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

Presumably the setting was somewhere near Treboddick. The other children were taking up nautical poses for the camera, like something out of Swallows and Amazons (a book which Carole suddenly felt certain the Lockes would have read with enormous relish). But Nathan looked detached, almost embarrassed by the play-acting around him. Maybe it had only been a phase, an adolescent grumpiness which had afflicted him that one particular day, but Carole got the impression of the boy as an unwilling outsider in the claustrophobic world of the Locke family.
    “Thank you. I haven’t met him obviously,” she said. “And I’m afraid I don’t know much about the background or the history at Connie’s Clip Joint. That morning was the first time I had been in the salon.”
    “It must have been a terrible shock for you. But do you mind telling us what you actually saw?”
    “No, not at all.”
    “And is it all right if I take notes?”
    Carole shrugged permission. Rowley Locke took a small plain leatherbound notebook out of his jacket pocket, and then unscrewed a large fountain pen. He opened a page on which she could see neat italic writing in brown ink. She had a feeling that everything Rowley Locke did in his life would be balanced on that fine line between individuality and pretension.
    Her description of what she had seen in the back room at Connie’s Clip Joint was delivered as impassively as she could make it. When she had finished, Rowley Locke completed his last note with a neat full stop.
    “Thank you so much, Carole. There were quite a lot of details there we didn’t know about.”
    “Oh?”
    “Well, we knew how the girl had been strangled, and what had been used to do the deed, but we didn’t know anything about the vodka bottle and beer cans. Or the red roses.”
    “Those all seem to suggest that Kyra had been entertaining someone in the salon that evening. She had the keys, you see, so that she could open up the following morning.” Carole remembered something Les Constantine had told her, and could see no harm in passing it on. “I gather that Kyra’s father was very protective of her, wouldn’t have liked the idea of her having boyfriends around at home. So I suppose, if the girl wanted to be alone with Nathan, Connie’s Clip Joint was the obvious place for them to go.”
    Eithne Locke, interpreting this as some obscure slight on her as a parent, insisted that Nathan had always been welcome to bring Kyra to Marine Villas. “We made that very clear to him. Arnold and I have very liberal attitudes to that kind of thing. Diggo had one girlfriend virtually living here just before he went to university.”
    Carole assumed this was another of the ghastly Locke nicknames, probably for Nathan’s older brother, but she didn’t ask for an explanation. Instead she went on, “I haven’t heard it as a fact from the police, but I had assumed that the vodka bottle and beer cans might have given them a direct link to Nathan. You know, through his DNA or fingerprints.”
    “Yes, except that they don’t have his DNA or fingerprints on file—and we refused to let them take any samples from the house. We know our rights.” Rowley Locke was mounting another of his human rights hobby horses. “I am aware that this government would like to have everyone’s details on file from birth, but at the moment they can only keep such records for people who have actually been found guilty of a crime. And I am glad to say that my nephew has never fitted into that category.”
    “But you’re not denying,” asked Carole, “that it does look likely that Nathan spent some time with Kyra in the salon the evening before she was found dead?”
    “No, none of us is denying that. We think it very likely that he did spend time with her. What happened while they were together…” For the first time he looked embarrassed. “Carole, you didn’t gather from the police whether there had been any sign of…sexual activity…on the