Laughing Boy (24 page)

“So how come ‘Theo’s Tune’ is credited to Blue Coyote?” I asked.

“Oh God! That song has dogged me all my life. If only you knew. It was a commercial thing, I imagine. Tim knocked it up especially for me but didn’t want it including in The LHO repertoire. It wasn’t their style, something like that.”

“Did your father tell you what the row was about when Tim stormed off the stage?”

“No. I’ve mentioned it but he shakes his head, pretends he can’t remember.”

“Right. Well, thanks for your time, Mr Zekolwski. Do you mind if I call you again if I need anything else?”

“Not at all, Inspector, and drop by if you ever happen to be in this part of the world. Good luck with the investigation and let us know when you catch him – maybe there’ll be a story in it for us.”

“There’ll be a story in it, that’s for sure, but we’ve to catch him first.”

“Well there you go – technical adviser. You’ve paid for your trip already.”

“I like the sound of that. Thanks a lot.”

“Just one small thing, Inspector. I take it that you’ve seen the website?”

“Yes, we have. That’s where we found the lyrics and everything else we knew about The LHO. I’ve asked our technical people to try find who the author is but they haven’t come back to me yet.”

“I can help you there. She’s a woman called Shiralee Weston, lives in a trailer in Desert Springs.”

“Wow, thanks. That’s a big help.” I asked him for a spelling and wrote it down. “Who is she, do you know?”

“Yeah. Apparently she was a neighbour of Tim’s parents and they were very close. I think there was possibly some involvement between her mother and Tim’s father. They grew up together and Shiralee had a mighty crush on Tim. Now she keeps his memory alive with the website.”

“It sounds as if we need to talk to her.” If she ran a fan club we needed the names of any British members. Names, and addresses. I liked the sound of that. Perhaps we were getting somewhere at last.

“I’d hurry, if I were you,” Theodore said. “She sits all day listening to LHO tapes and stuffing herself with ice cream and doughnuts, like the queen ant in a termite colony. Hasn’t been out of the trailer for five years. When she dies they’ll have to dismantle it from around her.”

“Good grief. Have you met her?”

“Not personally. One of my research staff tracked her down, via the neighbours, and he had that pleasure. She claims to be Tim’s ex-girlfriend, the love of his life wallowing in guilt for not saving him. She’s intelligent, though –
manages
the website. I’d guess she’s the source of all the CIA nonsense.”

“Right, thanks. One last thing: what does LHO stand for?”

“LHO?” His voice lightened, went up an octave to put
him about level with Johnny Cash. “Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“OK. They all went to school together in La Habra. That’s a district of LA. They played in the school band and kept the name when they left and turned professional. LHO was The La Habra Orchestra.”

“It can’t be done,” Dave declared as he walked across the office, a plastic lunch box in one hand, his jacket dangling from the other.

I was seated next to Pete Goodchild with my feet on a spare chair. I swung them down to make room for him,
saying
: “What can’t, Old Son?”

Pete said: “
He tried the thing that could not be done – and found he could not do it
.”

“The walk,” Dave replied. “I’ve just run up and down the back stairs four times and I’m knackered.” He wiped the back of his hand across his brow and offered it as proof. “The steps are all wrong. If you take them one at a time they’re too small and two at a time is too much. We’ve
really
taken something on with this, Charlie.”

I patted him on the knee. “That’s what makes it worth doing. Pacing yourself, David, that’s the name of the game. Remember that we won’t be carrying anything, we can wear shorts and T-shirts, and we’ll arrange for certain off-duty PCs – those nice rounded ones with long hair – to ply us with refreshments throughout the twenty-four hours. It’ll be fun. A party, you’ll see.”

“Were you out training over the weekend?”

“I might have been.”

“No wonder you’re so smug.”

It was the Tuesday of Easter week and I’d stood the team down for Monday. Normally I would have done a walk somewhere, probably with Dave and Jeff, but the
foot-and-mouth
had closed all the footpaths and I’d settled for a
couple
of solo jogs to the top of Beacon Hill. We were still
tracking down and interviewing the owners of vehicles
captured
on various video cameras, but the main line of enquiry was happening over in America. Her ISP had confirmed that the Tim Roper website was owned by Shiralee Weston, but our technical people hadn’t been able to break into it or find any membership lists. So I’d set the FBI on to her. If they couldn’t do it electronically they’d go round and scare her skinny. All I could do was wait.

