LITMIR.BIZ

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to the street, any unexpected noises …’ I trailed off. He was shaking his head.

      ‘I mean, I’ve been racking my brains ever since I went over to Kate’s house. Did I hear a scream? I really don’t think so. Did I see anyone strange? Again, no. Did I have any concerns about anything? Not in the least.’

      If he was going to interview himself, that was going to save me doing a lot of talking. I made a meaningless scrawl on the page in front of me. ‘Is there anything you think I should know about Kate Emery or Chloe or anyone else?’

      He blew out a lungful of air. ‘Well. There is one thing. I feel a bit bad even mentioning it but I think I should. For everyone’s sake. I know I’m not the only one to be thinking about it and if you don’t hear about him from me, it’ll be someone else who tells you sooner or later.’

      I nodded, making my very understanding listening face. Get on with it and stop justifying whatever it is you’re about to say, you horrible man.

      ‘There’s a lad. A young lad. He must be … oh, twenty. Twenty-one. Something like that. He lives down the road. Number six. His name’s William Turner.’

      I waited for him to go on.

      ‘He was in trouble with the police a few years ago. Four years ago, it must have been, because it was shortly after we moved in. He was arrested for attempted murder.’

      ‘Arrested? Was he charged?’

      ‘No. I don’t know why.’

      ‘Who was the victim?’

      ‘A friend of his.’ Norris laughed. ‘Some friend. He stabbed him.’

      ‘What happened?’ Georgia asked, her eyes wide.

      ‘It was a fight after school one day.’ Norris shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Everyone knew he’d done it but they couldn’t prove it.’

      ‘Didn’t the victim give evidence?’ I asked, puzzled.

      ‘He wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t say a word. His family moved not long after. I don’t blame them. We talked about it, but we couldn’t afford to move twice in such a short space of time.’ He shuddered. ‘Not what you want to hear about, is it? Not when you’ve got an eleven-year-old and you’re worried she’ll be hang- ing around on street corners in a few years. But Bethany’s not like that, thank God. We’ve been pretty strict with her. She knows the rules and she knows not to break them.’

      ‘So, to be clear,’ I said slowly, ‘you think I should focus on William Turner because he was once involved in a stabbing.’

      ‘Not just that. The kid is weird, let me tell you. He hangs around all the time. No job, obviously. It’s no surprise. I wouldn’t employ him. He has no education and no work ethic.’ Norris leaned forward, dropping his voice, absolutely earnest. ‘I’ve read about psychopaths and, if you ask me, he’s a textbook case. It’s one per cent of the population, you know. One in a hundred. That’s a lot. There’s more than a hundred people living in this street and I’m confident I’ve worked out who ours is.’

      ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

      ‘He watches the girls.’ Norris shook his head, disapproving. ‘I’ve seen him. He sits on his garden wall and he watches them walking up and down the road. Talks to them, sometimes. Calls out, you know. Gets them into conversation. I’ve warned Bethany to stay well away from him. Chloe too. She doesn’t have the common sense to keep her distance. Not when he’s a good-looking lad, which there’s no denying he is. He knows it, too.’

      ‘You seem to spend a lot of time thinking about Chloe,’ I observed. ‘You know her routine – you know when she’s away and when she’s here. You gave her a lift from the station. You carried her bag over to the house.’

      His face went red. ‘I don’t know what you’re implying, if you’re implying anything. I worry about Chloe. I worry about all the girls round here. And the police don’t do anything about Turner.’ He remembered who he was talking to. ‘At least, they don’t seem to.’

      ‘Looking and talking isn’t against the law. We can’t stop Mr Turner from socialising. Especially if – according to you – he wasn’t convicted of anything.’

      ‘Yes.’ Norris narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t think I’m right to be worried either. But you haven’t met him. You haven’t spoken to him. You haven’t looked into his eyes. I have. And I know what I saw there.’

      ‘What was that, Mr Norris?’

      ‘He has no soul.’ Norris leaned back in his chair, as if he’d struck a killer blow that ended the argument then and there. In a way, of course, he had. I certainly didn’t want to prolong it.

      ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Norris. If you think of anything else we might need to know, do get in touch. We’ll probably need to speak to you again, to confirm the details of your statement. And we’ll need to get your fingerprints and DNA, if you don’t mind, for elimination purposes.’

      ‘Right. Yes. Anything to help.’ He was back to looking uneasy. ‘Though I’m sure there’s nothing that can’t be easily explained if you do find some DNA of mine floating around.’

       What exactly did you get up to when you went to fix the tap, Mr Norris?

      I followed Georgia out to the hall and collected a set of keys for the Volvo that sat outside the house. As I was leaving, a thought struck me. ‘Mr Norris.’

      ‘Yes.’ He was already closing the door, relief all over his face. He hadn’t been anything like as relaxed as he’d pretended to be.

      ‘What’s your problem with the cat?’

      ‘Oh – I don’t like cats. I have a phobia of them, actually. The fur. The way they look at you. And if you’d seen what it was doing at the house—’ He covered his mouth again and retched. Sweat stood out on his forehead. When he could speak again, he mumbled, ‘Disgusting animal. A charity is coming to take it away. I’m not having it in my home. Why?’

      ‘Just wondering,’ I said, and followed Georgia down the path to the road.

      ‘I don’t get it,’ she said once we were out of earshot. ‘Why were you wondering?’

      ‘Two reasons. Someone managed to lock the cat in that room, and they made sure it could survive being left alone for a few days. He wouldn’t have wanted to go near it and he certainly wouldn’t have cared if it had died from lack of water. Anyway, can you see him being able to stab someone to death? Even talking about the scene made him want to vomit.’

      ‘You don’t think he was faking.’

      ‘I don’t. But I could be wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong about the cat.’ As I spoke I glanced back at the house and saw a curtain twitch in an upstairs room: Chloe, I thought. And a second, smaller figure beside her, drawing her away. The light caught her glasses as she moved: Bethany Norris. They were gone before I could draw Georgia’s attention to them.

      ‘What do we do now? Go and see William Turner?’ She was full of energy, straining at the lead like a dog with the scent of blood in her nostrils.

      ‘The convenient local psychopath. I think it can wait – I’ll get Liv to do some checks on his history before we call on him. I’d like to know more about what happened to Kate Emery and more about him before I speak to him.’

      ‘So what? Go home?’

      ‘Nope. Now we go and see another troublemaker.’ I grinned. ‘But this one is all ours.’

       5

      ‘Welcome back.’ Derwent stood in the doorway of number 27, liberated from

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