Sleeping Cat Blues by Alison O'Leary

Author:Alison O'Leary [O’Leary, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jeremy stared at the screen, his thoughts buzzing. If Nicholas was roughly the same age as the children who were killed, it was entirely possible that he had known them. He might even have attended the same school, gone to the same children’s parties, perhaps played games in the park with them. Given their similarity in age, even if he didn’t know them personally he must have at least known what had happened to them. There couldn’t have been a person in the town who didn’t, and the children would have been particularly afraid. For many of them it would have been their first experience of the finality of death and, as experiences go, it would have been a pretty dreadful one. For most, himself included, their first confrontation with death comes when they’re adults, and then it’s often a grandparent or other elderly relative that has died. Such deaths, while sad, are not usually totally unexpected.

The experience of the town’s children had been the complete opposite. They had been suddenly pushed face to face with the brutally shocking and permanent removal of some of their playmates. Carlos had said that his friend’s mother had told her that all the children were terrified that summer and that their parents had practically put them under house arrest. Surely Nicholas must have been among them? So why had he lied? He corrected himself. To be fair, Nicholas hadn’t actually lied. He had simply been what his father would have called economical with the truth.

He ran his thoughts over this evening’s conversation again, mentally hitting the replay button in his head. What had Nicholas actually said? He had said, he was sure, that he had moved here from another area to take up the post of Head of Library Services which, strictly speaking, was true. What he hadn’t said was that he was no stranger to the town. The result was that they had all been left with the impression that he wasn’t local. When they were all talking about where they had come from, surely the obvious thing for Nicholas to say would have been that while he had recently moved to the area, he had in fact been born here. That it wasn’t so much a move as a homecoming. But he hadn’t. Why not? Perhaps he was just a private sort of person. Someone who didn’t like sharing personal details. He could understand that. He wasn’t keen on oversharing himself. But what would have been the harm in at least saying that he was back in his hometown?

He scrolled down the screen but nothing else about Nicholas appeared, other than a short news piece about the return of mobile libraries in the rural areas. In fact, the information about all of his classmates was frustratingly thin. He pushed his chair back and got up. While Google had produced some results, it wasn’t really anything that he could use. Apart from joining Helen’s gardening club or Moira’s choir, which would start to look distinctly like stalking, he couldn’t really get any further.

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