Laughing Boy

by Stuart Pawson

“That’s why I bring figs,” he replied.

  “The Beast Must Die,” I read from the cover of the book. “What’s this? Looking for inspiration?”

  “Catching up on the classics, Charlie. Have you read it?”

  “Mmm, long time ago. By Nicholas Blake, aka CS Lewis.”

  “C Day Lewis.”

  “Near enough. I’ll borrow it when you’ve finished.”

  He reached out and took it from me, saying: “Here, let me read you a piece.” It was the first page and he soon found it. “Here we go: Every criminal needs a confidante…Sooner or later he will blurt it all out…Or, if his will stands firm, his superego betrays him…forcing the criminal into slips of the tongue, and so on.”

  “Those were the days,” Dave said, “when you could nail someone on a slip of the tongue. Nowadays a signed confession isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

  “Ah!” I said. “But we have video evidence now. Show a young thug a blurred video of someone in a hooded top holding up a corner shop and he’ll say: ‘Yeah, it’s me, bang to rights.’ He’s on TV, man, this is his moment of fame.” I finished my tea and placed the mug on Jeff’s blotter. “Right, what have we?” I asked, “and don’t all speak at once.”

  We’d interviewed everyone who used the shop this week, everyone within quarter of a mile of it and everyone who used the road poor Colinette walked down and the lane where she was found. We’d had roadblocks out, knocked on doors and had a caravan near the shop. People came forward in their hundreds, mostly to say what a wonderful girl Colinette was, but nobody added to our sum of knowledge about her death. We’d even taken the names off the pile of wreaths and sprays of flowers that had accumulated outside the recreation ground, at the spot where we suspected she was accosted, and we’d relocated a CCTV camera to watch everybody who visited the place.

  Late Thursday night, I was told, a brick was hurled through Mr Naseen’s shop window and we were having to give him round-the-clock protection.

  “We can’t afford to let this become racial,” I told them. “Anything like that needs squashing from the outset. Do we know who threw it?”

  “The brick’s gone to fingerprints.”

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do.” I looked at the DC who’d raised the subject. “Stay with it, please,” I said. “Find out where the brick came from, who laid it, anything you can. Let it be known that we’re not taking it lightly.”

  Peter Goodfellow, one of my more polite DSs, raised a finger as if to ask permission to speak. “Yes, Pete,” I said.

  “Um, I was just wondering, Charlie, have we considered that this murder might be linked to Mrs Heeley’s?”

  “Let’s consider it now,” I invited. “In what way are they similar?”

  “Well, for a start, they are both murders,” he began.

  “There was the Robshaw case down in Doncaster about five years ago, when he murdered his ex-wife with rat poison and then killed her lover with a meat cleaver. It wasn’t until a neighbour remembered that he used to chop logs with…”

  “One of ours was a stabbing, one was strangled,” someone interrupted. Pete might be polite and reticent, but once you launch him he’s difficult to stop.

  “Fair enough,” Pete replied, “but they both ended up dead, for no apparent reason. Who’s to say that our man didn’t do the deeds in the way that was most expedient at the time, like Robshaw did. One night he just happened to have…”

  “Let’s not dwell on what might have happened, Pete,” I suggested. “There could easily be a link. For a start both crimes are apparently without motive.”

  “As was young Robin Gillespie,” Dave interrupted, “over in Lancashire, a fortnight before Mrs Heeley.”

  “OK,” I said. “Let me tell you what we’ve done about it.” I explained Dave’s misgivings about Robin’s murder and told them about my contact with NCIS. They were supposed to be looking into other apparently random murders for us. Initially, I said, we’d have to investigate Colinette’s death as if it were a one-off, which it was. All murders which involve only one victim are one-offs. It’s just that several of them may be committed by the same person. It didn’t matter which you caught them for. As we were drawing a blank in our enquiries, now might be the time to consider possible links with other crimes, but whether that would open new avenues of enquiry was doubtful.

  “It’ll give us an insight into his mind,” someone offered.

