Laughing Boy (11 page)

“What sort of moon was there?” someone asked.

“Almost full for M1,” I told them, “but no moon at all for M2 and M3. Sorry, but it was worth a try. Anybody else?”

Somebody asked about the first and third bodies being 
moved. I explained that Robin had been killed in a fairly secluded part of his route, and the place where his body was dumped was, if anything, more public. It would have been more expedient to flee the scene, rather than bundle his corpse into a car. This was possibly true for Colinette, too.

“Do you think the killer wasn’t alone?” somebody asked.

“It’s a possibility,” I replied. Peter Goodfellow was sitting to one side, leaning on the wall. I turned to him, saying: “Come on, Pete. You’ve a few thoughts on this, so let’s hear them.”

“Yeah,” he said, uncurling from his chair and standing up. “I was thinking about it. Last night. The three victims were all people of habit. One was working, one had been to bingo, like she always did on a Tuesday, and M3 – Colinette – was on her way home from work. They were killed on Tuesday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If they were all killed by the same person there’s a good chance that he had watched them, chosen them because he knew where they’d be at a certain time. But the two who worked were not attacked on Monday. I just thought, maybe…maybe he watched them on Monday, just to make sure they were working that week. We’ve spent a lot of time asking about cars and movements on the nights they were killed. Maybe we should ask about Mondays, too. There was a case in Belgium, back in 1975, when a series of women were murdered who all worked in launderettes, the Liege launderette murders. The perpetrator was caught because he had a part-time job at the weekend, and when he moved to Antwerp…”

“Cheers, Pete,” I said, silencing him with a raised hand. “That’s a good point. Anything else?” From the corner of my eye I saw Maggie fidgeting in her seat. “Yes Maggie,” I said.

“What Pete just told us,” she began. “As you know, I’ve spent a lot of time with Colinette’s mum. Colinette didn’t go straight home on Tuesday. She goes to the pool – Heckley baths – on a Tuesday. Well, she used to. Perhaps because of
that she gained herself an extra day’s life.”

“OK,” I said. “We start again with Colinette. Now we want to know where everybody was on Monday and Tuesday, as well as Wednesday, and more importantly, who they saw.” It was something to do, but I couldn’t help
feeling
that the trail was growing cold.

When the troops had dispersed Les and I went up to Gilbert’s office and had another coffee, this time with a tot of the Famous Grouse in it. I prefer it without, but it’s what cops do. Les produced a pipe and pouch of tobacco and asked if he could smoke. “No way,” Gilbert told him, but Les opened a window and had a few puffs with his head hanging outside.

“When did you start that filthy habit again?” I asked, reaching for the pouch and sniffing the contents. “It smells quite nice until you light it.”

“Only thing that keeps me sane,” he replied.

“How long had you stopped for?”

“Ten years, eight months.”

“So why did you start again?”

“This bloody stupid racial harassment case we’ve got. It’ll be the death of me.”

“Aagh!” Gilbert exclaimed.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that we’ve got one, too. Does the name Wilson McIntyre mean anything to you?”

“Light-fingered Willy,” I said. “More convictions than you’ll find in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.”

“Well he’s claiming racial harassment now. Says he’s been stopped twelve times in the last four weeks.”

“Because he’s Scotch?” Les asked.

“He’s not Scotch, he’s black. The ACC rang me
yesterday
about it, but I’m trying to hold him off.”

“Jeee-sus,” I hissed. “What does Gareth have to say?” Gareth Adey is my uniformed opposite number, and it
would have been his men who had stopped Willy.

“Haven’t spoken to him yet. Since he was made OIC foot-and-mouth he’s out all day nailing notices to trees and lampposts all over the division.”

“And when you do,” Les said, “you’ll find that your friend Willy was stopped at three o’clock in the morning, wearing dark clothes and trainers, heading away from a reported break-in.”

“I’ll have a word with the men,” I said. “Find out what it’s all about. Now, this press conference. As you two far
outrank
me, I suggest that you handle it between you. How does that sound?”

