Sandra nearly wept with gratitude.
‘What did you see?’
‘Who,’ said the girl. ‘Who did I see.’
‘Who then?’
‘I saw Frankie.’
‘Frankie?’
‘Frankie Day,’ smiled the girl. On her own at lunchtime, thank the Lord. No one with half a brain in here to shut her up.
Sandra wrote it down. Frankie Day.
‘So you know him, do you? This Frankie Day?’
‘Everyone knows Frankie,’ said the girl, shifting the lollipop deftly to the other cheek with her tongue.
‘I don’t.’
The girl laughed as if this was extremely funny.
‘But everyone knows him. He’s always up and down this road, all the time.’
‘Doing what?’ asked Sandra.
The girl laughed and tossed the lollipop with her tongue again.
‘Doing what?’ Sandra persisted.
The girl winked. ‘Doing the… you know.’
‘No, I don’t. What?’
The girl made a gesture with her hand, swivelling the wrist.
‘Trying the car doors,’ she said with a sharp sigh and a roll of the eyes, as if Sandra was thick and should have known. ‘He passed by the front of the shop. Then I heard the bang. It blew out some of the windows, but this one -’ she nodded to the big plate-glass job at the front of the shop – ‘this one was OK. It moved in the frame, though. You know what I mean? And I went to the door to go out and see what had happened, but Martha – she’s the manager – she screamed at me not to touch it, because the whole thing was out of its frame, just hanging there. If I’d opened the door, it could have fallen out and cut me.’
‘And you didn’t see Frankie again, after that?’ asked Sandra.
‘He hasn’t been back.’ The girl frowned. ‘I don’t know why.’
Think I do, thought Sandra. ‘Can you describe Frankie for me?’
The girl described Frankie, and Sandra made notes. ‘Can you remember anything else?’
‘A dark-haired woman dressed in black left the car that blew up,’ said the girl, her forehead knotted with concentration.
Annie Carter.
‘And then a big tall man, thick-set, with lots of this bright red hair, he went to the car and got in. I think he popped the lock. He sat in the driver’s seat with the door open. And when he’d left it, Frankie rolled by.’
‘And when the car blew up, you were standing here?’
‘No, I was over there. By the baby clothes.’
‘And you could see the car?’
‘Yeah. I saw the red-haired man sitting in the driver’s seat of the car after the woman with the long dark hair left it. He had the door open. Next thing I knew, he was gone, the car door was shut and that’s when I saw Frankie try the handle. Then I was walking back to the till, and boom! Up it went.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tracey Esler.’