Laughing Boy (16 page)

Gina Milner loved animals. She loved all animals, but not equally. At the first stutter of her alarm clock she was wide awake and swinging her legs out of bed, and a quick peek through the curtains confirmed that the sun was shining, for once. She loved animals with shells or scales or feathers or fur, it was all the same to her, but most of all she loved
horses
.

She’d never owned one but had taken riding lessons from an early age. Her dad had ferried her there and back, and even investigated the possibility of buying a horse and
stabling
it at the riding school, but the cost was prohibitive and there are too many horse traders in the horse trading
business
.

Mrs Milner was already downstairs, making toast, as Gina breezed into the sunlit kitchen. “Morning, love, want some toast?” Mum asked.

“Haven’t time, thanks,” Gina replied. “Is it all right if I take the car?”

“It’s not good for you, you know, dashing about without any breakfast. Of course you can.”

“I’ll have some when I get back. Thanks, Mum.”

She grabbed her anorak from behind the door, unhooked the car keys and was gone. Her mother shook her head and smiled, proud of the daughter she’d thought she would never have. She placed six rashers of bacon under the grill and shouted up to her husband that breakfast was ready.

Gina was in her A-levels year at Heckley High School, and was on course for a straight flush of grade A passes. Then it would be off to Glasgow, studying veterinary
medicine
. After that, who could tell? Set up in practise in Halifax, go into research or work for a while on some project in Africa? The world would be at her feet. Meanwhile, the horses had to be fed and then it was off to her Saturday job, earning money for a trip to see the famous Lipizzaner
horses
at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.

None of her friends knew about her Saturday job, although they had all seen her at work. Her parents were in on the secret, but if one of them mentioned it she would
collapse
in a fit of giggling and change the subject.

Gina filled a plastic bag with carrots from the sack in the garage and transferred them to the boot of her mother’s Fiesta. She drove to the greengrocer’s shop at the end of the road and the proprietor gave her another bag filled with
cabbage
leaves and other waste items.

“There’s some apples in there,” he told her. “’Osses likes apples.”

“Thanks Mr Moss,” she replied. “You’re a treasure. I’ll tell them they’re from you.”

He smiled and shook his head as she drove off. “She’ll go far, that lass,” he said to his next customer. “She will, she’ll go far.”

Gina made an expert three-point turn and drove past her home, over the little bridge that crossed the canal and turned on to a minor road that led over the fells. The ponies were in a little triangular field just down from the tops, where a farmer had brought some of his sheep to have their lambs. They were all stranded there now, because of the
foot-and-mouth
restrictions, and the field was a quagmire. Gina had seen their plight a fortnight earlier, when out for a walk with her father, and had unofficially adopted them.

There was room to park but not enough to turn round. Usually she would feed the horses first, and after a long chat
with them, and much rubbing of their ears, would drive another quarter of a mile to where an old drovers’ road crossed the lane. She would turn round there and go home. This morning for some reason she decided to turn round first. The horses were waiting for her, their heads hanging over the wall like a pair of stuffed moose. Gina waved to them as she sped by, shouting: “Don’t worry, I’m coming back.”

A four-by-four came over a brow in the road, travelling in the opposite direction. Gina pulled into the side to give it room to pass and raised her hand to wave to the driver until she realised it wasn’t the one she normally saw. She smiled at her mistake and saw the vehicle’s brake lights come on through her rear-view mirror.

Gina stopped on the left-hand side of the lane, just beyond the drovers’ road, and reversed into it. The ground was rough and stony, and the entrance narrow, so she
concentrated
hard on what she was doing. Mrs Milner would not be pleased if her car was returned minus its silencer. When she was far enough back she pulled the handbrake on and instinctively glanced in her right-hand wing mirror before moving forward.

The same weak sun that had brightened Mrs Milner’s kitchen was shining through the gap in the curtains of a Victorian terrace house on the outskirts of Heckley. The young woman lying in bed screwed up her eyes as the patch of light it cast on the duvet moved across her face. She turned away from it and put her arm around the man lying next to her.

“Are you awake?” he whispered.

“Mmm, are you?”

“Mmm.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. I always do, after…you know.”

“So do I.” He moved her arm from across his chest and sat up, turning to plump up his pillows. “Put some music on,” he said.

She reached out and pressed the Play button on the
cassette
player that sat on the bedside cabinet, then rearranged her pillows so she could sit up next to him.

This is the eye of the storm
, came out of the speakers in a high-pitched voice, almost falsetto.
Watch out for that needle, Son, ’cos this is the eye of the storm
.

“Fast forward past this,” he ordered her. “It’s too slow.”

She did as she was told and a few seconds later the tempo stepped up to a rap. “This is better.” He put his arm across her shoulders and slapped out the rhythm with the palm of his hand against her skin as he sang along with the tape:

“Ah, that’s a good one,” he declared. “Tim didn’t fuck about when he wanted to say something. Now, listen to this next one and tell me all about it.”

It was the song that Tim Roper wrote for his pal Zeke’s new-born son, Theo. The collected voices of The LHO sang the lyric:

“Now,” the man began, “who are we talking about when we say Uncle Joe?”

“Joe Kennedy!” the girl answered, triumphantly.

“Very good!” he replied. “Dirty Joe Kennedy, who spawned the whole fuckin’ Kennedy tribe. But who put an end to it?”

“Lee Harvey Oswald!” she replied.

“That’s right. You’re learning, my girl, you’re learning. And who are The LHO named after and in tribute to?”

“Lee Harvey Oswald!”

“Off course they are. Probably the greatest American who ever lived. And who’s Sister Mary?”

“Mary Warner!”

“That’s right, marijuana. Now listen to this one. This one’s poetry.”