  “True,” I conceded, “but I’d prefer an insight into his address book.”

  “We need a reconstruction,” one of the others suggested.

  “You’re right,” I told him and turned to the sergeant who has the expertise to arrange one. “Any chance for next Wednesday?” I asked.

  “No problem,” he replied. “I’ll start auditioning in the morning.”

  Tomorrow was Saturday, so I told them to be in the office at nine and sent them all home. In my own office I found an artist’s A3 pad and a fibre-tipped pen and started drawing. From the window you can see the rooftops of Heckley, with the fells rising like a wall beyond them. I sketched it with hardly a look, from memory, with my chair twisted round and the pad on my knee. Somewhere up there, I thought, blowing about in the wind, are viruses that latch on to animals so that men with guns have to come and shoot them all. And was there someone out there with a virus of his own, that caused him to go out with murder in his heart? Or was he suffering from a mutant speck of DNA, one renegade base pair among three billions, that tipped him over the edge? I ripped the sketch off the pad and scrunched it up into a ball. It bounced off the wall and fell into my bin like they always do. Practise makes perfect. I pulled the chair up to the desk and started to write.

  1. I wrote, then drew a circle around it. All deaths apparently motiveless.

  2. All outdoors.

  3. All in early evening.

  I looked out of the window. Lights were going out in offices all over town, but were coming on in homes at the foot of the fells. The outer office door opened and the two cleaning ladies came in.

  4. All three murders clinical and determined.

  5. Car almost certainly used in M1 and M3.

  6. Perpetrator “organised” in all three.

  7. All victims creatures of habit. Movements predictable.

  8. Murders committed Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday. i.e. working days early in the week.

  9. Weapons: hammer, knife, ligature. Is this a progression?

  10. Bodies M1 and M3 transported elsewhere but no attempt to hide them. Moving them apparently pointless.

  The cleaning lady popped her head round the door and asked if she could do my office. I said: “Sure,” and moved out. I stood looking out of the window as she hoovered the floor and dusted the radiator. The road outside was jammed with traffic whilst an articulated delivery lorry attempted an impossible manoeuvre into Marks and Spencer’s loading bay. One of my sergeants came in with a sandwich and said he wanted to do a report and some studying while things were quiet. Mr Wood looked in to say goodnight on his way downstairs, told us not to stay too long. 11, I wrote, but I couldn’t think of an eleventh.

  I logged on, typed it out and ran-off ten copies. I wrote a brief note, put it in an envelope with one of the copies and addressed it to Dr Adrian Foulkes, Department of Psychology, Heckley General Hospital. The note ended with the words: Are the murders linked and if so, will he kill again? Even as I sealed the envelope I knew that the answer to both questions was “Yes”.

  On the way home I called in the supermarket to buy a curry from their oriental counter. They have them loose and you choose any combination you like, with different rices and naan bread. I’d decided to have chicken jalfrezi, but the container was nearly empty and definitely lacking in chicken. “Do you have any more jalfrezi?” I asked the big fair-haired girl whose nametag told me was called Julie.

  “No problem,” she said with a smile that was over and above that required by her employer. “I’ll fetch some; won’t be a sec.”


  She vanished backstage and returned almost immediately carrying a huge plastic box of the stuff. It had sticky address labels on the side with the name of the store and bar codes and the logo of one of those express delivery companies that you see hurtling up and down the motorway.

  It was a revelation. I’d always thought that there was a little Indian or Bangladeshi chef in the back, a headband stopping the sweat running into his eyes, as he toiled away chopping meat and vegetables and carefully weighing out all the spices for the different flavours.

  I hadn’t appreciated the scale of the enterprise, but it suddenly hit me. This supermarket had about a thousand branches. Somewhere there must be a giant curry factory sending its wares to every city and town in the country. In Europe, possibly. Lorry loads of the stuff would be departing every minute of every day and night in the impossible task of alleviating our craving for spicy food. Huge tankers, labelled in some esoteric code only understood by supermarket managers and firemen, were at this very moment rumbling outwards to the distant corners of the land. That’s what those orange stickers were on the backs of lorries. The Hazardous Chemicals code. When it said Hazchem code 1234, it probably meant that it was carrying vindaloo, so watch out.

