Laughing Boy (4 page)

That’s where I come in. My name is Charlie Priest – that’s Detective Inspector Priest – and I handle all the murders
around here. For just over a month I’ve lived, breathed and slept Laura Heeley until I know things about her that would shake her husband out of the torpor that has gripped him for most of his adult life. I’ve drawn charts, read files, made cross-checks and stared at video screens until big blue
tadpoles
started swimming across my eyes. My staff have made over five thousand interviews and looked at the tyres on every car in West Yorkshire. I’ve consulted, co-operated and co-ordinated until I didn’t know which was which and I’ve sat on a rock, high on the moors with the wind in my hair, and talked to the sky.

The sheep gave me some funny looks but no answers. They were right to be concerned: foot-and-mouth disease had erupted in Essex and Northumberland, and they had relatives there.

Laura Heeley, for whom the word
ordinary
was coined, just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. She crossed paths with someone who, for reasons known only to himself, needed to kill a woman on that spring night. He’d had a row with one; caught pox off one; hated his mother, who was one; who can tell? Maybe he’d had a row with his mother after he’d caught pox off her. It’s not unknown.

What was for sure was that I was summoned before an independent review team at HQ for a case meeting. Thirty days without a result and people in high places start asking questions. They want to hear about suspects, possible leads and lines of enquiry. It’s not all bad news. If you’re short of resources it’s a good opportunity to make your case.

So I stood up and told them everything we’d done, which was a lot, and everything we’d achieved, which was
diddlysquat
. They had a few suggestions, nothing dramatic, and I accepted them gratefully. She’d been murdered by a random attacker who had no motive and no recognisable
modus operandi.
He hadn’t killed again, so hopefully she was a
one-off
. The time had come to wind down the enquiry, re-deploy the troops, and I reluctantly agreed. I was treading water,
and for the life of me didn’t know what to do next in the Laura Heeley case.

If I’d known that she was number five in a series I might have had a few ideas.

Next morning we had a big meeting, crowded in the
conference
room. I told the troops about the review team’s
decision
and thanked them for the hard work they’d put into the case. “Reports,” I told them. “Get your reports finished and tagged, no matter how futile you believe them to be, before you resume normal duties. And meanwhile, let’s have one last brainstorm. Anything you don’t understand about the case, or any cockeyed theory you might have, now’s the time to air it. Who’ll start the ball rolling?” Individual officers have their own areas of enquiry, and can’t be expected to know everything about the case. That’s my job, to have an overview, but I have no illusions about my omnipotence and was at a stage where I would have accepted suggestions from the cleaning lady.

“Dave?” I invited, looking at big Sparky Sparkington
sitting
in the front row. He’s a close friend and doesn’t mind being put on the spot.

“Yeah,” he began, shuffling in his seat. “We all know the statistics. According to them, it’s a family matter. Are we really happy that the husband and son are in the clear?”

We’d covered this ground a thousand times, but it helped break the ice. I pointed at Jeff Caton, one of my DSs, and invited him to comment. We’d spoken to the family
together
, initially, handling them like one would handle any bereaved relatives. Then Jeff had called them in for a formal interview, “just for the record.” It’s a delicate situation, balancing sympathy for their loss with your suspicions that they may have done the deed themselves.

“I’m happy about them,” Jeff told us. “The daughter’s alibi is watertight – she was ten-pin bowling with friends and still had the receipts. The son and husband are not totally in
the clear – they could have conspired together, but there’s nothing for them in it.”

“I’ll go along with that,” Maggie Madison interrupted. She’d worked with the family as police liaison officer. “Barry and young Billy are completely lost without Laura. They don’t know how to boil an egg between them. Barry has never made a cheque out in his life and hasn’t a clue about the washing machine or where the clean towels are kept. Laura ran the house and ran them. In short,” she added with a smile, “they were a typical happy family.”

“No skeletons?” I asked.

“Big row, two Christmases ago. He got drunk, had a fight with Billy. The daughter, Sarah, used it as an excuse to leave home and live with her boyfriend, but she’s back now.”

“Anything else?”