He reached across her and pressed the Stop button. “That’s where Tim spent his last night,” he told her, “in the San Gabriel mountains, composing himself, collecting his thoughts, before the CIA assassinated him. Maybe we should go there.”

“What, to America?”

“That’s right. I think they’d appreciate us there. Wouldn’t you like to see the Mojave Desert just once, with the sun coming up behind the mountains, before they make it one big car park?”

Her face was alive at the thought of it. “Could we?” she asked.

“I don’t see why not, when we’ve finished here. Did you enjoy last night?”

“Oh yes! It was the best so far.” She snuggled against him, her face glowing at the memory of the previous night’s activities. “When can we do it again?”

“Soon. I should be finished downstairs today or
tomorrow
. All it needs is some paint. And then we’ll do something really special, I promise you.”

“Have you found anyone?”

“I think so. And you’ll like her. One I remember from the old days, back down home. It might be a good idea to go further afield, next time.”

“Oh Timothy, you’re so good to me.”

“What!” he exclaimed. “What did you call me?”

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough. What did you call me?” He pushed himself upright and placed his hand on her stomach.

“Timothy.”

“And what happens to people who call me that?”

“They have to be punished.”

“That’s right. They have to be punished.”

The sliver of sunlight slid off the bed and started its
journey
across the carpet and over the piles of clothes they’d left there the night before, and up on the roof a blackbird
started
singing.

People, some people, often drive out into the countryside to dump unwanted household effects. It’s fairly commonplace to see some rural scene marred by the incongruous
placement
of a three-piece suite or a mattress that was surplus to the requirements of a townie who thinks of the countryside as one big dumping ground. Gina thought it was a
mannequin
, a store-window dummy, that some joker had
abandoned
there. It was sitting upright, legs spread wide, leaning on the wall as casually as if waiting for a bus. She opened her door to have a better view, and her smile slowly changed into a look of horror. Store-window dummies didn’t have
cellulite
, she thought, or pubic hair.

The horses didn’t get their carrots on Saturday morning. Gina drove downhill and stopped at the first house she reached, where she telephoned the police. The old lady who lived there made her sit by the fire and gave her a cup of tea, but she couldn’t drink it because her hands were shaking too much. Much as she enjoyed it she didn’t go to her weekend job that day, or the next.

We didn’t have our jog in the park, or the swim, or the pint in the pub. We were congregating in the office, with Pete regaling everybody with the story of Rowena and his little fuchsia number in terms that were decidedly non-PC, when the call came through.

By the time I put the phone down the joking and
laughter
had stopped and all eyes were on me. “Looks like he’s struck again,” I said, very softly. “A woman’s body’s been found on Stone Rigg Lane, near the top of Whinmoor Hill.” Here we go again, I thought. Here we go again. I mentally clicked up a gear. “Dave, you come with me. Maggie, I want
you to talk to the person who found the body. I’ll ring you with details. Peter, pick your team and follow us. Jeff and the rest of you, round up the specialists and stand by. Make some room downstairs for us and inform Mr Wood. You know the score. Christ, you ought to by now. C’mon, let’s go.”

We did what we do best: stood on the hillside in little groups, bare-headed with our jackets flapping in the wind. We looked suitably grave and I did a lot of pointing. I arranged for the lane to be blocked off and a tent to be
erected
over the scene before we let the specialists in. At lunchtime the pathologist did his stuff and I had my first close look at her.

The marks on her neck were similar to the ones we’d seen on Colinette Jones, but there were more of them. At first glance I’d have put her at about forty, but when I was closer I guessed she was younger than that. Late twenties, early thirties. Her tiny denim skirt was pulled up over her waist and she was wearing a skimpy top under a denim jacket. I could smell her perfume. It was one of those that sometimes knocks you over when a posse of sixth formers goes by. Cheap and strong and sold by the gallon.

There was no sign of her knickers, tights, handbag or shoes. In the pockets of her jacket we found a twenty pence piece, a used tissue and nine unused condoms in a packet that had once held twelve. We sealed these in evidence bags and I signed them. I suspected that our man had turned to a prostitute for his latest victim, and with any luck they’d done business before he’d killed her. Maybe this was his big mistake, I thought. Maybe this time we’d have him.

Finding out who she was and whom she’d been with were the top priorities, followed by the PM findings. Professor Sulaiman agreed to perform the autopsy on Sunday morning and I sent a team out trying to trace her. If she hadn’t been reported missing an artist’s drawing of her on TV or in the papers would probably do the trick.

The landlord of the pub in the village agreed to keep his kitchen open and at three o’clock fifteen of us descended on him for a belated lunch. I paid on my credit card and asked for a receipt.

There was nothing else we could do at the scene so I sent Dave and the others home and drove back to the office to start the paperwork. I left the space for the victim’s name blank and wrote M4 after it. M4, I thought, plus XYZ makes seven. Not my lucky number. How long before we went public and announced that he’d done three others that we knew about?

Maggie rang to say that the body had been found by a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl called Gina Milner who had made a full statement but was taking it badly. She was an only child and Maggie suspected she’d led a sheltered life. I pictured the poor dead woman sitting back against the wall with her eyes bulging and her tongue hanging out and wondered how you could prepare a child for something like that. I called in at Sainsbury’s on my way home and had my second cooked meal of the day in their restaurant, but this time I paid in cash. You can use the coffee machine as often as you like, so I sat there for an hour, watching people, wondering if he ever used places like this. Maybe yes, maybe no. Most of my officers wouldn’t be seen dead in a supermarket, but I knew that a serial killer pushing a shopping trolley was not as incongruous as it sounded. He had to eat, and was probably a loner, so Sainsbury’s was as good a place as anywhere to bump into him. I finished my coffee and went home.