Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue

‘Oh. Well, by all accounts they were doing the other thing as well. Holmes says she told him she was sixteen.’

‘They always say that.’

‘It’s bloody difficult, though, isn’t it? I certainly couldn’t tell you whether one of these girls out there was fifteen or sixteen. Sometimes they look every bit of eighteen and turn out to be twelve. The CPS wouldn’t entertain a prosecution for statutory rape anyway. Not at seventeen.’

‘There are certainly plenty of leads, then, sir.’

Tailby sighed. ‘Too many. A positive over-abundance of suspects. I’d much prefer to narrow it down to one at an early stage. But at least it avoids the talk of a link with the Edson case.’

‘Were there any reports of motorbikes in Moorhay from the house-to-house?’ asked Cooper.

‘Several. They’re being sifted out from the computer. Holmes is coming in shortly to be interviewed. Perhaps we ought to have a look at him ourselves, you and I. We could leave Harry Dickinson and the Vernons until later. This lad seems to be more than happy to talk. What do you say, Cooper?’

‘I’d like to do that, sir. Thank you.’

Then the phone rang, and Tailby took a call from downstairs. He nodded with the beginnings of a small smile.

‘Change of plan,’ he said. ‘DI Hitchens can tackle Holmes instead. If you pop downstairs, you’ll find Mr Daniel Vernon waiting. Apparently he has a few things he wants to tell us.’

One of the twin tape decks had developed a faint, irritating squeak. Diane Fry thought it could almost have been designed to do that deliberately, to unnerve an interviewee. But today it was likely to unnerve the interviewers first.

‘We go to the arcades at lunchtime from school, see. Sometimes we stay all afternoon. Nobody bothers about us.’

Simeon Holmes was still dressed in the bottom half of his black biking leathers, but had taken off the jacket as a gesture towards the stifling atmosphere of the interview room. He was wearing a black Manic Street Preachers T-shirt that revealed smooth, well-developed arms and shoulders, and there were small blue tattoos at the base of his neck on either side. His hair was cropped close on top, but had been left to grow long at the back. He had a gold earring in one ear and a small birthmark near one eyebrow. Diane Fry remembered that DS Morgan had described Holmes as the sort of muscular lout that some girls liked. And he had a 500 cc motorbike as well.

‘But you’re a pupil at Edendale Community School,’ said Hitchens with barely concealed amazement.

‘That’s right, mate.’

‘How can you take all afternoon off from school?’

‘We get study periods, see? It means we can do what we like, with no lessons to go to.’

‘Do what you like? Do anything but study, I suppose.’

Holmes shrugged. ‘Everybody does it.’

‘I see.’

Hitchens exchanged glances with Fry, who raised her eyebrows. It was no surprise to her what lads like Simeon Holmes got up to.

‘You told Detective Sergeant Morgan that you met Laura Vernon at one of the amusement arcades in Dale Street.’

‘Tommy’s Amusements, yeah. I was playing one of those computer fight games, you know? Tommy’s has the best games, and I was knocking up a high score. There were a few of us in there, maybe six or seven of us.’

‘Fellow sixth formers?’

‘Some of them.’

‘And?’

‘Well, one of my mates, who was near the front window, shouted to me that there was this tart messing with my bike outside. So I went out, and there she was sitting on the saddle waggling the handlebars. A bloody cheek, it was, to be honest. If it’d been a bloke doing that, I’d have decked him. I don’t like people messing with my bike. But it was this tart, Laura.’

Fry’s nose twitched. There was a curious smell in the interview room which had been getting stronger during the past few minutes. It was warm and stuffy in the small room, but the smell was something more than just the sour odour of stale male sweat.

‘You didn’t know Laura before that?’ she asked.

‘Never set eyes on her before.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I would’ve remembered, luv, believe me. I don’t forget a good-looking tart.’

Holmes grinned at Diane Fry, who remained impassive, much as she would have liked to have ‘decked’ him. She had never much liked being called ‘luv’ by youths like Simeon Holmes.

‘She was an attractive girl, wasn’t she?’ said Hitchens.

‘Yeah. She was.’

Was that a slight flinching? Fry had seen before the people who seemed almost unperturbed by the death of someone they knew well, until they were referred to in that awful past tense. The fact of their death seemed to come home in one tiny word.

‘So why was she on your motorbike?’ asked Hitchens.

‘She was just looking, she said. A lot of birds like bikes, you know. They find ’em dead sexy. They can’t wait to get their legs astride one.’

‘Is that why you ride one?’

Holmes grinned again. ‘Not really. But it helps, you know?’

‘So are you saying she was interested in the bike, not in you?’ asked Fry.

Holmes looked at her, ignoring her frown as the grin stayed on his face. ‘Give over. Well, you might have thought so at first – she was pretending to play it a bit cool, like. But all I had to do was give a bit of chat, you know, and we got talking straight off. She came in the arcade to watch me play. Yeah, and later on one of the other lads in there, who knew her – he told me she’d been asking about me a couple of days before. She wanted to know who I was, what my name was, you know. So she’d obviously fancied me. The bike thing was just a bit of a ploy.’ He turned towards Hitchens again. ‘Birds do that sort of stuff, you know?’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Hitchens. For a moment, Fry thought the DI was going to give Holmes a matey wink. If he did, she was going to have to walk out.

‘Birds like her especially,’ said Holmes.

‘Like what?’

‘Well, she was from the posh school, you know. High Carrs. The kids there aren’t supposed to be down in town during school hours, not even the sixth formers. But she’d sneaked out. She was like that, Laura. Didn’t give a toss about school really.’

‘She was a bright girl, though, from what we hear.’

‘Sure. Dead bright. She could have sailed through her GCSEs, I reckon, but she couldn’t be bothered with all the studying. She was more into music. I reckon her parents put her right off school. It happens, you know. Some parents push their kids too hard and they go totally the other way. It’s a shame really.’

‘Teenage rebellion, eh?’

‘Yeah, right. Did it yourself, eh, mate? Well, maybe Laura would have come out of it, if she’d got the chance.’