Laughing Boy

by Stuart Pawson

“I’d have thought you’d’ve had enough of it through the day.”

  “I know, but I’m being unkind. The night classes are a joy, Charlie, believe me, a joy. And the money’s welcome. It’s the days that are the problem. We start again on Wednesday and I’ve already got the twitch back. What do you want to talk about?”

  “I’m displeased, Tony, to put it mildly.”

  “What about?”

  “About the company you keep.”

  “What company?”

  “Arnie Vernon. He’s a hack of the worst kind. To call Vernon a journalist would be an insult to the profession. Apart from being a sot he is an unscrupulous liar who would sell his sister to the Mujahedeen if there was a by-line in it. Somebody’s been running to the press agencies with tit-bits of information, for money of course, because somebody else has leaked it to them. First of all they knew we were linking the murders, then they knew that the assistant chief constable wanted to call in the LeStrang woman. Nothing important, as it happens, but it could have jeopardised the enquiry.”

  His shoulders slumped and his head fell forward. I went on: “This is a murder hunt, Tony. A big one. People have died in extremely unpleasant ways and it’s not over yet. I can’t afford to have anybody on the team who isn’t with us one hundred and twenty per cent. If you’d seen them, poor Colinette Jones and the others, you wouldn’t be as eager to talk to Vernon and his likes.”

  Tony reached out and placed one hand on the dash, then twisted in his seat to face me. “It’s not Maggie,” he said. “She doesn’t come home and blabber on about everything that has happened. She just sometimes lets a little bit slip, when she’s frustrated. She knows I’m having a rough time – we have the OFSTED inspectors in next week – so she might tell me about her day, to make me feel involved. That’s all, and I don’t ask about it. She’s never in when I come home, you see more of her than I do, so I started to call in the Marquis of an evening. That’s how I met Vernon.”

  “What did he do – knock your drink over?”

  “No, not quite, but I see what you mean.”

  We sat in silence for a few seconds. The rain had built up on the windscreen so I pressed the wiper lever down and they swept it clear. A vehicle going in the opposite direction kept his headlights on main beam as he passed us, flooding the car interior with light. Probably thought we were a couple of faggots having a tiff.

  “She’ll leave me,” Tony said.

  I didn’t comment.

  “She loves working for you, Charlie,” he continued. “She’d walk to the ends of the Earth on broken glass for you. It’s my fault, not hers. I know you’ve got pressure on you, but you’re not the only ones, you know. And I’m sure you have your good times, your successes. They’re few and far between in the classroom these days, believe me. Sometimes …sometimes…” He gave a big sigh and left it at that.

  I kept quiet, aware of the awkwardness, waiting for it to wear him down. After about an age he said: “My dad was a miner. Did you know?”

  I didn’t.

  “Well he was. The pits this way on weren’t much good. Thin and wet, with lots of faults. He was crippled with rheumatism. They were always on the point of closing, losing money, limping from one crisis to the next. And, of course, the miners took the blame. Dad used to say that it wasn’t their fault: good coal made good colliers and bad coal made bad colliers. It’s the same with schools, Charlie. These days it’s all league tables, performance assessment, but it’s good kids who make good schools and bad kids who make bad schools. Teachers can only do so much.”

  “Maggie’s a good officer,” I said. “And a good friend. You both are, and I don’t want to lose either. This job puts a strain on marriages, God knows I learnt that the hard way, but that’s the price we pay. We’ve just got to pull together and try to understand.”

  “We’ve been having it rough lately, Charlie,” he admitted. “I think you sensed that when you came last week. This could finish us. Maggie tries, but I’ve been depressed, lately. I’ve just lost it, somehow. Lost my grip on things.”

  “Talking to Vernon’s not the answer,” I said. “If you need to talk to someone talk to me or Maggie.”

  “What will you say to her?”

  “Maggie? I don’t know. Nothing, probably. I don’t think it’ll be necessary, do you? Anyway, we have a review meeting on Friday. They’ll probably appoint someone over my head and disband my team, so we should all have a bit more time after that.”