I picked up Dave’s lunch box and opened it at one corner. “Anything nice?” I asked, suddenly feeling hungry.

“Smoked salmon,” he replied, taking it from me and clicking the lid closed again.

“I don’t like smoked salmon. I like my salmon cooked.”

“It’s not for you.”

“Right. So where’ve you been until now, apart from
running
up and down the back stairs?”

“Ah!” he said.

“What does ah! mean?”

“It means ah! wouldn’t you like to know.”

I turned to Pete. “Peter,” I began. “I have to put up with him because we go back a long time, but if you ever become as obstructive as he is, you’re sacked. Understood?”

Pete grinned and nodded.

“It’s a delicate matter,” Dave said. “Let’s just say that Paul Usher will probably be withdrawing his complaint anytime today.”

“You’ve sorted it?”

“Consider it sorted.”

“Good. Well done. I suppose I’d better do some work, too. How’s that letter to Madame LeStrang coming along?”

“Done it once,” Pete replied, “but I’ve changed my mind and decided to use the Outdoor Leisure maps. The Landrangers are a bit too small and it looked as if we were being deliberately obstructionist. I’m just working the
references
out more accurately so she won’t be able to say we were unhelpful.”

Easter is a poor time for news, so there’d been a full-page spread about us in one of the Sunday tabloids.
Police Enlist Psychic
, it screamed out, and explained how we’d called upon the assistance, once again, of the extraordinary powers of Madame LeStrang.

“Try to get it off today, please.”

“No problem.”

A DCI had been bumped up to take over Superintendent Isles’ workload, and he needed to know where the enquiry was heading. He knew the score, wasn’t interfering, but he might have to field a few awkward questions. And he was hoping that the appointment might become permanent and didn’t want to make a balls-up. I took Dave with me. On the way I asked what the hold was he had over Paul Usher.

“Not him, her,” he replied. “Maria-Helena.”

“Anything you can tell me?”

“Sure. I went round to the Smith’s about three years ago, with a court warrant for Gary, the eldest of the sons. I’d hardly knocked on the door when it burst open and one of the younger ones stormed out, nearly knocking me over. I yelled: ‘Is Gary in?’ after him and he shouted back: ‘Yeah, he’s in bed.’ Well, the door was open and the stairs were beckoning, so in I went. He was in bed all right, and his arse was going like a fiddler’s elbow. Peeking out from under him was the lovely, if slightly embarrassed countenance of
Maria-Helena
. I said: ‘Downstairs, both of you, in thirty seconds,’ and they were.”

“His
sister
?” I said.

“Half-sister, actually. Different mothers.”

“It’s still illegal.”

“It’s how they live, Charlie. Surprising thing is that they are all so well balanced when you talk to them. Totally immoral, but well balanced. Mrs Smith is an intelligent woman, lots of down-to-earth common sense. I brought him in on the warrant and forgot about the other.”

“Until now.”

“That’s right. She’s still playing home and away with her half-brother but Paul doesn’t suspect a thing, so she’s
kindly
offered to withdraw her witness statement about the Pakistanis who attacked her husband.”

“Was it her who attacked him?”

“Mmm. They had a row and she thought he was going to hit her, so she grabbed the knife. Don’t worry about her safety, Charlie, he’s the one living dangerously.”

“Right.”

We brought the acting super up to speed, telling him about the assault on Neville Ferriby and our enquiries in America. He shook his head in disbelief when I laid it on about the ACC’s intervention and the involvement of the mad Madame, and we parted the best of mates. Apart from that, it was another waste of time. As we drove into Heckley on the way back I stopped at a traffic light. It was showing red, so it was a wise action.

“There’s a sandwich shop just round this corner,” I said.

“Want me to leap out and get you one?”

“Please.” The lights changed. I coasted round the corner and pulled into the kerb. The driver of the following car swung round me and glared as he passed.

“What do you want?” Dave asked, one leg out of the door.

“Um, something fast.”

