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

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      ‘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.’

      ‘Yes, Simeon. But you didn’t exactly encourage her to go back to school, did you?’

      ‘Well, no. We hit it off pretty well, you see, from the beginning. She started coming down to the arcades regular. I was a bit surprised, to be honest – she was a bit too upmarket for me, if you know what I mean. Not my usual type. But she was dead keen. Yeah, dead keen. And I didn’t say no. Well, you don’t, do you?’

      The curious smell was definitely coming from Holmes. Fry discounted the sweet smell of alcohol, the rank bite of cigarette smoke. No drugs she had ever come across smelled quite like that. Perhaps it was something to do with the motorbike leathers. Some kind of oil used to soften up the leather maybe, which was now being evaporated by the heat and humidity in the interview room. But to produce that sort of stink it would have to have been something like rancid pig fat.

      ‘Didn’t Laura get into trouble at school for breaking the rules?’ she asked.

      ‘Dunno. She never said. She wouldn’t have given a toss anyway.’

      ‘But her parents might have.’

      Holmes shrugged. ‘She didn’t talk about them much.’

      ‘Basically, you would say that Laura instigated the relationship?’ asked Hitchens.

      ‘What? Oh, yeah. She started it, all right. Dead keen, like I said.’

      ‘Had she had other boyfriends?’

      ‘Sure. She was no Little Miss Innocent. Don’t go getting that idea.’

      Fry leaned forward to put her next question.

      ‘When did you start having sex with her, Simeon?’

      Holmes looked from Hitchens to Fry, the worry that had been behind the grin coming to the surface now.

      ‘Look, this is about who killed her, right? That’s what you lot are bothered about. I mean, you’re not going to come on heavy about the age thing, are you?’

      ‘What do you mean, Simeon?’

      ‘Well, she told me she was sixteen, you know, but …’

      ‘You knew she was younger, didn’t you?’

      Holmes looked at Hitchens appealingly. ‘You’re not interested in that, are you? It isn’t important now, is it? Now she’s dead.’

      ‘That’s what I think too,’ said Hitchens.

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