Laughing Boy (35 page)

The bell worked. We could hear it inside, chiming like the Bells of St Mary’s each time we pressed the push, but nobody answered it.

“There’s nobody in,” Dave declared after five minutes. People give off waves, emanations, which are absent when a house is empty. Science has never proved their existence, but we all recognise the feeling.

“Do your stuff, George,” I said.

Geordie tested the door with his shoulder, feeling if there
were any bolts. The steps made it awkward for him to take a kick at the lock, so Dave and I supported him while he stood on the top step, leaning backwards, and raised his size
fourteen
boot.

The first kick sounded like a mortar shell exploding. I looked down the street but no more lights came on. A taxi went past on the road at the bottom of the hill, followed by a motorbike. Geordie leaned back and took another kick. The third one burst the door open. I took a final quick look around and followed them inside.

I let the other two in through the back door while Dave and Geordie ran upstairs shouting “Police! Police!” but nobody was home.

There was an upstairs and a downstairs, plus a cellar, a hallway and two attics. We switched on all the downstairs lights and looked around. “Keep your hands in your
pockets
,” I told them. The kitchen was big, taking up half of the ground floor, with a deep, old-fashioned porcelain sink and modern units. Highly desirable to some tastes. The floor was polished floorboards with a big Chinese rug covering half of it. The iron range had an electric fire where the real thing had once blazed, and a dining table with two chairs stood against one wall.

“Not bad,” one of the PCs remarked.

“Very homely,” I agreed.

We filtered through into the other room, probably called the lounge. The one that the original tenants only used on high days and holidays, or when the vicar called. There was a log-effect gas fire with a bulbous settee in a ghastly
material
in front of it and a matching easy chair to one side. A coffee table supported two wineglasses, used, and the only picture on the walls was that one of a clown with a painted smile and a big tear rolling down his cheek. The striped
curtains
clashed alarmingly with the wallpaper and three teddy bears sat next to a mini hi-fi centre and a Playstation on top of the cheap sideboard, dispassionately watching us.

I was getting some good ideas about interior design, mainly how not to do it, but nothing that helped with the case. I posted one of the PCs at the front door, in case the householders made a sudden appearance, and went back to the lounge.

As I entered the room Dave was standing near the
sideboard
with one hand raised. He looked round, wondering where I was, and beckoned me over.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look.” He was pointing at the window of the cassette deck in the Sony player. “See what it’s called.”

I stooped until my face was level with it. There was a
cassette
in the machine with a hand-written label. I couldn’t read it all, but the middle bit said:

It was like toothache in all my teeth at once. But not painful toothache. Pleasant, spine-tinglingly, bladder-releasingly glorious toothache. More pleasant than you can bear, like it must be when your numbers come up or a loved one arrives back from war. The muscles for my jaw were contracting, clenching my teeth together and sending pins and needles up the sides of my head. I straightened up, looked at Dave, unable to speak.

He felt the same. I could see it in his face.

“Bingo!” he said.

“It’s him! We got him!”

He threw his arms round me in a bear hug and lifted me off my feet. “You did it, Kid! You did it!”

“Waaa! That’s enough,” I grunted as he put me down. “We’ve work to do.”

The remaining PC and Geordie were grinning like schoolboys at an Anne Summers party. “Worrizit?” one of them asked.

“It’s a tape by Tim Roper,” Dave explained. “He was an
American rock musician in the Sixties, and we know the killer was a fan of his.”

Geordie’s smile widened and he thumped me on the arm. I staggered sideways, my shoulder nearly dislocated.

We sent for the SOCOs, collected some latex gloves from the cars and started to give the house a search. “What are we looking for?” the PC asked.

“Anything that might link the killer with the victims. Photos, newspaper cuttings, the weapons, anything like that. He may have collected a few items: shoes, an umbrella, handbag, knickers. Anything.”

