Laughing Boy (8 page)

“Oh,” I said. That hadn’t been the answer I’d expected. “Um, we found it in the recreation ground. Did she lose it?”

“I don’t know. She had a boyfriend. Went out with him for years, ever since they were at school together. They were engaged when she was fifteen, but we didn’t know. About, oh, two years ago she finished with him and stopped
wearing
the ring. I don’t know why they finished, he was a
lovely
boy.”

“I see,” I said as I took the ring back from her, although I didn’t see at all. “And would you happen to know this boy’s name and address, Mrs Jones?”

Things are rarely straightforward. The ex-boyfriend was called Graham Allen, and the address was his parents’ house, but nobody was home. It was a detached residence,
definitely
in a league above Colinette’s modest semi, surrounded by well-tended gardens with rose beds and neat lawns. After gaining no answer to my knocks and pushes on the bell I wandered around and peered in through the windows. The rooms were large and elegantly furnished, and if the number of pot dogs were anything to go by they were canine freaks. Next door, over the wall, I could hear the noise of a motor mower, so I wandered in that direction.

When the gardener swung the mower round at the far end of the lawn he saw me standing at the end of his next stripe, ID already in my hand. He burbled towards me in a haze of blue smoke until he was almost on my toes, then stopped and turned off the engine.

“Can I help you?” he asked. It was a mild day but he was wearing leather shoes, grey flannels and a tank top over a
shirt and tie, except he would have called it a sleeveless pullover.

“Is it dry enough for cutting?” I said.

“Hardly, but it needs doing.”

I held my ID towards him, saying, “DI Priest, Heckley CID. Would you happen to know where your neighbours are?” He might have been the gardener, but I’d do him the courtesy of assuming he was the householder.

“CID, did you say?”

“Mmm.”

“In that case there’s probably no harm in telling you. Spain. Costa del Sol. They have business interests over there.”

“And what about Graham?”

“Ah!” he snorted. “Thought it might be him you were after. What’s he done now?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “We just want a word with him. What makes you think he may have done something?”

“Oh, perhaps I’m being unfair,” he replied, as cagey as I was. “He’s young, enjoys life. That’s all they think about, these days, isn’t it?”

“So what time will he be home?”

“He lives in Heckley, with his girlfriend. Don’t know the address.”

“OK. Thanks for your help.” I pointed at the mower. “You should buy a sit-on one,” I suggested.

“Only exercise I get,” he replied, pulling the starter cord and disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

We had a meeting in Gilbert Wood’s office in the afternoon. Me and Gilbert, Maggie Madison and the pathologist from the General, Doctor Sulaiman. I helped Maggie make coffee with Gilbert’s percolator and when we were all settled at one end of his conference table he said: “Right, Dr Sulaiman, what can you tell us?”

The doc is just as impatient and probably even busier
than we are. He might be thorough when he does the
business
, but when it comes to reports he’s thankfully straight to the point. Colinette was a fit and healthy girl, athletic even, and had been strangled.

“She competed in triathlons,” Maggie told us, “and would have started college in September to train as a sports
therapist
.”

“Her musculature indicates that she had been training at an endurance event for some time,” the doctor said.

“So you’d think she’d be able to put up some sort of a struggle,” the super suggested.

“You’d think so, but there was no evidence of this. Let me tell you about the strangulation.” The doctor looked in his pile of documents and withdrew a sheet of unlined paper from them. “Unfortunately the photographs are not ready yet, but my assistant made these drawings.” He spun them round so I could see them. “These represent the marks on Colinette’s neck. They are deep and quite savage. A great deal of force would be required to make them. The strange thing, however, is that they are only on the front of her throat, covering an arc of about one hundred and thirty degrees.” He made a circle with his fingers and thumbs,
saying
: “In a normal strangulation, either with the hands or with a ligature, some bruising is found around the full
circumference
of the neck.”

Maggie said: “So the marks go less than halfway round.”

“That’s right, Maggie.”

“Any thoughts on that, Doc?” I asked.

