock. When it was over they made some rapid phone calls, then sent a car to Silvermeadow to pick up the gelato king.
Verdi arrived with an air of benevolent mystification, Brock noted, an honest citizen trying be patient with the inexplicable ways of the police.
‘Was it really necessary to bring me over here, Chief Inspector? I am quite short-handed today.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Brock snapped down the switch of a recording machine and intoned the time and names of those present. ‘We found a travel agent in Basildon who says you bought some tickets on the sixth of December. Tell us about them, will you?’
Verdi blinked, and Brock saw the signs of sudden panicked calculations. ‘The sixth? Perhaps you would just remind me?’
‘Why? Did you make more than one purchase of tickets around then?’
‘Well, I don’t think… I just don’t recall.’
‘One single ticket on the coach that stops at Silvermeadow en route from Victoria to Harwich, plus one single ticket for the night ferry from Harwich to Hamburg.’
‘Ah!’ His face creased in an exaggerated smile. ‘Yes, of course, how stupid of me.’
Stupid indeed, thought Brock, and remarkably forgetful.
‘Open tickets,’ he said, ‘valid during the following six months-’
Brock leant forward and spoke slowly, not trying to keep the anger from his voice. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence.’
Verdi drew back a little. ‘Really, Chief Inspector! You’re being very aggressive, if I may say. Maybe I should call my solicitor.’
‘Maybe you should. Lying to police conducting a murder inquiry is an extremely serious matter.’
‘Lying?’
Brock placed the computer image of Testor on the table. ‘You never saw this man before. A lie. You had no idea what your niece was doing at Silvermeadow on the sixth. A lie.’
‘This man?’ He touched his moustache nervously as if it were a charm that might help.
‘Eddie Testor.’
‘That is Eddie Testor? No, I don’t think… Well, maybe there is some similarity…’
Brock made an abrupt move of irritation.
‘No, please.’ Verdi took a scarlet handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face, which had gradually become almost as red. ‘All right, look, I see you’ve been talking to Eddie, and if he’s chosen to speak then I can feel free to tell you everything. I was keeping silent to protect him, you see. No, please, you’re looking as if you don’t believe it, but that’s the truth of the matter.’
It occurred to Brock that it would be easy to underestimate this man, to write him off for his bluster and his lies as a fool. He guessed that Verdi had been playing this part, part clown and part bully, for most of his life, and might have become quite adept at using it to hide bigger, deeper lies beneath the phoney surface.
‘The fact is, what can I say?’ Verdi went on. ‘I did try to help Kerri visit her father, my brother, over in Hamburg. Well, I felt it my duty, really. Alison was being very unreasonable in preventing it, and I could see it would end up destroying her relationship with Kerri, apart from causing heartache to the rest of my family-my brother and our elderly mother, who hasn’t seen her grand-daughter in three years and isn’t able to travel. Stefan, my brother, had been exchanging letters with Kerri for some months, using me as a post-box, and they had decided that they would get together for this Christmas, regardless of Alison. Anyway, I agreed to arrange Kerri’s tickets, thinking she’d go over towards the middle of December. But on the Sunday night, the fifth, she came in to see me at the shop after she’d finished her shift and said her mother was driving her mad, and she was going to leave the following day, with or without my assistance. She said she would hitch-hike if I wouldn’t help. I told her to calm down, and tried to persuade her to wait, but she was very stubborn. She wouldn’t listen, so I phoned the family in Hamburg, and this travel agent I know, and made the arrangements.
‘The following day I collected the tickets from Basildon, but I didn’t want Kerri being seen anywhere near me or the shop on the day she was to disappear, or I was sure I’d be in trouble for helping her. On Mondays and Tuesdays I leave early from Silvermeadow, so Monday afternoon was a perfect time, and I arranged for Eddie to act as the go-between, to hand over the tickets.’
‘Why Eddie?’
Verdi shrugged. ‘He was just someone I knew who had no connection at all with Kerri or, as far as most people knew, with me. I just knew that he was a very willing lad, someone who could be trusted to run an errand.’
‘Did you know he had a criminal record?’
Verdi frowned. ‘The road-rage case, you mean? Yes, I knew about that. But I’ve never seen that side of him, and frankly I think he’s got over all that. But of course, when Harry told me that Kerri had been murdered, that came straight into my mind.’