  And the opposite would be true. A similar number of articulated lorries, and probably trains, too, would be converging on the factory from all directions, bringing chickens and lambs on their final journey, together with onions, tomatoes, peppers and more exotic vegetables. Smaller, faster lorries, the equivalent of the old tea clippers, would race to bring spices and herbs from the far-flung outposts of the globe. They would carry cardamom from Cordoba, paprika from Papua, turmeric from Turkistan and basil from…Basildon.

  Julie handed me the goods with another smile and I rewarded her with my best lopsided one. I collected a sixpack of Sam Smith’s from the beer shelves and went home. That was Friday night catered for.

  “Can I have a word, Charlie?” Pete Goodfellow asked as I poured hot water on to my Nescafé. “I’ve been thinking about the crimes again, if they are linked.”

  Pete never comes forward if he thinks somebody else has covered the ground, but he’s knowledgeable and thorough, and has a near-photographic memory for trivia. We walked downstairs to the incident room, carrying our coffees, and he told me all about it. And I mean all about it.

  Superintendent Gilbert Wood, my boss, was at the meeting, and so was Detective Superintendent Les Isles from HQ. He was the official senior investigating officer, keeping an overview in case I made a boo-boo. We talked about what we had done in the hunt for Colinette’s killer and Les asked questions and made a few suggestions. We’d already covered most of them, but we agreed to have another look at one or two people. The only decision we made was to hold a press conference on Monday and a reconstruction on Wednesday. It’s what we do when we’re running out of ideas.

  I then suggested that we look at the other two murders and consider if there were any similarities. I put my efforts of the night before on the overhead projector and invited comments.

  “What sort of moon was there?” someone asked.

  “Almost full for M1,” I told them, “but no moon at all for M2 and M3. Sorry, but it was worth a try. Anybody else?”

  Somebody asked about the first and third bodies being moved. I explained that Robin had been killed in a fairly secluded part of his route, and the place where his body was dumped was, if anything, more public. It would have been more expedient to flee the scene, rather than bundle his corpse into a car. This was possibly true for Colinette, too.

  “Do you think the killer wasn’t alone?” somebody asked.

  “It’s a possibility,” I replied. Peter Goodfellow was sitting to one side, leaning on the wall. I turned to him, saying: “Come on, Pete. You’ve a few thoughts on this, so let’s hear them.”

  “Yeah,” he said, uncurling from his chair and standing up. “I was thinking about it. Last night. The three victims were all people of habit. One was working, one had been to bingo, like she always did on a Tuesday, and M3 – Colinette – was on her way home from work. They were killed on Tuesday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If they were all killed by the same person there’s a good chance that he had watched them, chosen them because he knew where they’d be at a certain time. But the two who worked were not attacked on Monday. I just thought, maybe…maybe he watched them on Monday, just to make sure they were working that week. We’ve spent a lot of time asking about cars and movements on the nights they were killed. Maybe we should ask about Mondays, too. There was a case in Belgium, back in 1975, when a series of women were murdered who all worked in launderettes, the Liege launderette murders. The perpetrator was caught because he had a part-time job at the weekend, and when he moved to Antwerp…”

  “Cheers, Pete,” I said, silencing him with a raised hand. “That’s a good point. Anything else?” From the corner of my eye I saw Maggie fidgeting in her seat. “Yes Maggie,” I said.

  “What Pete just told us,” she began. “As you know, I’ve spent a lot of time with Colinette’s mum. Colinette didn’t go straight home on Tuesday. She goes to the pool – Heckley baths – on a Tuesday. Well, she used to. Perhaps because of that she gained herself an extra day’s life.”

  “OK,” I said. “We start again with Colinette. Now we want to know where everybody was on Monday and Tuesday, as well as Wednesday, and more importantly, who they saw.” It was something to do, but I couldn’t help feeling that the trail was growing cold.

