Laughing Boy (14 page)

“Yes. It wasn’t an operational decision, we had a leak and made the best of it.” No point in admitting that I’d goofed at the press conference. I clicked my ballpen and placed it in my pocket. He’d certainly given me something to think
about. “Presumably you want me to keep mum about all this,” I said.

He leaned forward on his hairy arms, saying: “What I want, Charlie, is for you to take the case on. We’ve had eighteen months of calm – the eye of the storm – and now we’re through that and on your patch. Six murders so far, six separate investigations. We need someone with your
experience
and ability to think laterally to take an over-view. I can offer you Acting DCI and whatever resources you need. My advice would be to work on the quiet with a small,
hand-picked
team, at least to start with, but it’s up to you. What do you say?”

It wasn’t what I’d expected. Sometimes, with big cases, everybody with an eye on promotion wants to jump aboard. Other times they stay clear, especially when the press are on a witch-hunt and things aren’t going too well. In those cases we find someone fresh-faced and ambitious and put them in charge, and it’s muck or nettles for them. Alternatively, we bring out the old war-horse who thinks we’re in business to catch criminals and doesn’t know how to say no, and we let him get on with it. This looked like one of those.

So, I thought, I have a reputation for lateral thinking, whatever that meant. Somewhere on my file, next to the bits about being an ex-art student and failed goalkeeper, there must be something about my having a somewhat cavalier attitude towards proper police procedure. I didn’t care, as long as they realised that it wasn’t natural, and I had to work at it.

“I’m not keen,” I told him. “I have a good relationship with Superintendent Isles and this would look as if I’m undermining him. Thanks for the offer, but he’s the man you should be talking to.”

“Les Isles is a plodder,” he stated, “and this case needs something better than that. OK, so how does this sound: The Senior Command course is due to start at Bramshill next week and Les has had an application in for a couple of
years. I could have a word with the director of studies about an extra place for him, which would leave the way clear for you to take over the investigation. You’d be doing him a favour.”

I shook my head in disbelief and picked up a beer mat from his desk, turning it round and round in my fingers. The sunlight slanting in through the venetian blind made striped patterns across the desk and my outstretched arm. It would have looked good in a painting.

“No doubt you and the director of studies go back a long way,” I said.

“Yes, we do. Shall I give him a ring?”

“If Les has applied,” I said, my voice unreal, coming from someone else, “it would be churlish to disappoint him.”

“Good man. Just what I thought.”

“So who will I report to?”

“On a day-to-day basis, nobody, but I’m here if you need me and I’d expect to be kept informed of developments.”

“Who’d know about me?”

“To begin with, your own super and the SIO for each case. And the chief constable, of course. That’s all. After that, it’s up to you how you handle it. If you decided that a higher, more open profile was appropriate, so be it.”

“OK,” I said. “You tell Admin that my new salary starts in the morning and I’ll go back and kick up a storm of my own.”

I spent a while looking at the files and then took the tube from St James’s Park station to South Kensington, where I lost myself for a couple of hours in the V & A. I could have stayed there a fortnight, but I dragged myself away in time to catch the 17:35 plane back to Leeds. By eight o’clock I was sitting in front of my own flame-effect gas fire,
pondering
on the day’s events. The fine words and the optimism had evaporated on the flight back, but they were paying me more for doing what I was already doing, so that couldn’t be
bad. A celebration was called for, and I was starving. I
lingered
only long enough to change my shoes and dump the junk mail, and went for steak and chips at a roadhouse on the bypass. It was my gesture of solidarity with the farmers.

Thursday morning I deployed the troops as usual, with the emphasis on the Colinette Jones enquiry. The
reconstruction
had gone well and jolted the memory of a few
people
who’d been on the streets that night, but there was
nothing
to send us dashing off with blue lights flashing. There never is. We’d had a stabbing the day before that sounded to have racial overtones, so I put Jeff Caton on to it, with instructions to placate everybody and keep it out of the papers. After that it was the morning prayer meeting, with Mr Wood and Gareth Adey, my uniformed counterpart. Gareth was up to his sweetbreads with the foot-and-mouth so we sent him on his way as soon as possible and I told Gilbert about my new job description.