  He gave a little snuffle of a laugh but didn’t speak.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Go on.”

  “Bad taste joke of the week. I was going to say can I quote you on that?”

  I gave him a half smile and put the car in gear. As we moved off he mumbled something about appreciating it, said it wouldn’t happen again. I wondered if I was growing soft.

  They found half a pound of heroin concealed in the soles of the trainers, with a street value of about a quarter of a million pounds after it had been diluted with powdered milk and divided into individual hits. It would have cost about ten grand to buy, which made it, as Dave said, a nice little earner. Becky, Graham’s model-girl partner, was inconsolable when the news was broken to her, but there’d be no shortage of volunteers wanting to try. His parents doused the barbecue over on the Costa and caught the next flight home. We’d wondered if they’d dabbled themselves, but they appeared genuinely shocked when we eventually met them. Another supply line had been closed off which would be reflected in a small blip in the street price, and the hapless Neville Ferriby would have to either go cold turkey or wander round the pubs of Heckley clutching his money, looking for another source.

  Monday and Tuesday Caitlin Jordan-Keedy made it to work and back home again without let or hindrance. The only figure she might have seen furtively dodging between shop doorways, the collar of his dirty mac turned up against the rain, was Peter Goodfellow. I talked to her on the phone, reassured her that we were watching, trying to convince her that we were taking her story seriously. She’d never know how badly I wanted it to be true, how much danger I wanted her to be in.

  “Just the man,” someone said as I walked into the office and checked the kettle.

  “Empty again,” I snapped, half-heartedly. “What’s the golden rule? If you empty it, you fill it.”

  There were about ten of them sitting round in the office, with Sparky the centre of attraction, as usual. The only uniform was Geordie Farrell, a white mug looking like an egg cup in his fist. Someone jumped up and took the kettle from me.

  Dave said: “Jeff’s been telling us about the latest drugs craze that’s sweeping the county.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, turning to Jeff.

  “Oh, the kids have started injecting themselves in the mouth with ecstasy,” he replied.

  I grimaced. “In the mouth?”

  “Yeah, it’s called E by gum.”

  I stroked my chin. “Right. Right. So what else is new?”

  “Not much, apart from a couple of schoolkids downstairs, Charlie, in for a caution. I assume you’ll want to handle it yourself.”

  I found a chair and pulled it towards the others. “Under normal circumstances, Jeff, you know I’d leap at the opportunity, but just this once I’m happy to delegate that responsibility to you. Regard it as something you can put on your CV.”

  “Cheers. I appreciate the sacrifice you’re making and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

  “No problem. Ask them if they know any good jokes. What’ve they done?”

  “They were caught fighting liars in the school dumpsters.”

  I blinked as someone jumped in with: “Fighting liars?”

  “Lighting fires, deaf lugs. I said lighting fires.”

  “No you didn’t, you said fighting liars.”

  “You need your ears testing.”

  “He said fighting liars, didn’t he, Charlie?”

  I shook my head and
raised both hands in a gesture of peace. “I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. I never listen to anything Jeff says.”

  Somebody else said: “This foot-in-mouth disease is getting worse, isn’t it?”

  “Get lost!”

  “Oh what a shining wit.”

  “And you can piss off, too. It was a slip of the tongue. Anyone can make a slip of the tongue.”

  The phone in my office started ringing. Phones are inanimate objects. They transmit and receive electrical impulses and convert them to sounds. In theory they should transmit one sound as implacably as any other, but sometimes there’s something about the ring, the tone, that makes you hesitate before you lift it. We all turned towards the offending sound as it cut across the office like an assegai, and the silence between rings was as evocative as the noise.

  “I’ll get it,” Dave said, picking up the phone at his elbow. He tapped in the appropriate code and the phone in my office fell silent.

  “No, he’s not here,” he told someone, presumably referring to me. I relaxed, encouraged by the tone of his voice, and reached towards him for the handset, but he ignored me. “No, I don’t know where he is.” He listened for a few seconds then concluded the conversation with the words: “OK. I’d give it another hour, if I were you, and then call it a day. S’long.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Rod. He says not much is happening.”