The cellar was directly beneath the lounge and echoed its dimensions. I searched it with Geordie, his hands in his pockets because they don’t make gloves to fit him. Two mountain bikes leaned against the end wall, incongruously modern in these surroundings. Once it had been the laundry and an old zinc set-pot still stood in one corner, with a
mangle
like my grandma used, but now all that was done up in the kitchen. Now it was a storeroom and workshop. One wall was lined with rickety shelves that held paint cans going back to the days when lead poisoning was endemic amongst painters and decorators, and a Black & Decker Workmate held centre stage, looking as if it was still in use. It was
surrounded
by sawdust and off-cuts, and several assorted lengths of three-by-two timber lay nearby.

“He’s been busy,” I said.

“Yeah, but doing what?”

We climbed the stone steps out of the cellar and gave the kitchen the treatment. Apart from the knives it was a waste of time. Dave and the PC came downstairs and reported finding nothing of interest except for another Tim Roper tape. He’d been careful, very careful. We double-checked, Geordie and me going upstairs and the other two plunging into the cellar. The attics were huge – just
asking
for a big train set or a four-lane Scalextric to be spread across them – but held nothing for us: rolled up carpets, surplus wallpaper,
Sunday Times
supplements going back to the Ice Age. I thumbed through a few but the dust found its way into my nose and I had a sneezing spell.

The tape was in the bedroom, in a Panasonic rasta-blaster on the bedside table. He wore expensive jeans and Debenhams underpants, she wore M & S big knickers and small bras. The bed was unmade and two people had slept in it. I collected some hairs, put them in evidence bags and sealed them, but I wasn’t sure why. While we were in there my phone rang. It was the front desk.

“Hatfield have sent us some information on Timothy Fletcher, Charlie.”

“I’m listening.”

“Right. He doesn’t have a record but he’s known to them. Apparently his foster parents were burned to death in a house fire, four years ago, and he inherited £350,000. Fletcher was in the house at the time but escaped from an upstairs window on to the roof of an outhouse. No cause for the fire was ever found but it was suspicious. He was given a hard time but there wasn’t enough to charge him.”

“Mmm, it all fits. Anything on the missing girl?”

“No, nothing. Have you found anything?”

“No, not much.”

The euphoria was fading. Losing your parents, even your foster parents, in a house fire was unfortunate. A jury might find it suspicious, but on the other hand it might win him the sympathy vote. Having a liking for an obscure, dead, American rock musician wasn’t a good enough link to win a conviction. We went downstairs, joined up with the others again and I told them the news.

“No dog,” Dave said. “They don’t have a dog.”

“That’s not illegal,” I told him.

“Isn’t it? Bugger.”

“Any luck?” the other PC asked when we joined him on the doorstep.

“No,” I told him. “Not a thing.” I turned to the others.
“Did we double check everywhere? Let’s go through it. Did we all do the front and back attics?”

“We did,” Dave replied.

“An’ so did we,” Geordie added.

“Good. Front bedroom?”

“Yep.”

“Aye.”

“Back bedroom.”

“Yes.”

“We did.”

“Bathroom?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Kitchen?”

We’d all done the kitchen.

“Front room.”

Again, we’d all searched it.

“What about the hallway?”

“We checked it out.”

“So did we.”

“And that only leaves the cellar.”

“We did it.”

“And us.”

“That’s it, then. Let’s hope forensic can find something.”

“Two cellars,” the PC who’d been waiting outside stated. “There are two cellars. Did you do them both?”

“There’s only one,” I told him.

“No there isn’t. I was brought up in a house like this. There’s a front and back cellar, same as the rooms on every floor.”

We all looked at each other, shaking our heads, certain we hadn’t missed a whole cellar.

“Show us,” I said, stepping back inside.

He led us down the stone steps into the room we were now so familiar with. The Workmate and bits of timber were still there.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, looking at the blank wall. “It should be there. That’s where the door normally is. These houses must be different.”

His colleague rapped his knuckles against the wall, but they hardly made a noise against the solid brickwork. It was covered in woodchip wallpaper, painted white.

“Did you paper the walls in yours?” I asked.

“No. We kept coal in it. Never seen one papered before.”

“Keep tapping,” I told his pal.