“A few, Charlie, but I’d like to move on, if I may. Note that there are several marks, one above the other, and not just one. And you’ll have to take my word for this, until we have the pictures, but the marks were remarkably
smoothedged
.”

“Smooth-edged?” Gilbert repeated.

“Yes. In a strangulation as violent as this the bruising and abrasions usually give an indication of the type of material
the ligature was made from. In this case, it appears to be something lacking in any sort of surface texture whatsoever.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The material that comes to my mind is plastic-covered clothesline.”

“Wouldn’t that be too stretchy?” I wondered.

“No, it doesn’t stretch.”

“What about its size. Does the diameter indicated by the marks fit with clothes line?”

“Yes, precisely. In fact…” he reached down into his oldstyle briefcase and produced a short length of pink line, “…I have a typical sample here, courtesy of Mrs Sulaiman, but don’t tell her.”

“So it looks as if we have a murder weapon,” Gilbert concluded as he ran it through his fingers.

“Yeah,” I said reaching for my coffee and one of Gilbert’s chocolate digestives, “available from every other shop in the country.”

Gilbert offered the biscuits round but left the packet at his corner of the table. “Was there any sexual interference, Doc?” he asked.

The doc shook his head slowly as he swallowed biscuit, in a way that indicated he wasn’t sure. “She was wearing those very brief knickers that are so popular these days,” he told us.

“A thong,” Maggie said. “She was wearing a thong. Lots of the younger girls wear them.”

“The nurses at the hospital have started wearing them under their tunics,” the doctor divulged. “I’m not sure if the effects on the patients are detrimental or restorative. However, back to poor Colinette. She was wearing a thong and it appeared to have been pulled down, but only a little way. As if our perpetrator had had a feel at her private parts, but that’s all.”

“Touched her up,” I said.

“Yes indeed.”

“Wonder if he’ll be happy with that the next time?”

All eyes turned to me. I looked at Dr Sulaiman. “Back to the strangulation marks, Doc,” I said. “Some of them were side by side and some were probably superimposed on each other. Would any one of them have killed her?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Any one of them would have resulted in death had it been sustained for long enough.”

I didn’t voice my thoughts. He’d strangled her until she was unconscious, then let her revive for a while before doing it again and again. Six or ten murders for the price of one. And poor Colinette, waking each time from the worst nightmare anybody had ever had, only to find that it wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.

“You said, Doc,” I began, “that you’d come back to the question of how she was strangled. I know you’re not in the business of conjecture, but…”

“Ah yes,” he replied. “Unfortunately once again I have to apologise for the lack of photographs, and I’m not even sure if the photos will capture what I saw, but I have put it in the record. When I studied the marks on her throat there was a slight suggestion that they were deeper at the right side than at the left. Now why could that be?”

I looked puzzled, Maggie said: “She struggled and twisted sideways?”

“Possibly,” the doc agreed, “but when he did it again you’d think that she might twist the other way, wouldn’t you?”

Maggie looked glum and nodded.

“The other explanation is that more force was applied at the right side than at the left.”

“Spell it out, Doc,” I invited.

“OK.” He picked up the piece of clothesline and bent it into a horseshoe shape. “Colinette’s neck is here,” he said. “The perpetrator pulled back, like so.” He pulled the loop towards himself. “As you see, it is necessary for him to have something to pull her back against.”

“Like a car seat,” I said. “She must have been in a car for him to dump her where he did, and he strangled her from behind while she was in the front passenger seat.”

“With her head against the headrest,” Maggie added.

“It’s a possibility,” the doctor agreed with a shrug of modesty.

“So why are the marks more pronounced at one side?” I asked.

“One reason,” the doctor said, “could be that this end of the line was attached to the headrest support on the left hand side. He would then only have to pass the loop over her head and pull on one side.”

“Brilliant, Doc,” I said. “I think you’ve just given us his MO.”

I walked downstairs with the doctor and thanked him again for his time. From the front desk I rang HQ and arranged for every policeman in the division to look out for a vehicle with a piece of rope, possibly clothes line, dangling from the passenger seat headrest. I wanted them to inspect every car or van they saw, and if they found it I wanted the driver arrested. It was a long shot, but murderers get sloppy, just like the rest of us.