“Laura was friendly with an old man who lives nearby. Used to take him meals and talk to him, but there was
nothing
in it. He’s a pensioner.”

“Pensioners have their moments, Maggie,” I remarked. “Well, I hope they do. Did Barry know about this?”

“Yes, but he’s not the jealous sort. He’s not any sort. A couch, a television and a remote control and he’s as happy as Larry.”

“As you said, they were a typical happy family. Anybody have a question?”

“Insurance?” a voice asked.

“None,” I replied.

“Are the kids his?” someone else asked.

I hunched my shoulders, pursed my lips and opened my eyes wide. “Dunno,” I admitted. “They’re supposed to be his, not adopted, that is. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, maybe somebody else put Laura in the family way, all those years ago, and he’s born a grudge ever since, biding his time. It’s just a thought.”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s a possibility. Resentment smouldering away inside him. We have samples from them all but I don’t 
think we asked the lab for a paternity test. We’ll check it out. Thanks for that, anything else?”

We rabbited on for another hour, chewing over stuff that I’d grown sick of the taste of but was possibly new to some of the others. Unusual tyre prints had been found near where Laura died, and the owner of the vehicle that left them had been tracked down. They were cheap imports from the Eastern Bloc, and only two hundred and fifty had been brought into the country, so it wasn’t a difficult task. He admitted being there, but twenty-four hours earlier, and had dumped a mattress and some other rubbish in a farm
gateway
. Forensics proved the mattress was his, witnesses
confirmed
it had been there when he said. We did him for
littering
and moved on, but the review team were not happy about this and I’d agreed that we’d have him in again. It was a waste of time but it made them feel useful. I delegated a few jobs and closed the meeting.

“Tea, Vicar?” Sparky asked, ten minutes later as he manoeuvred himself into my little office, two steaming mugs in his hands.

“Cheers,” I said, pushing the papers on my desk to one side.

Noticing DS Jeff Caton sitting in my visitor’s chair he said: “Oh, am I interrupting?”

“No,” I told him. “Move that stuff and sit down.”

“You want a tea, Jeff?”

“No thanks, Dave.”

“So what do you reckon?”

“We reckon that there’s a killer on the loose, that’s what,” I said.

“And we’ve failed to catch him,” Jeff added.

“We will do,” Dave assured us. “Wouldn’t like to think I’d done a murder, these days.”

“Optimism!” I retorted. “From you? What happened to the usual morose Sparky we all know and love?”

“I have confidence in you, Sunshine, that’s all. Well, in
you and mitochondrial DNA.”

“Oh God,” I said. “He’s been reading the
Sunday Times
again.”

“Something will turn up, just you wait and see.”

“Yeah, but what if it’s another body?”

“Blimey, we are down, aren’t we. Is there summat I don’t know about?”

I shook my head. “No, not really. I’m just not happy about disbanding the team but I don’t know what else we could’ve done.”

“We need a morale booster,” Jeff said. “Something
entirely
different to use up our energies and give us a high.”

“Start the walking club again,” Dave suggested.

“We can’t. Everywhere’s closed off because of foot-
and-mouth
.”

“It’ll soon be over.”

“We’re always starting the walking club. It fizzles out, mainly due to shift patterns.”

“How about the London marathon? Or the Leeds marathon? We’d get entries in that.”

“Too much commitment required,” I said.

“And we’d look fools, training in our fancy costumes,” Jeff added.

“You don’t
have
to wear one, you wally.”

“In which case you look a fool when all the fancy
costumes
beat you. Imagine buying all the best gear – the Adidas vest and shorts; Nike shoes; a headband – training for a year, running twenty-six miles and then getting beaten in a sprint finish against a Telly Tubby.”

“Or Thomas the Tank Engine,” I said.

“Good point. So what about Karate? Table tennis? Ballroom dancing? Five-a-side soccer?”

“Mmm, I don’t think so.”

“The Three Peaks?”

“We’re always doing the Three friggin’ Peaks. We’ve done the Three Peaks so many times my boots say: ‘Oh no, not
again,’ when the car stops at the Hill Inn.”

