Laughing Boy (34 page)

“I’m not sure. I ought to sell it, but a little bit of me thinks of it as an insurance policy. My safety net. I don’t know.”

“Well, you know where I live.”

“Yeah. Goodnight. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Take care.”

I watched her drive down the cul-de-sac and turn out into the main road, indicator signalling although there was no other car in the street. Her lights vanished behind the
houses
and I knew how Captain Bligh must have felt, abandoned in his dinghy, as the
Bounty
faded over the horizon.

I rinsed our mugs, put a CD on and tidied away the rest of the crockery. Mary Black,
The Moon and St Christopher
. I turned the volume high and went upstairs to the bathroom. After I’d cleaned my teeth I found some clean clothes for the morning, checked the alarm and climbed into bed.

It’s a sort of sleep, I suppose. You feel wide-awake, but the images flooding your brain are out of control, beyond your knowledge, out of context. I was facing a big rabbit behind a desk, buck teeth and whiskers stained with blood. His secretary was a little girl, a bandage round her eyes as she took notes.

“Why did you do this?”

“Because it seemed a good idea.”

“Take that down.”

“Yes, Sir.”

I opened a filing cabinet. It was filled with dead fish. I closed it again. Someone was watching me, pointing a
camera
. A body leaned against a wall, legs wide apart, grinning at me. “Hello Charlie. Looking for business?” I had to climb these stairs to escape, but each bend I went round brought me to the bottom of the stairs again, like in some M C Escher drawing. If I went faster I could make it round the bend before they changed … not quite … faster this time … faster still.

I kicked the duvet off, woke up shivering, went to the bathroom for a pee. I dried my back on the towel and had a drink of water from the tap.

When I was in bed again I pulled a corner of the duvet over me and lay on my back with my hands clasped behind my head. What was it Annette had said about the apartment? That it was her safety net, her insurance policy. Is that what
I was, too? An insurance policy? Was tonight’s visit just her way of keeping up with the premium?

Ah well, I thought, if that’s a price I have to pay, so be it. I was in a corner, with nowhere to run to, and my tanks were dry.

I transported myself to a lake, in a canoe, with the sun
rising
from behind the Rockies and the mist lying across the water.
New World Symphony
from the orchestra hidden in the pine trees. I caught a small trout, brought it on board and unhooked it, but when I looked at my hands they were covered in blood. I leaned over the side to wash them and the lake turned crimson.

Carcasses of cattle were burning. A great pile of them, falling out of the back of a white pickup. “Why did you do this?” the rabbit asked.

“It wasn’t me.”

“Take that down.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Someone must have ordered it.”

“Not me.”

“It was a slip of the tongue.”

“Why do you smoke Old Holborn?”

“Because it makes me sick if I eat it.”

“Well put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

“A slip of the tongue?”

“A slip of the tongue.”

“Is that why you’re burning them?”

“That’s right. They always give themselves away.”

They always give themselves away.

I sat up, leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, giving my brain time to clear. The digital clock said 01:13, its red glow spilling on to the pillow at that side of the bed. I pinched my ear, decided I was awake. I sat like that for nine minutes, going over it in my mind.
They always give
themselves
away
. Over it and over it. Over and over and over again. As the clock slipped to 01:22 I reached for the phone.

It only rang twice. “Yes Charlie?”

“It’s me, Dave,” I said.

“I gathered that. Can’t you sleep, Old Son?”

“No.”

“It’s Charlie,” I heard him say, aside, then: “Neither can I.”

“Sorry.”

“Never mind. Look, why don’t we both go downstairs, make a cup of tea and continue this conversation from there? How about that?”

“No. It won’t wait.”

After a pause he said: “What won’t?”

“I’ve been thinking about the case.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“How does this sound?” I replied, still wondering if I was missing something, if I’d overlooked a glaringly obvious piece of information that would immediately rubbish what I was thinking. “About a month ago a young couple called in the nick, just as I was on my way out. I spoke to them. They said they’d been walking the dog in the recreation ground on the Monday night, two days before Colinette was murdered. A white pickup went by. A big, noisy, white pickup.”

