Holmes looked from Hitrhcns to shee, the worry that had been behind the grin coming to the surface now.
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‘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.
‘Right. Well, I didn’t want you thinking I was making excuses, like. But, to be honest, she was gasping for it, big time. Couldn’t wait to get my trousers off. Being frank, like.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Well, it’s right. She wanted to do it all the time. We used to go into the park, or we’d get on the bike and drive out somewhere into the country. Up on the hills. She liked that.’
‘So you had sex often?’
‘All the time — well, every time we met, if we had long enough.
‘ J ‘ O O
And sometimes when we didn’t have long enough, too, if you know what I mean. Yeah.’
Fry thought if Holmes grinned again she would have to slap the cuffs on him and read him his rights on a charge of offensive
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behaviour.
‘Was she a virgin before she met you?’ she asked.
‘No way.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, look, for one thing you can tell when you do it the first time, you know. By how they react and other things.’ He hesitated, looking sideways at Fry. ‘Anyway, she knew what it was all about, all right. In any case, the lad that she’d asked
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about me, he’d already had her himself. He told me about her. Reckoned there had been others too.
‘Plenty of boyfriends, then.’
‘Yeah. She was dead keen on the blokes.’
‘Were there other boyfriends while you were seeing her, perhaps?’
‘Dunno really. Could have been, I suppose. She never mentioned to me if she had.’
‘It wouldn’t be unusual, for the sort of girl you seem to be describing. She might even do it deliberately, to make you jealous.’
‘I’m not the jealous type,’ said Holmes. Then his smile shrank and faded, and he looked at Fry again. ‘Oh yeah, I see what you’re getting at. You’ve got an idea that I got jealous of some other bloke and bashed her, right? Well, you can forget that right off. She was OK, Laura, good fun. But things like that don’t last, you know? We all move on. It’s what I would have expected, for either her or me to find someone else and it’d be over. A good few weeks together, and that’s it. It wasn’t a problem. I didn’t see her as much in the holidays anyway — she couldn’t get away from the parents, you know.’
‘We have a witness who saw Laura talking to a young man on the path behind the Mount shortly before she was killed on Saturday night,’ said Hitchens.
‘It wasn’t me, mate. I’ve already told the other bloke where I was. I was at Matlock Bath with about fifty other bikers.’
‘Yes, so you said.’ Officers were already busy checking out the names and places Holmes had given to DS Morgan. Depending on what they came back with, the youth might have to be sent home for now.
Fry would be pleased to get out of the interview room soon to get some fresh air, because the smell was becoming overpowering. She noticed Hitchens pull out a handkerchief as if to wipe his nose, but keeping it there a long time.
‘Besides,’ said Holmes, ‘I’ve never been near her place. Did someone say it was me they saw?’
‘Not specifically,’ said Hitchens.
‘There you are then.’
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Holmos was relaxincr now shee ha tor] tn soe him rolaxincr. Mo
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might start to grin again. ‘When you had sex with Laura,’ she said, ‘did you like to bite her?’
He stared at her with distaste. ‘Get lost,’ he said.
‘You refuse to answer?’