“Ask around, Dave,” Jeff said. “See what the troops think. It’d be good if we could come up with something to keep the team together.”

“Right,” he replied, adding: “Now can I ask about the crime?”

“Which crime?” I asked.

“Mrs Heeley’s murder.”

“Sure. Fire away.”

“That killing in Lancashire, near Nelson, the beginning of February. You brushed over it in the debriefing just now because there are no apparent similarities, but I think they could be connected.”

“Robin Gillespie,” I said. Robin was found dead on the edge of some waste ground just outside Nelson. He’d been hit once on the head with a hammer and his body brought to the spot. He was fourteen years old.

“That’s right. Poor little Robin.”

“You went there with me, Dave, and saw the files. What’s troubling you?”

“It’s a random killing, like ours, and Nelson is only thirty miles away.”

“The MO was different.”

“It’s a progression. First one, a blow to the head –
efficient
but impersonal. Next one, a knife in the back – much more satisfying.”

“Thanks Dave,” I said. “That’s really cheered me up. Just what I needed.”

“Any time. Want me to have a word with our litter lout friend?”

“Yes please. I was just going to ask you. Meanwhile, I’ll get the lab to check on the paternity of Mrs Heeley’s
children
.”

“And I’ll go back to making the streets of Heckley safe for women and kids,” Jeff said, rising to his feet.

When I was alone I picked up the telephone, but it wasn’t
the lab’s number I dialled. “It’s me,” I said when the front desk answered. “Spread the word. Sparky will be coming round sometime, asking about volunteers for extra curricula activities – walking, running the marathon, that sort of thing.” After a couple of minutes’ conspiratorial chatting I pressed the cradle and this time I really did dial the lab.

Sparky’s belief that the two murders were linked worried me. Laura Heeley appeared to have led a relatively blameless, uneventful life. She was a bit of a gossip, we discovered, and was often the first to pass on information, suitably
embroidered
, about the downfall of any of her neighbours. Two brothers a few doors away had been put on probation for shoplifting and Mrs Heeley had been vocal and indiscreet in her condemnation of them to the extent that their father had called and had words with her, but stealing chocolate, even Ferrero Rocher, doesn’t usually lead on to murder. In
mediaeval
times she might have been a candidate for the ducking stool when things were slow, but in modern, cosmopolitan Heckley she had largely lived her life unnoticed.

Robin Gillespie was a son that any father would have been grateful for. He played for the school football team and somewhat reluctantly in the school orchestra, on viola. He was killed while on his paper round, which he did to earn money for a proposed trip to Florida, and his body
transported
about a mile and a half to the waste ground. The local police found the spot where he died, in a dark stretch of road between two groups of houses, but no weapon. He had not been sexually assaulted and the pathologist found no
evidence
of previous homosexual experience.

Two murders, no motives, and little else to link them. But murder is relatively rare in this country, and random killing almost unknown, apart from among young
tearaways
. The more I considered it, the more convinced I became that Sparky might be right. I found my copy of the Almanac in the bottom drawer and thumbed through it
until I reached the NCIS entry.

Chief Inspector Warburton shared a symposium with me at Bramshill a couple of years ago, talking about crime in market towns. It all went straight over my head. Rural,
suburban
or inner city, I just look for fingerprints and round up the usual suspects. The only difference, I told them, is the type of shit you get on your shoes: cowshit, horseshit or dogshit. I left a message for him to give me a ring.

It was Nigel Newley, a DS at HQ and my number one protégé who called me first. “Hi, Boss,” he said. “It’s Wednesday, are we going to the pub tonight?” He’ll still be calling me boss when he’s Assistant Chief Constable.

“Have you any money?” I asked.

“Um, a small amount.”

“In that case, see you in the Spinners, usual time.”

“Do we, er, have a lift home?”

“I’ll arrange it.”

“Smashing, I’ll walk there, then. See you.”

“Ta-ra.”

DCI Warburton rang shortly after. We reminisced about Bramshill for a few seconds and then I told him about Laura Heeley.

“The husband did it,” he announced.