  When the troops had dispersed Les and I went up to Gilbert’s office and had another coffee, this time with a tot of the Famous Grouse in it. I prefer it without, but it’s what cops do. Les produced a pipe and pouch of tobacco and asked if he could smoke. “No way,” Gilbert told him, but Les opened a window and had a few puffs with his head hanging outside.

  “When did you start that filthy habit again?” I asked, reaching for the pouch and sniffing the contents. “It smells quite nice until you light it.”

  “Only thing that keeps me sane,” he replied.

  “How long had you stopped for?”

  “Ten years, eight months.”

  “So why did you start again?”

  “This bloody stupid racial harassment case we’ve got. It’ll be the death of me.”

  “Aagh!” Gilbert exclaimed.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that we’ve got one, too. Does the name Wilson McIntyre mean anything to you?”

  “Light-fingered Willy,” I said. “More convictions than you’ll find in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.”

  “Well he’s claiming racial harassment now. Says he’s been stopped twelve times in the last four weeks.”

  “Because he’s Scotch?” Les asked.

  “He’s not Scotch, he’s black. The ACC rang me yesterday about it, but I’m trying to hold him off.”

  “Jeee-sus,” I hissed. “What does Gareth have to say?” Gareth Adey is my uniformed opposite number, and it would have been his men who had stopped Willy.

  “Haven’t spoken to him yet. Since he was made OIC foot-and-mouth he’s out all day nailing notices to trees and lampposts all over the division.”

  “And when you do,” Les said, “you’ll find that your friend Willy was stopped at three o’clock in the morning, wearing dark clothes and trainers, heading away from a reported breakin.”

  “I’ll have a word with the men,” I said. “Find out what it’s all about. Now, this press conference. As you two far outrank me, I suggest that you handle it between you. How does that sound?”

  I had a banana sandwich for lunch and changed into jogging bottoms, lightweight boots and fleece jacket. In less than an hour I’d walked out of town and was nearly at the top of the fell, with sweat chilling my back every time a gust of wind came down from the North. I had to walk on the road, because every gateway was taped off, with a warning sign about the disease. We were living in a no-go area. I jogged the last quarter of a mile
and nearly collapsed in the picnic lay-by at the top.

  When I’d recovered I stood on the wall and surveyed my kingdom, spread out below me like a map. Along the valley buildings crowded next to each other in a hotchpotch of styles, like a collection made by someone who didn’t know what to specialise in so he just kept everything. Churches – more churches than you’d believe – shoulder to shoulder with multi-storey car parks, department stores and office blocks. Gothic ornamentation jostled for position beside Sixties austere, Victorian art nouveau and pre-war utility. Steam rose from somewhere on the left of town and a Metro train left a smudge of black over the station as it pulled away. The train line cuts the town in half, while the canal borders it on the north side.

  It was a dull day, and all the colours were muted. Although we’d not had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth within twenty miles the fields and fells were uncannily quiet, devoid of livestock, as if they’d already surrendered to the inevitable. When the drizzle started it felt as if the sky was weeping. How soon, I thought, will the men with guns come and light the funeral pyres? It’s a crazy world. A crazy world. I pulled my waterproof jacket out of my pack and headed downhill.

  Willy McIntyre had gone to the press and the editor of the local evening paper tipped off the assistant chief constable that they were carrying an article about the case in Monday’s edition. Forewarned is forearmed. The ACC sent for Gilbert to try to keep one step ahead of the game, which left me to handle the press conference on Monday morning. Les agreed to attend, to give the occasion a bit more clout, for which I was grateful.

  While we were setting up the microphones and deciding who would sit where, Les pulled his pipe out and placed it on the desk. Our press officer latched on to it and insisted he take a few token puffs on camera. It would, he claimed, “create an aura of competence and authority.” I pointed out that the room was fitted with a sprinkler system, and if he lit the thing it would create an aura of panic and ridicule, so we agreed that he would just hold it and point with it. Otherwise we might find ourselves on television a few more times than we’d bargained for.