He took it well, but wasn’t too pleased when I said that I wanted Dave Sparkington and Maggie Madison working full time with me. I pointed out that nothing much would change. We’d concentrate on the deaths of the three in the North, but I would have an overview that would take in the other killings. I’d still be here to have a chocolate biscuit with him every morning.

Natrass didn’t waste time and Les Isles rang me
midmorning
to tell me his good news. He was apologetic about the case but said he’d recommend that I be left in charge and lifted to acting DCI. I expected to feel rotten about it, but he was obviously happy with the turn of events and made it sound like it was all his idea. I congratulated him on his selection and said he’d be sorely missed. My words sounded insincere even to me, and I knew I’d never make a politician.

Superintendent Natrass was oiling the wheels for me with the other forces, so all I had to do next was brief Dave and Maggie. I contacted them and said I’d see them in the
canteen
at lunchtime.

“Who wrote:
One two three, it’s elementree
?” I asked, half singing the words between mouthfuls of bacon sandwich, when I met them there.

“Len Barry,” Dave responded immediately. “Number three in 1963.”

“Formerly of the Dovells,” Maggie added. “Had another hit the following year with ‘Like a Baby’.”

“Blimey, I’m impressed,” I said.

“Pub quizzes,” she explained.

“I might have known. Anyway, you’ve passed the test, so here’s the deal,” and I told them all about it.

Friday morning they drove down to Hatfield and Waltham Abbey to familiarise themselves with those cases and the terrain, and to pick up the files that had been
created
for us. I had the usual meeting with Gilbert and when I went back to my office Peter Goodfellow was waiting for me in a state of high agitation.

“That pickup, Charlie,” he said. “The white one. I just put it through the computer, and guess what? A white Toyota pickup with big wheels was reported near the scene of the Robin Gillespie killing, by three independent witnesses. One of them was a retired police officer, getting on a bit – seventy-four according to the report – but with all his
faculties
and he gave a good description…”

“Was it traced?” I asked.

“You bet. Owned by one Jason Towse. He works in Nelson and lives that way on. His wife gave him an alibi.”

“Get the details. And a street map. I’ll clear it with Nelson and we’ll pay Mr Towse a surprise visit.”

Pete drove, I navigated. I took us through Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall, where Sylvia Plath is buried, and then on a Z road over Heptonstall Moor. It’s a wild landscape up there, and today it was at its best. The clear skies of the early morning had given way to steady drizzle drifting across from Lancashire, and the moors tapered away until land and
sky merged in a grey smudge, barely an arm’s length off. There were no sheep, no birds, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that something was out there, something malevolent,
drifting
about in the miasma, waiting its opportunity to strike.

“Which way?” Pete asked as he slowed for a fork in the road.

“Um, right,” I said. “Or left. Where are we going?”

“You’re the flippin’ navigator. It might have been better to take the A646 through Todmorden and Burnley, except we’d have hit all the traffic. Nelson’s a nice town. If you want a new pair of shoes it’s the place to go. There’s this outlet, a factory shop, and all they sell is shoes, millions of them.”

“I’m OK for shoes. They don’t wear out like they used to.”

“That’s true. Did you ever stick rubber soles on them?”

“Mmm. Presumably Mr Towse will be at work. So let’s see if his wife’s at home, first. That might be interesting. Pull over and we’ll look at the
A to Z
.”

Thirty minutes later we rolled into the cul-de-sac in Padiham where they lived and parked outside number twelve, a well-kept semi. There was no Toyota pickup on the drive, just an oilstain that indicated he did his own
maintenance
and a wishing well with a selection of gnomes
patiently
fishing and doing other things into it. The lawn had already had its first trim of the year and the daffodils were promising to look good in a day or two. Mrs Towse answered the door after our first push of the bell.

She was a pleasant looking woman, turning to
blowziness
, with bleached hair and high heels that gave a hint of glamour. We discreetly showed our IDs, conscious of the twitching curtains over the road, and she let us in.