“Has Maggie gone?” I asked when I was back upstairs in the super’s office.

“Only to refill the perc,” he replied.

“Good. Only place I know where you can get a decent cup of coffee. So what do you think?” It’s a catchphrase. Say it first and you win yourself some time to consider your own thoughts.

Gilbert shook his head and looked grave. “Poor kid,” was all he said.

“She was a thoroughly modern woman,” I told him. “Fighting fit, training for the toughest sport there is but still feminine, liked her fashionable clothes. Not all the younger generation are couch potatoes and substance
abusers, thank God.”

Maggie came back and plugged in the percolator. “If you don’t need me I’ll get back to Mrs Jones,” she said.

“Is anybody with her at the moment?” I asked.

“WPC Renfrew and several assorted neighbours. Claire Renfrew has the press statement if they start harassing her.”

“Hang on a bit, then, Maggie,” I said. “You can give us the female perspective, and three heads are better than two, as they say.” I showed them the ring we’d found that had belonged to Colinette, and told them about the neighbour’s indiscreet comment about ex-boyfriend Graham Allen.

“Sound like she hurled it there in a moment of reckless abandon,” Maggie stated. “How far into the field was it?”

“About thirty-five yards.”

“Phew! She must have been in a mood.”

“If you’re free this evening we’ll go talk to young Mr Allen,” I said.

“Right. I can’t wait. Have you tracked him down?”

“Mmm. Got his address from the DVLC. He has form for speeding and careless driving, but that’s all.”

“Any word about the missing umbrella?” Gilbert asked.

“No, and she was only wearing one shoe when she was found, so finding the other is a priority.”

“Are we assuming that she was picked up by someone in a car?”

“She must have been.” I turned to Maggie. “OK, Maggie,” I said. “Put yourself in her place. It’s peeing down with rain, you’re half a mile from home and wearing
unsuitable
shoes. Who would you accept a lift with?”

Maggie thought for a few seconds before answering and the percolator gurgled impatiently in the background. “I wouldn’t attach too much importance to the rain,” Maggie said, eventually. “It was quite bad but it wasn’t a cold night and she’d be used to training in it. I don’t think she’d accept a lift with anyone unsuitable just because it was raining.”

“What if she’d lost a shoe or broken her heel?” I asked.

Maggie shook her head. “Nah. She’d either limp home or back to the shop.”

“Might somebody stop in circumstances like that?” Gilbert asked.

“Yes,” Maggie agreed. “Some white knight, or a chancer, might stop and proposition her. She was young and
attractive
. Who knows?”

“But you don’t think she’d have got in the car if she
didn’t
know him?”

“No. And we haven’t found a broken heel, have we.”

“No. So who
would
you get in with?”

Maggie raised a hand and touched the thumb with her other forefinger. “Someone I knew,” she said.

“Yep. Go on.”

“A policeman.”

“Right.”

“And…a woman. Perhaps I’d get in with a woman.”

“Anyone else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A taxi?”

“No, no way, not if I hadn’t waved him down.”

“Right.”

“The coffee’s ready.” She walked over to the little table in the corner, near the plug, where Gilbert did his brewing.

“What about a man and a woman, Maggie,” I called across to her. “Would you get in with a man and a woman?”

She came back with the percolator and poured Gilbert the first cup. “I don’t think so,” she replied, “but what if the man was hiding behind the seat? Then Colinette would have thought it was just a woman, on her own.”

“Hiding behind the seat,” I repeated as I offered her my mug for refilling, “with the loose end of the cord wrapped around his fist.”

I picked up Maggie at seven o’clock, after she’d fed Tony, her husband. He’s a schoolteacher, hanging on until early
retirement
,
and is used to me borrowing his wife at odd hours. This is a job that tests relationships to breaking point. In the car Maggie told me bits and pieces of information that she’d gleaned from Mrs Jones about Colinette. Nothing heavy, just snippets that helped fill in a few blanks in the picture I had of a healthy, likeable girl.