  “You should have told him to go home.”

  “No, he likes watching people.”

  Someone placed a mug of coffee in front of me and I thanked him. Big Geordie coughed to attract attention, as if we could ignore him, and asked: “Who’s coming training tonight? Five laps roond the park.”

  Two or three said they’d be there but I declined.

  “Is it true that the firemen are doing the three peaks thing by climbing up ladders and sliding down a brass pole?” Jeff asked.

  This caused a flurry of disapproval and widespread agreement that it would be cheating. Walking down the mountains was almost as hard as walking up them.

  “Somebody’s talking rubbish,” Geordie informed us. “’Hoo are they going to put a pole up in the middle o’ the park? Anyhoo, we’ll do it the hard way, up and doon the back stairs.”

  “So the real thing is definitely off?” Another fifteen cases of foot-and-mouth had been confirmed, mainly in the Lake District, and there was no sign of it easing.

  “It looks like it.”

  Dave broke a brief silence, saying: “Just think, Jeff. If you did the scoring as the rest of us went up and down, you could tell us when we’d mounted three counts.”

  “Fuck off!”

  That broke up the meeting. Big Geordie stood up and I did the same. My coffee had cooled down so I was heading for the kettle to revitalise it when the phone in my office rang again. Sparky did his trick but this time it wasn’t Rod. He raised an arm to silence us and the smiles slipped from our faces as he listened.

  “Yeah. He’s here. I’ll put him on.”

  I reached for the phone as he told me the news: “They’ve found a woman’s body, just outside Leeds.”

  Chapter Ten

  I sat in the back as we drove there, not speaking, watching the fields and telegraph poles going by, remembering when I used to go off with my parents. Scarborough, Whitby or the Dales. I’d stuff myself with ice cream and Dad would slip into a pub to buy cigarettes and have a quick pint. He’d cough and smoke all the way home, and we’d stop at the Four Alls for a shandy and some more cigarettes. It’s not the cough that carries you off…

  Dave was driving, with Peter in the front passenger seat. We’d not been able to raise the chief inspector doing the initial investigation, so we had to be content with second-hand messages from their HQ. They gave us the location of the body and we headed there. A council worker giving the grass its annual trim had found her in the middle of a roundabout, but she was newly dead. Dave was inches behind a woman in a Nissan Trooper doing the school run, nosing out every few seconds as he looked for an opportunity to pass.

  “Take it easy, Dave,” I said. “She won’t be going anywhere.”

  They’d closed off one segment of the roundabout and diverted the traffic through a garage forecourt. We showed our IDs and were allowed through the cordon to join the crush of vehicles parked haphazardly at the crime scene, some on the grass, some on the road. The sun was low and bright, casting long shadows, and a tent indicated the location of the body.

  Faces turned to us as we slammed the car doors and walked over to the knot of suits who might have been insurance salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses deciding who was going to knock on which side of the street. They were all strangers to me.

  “Acting DCI Charlie Priest, Heckley CID,” I said to the swarthy man with a pencil moustache who projected himself to the front of the group. “And this is DC Sparkington and DS Goodfellow. I don’t think we’ve met…”

  He introduced himself and we shook hands, but without much cordiality, and he asked why we were there.

  “We’ve had three,” I told him. “Possibly more. We’re looking at all suspicious deaths to see if they might be linked with ours.”

  “This one isn’t like yours,” he replied.

  “Perhaps not, but I need convincing.”

  “We’d have sent for you if it was.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “OK. Come and see for yourself.”

  He strode off towards the tent and we followed him. It was a green tent and everything inside was bathed in green light. Only the blanket over her body provided a contrast. The DCI stooped and peeled the top three feet of blanket back, revealing its ghostly cargo.

  She was huddled in the foetal position and looked about eighty years old. Grey-green hair, green face, blue-green nightdress. He covered her again and lifted the blanket off her feet. Legs like cocktail sticks ending in fluffy slippers.

