Free Skeleton Plot by J. M. Gregson

encouraging. He wondered quite how he had got here, how he seemed now almost to be volunteering this account of himself as a young man which he would have preferred to keep hidden. ‘I was a bit wild, in those years. I was surprised Dan kept me on, at times.’
    ‘But you had Emily on your side. I suppose she spoke up for you, at critical moments.’
    ‘I’m sure she did. Neither she nor Dan acknowledged it, but I’m sure that it was Emily who kept me here, on one or two occasions. I’m not sure I’d keep a youngster on now, if he did some of the things I did then.’
    ‘Drugs?’
    ‘Yes. I was never in any danger of becoming an addict – I hadn’t the money, apart from anything else. But I dabbled and experimented, in the way stupid young men did and still do. One or two mornings I didn’t turn up on time for work. One or two others I wasn’t fit for work when I got there. You can’t have that kind of thing on a farm.’
    ‘Or anywhere else, Jim. People don’t keep their jobs for long, if they’re doing drugs.’
    He nodded. ‘I can see that. I only know farming.’
    ‘No doubt you got into fights as well.’
    Simmons smiled grimly. ‘One or two. A few bloodied noses and hurt pride. Nothing that got me into trouble with you lot.’
    Bert returned his smile. ‘No. We check criminal records before we speak to people, whenever we can. I expect there were girls as well.’ He didn’t mention boys or men. You had to ask about those as well in most situations nowadays. For the moment, he’d ignore that, in view of the reason why they were here and the evidence of a happy marriage which they’d glimpsed earlier.
    Simmons gave a brief nervous smile and snatched a glance at the door his wife had shut so firmly behind her. ‘There were, yes. I’d been in a care home from twelve to sixteen. I was still finding my way with girls when I came here.’
    Bert Hook was around the same age as the man he was questioning. But he felt almost avuncular as he said, ‘I was a Barnardo’s boy myself, Jim. I worked it out through sport rather than drugs. But I wasn’t much good with girls, for a long time.’
    Confession often prompted confession, in the right circumstances. It did that here. Simmons said, ‘I did all right with the girls. It didn’t do me much good. I got myself into a few scrapes with women. I tended to pick the easy ones rather than the ones who were best for me, when I was a young man. I was lucky to end up with Lisa.’
    Hook nodded. ‘And I was lucky to end up with my Eleanor. There’s an awful lot of luck in these things.’ He glanced at Lambert, but found that his chief was content to let him play his patient game. ‘We think this mystery girl who was killed and buried here at that time was a drug user, Jim.’
    ‘I knew nothing about her.’ His features were suddenly set in stone.
    ‘With respect, you don’t know that, Jim. You don’t know who she was, any more than we do at the moment. And you’ve just indicated that you associated with a variety of girls at that time in your life.’
    He smiled bitterly. ‘I like that term. “Associated with”. I took them to bed, whenever I could. No, that’s not correct. Most of them didn’t make it to bed. Most of them were up against a wall, or in the woods, in the summer.’
    ‘All this sounds pretty turbulent. You must have had arguments with some of them. Must have fallen out quite seriously, at times, I should think.’
    ‘I had a few rows, yes. Girls don’t take kindly to being ditched, do they? And I didn’t even know how to be tactful, in those days. I was a bastard at times. I’m sure I deserved the names they called me and the slaps across the face I got from time to time.’
    ‘And no doubt you retaliated also, from time to time. No doubt you hit back, as an impulsive young man.’
    ‘No! I never laid hands on a woman. I got out as fast as I could when they turned nasty, but I never hit back. Not with girls.’
    ‘Not even