Fethering 08 (2007) - Death under the Dryer by Simon Brett, Prefers to remain anonymous Page A

left here early that evening, round seven. Arnold and I are obviously worried sick.” But she didn’t sound worried sick. Still, Carole knew that that meant nothing. The woman’s surface calm might well be a coping mechanism for her anxiety.
    “We are sure he will come home eventually,” the boy’s mother went on, “but he must be aware that he’s a suspect and I’m sure he’s terrified of the police getting hold of him.”
    “Our fine boys in blue,” said Rowley Locke, clearly speaking from a long-held agenda, “do not have the best reputation in the world for the way they deal with suspects. Human rights tend to cover only what can be seen; they frequently cease at the door of the interrogation room. We don’t want Nathan to have to go through that.”
    Carole, whose experiences in the Home Office had given her a less cynical attitude to the British police, did not think that this was the moment to take issue. Nor did she think it was the moment to raise the question of suicide with the boy’s parents. It seemed to have entered their thoughts no more than it had Rowley’s, and Carole was not about to create new anxieties for them.
    “Have you any idea how the police’s search for Nathan is going?”
    Rowley Locke shrugged. “As I say, we’re not very high up the distribution list for police information.” Join the club, thought Carole. “They’ve asked us about where he might be, obviously.”
    “They even had the nerve,” said Eithne, “to search this house to see if he was hiding somewhere.”
    “Though they did ask our permission first,” her husband pointed out.
    “Yes, but only because they would have had to get a search warrant otherwise,” Eithne added.
    “And they looked for him in our house as well,” said Rowley. “We too gave permission. We have nothing to hide. They even searched Treboddick.”
    “Treboddick?”
    “Oh, sorry, Carole. It’s a place we have in Cornwall. They thought Nathan might have hidden himself away down there.”
    “Well, I suppose that’s a reasonable suspicion, isn’t it? If it’s a family place?”
    “Huh.” Rowley Locke was not temperamentally inclined to listen to any arguments in favour of ‘our fine boys in blue’. “Anyway,” he went on, “the reason for wanting to talk to you, as I said on the phone, is because the police are telling us nothing. And it’s very difficult for us to get a handle on what Nathan might or might not have done, when we don’t know exactly what it is he’s been accused of.”
    “He hasn’t been accused of anything yet.”
    “All right. What he’s suspected of having done. And I just thought…because you were actually on the scene when the body was discovered, you might know something…well, more than we do, anyway.”
    Carole nodded thoughtfully and looked around the room. She felt justified in taking her time. What the Lockes were asking could be considered as a major intrusion into her privacy. They weren’t to know she was at least as desperate to find out everything about them as they were about her.
    The framed photographs on the mantelpiece and walls corrected an image of the family that she had received. Dorcas’s prissiness had suggested to Carole that she was an only child, but the evidence negated that impression. All the pictures showed lots of children, and both sets of parents, in a variety of relaxed holiday settings. Both Nathan and Dorcas had siblings, one of hers being an identical twin. Carole got the strong impression that the Locke cousins did everything together. And no doubt, she thought with a mental cringe, they all had nicknames like Fimby.
    “I see you’re looking at the photographs,” said Rowley. “That’s Nathan.”
    The boy he pointed out had darker hair, but the same susceptible pale blue eyes. He was good-looking, probably about thirteen when the photograph had been taken. The massed children were on a boat in a creek that looked Cornish, the Helford River maybe.