“Gazelle?”

“No, clot-head! Cheese, salad, whatever. Something that’s ready made. Something where she doesn’t have to defrost the prawns, or carve the ham, or cut the bread and slice her thumb and have to find a flippin’ plaster, while I wait here and gridlock half of Heckley.”

“OK, keep your ’air on.”

It was cheese and pickle. Fine. I carried it into the nick and Dave drove off with Jeff Caton, who was just leaving to see if Paul Usher was having second thoughts about his complaint.

“Just the man!” the desk sergeant called as I walked through the doorway. He grabbed his phone and said: “I’ve found him, he’s here, now,” into it.

“Who is it?” I asked, taking the instrument from him.

“America,” he replied in a confidential whisper, as if we were discussing his medical condition. “A woman.”

I heard our operator say: “We’ve found Mr Priest, I’m putting you through,” followed by the usual clicks and silences. After a couple of seconds I said: “Inspector Priest here.”

“Inspector Priest?” The voice was straight out of Central Casting.

“That’s right. Who am I speaking to, please?”

“This is Agent Gladys Jewel, Inspector. Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, Gladys. Charlie Priest here, do you have some information for me?”

“
Gladys
!” I heard the desk sergeant hiss.

“Not what you were hoping for, I’m afraid, Charlie. Agent Kaprowski apprised me of the situation and we’ve approached the problem in a variety of ways. It’s been the Easter weekend over here, so first of all I’d like to apologise for the delay in replying.”

“Yes, we have the same festival this side of the Atlantic,” I told her.

“Gee, I guess you do. OK. How to unlock the secrets of Shiralee Weston’s computer, that was the problem. So first of all we hacked into it. No sweat, but we found nothing there and we couldn’t discover any alternative sites
operating
from her address. That could mean that we were not clever enough or that there was nothing to find. We read all her emails and there was nothing to indicate she was running a Tim Roper fan club, no bulletin board, no
nuthin
’. So, plan two: I put on the funny voice and ring her. Say I’ve just
discovered
the works of Tim Roper and it was a revelation. This was what I’d been looking for all my life. Boy, did we have an animated conversation? That chick is one strange lady,
Charlie, believe me. She told me how to download all his stuff but guess what? There’s no fan club. All the world are Tim’s fans, she says, or they will be, once they’ve heard him. Which brings us to plan three: send a couple of agents round in the hope that she has a filing cabinet with it all in. Zilch. She doesn’t have a filing cabinet with it all in. From what they said about her there’s no room in the trailer for a filing cabinet. She’s a mess, Charlie, a pitiful mess.”

“I hope they weren’t too hard on her.”

“No. They told her what it was about and she
co-operated
. So the bottom line, Charlie, is that we haven’t been much help to you.”

A big stone was sitting somewhere at the bottom of my stomach. I’d been sure that the Tim Roper avenue would take us to the murderer, but it was a dead end, a false trail, a blind canyon. He could just as easily have used the lyrics of Abba or Brotherhood of Man to taunt us.

“Gladys…” I began, “you’ve obviously put a lot of effort into this, and I’m grateful.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I think that’s about all we can offer.”

“I, well, I felt sure this was going to lead us to the killer.”

“You sound desolate.”

“I feel it.”

“Don’t take it to heart, Charlie. Do you know how many unexplained deaths we have in LA County?”

“No.”

“About twenty-five a day.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Who did he kill?”

“Seven. He’s killed seven.”

“Gee, I didn’t know that. What are they, recreational killings?”

“It looks like it.”

“They’re the worst sort. Have you had a word with our people at Quantico?”

“I’m preparing a file for them.”

“They’re good, Charlie, believe me. Meanwhile, we’ll have a think about things and keep looking for that fan club. How does that sound?”

“You’re a treasure, Gladys. Many thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome. Take care, Charlie, and good hunting.”

Quantico is the FBI training college, and that’s where they invented criminal profiling. Pete Goodfellow didn’t know it yet but his next job would be to prepare that file and submit it to them. I wasn’t expecting any results, but when lives are being lost and failure is staring you in the face, an important part of the job is covering your back. One day they’d be
baying
for a scapegoat, and I was the prime contender.