He worked his way from left to right, towards where the door was supposed to be. When he was there his knuckles made a hollow booming sound.

Geordie pointed to the wood on the floor. “That’s what he’s been doing: blocking off the other cellar. This paper and paint’s brand new.”

We all started tapping the wall and in a few seconds had the outline of the doorway delineated. “Let’s go through,” I said, and turned to look for a suitable implement.

“Don’t bother, Boss,” Geordie said. “Leave it to me.”

He lowered his head, pointed his shoulder at the wall, adopted a grimace that had terrified many an opposing
prop-forward
and charged.

There was a splintering and snapping of woodwork and the big fellow vanished from sight. We all peered through the hole in the wall and saw him picking himself up, wood and plasterboard hanging round his neck, bits in his hair and a cloud of dust slowly settling around him.

“Well that’s one way,” Dave said.

I pulled the loose bits down, widening the hole, and stepped through it. “You OK?” I asked.

“Great!”

It was dark in there, but we fumbled around until
someone
found a light switch. It controlled a single, naked, 150 watt bulb that hung in the middle of the room. Against the central wall was an aluminium loft ladder leading to a trap door in the ceiling, just about under the Chinese rug and the
table. We’d come in the hard way.

But it was the chair that held our attention.

It was directly under the light and reminded me of a
picture
I’d seen of the electric chair in which the Rosenbergs were executed for selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. It was primitive, made of pieces of wood crudely nailed
together
, without a dovetail or tenon to grace its construction. Four blunt legs, a back, armrests, all at right-angles to each other, and two pieces sticking forward, for the legs. And nailed to all of these was a succession of leather straps.

“What in Christ’s name is that?” I hissed.

We slowly circled it, hypnotised by the horrors it
suggested
, as if in some nightmare-induced pavan. I counted the straps. There were eleven of them, some plain black leather, some coloured red or green. They were dog collars, put to use for something else.

Dave crouched down inspecting it closely, sniffing the woodwork and the leather.

“Don’t touch it,” I said.

“It’s brand new,” he replied. “It’s never been used.”

“You know what this is, don’t you, Boss,” I heard Geordie say, his voice strangely hushed.

I turned to look at him and thought he was about to faint. His face was ashen and beads of sweat were forming on his brow. “What, George?”

“It’s a torture chamber. That’s what it is. A torture
chamber
.”

I stared at him, then at the chair and back at him. “She’s alive!” I exclaimed. “She’s still alive and they’re bringing her back here!”

Fresh air has rarely smelt sweeter. I took great gulps of it as we emerged into the little garden. “We’d better be ready for them,” I said. “Fix the door, George, if you can.” He broke a few splintered pieces free and pulled the door shut, jamming it with a wedge of wood.

“Well done, so here’s what we do. Get rid of the pandas
round the corner, one in each street. Warn the others off but tell them to stand by. Dave and I will wait in the street in my car and we’ll try to rustle up some more unmarked cars. If she went missing at ten they’ve had nearly five hours to come back home. Taking it steady they should…”

They should have been here by now. That’s what I was going to say, but before I could my prediction was
confirmed
by a dark car that cruised silently into the top of the street. Its lights were out, but the familiar Peugeot badge glinted under the street lamps as it turned the corner. I stopped in mid-sentence, transfixed by it, and the others turned to follow my gaze.

“It’s them,” I shouted. “They’re back! It’s them!”

Geordie was nearest. He jumped into the middle of the road and held up his arm. The car’s engine revved and it headed straight at him.

“After them!” I cried as I he dived clear.

Dave ran round to the driver’s door of my car and started the engine. I climbed in beside him and we were accelerating down the road as I pulled my door closed. The Peugeot turned left at the bottom of the hill and was about two
hundred
yards clear of us as we straightened out after the corner.

“Seat belt,” I said, after I’d pulled mine on. The Peugeot is a fast car, and this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Dave pulled a length of belt and I held the wheel as he fastened it. We were doing eighty, still accelerating, still losing ground. I looked back and saw the blue light of one of the pandas, way back in the distance.