  “Poor old lass,” Pete said, very quietly.

  “Come outside,” the DCI ordered. When we were back in the fresh air he said: “Hypostasis indicates that she died where she is lying. Time of death in the early hours of today, cause of death probably hypothermia but the PM scheduled for in the morning.” He turned and pointed. “See that building?”

  “Er, which one?”

  “Other side of the trees, with the tower.”

  It was a castellated tower, poking above the trees, with a clock face and a flag pole, about half a mile away.

  “With the clock?”

  “That’s it. St Joseph’s, known locally as Holy Joe’s. One-time septicaemia hospital, one-time isolation hospital, now an old people’s home. We asked them to do a stock-take and would you believe it, one of their clients is missing. Miss Jane Middleton, aged 77, hasn’t been seen since supper last night, and her bed hasn’t been slept in. We’re just waiting for permission to move the body. Anything else you need to know?”

  Dave said: “They probably have supper at about seven.”

  “So they haven’t missed her for nearly twenty-four hours.”

  “Poor old lass.”

  “That’ll do for me,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Glad to be of assistance.” He warmed slightly once he realised I wasn’t there to steal his case. “So how’s it looking with your jobs?” he asked as we walked back towards the cars.

  “Grim. No progress at all.”

  “Rather you than me.”

  I didn’t even look out of the window on the way back. I sat gazing at the back of the driver’s headrest, letting thoughts tumble through my head like newspapers blown about by a gale. I wasn’t getting any younger. What a stupid expression. Nobody was getting any younger. I was getting older, rapidly, that was it. No known relatives. Outlook, bleak. Pension prospects were good, so that was a relief. Friday we’d be on the carpet and they’d probably take the case off me. Perhaps that would be the time to leave. I had an option that wasn’t available to most officers. Somewhere in my abdom
en were three shotgun pellets. Two were deep in my liver, too difficult to recover but not doing any harm, the surgeon assured me, and the third was pressed against my spinal column. Too dangerous to retrieve. Anytime I wanted I could keel over with a stabbing pain in my back and I’d be out of the force on full pension before the ink dried. That was my insurance plan.

  As we approached Heckley I said: “Is your phone on, Pete?”

  “No, it hasn’t been. I’ll ring in.”

  He told the front desk that we’d been on a wild goose chase and I heard him ask for a number. He twisted in his seat, saying: “Rod’s been after you.”

  He dialled the number and spoke to Rod. “Yeah, he’s here. We’ve been out. Charlie’s asleep in the back. Oh God! his mouth’s open and he dribbles. It’s disgusting. OK.”

  Pete terminated the conversation abruptly and turned back to me. “Said he’ll ring back. Sounds as if he’s on to something but didn’t want to speak.”

  “Good old Rod,” I commented.

  “Where is he?” Dave asked.

  I thought about it. “Do you know,” I said, “I believe it was his turn to tail Mrs Jordan-Keedy tonight.”

  “Lucky for him,” Dave mumbled.

  Five minutes later Rod rang back. He was in the toilet of the trans-Pennine flyer and a youth of the appropriate description had followed Mrs Jordan-Keedy on to the train at Heckley. He was now sitting about four rows behind her and the train was full. Rod had phoned her on his mobile and she’d answered in the pre-arranged way. We’d made contact.

  I pulled my mobile from my inside pocket and unfolded it. Mrs Jordan-Keedy’s number was in my diary. I dialled it and she answered with a brisk hello.

  “It’s DI Charlie Priest,” I said. “Just answer yes or no. Can you speak?”

  “Some.”

  “Is it the same youth?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Last time, I believe you said you went into a restaurant and he gave up the chase. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, so do the same tonight, except that one of our men – he’s called Rod – will walk to the restaurant with you. Just say hello to him as you get off the train. Pretend he’s an old friend and you’re pleased to meet him. Then we’ll follow laddo back and nab him at this end. Are you happy with that?”