Laughing Boy (6 page)

Dave took a long, deliberate sip of beer and I could tell that his mind was working overtime. He replaced his glass on the table, licked froth of his lip and said: “I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this, Nigel, but I know that you are a stickler for these things and that you’ve had a much better education then me – sorry, than I…”

“You got a C in woodwork, didn’t you?” I interrupted.

“Religious instruction, actually. I got an F in woodwork.”

“I thought you were good at woodwork.”

“I am, but Mr Gravesend took us for the exam and he had a speech impediment. He told us to make an egg rack, but I thought he said roof rack. I used more wood than all the other kids put together. Anyway, as I was saying, as you are such a bloody pedant about these things, Nigel, can I point out that
people
have epidemics, animals have epizootics.”

“Ooh!” I said. “Ooh! Talk yourself out of that one, Nigel.”

He bit his lip, then said: “I think I’d better get the next ones in.”

I was still smiling as I looked across at Natasha. After a few seconds she glanced my way and I raised my eyebrows in salute. One day I’m going to learn how to make them work individually. I practise every morning, as I shave, but it’s harder than it looks. She returned my smile, just for a
moment, until something behind me caught her attention.

“Uh-oh,” I heard Nigel say, and Dave added: “Talk of the devil.”

I looked round to see what the fuss was about. A man had entered the bar, a big man in uniform who dwarfed the
doorway
. He stood there for a few seconds, taking in the room, then wove between the tables towards us.

“Bet he hasn’t come for his first dancing lesson,” Nigel said.

“No, I don’t think he has.” I looked up at the figure as he loomed over me, and said: “What is it, George?”

PC Farrell, better known as Big Geordie, placed a hand the size of a leg of pork on the table and stooped until his face was level with mine. “Sorry to disturb you, Boss,” he whispered, “but you’re needed. It looks as if there’s been another.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Down a lane off the Oldfield Road, just out of town.”

“Woman?”

“Young girl.”

“Right.”

We followed him out, oblivious of the three
barely-touched
drinks on the table and all the eyes, including Natasha’s, that watched us to the door.

The hatchback reversed into the space outside the terrace house and doused its lights. The driver let his head loll back and reached across to take the hand of the woman sitting next to him. “Phew!” he exclaimed, and she squeezed his hand in silent agreement. Phew indeed. After a moment he felt into the car’s ashtray and retrieved his door keys. They both got out and after unlocking the front door of the house he turned to use the remote control to lock the car. The
hazard
lights flashed to confirm it was done and they entered their home. When inside he carefully dropped the latch and turned the key. The curtains in the front room were already
closed, and a gas fire gave off a comforting hiss as it kept the room temperature up in the tropical eighties. The only
illumination
was from the fire and a pair of wall fittings that cast semi-circles of light on to the high ceiling.

He led her into the room as if it were a new experience for both of them. She held back with feigned reluctance, like a schoolgirl who’d heard about men like this – not wanting to follow but at the same time driven by a curiosity that had to be satisfied. He tugged her arm and she shelved her doubts, allowing herself to be led.

When he was standing on the woollen rug in front of the fire he turned and undid the buttons of her coat. “Take this off, my darling,” he said, “or you won’t feel the benefit, afterwards.” She shrugged it off and he tossed it over an easy chair.

“What about yours?” she said.

“I’ll take that off, too.” His jacket joined hers and he placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging them with a rotary movement. “You’re good for me,” he told her.

“We’re good for each other.”

“That’s right. We’re a team.”

“Shall I put some music on?”

“It’s in the player.”

The girl turned away and pressed the play button on a Sony music centre that stood on a sideboard opposite the fireplace. After checking that the volume was right she moved back to him and he replaced his hands on her
shoulders
. She rolled her head, swaying to the music, and
murmured
: “Mmm, that’s good, Timothy, that’s really good.”

“What!” he exploded, pushing her away. “What did you call me?” His arm swept in a wide arc and his cupped hand cuffed her at the side of the head, the noise it made more violent than the impact.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, holding her hand in front of her face like the heroine of some 1930s paperback. “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me.”

He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. “What did you call me?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry.”

“Say it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“For calling you…calling you…”

“Calling me what?”

“For calling you Timothy.”

“So what am I called?”

“Tim. I forgot. Please don’t hurt me, Tim.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, you know that, don’t you?” She nodded, her head still stretched backwards by him, her white throat exposed. “But you’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t you?” She nodded again.

“And what happens to naughty girls?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know, so tell me.”

“They get punished.”

“And do you think I should punish you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you deserve it?”

She nodded.

“And how do we punish naughty girls in this house?” he asked.

“With…”

“Go on.”

“With…the strap.”

“And where is the strap?”

“Down here.” Her hand fell to his waist.

“You’d better fetch it then, hadn’t you?”

She slowly lowered herself to her knees in front of him. Her fingers unfastened the big aluminium buckle of his belt and began to carefully unthread it from the loops of his Versace jeans.
 

I pushed the possibilities out of my mind. Speculation is pointless when you are on your way to the scene. Go through the checklist, think about what you could have done better last time, try to put your mind into a higher gear. Some times, faced with a suspicious death, you need to act fast and decisively; others demand that you move with the deliberation of a chameleon stalking a fly. The trick is to know the difference. Everywhere we go we leave something behind, take something of that place with us. The molecule of spittle he breathed out or the single fibre that he picked up from a chair may be the only clues to link a killer with his crime, and it’s my job to find them. Mine and the team of experts I have, a phone-call away.

The three of us piled into the back of the patrol car and Dave rang Shirley to tell her that we wouldn’t need a lift, because “something has come up.” The words are written in burnt dinners and disappointed children’s faces across the life of every policeman’s wife.