“We didn’t really expect to catch you, Mrs Towse,” I said. “Do you work at all?” I make the small talk, butter them up, then Pete asks the meaty stuff.

“Oh yes,” she replied. “I’m senior medical receptionist at
the practice and I was just getting ready to go. Will this take long?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Pete answered. “I believe the local police have already interviewed you about your husband’s movements on February 6th.”

“Yes. The night that poor boy was murdered. Someone saw a pickup like Jason’s in the vicinity, but the time was wrong.”

“Robin Gillespie was murdered a few minutes after five,” Pete continued, “on his way home from his paper round. You said that Jason arrived home before then.”

“That’s right. He came in at about five o’clock.”

“What does Jason do for a living, Mrs Towse?”

“He’s a company director.”

“But what does he do?”

“He manufactures high class kitchen units for several property developers and builders. Bespoke units, not mass produced ones that fall apart as soon as you fill them.”

“I see. I’ve been led to believe, Mrs Towse, that people in small businesses have to work all the hours that God sends. Does your husband always finish at such a sensible time?”

“No, not always. It’s just that he was between orders, just temporarily, of course, and had been to see a client. He rang me at about four thirty to say he was on his way. I had to go to evening surgery and it was a filthy night, but if I waited he’d be able to run me there. The police have been told all this several times.”

“I know, Mrs Towse, and I appreciate your patience. Now, can we leap forward in time to just over a week ago. March the twenty-first, to be precise, which was a Wednesday. What time did your husband come home that evening, Mrs Towse?”

We were seated in the kitchen, surrounded by high-class bespoke units made in some fancy wood with a grain like a contour map of the Karakorams. There was a wine rack under the double sink and some of the cupboards had little
pegs beneath them for hanging mugs on. Mrs Towse’s hand made a small, involuntary movement towards her face and her cheeks flushed a shade under the makeup.

“The twenty-first, did you say?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That would be the third Wednesday of the month?”

“Yes, I suppose it would.”

“He came home early, about four thirty.”

“You seem very certain about that, Mrs Towse.”

“Yes, well, I, er, I had the evening off. Wednesday evening is our quietest time, not that it’s ever quiet for long, as you’ll appreciate, and the doctors are very good about time off. Jason came home early and we had a quiet night in, just the two of us.”

“You cooked something special,” I suggested.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did.”

“What was it?”

“Pardon?”

“What did you cook?”

“Oh, er, Chicken Provençal, in a red wine sauce. It’s his favourite.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Thank you.”

Pete gave me a sideways look before saying: “Mrs Towse, this could be serious. Can anybody confirm that Jason was here with you on Wednesday the twenty-first?”

“Um, well, me,” she said.

“Nobody else?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Nobody called, nobody phoned?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Pete asked me if I’d anything else to ask, and I said: “No, I think that covers everything. What time will Jason be home this evening, Mrs Towse?”

“About five thirty, perhaps a little later,” she replied.

“OK. Thanks for your time and we’ll probably come back
then to have a word with him and verify what you said. Thank you.”

“Oh no we won’t,” I said one minute later as I fastened my seat belt. “Let’s have another look at the
A to Z
. With a bit of luck we’ll catch him before she does, on his mobile. What did you reckon?”

“I reckon she was lying through her teeth.”

“Mmm, me too. Take the motorway north and come off at J13, fast as you like.”

He had a couple of units in an old cotton mill. Someone had gambled that there could still be a use for a solid stone
building
with acres of floor-space and lofty ceilings, and they’d been proved right. There was a canal running past the door, a motorway within three minutes and a market out there. A huge board listed the names of the resident companies, and only one unit was still available for rent. We parked in the visitors’ section and saw the white Toyota pickup in the spot nearest the door. He was an early starter. As we walked past it I noticed the headrests and remembered the professor’s theory about how Colinette had died. Was I looking at the place where she had gulped her last breath? Was I about to meet the man responsible? It’s impossible to keep these questions from entering your head when you’re on an enquiry.