I had a banana sandwich for lunch and changed into jogging bottoms, lightweight boots and fleece jacket. In less than an hour I’d walked out of town and was nearly at the top of the fell, with sweat chilling my back every time a gust of wind came down from the North. I had to walk on the road, because every gateway was taped off, with a warning sign about the disease. We were living in a no-go area. I jogged the last quarter of a mile and nearly collapsed in the picnic lay-by at the top.

When I’d recovered I stood on the wall and surveyed my kingdom, spread out below me like a map. Along the valley buildings crowded next to each other in a hotchpotch of styles, like a collection made by someone who didn’t know what to specialise in so he just kept everything. Churches – more churches than you’d believe – shoulder to shoulder with multi-storey car parks, department stores and office blocks. Gothic ornamentation jostled for position beside Sixties austere, Victorian art nouveau and pre-war utility. Steam rose from somewhere on the left of town and a Metro train left a smudge of black over the station as it pulled away. The train line cuts the town in half, while the canal borders it on the north side.

It was a dull day, and all the colours were muted.
Although we’d not had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth within twenty miles the fields and fells were uncannily quiet, devoid of livestock, as if they’d already surrendered to the inevitable. When the drizzle started it felt as if the sky was weeping. How soon, I thought, will the men with guns come and light the funeral pyres? It’s a crazy world. A crazy world. I pulled my waterproof jacket out of my pack and headed downhill.

Willy McIntyre had gone to the press and the editor of the local evening paper tipped off the assistant chief constable that they were carrying an article about the case in Monday’s edition. Forewarned is forearmed. The ACC sent for Gilbert to try to keep one step ahead of the game, which left me to handle the press conference on Monday morning. Les agreed to attend, to give the occasion a bit more clout, for which I was grateful.

While we were setting up the microphones and deciding who would sit where, Les pulled his pipe out and placed it on the desk. Our press officer latched on to it and insisted he take a few token puffs on camera. It would, he claimed, “
create
an aura of competence and authority.” I pointed out that the room was fitted with a sprinkler system, and if he lit the thing it would create an aura of panic and ridicule, so we agreed that he would just hold it and point with it. Otherwise we might find ourselves on television a few more times than we’d bargained for.

Everybody came. They always do for the murder of a young woman. YTV and the BBC were recording us for a showing in the evening, the
Gazette
reporters came mob handed and a few tabloids sent their northern
representatives
, hoping to hear something to titillate their readers. You could recognise them by their fur hats and boots. They’d be disappointed, because we were presenting Colinette as a wholesome, home-loving girl and stressing that there was no sexual interference. All references to her underwear were
lost in the pathologist’s report.

Les outlined the facts of the case, saying what we’d done and talking about Colinette’s movements on the night of her death and the two nights before. He said that we now
needed
to know from anybody who had been anywhere near the shop where she worked and her route home on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and he explained the reasons why. He spoke in a low voice, his hands clasped together with the pipe stem pointing into space, like your headmaster
explaining
that your behaviour hadn’t been quite what was
expected
of you.

Mrs Jones was too distressed to appear but she had
provided
an album of photographs and a few seconds of video taken at a barbecue in the garden of the ex-boyfriend’s
parents
. It had been shot by his next-door neighbour and showed Colinette in happier times, wearing shorts and a skimpy top. Les told them that we’d had copies made and they would be distributed at the end of the conference. Meanwhile, if there were any questions, he and good ol’ Inspector Priest would attempt to answer them.

A young woman with punk hair that I’d met before but forgotten the name of thrust her arm up with all the intent of a rearing cobra. Les invited her to speak with an expansive wave of the pipe.

“Superintendent Isles,” she began. “Is it true that you are linking this murder with those of Laura Heeley a month ago and Robin Gillespie, over in Lancashire, a fortnight before that.”

There’d been a leak. Someone had taken the pieces of
silver
and gone to the press. Les fidgetted with the pipe, hunched his shoulders and looked at me.