Big Geordie filled us in with the details. A motorcyclist on his way home from the wire works at Oldfield had stopped to shelter under a tree when the rain suddenly became much worse. He saw a girl’s body lying at the side of the road and rang for an ambulance and the police. He’d felt for a pulse and said that she was still warm, but he’d thought she was dead. We dropped Dave off at the General Hospital, where the woman had been taken, and the rest of us
continued
to the crime scene.

There are not many trees in this part of the world. The sheep eat the ones that survive the winters and most of those that achieved a decent size have long gone to the chipboard factory. This one was a chestnut, in full leaf, at the side of the road where a kink in the wall to accommodate the tree had created an unofficial lay-by. Another patrol car was parked nearby, behind a little Honda motorbike.

By the light of the car’s headlights the motorcyclist showed me the exact spot where her body had lain. The rain had turned the roadside into a quagmire, but the area under the tree was still quite firm, with lots of tyre marks. Big drops from the leaves pocked the surface as I looked at it, indicating that we hadn’t any time to lose.

“Quick,” I said. “Find something to cover the ground with, before it gets washed away.” We spread their
waterproof
coats over the tyre prints, and radioed in for a tent.

I’d just sent the motorcyclist on his way when Dave phoned me. He confirmed that the girl was dead, and by the marks on her neck she’d been strangled. I clicked my phone off and turned to the four PCs. “It’s official,” I told them. “This is now a murder hunt.”

“Timothy…Tim…” she whispered.

“Mmm.”

“The music’s stopped.”

“Mmm.”

“Are you asleep?”

“I was.”

They were lying on the floor, under a duvet, with the gas fire turned down low. He tugged the duvet to cover their bare shoulders and extricated his arm from under her head. She turned on her side and wriggled backwards until they were fitted together like two garden chairs. He flexed his fingers to revive the circulation and reached around her,
feeling
for her tiny breasts.

“Shall I put it on again?”

“Yes, I think you’d better.”

“Tonight…” she began.

“What about it?”

“Tonight…It was the best ever, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“I was…I was touching her.”

“I know you were. Was it good?”

“It was fantastic. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I was holding her, you know, down there, and she just, like, faded away. And, and, it was like, electric. It was, like, power, coming to me. I could feel it, coming up my arm. Like, power.”

“I told you what it could be like. Now do you believe me?”

“I’ve always believed you, Tim. You’re so clever. And I love you.”

“And I love you.”

“When can we do it again?”

He propped himself up on his elbow. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Doing two in Heckley was clever. They weren’t expecting that. Now they’ll realise that they are up against someone special, if they’ve made the connection, yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

“When we do,” she began, “can we, do you think we could, you know, spend more time with…them?”

“With the target, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been wondering about that myself. It’d be good, no doubt about it. Lift us on to another level. We’d have to bring them back here.”

“Would it be too dangerous?”

“No, not if we’re careful. Leave it to me. I have an idea, but it will mean some heavy work. And I’ve a couple of
targets
picked out already. I think you’ll like them.”

She wriggled her bottom against his loins to show her approval, and felt him harden. “I thought you were putting the music on,” he reminded her. She reached out and pressed the play button. After a few moments a simple rhythm filled the room, tapped out on a cowbell and soon joined by a bass guitar and keyboard. She turned to embrace him and he pulled the duvet over their heads as a thin, piping voice leaked from the speakers. “
This is the eye of the storm,”
it sang.
“Watch out for that needle, Son, ’cos this is the eye of the storm
.”

One of the important pieces of information we lacked was the identity of the victim. They went through her pockets at the hospital without finding anything, and we did a
torchlight
search of the edge of the field where she’d been found, in case her handbag had been hurled over the wall. Negative. Dave phoned me with a brief description and said she was aged about twenty. Same as his daughter, Sophie, I thought, and wished I’d sent somebody else to the hospital.

I went back to the station to check the missing persons’ file, knowing it was a waste of time. My feet and shoulders were wet but the heating in the offices was off, so I found a portable fan heater that we’re not supposed to have and plugged it in. Gilbert Wood, my superintendent, arrived, shaking his head and making sympathetic noises, and I rang a few other people to tell them to be at the station early in the morning.

“What do you reckon, then?” Gilbert asked. “Is it
another
?”

“It’s another murder,” I replied. “Whether it’s another
murderer
is a different question.” I’ve never understood the dread that people have that a series of deaths may be the work of the same person. Surely having one twisted hospital worker going round the wards turning off the oxygen is preferable to having a whole bunch of them who just do it once, for a kick? For the time being we’d treat this as a
one-off
, and do everything we could to find the perpetrator. If we were successful and could pin the other two deaths on him, so much the better. If we didn’t catch him, we’d have to take a long and careful look at all the circumstances.

“Need any help from HQ?”

“Not at the moment, Gilbert. Let’s wait until we know who she is. Somebody might leap into the frame.”

Who she was, her last movements, who she was with. Often, with attractive young women, that was all we needed to know. Young blokes, and sometimes not-so-young ones, get ideas, build up fantasies. Magazines and daytime-TV
soaps reinforce the idea that romance, perfect romance, is everybody’s right. You see the girl of your dreams, she looks across and the feeling is reciprocated, as if love was some force of nature like gravity or magnetism, that obeyed rules laid down when the universe was formed. But it’s not like that, and when we learn the truth it can be painful. Most of us just go home to play the Janis Ian records and sob into our cocoa. A few of us turn violent, and this looked like one of those.

The phone rang. “Priest,” I said into it.

“It’s the front desk, Charlie,” I was told. “I’ve a woman on the outside line, saying she’s worried about her daughter. She didn’t come home from work tonight.”