“Mmm,” Dave mumbled. “We checked all the white
pickups
, Charlie. You went to interview the owner of the one seen in Nelson yourself. He was the gay guy, wasn’t he, with an alibi like the Rock of Gibraltar?”

“Cross-dresser, that’s right, but hear me out.”

“Sorry.”

“OK. In Nelson three independent witnesses reported seeing a white pickup, and we eventually traced it and
eliminated
the driver from enquiries. But when Colinette was murdered nobody else saw a noisy white pickup, not on the Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.”

“So…”

“So what if there wasn’t one? What if our visitors saw one in Nelson when little Robin was murdered because they
were there? They killed him. They needed an excuse to come into the police station, for bravado, to show how clever they are, so they reported seeing the pickup in Heckley,
following
our appeal, in the hope that the one in Nelson had been reported. Spreading misinformation. Maybe the one in Nelson drove by as they did the deed, scared them.”

“You’re saying that the murderers came into the nick, large as life, to show off. Would they do that?”

“I don’t know. Sounds likely, to me. We’re talking about nutters, remember. Goading us has been part of the deal right from the beginning. Maybe I should ring Adrian…”

“Whoa, Charlie,” Dave interrupted. “Before you wake half the county. Can you remember what they were called?”

“No.”

“Any idea who talked to them?”

“Peter did in the nick, and he probably did the follow-up. Somebody else will have done a second follow-up. It’ll all be in the book, on the computer.”

“It sounds good, Chas. It sounds bloody good, but it might look different in the cold light of day. Nothing’s spoiling, so grab a couple of hours and I’ll see you in the office at seven. How’s that?”

“That’s fine…except…”

“Except what?”

“Except…that’s just supporting evidence. It’s not the real reason why I rang you.”

A long pause, followed by: “So why did you ring?”

“I think I’m going mad, Dave.”

“No you’re not. Not any more than anyone else is. You’ve just got things on your mind, that’s all. It’ll pass, believe me.”

“This couple.”

“Mmm.”

“I met them at the desk.”

“So you said.”

“When we did the first television appeal Les Isles did
most of the talking. He was holding his pipe in his hand.”

“That’s right. Made him look avuncular, or something.”

“The last letter, the one after Norma Holborn, it said: ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’”

“I remember.”

“But it was addressed to me, not to Les.”

“I know. We assumed whoever sent it confused you.”

“That’s what we assumed, but we were wrong. Les left his pipe and tobacco on the windowsill in my office. I dropped them off at the front desk, asked for them to be posted them to him. That’s when I met this couple. They’re not
confused
, Dave – I was holding Les’s pipe in my hand as I spoke to them. That’s why they think I’m the pipe smoker.”

I could hear him breathing down his nose, considering what I’d told him: heeeee haaaaa, heeeee haaaaa, heeeee haaaaa. I was beginning to think he’d fallen asleep, sitting up with the phone pressed against his ear, until he said: “What’s the fastest you’ve ever made it to the office, Charlie?”

“Thirteen minutes.”

“I’ll beat you there.”

I slammed the phone down and rolled off the bed. My suit was on the chair but I didn’t want that. Jeans, T-shirt, trainers. No time for socks. Leather jacket off the peg
downstairs
. The tyres protested as I reversed out of the drive, and screamed like a banshee as I accelerated up the street. The big security light on the end house flicked on as I streaked through its detection zone, but it missed me, I’d already gone.

Dave’s car was parked in the super’s place, next to the entrance. I swerved to a standstill next to it and yanked the brake on. As I slammed the door I could hear his engine ticking and hissing as it cooled.

“Where’s Dave?” I shouted to the desk sergeant as I sprinted through the foyer to the foot of the stairs.

“There’s a message for you, Charlie,” he called after me.

“Tomorrow. Where’s Dave?”

“In the incident room, what’s happening?”

But I was out of earshot, taking the steps three at a time. The CID office was in darkness but there was sufficient light coming in from outside for me to see by. I went straight into my own office, pulled the drawer open and found my diary.