“No,” I said. I don’t know why, but a serial killer on the loose provokes hysteria in the media and that puts pressure on us. They give him a name and hurl it in our faces at every opportunity. It’s as if committing one murder is almost acceptable – we all have one book and a murder in us – but
more than that is aberrant. There was a rustle of unease in the room and more hands were thrust upwards. “If I can explain,” I went on. “So far, we have found nothing to link any of these murders. We are in full consultation with West Pennine, who are in charge of poor Robin’s murder, and Mrs Heeley’s was on our territory, but there are very few similarities.”

“What’s your gut feeling, Charlie?” the editor of the
Gazette
shouted from the back of the room.

I sat up and stretched my neck so I could see him. “We don’t have gut feelings,” I replied. “We collect evidence and go along with that.”

“So what does the evidence say?”

“Very little, I’m afraid, but that in itself is grounds for suspicion. It’s the only factor that might link the cases.”

“You mean that the very lack of evidence in each case
suggests
that they were committed by the same person?”

“No, but it’s something we have considered.”

“It sounds as if you’re looking for someone who is extremely clever.”

I shook my head. “Cunning and devious,” I said. “There’s nothing clever about hitting a young boy on the head with a hammer.”

“So you do think the cases are linked.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said you were considering it.”

“It’s a possibility,” I admitted. I’d blown it, I’d really blown it.

“Have you called in a profiler?” someone asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It isn’t the time.”

“Can I ask a question please?” one of the hacks from the
Gazette
shouted. He was called Arnie Vernon and it was the first time I’d seen him outside a pub after ten o’clock in the morning. Les nodded at him and he said: “What about the ring? You haven’t told us about the ring.”

“What ring?” I asked.

“The one you found in the rec.”

“Oh, that one.” I turned to the rest of them and explained. “We did a fingertip search of the recreation ground adjacent to where we think Colinette was abducted. In the course of that search we found a lady’s ring. In one of those incredible coincidences that sometimes occur in these situations it just happened to be one that Colinette had lost about eighteen months previously. So far we haven’t attached any significance to it.”

Our press officer, standing right at the back, made a
cutthroat
gesture to me. I said: “Can I thank you for attending, ladies and gentlemen. It’s imperative that we keep this case in the public’s eye in order to find Colinette’s killer. We are grateful for your co-operation.”

I took Les up to Gilbert’s office and we attacked his coffee and biscuits with vigour. “Want anything in it?” I asked, but he shook his head.

“Go on then,” I invited. “Tell me I cocked it up.”

“You cocked it up.”

“Thanks.”

He pushed his tobacco pouch towards me, saying: “Want a fill?”

“No.”

“Do you good.” He sat back in Gilbert’s big chair and sucked on the empty pipe.

“Make it something more exotic and I might be tempted.”

“Somebody’s squeaked,” he stated. “They know that we’re linking the cases, or that bird from
UK News
does. She’s oiled someone’s palm, or some other part of his
anatomy
. I bet they’ve already got a name for him.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right. And how did they know about the ring? That’s never been mentioned.”

“It had to come out sometime, Charlie, and the longer we’d concealed it the more they’d have been at our throats when it
did come out. ‘The public’s right to know,’ and all that.”

“I was probably thinking that way myself, and when lives are at stake they’ve got a point.”

“What about a profiler? It might be an idea.”

“No,” I replied. “I don’t need anybody to draw circles on a map and tell me he lives within two miles of the town hall clock. And I don’t need to know that his mother didn’t love him. It’s fingerprints and semen stains I want, not airy-fairy conjecture that might lead us up the wrong gum tree. I can do that for myself.”

“They sometimes get good results.”

“Yeah, in hindsight. When I’ve a specific question, Les, I’ll ask. As a matter of fact, I’ve dropped a note to Adrian Foulkes at the General, asked him to contact me.”

He grinned. “I should have known better than to push it. You’re a good cop, Charlie. You might have fucked-up the press conference, but the enquiry is in safe hands.”

“Thanks, Les. And patronising is the lowest form of
bullshit
. Do you really think a pipe would suit me?”