“This message, Charlie…” the sergeant began as I passed him again, on my way to the incident room.

“It’ll have to wait. Who’ve we got that’s handy?”

“Geordie Farrell. It’s important.”

“So is this. Call him in, we need him.”

“I was going to ring you at shift change…”

“Later, Arthur, later. Get Geordie, fast as you can.” I transferred the diary to my left hand and reached for the handle of the incident room door.

“A woman’s missing…”

His words hit me like a missile, right between the
shoulder
blades. I leaned on the doorjamb, not breathing, wishing I’d heard him wrongly.

“What did you say?” I hissed, slowly turning round.

“A woman’s missing. Hatfield rang, about fifteen minutes ago, said to tell you. I was going to ring you at shift change.”

Hatfield. Not one of ours. A little comfort there, but not much. “Get them on, Arthur,” I told him. “Find out what you can. Say I might have a name for them in a few minutes.”

Dave was hunched over a computer, looking at one of the interminable lists. If there’s one thing computers are good at doing it’s making lists. As I pulled a chair alongside his he said: “Anything to narrow it down?”

“In a sec,” I replied, opening my diary. “After I’d seen them I went straight to see Dr Foulkes.” And for that I’d claim mileage, so it would be in my diary.

“Here we are. Tuesday, March 27th.”

Dave went back to the Home page, typed the date and
white pickup
into the little box and hit the Enter key.

The search, we were told, took all of a billionth of a second
and produced only one entry. Typed across the screen, with a blue band above and below, it said:

I don’t think either of us believed it. Two months’ work,
living
, breathing, eating and sleeping the case, and suddenly we had a name and address. No evidence, yet, but we were
getting
there.

“Let’s give him his wake-up call,” I said.

But first we had other things to do. I spoke to Hatfield, gave them the name and address and the number of Fletcher’s car. He drove a blue Peugeot 306. The missing woman was a twenty-year-old nurse at a local hospital. She should have finished work at ten but when she didn’t arrive home her boyfriend started making enquiries. They found her car still in its usual place, but with two tyres slashed. It looked as if some not-so-good Samaritan had come to her assistance, given her a lift.

I rang Dr Foulkes and asked him if it was likely that our man would have called in the station. He was in bed, alone. Must be going through a lean spell, I thought. “God, it would be audacious, Charlie,” he replied, “but yes, it’s just the thing that would appeal to him.”

Dave rang Peter Goodfellow. He’d done the first
followup
but not the second. He remembered them, thought they were an odd couple, but not unduly so.

“Did they have a dog?” Dave asked. “They were supposed to be walking the dog in the recreation ground. Did you see it?”

Pete hadn’t seen a dog, asked if we wanted him to come in. Dave said he’d better.

But the real reason we delayed was because we wanted more manpower. Geordie works alone, because he’s big enough for two. He came back to the nick as did another car
with two officers in it. We alerted traffic and an ARV. Asked them to look out for the Peugeot, to stand by. Then we drove in my car to 14, Ladysmith Grove.

It was on the outskirts of Heckley, in the buffer-zone where the back-to-back terraced cottages of the once-upon-a-time mill workers give way to the more substantial dwellings of the middle classes. There were three or four streets of through-terraces built into the hillside, probably where the overseers or the lower echelons of the professionals lived in Victorian times. Schoolteachers and policemen, perhaps. Number 14 was the top house, and beyond it a wall
extended
across the road in a recent initiative to stop cars using it as a rat-run. There were no windows in the end gable,
making
the cross street that ran past it surprisingly private. Cars were parked everywhere, mainly bangers but I saw a Mitsubishi Shogun and a decent BMW.

We’d driven past the Grove and turned up the next street, Ladysmith Avenue, and parked as silently as we could right alongside the end of number 14. The two officers from the panda went to the back door and Dave, Geordie and I padded round to the front. Every house in the street was in darkness apart from one upstairs window a few doors down, on the other side of the street. It was a bedroom window with red curtains. An invalid, I wondered, or someone working late, or left on by accident? There was a gate and a tiny walled
garden
, just a yard, with four steps leading up to the door.