Laughing Boy (15 page)

JT Joinery was on the ground floor, and the communal receptionist rang him and said that a Mr Goodfellow and a Mr Priest had arrived. He came to a security door and let us in.

He was big and soft looking, with a chubby baby-face and the beginnings of a beer belly under his overalls that gave him a pear-shape. We followed him wordlessly down a short corridor, past doors marked with names like Pendle Dolls Houses and Lancashire Hot Pots. This was Craftsville UK, the new vision of working Britain. I suspected that JT Joinery was the only genuine industry in the place.

It certainly looked industrious. There were enough power tools to stock a small B & Q and the air was filled with a fine sawdust that stung your nostrils and made me want to sneeze, so I sneezed. Why deny yourself? He led us into a small partitioned-off office space, a bit like mine, cleared a pile of catalogues off two wooden chairs and
invited
us to sit down. There was a girlie calendar on the wall, plus dozens of notes, post-its and unpaid invoices. It was a typical small business, run by a craftsman who was slowly drowning under the paperwork.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said.

“You were expecting us,” I opened with, after the
introductions
.

“Er, yes. Janet rang me, said you’d called. I thought you might come straight round.”

“How’s business?”

“Not bad. Picking up after the winter.”

Pete said: “This is serious, Mr Towse, so we’d like some straight answers. Where were you at seven o’clock on the evening of Wednesday the twenty-first of March? That’s just over a week ago.”

He blushed, pressed his hands together and did a funny little shake. “What’s it about?” he asked.

Pete opened his mouth to speak but I beat him to it. “A pickup like yours was seen near the place where young Robin Gillespie was murdered, back in early February,” I told him.

“That’s right, and it was mine. I’d gone to measure up at a house in Trawden, but they weren’t in, so I came home that way. Somebody saw the pickup and reported it. It’s
noticeable
. I suppose that’s why I drive it. The police have gone all over it and didn’t find anything.”

“So I understand. A week last Wednesday a young girl was murdered over in Yorkshire,” I said, “and a similar
pickup
was reported near the scene. Now, Mr Towse, where were you on the evening of the twenty-first. It was the third
Wednesday in the month, if that helps.”

Up to then he’d looked worried, but at that last
statement
you’d have thought I’d hit him in the teeth with an eight-by-four sheet of MDF. His mouth fell open and his arm shot out, knocking several letters on to the floor. I
studiously
bent down, tapped the sheets together and replaced them on his desk.

“Wednesday,” I reminded him.

“Um, J-Janet told you I was with her,” he began.

“That’s right,” I said. “She told us that you had a
romantic
evening in, all by yourselves. She cooked you coq-au-vin, which is your favourite, and you ate it off her stomach, while lying naked on the living-room rug. Now, we don’t mean this as any reflection on yourself or your lovely wife, but we didn’t believe her. So could we now have the truth,
please
!”

“She meant well,” he said, brushing a hand through his hair.

“Commendable,” I commented. “You’re a lucky man.”

“She thought it would just save trouble.”

“Instead of causing it. Where were you, Mr Towse?”

“We went out to some friends. For a meal. Janet didn’t want you calling round, embarrassing them. You know what women are like. The police call, asking questions…you might be completely innocent but mud sticks, doesn’t it? And they’re nice people. She didn’t want to bother them.”

“I’m sure she didn’t. Do you have an address for them?”

“Yeah, somewhere.” He produced a British Timber diary from a drawer and went to the page marked
Addresses
, near the back. I’ve never met anyone before who uses the Addresses page in a diary for addresses. Very suspicious. He read it out and Pete made a note.

“Name?” I asked.

“Um, Trevor and Michelle.”

“Surname?”

“I don’t know.”

I said: “You went round to these people’s house and had
a meal with them but you don’t know their surname?”

“Mmm.”

“Was anybody else there?”

“Yes, quite a few people.”

“How many?”

“About forty, or so.”

“Forty! Can you name any of them?”

“No, not surnames. They meet, now and again…”

“On the third Wednesday of the month.”

“That’s right. And talk and have a meal. That’s all. It was the first time we’d been invited.”

“I see. Sounds highly civilised. What time did you arrive?”

“Just after seven. We didn’t want to be the first there.”

“Do you have a phone number for Trevor and Michelle?”

“No.”

I looked at Pete, who shook his head, and we left. “More lies,” he said as he started the engine.

“He’s certainly covering something up,” I agreed. “Would you take him for a killer?”

“As much as anybody else. You get the impression there’s something going off deep down inside him, and what sort of a grown man drives a vehicle like that?”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I was rather fancying one like it for myself.”

Trevor and Michelle live in Skipton, which, to my eternal surprise, is not all that far away from these Lancastrian towns. Our
A to Z
didn’t cover it, so we called in at the police station for directions and a quick consultation with the electoral roll told us that their surname was Young.

As soon as we turned into their cul-de-sac I knew where Janet Towse’s aspirations lay. It was what the agents call an executive development, with four individual houses on large plots and not a wishing well in sight. Brookmere was second on the left, complete with integral sun lounge and double garage. There wasn’t a car to be seen. Everyone must have
either been elsewhere, in the reserved space outside the office, or safely tucked up in its heated garage. Pete tried to park his so that it didn’t look abandoned, but found it impossible, and we walked up the block-paved drive to the front door. I searched for an oil stain from the pickup, but imagined that any such blemish would have been cleaned up within hours.

A white haired gentleman with a pink face and Shetland cardigan opened the door. “Sorry to trouble you, Sir,” Pete said, “but are you Mr Young?”

“Detectives, eh,” he said, a few minutes later when we were seated in easy chairs which I would describe as chintz
covered
, although I don’t know what chintz is. There were watercolours of Dales scenes on the walls, a rare burst of sun streaming in through the French windows, and if I’d had a pot of Earl Grey at my elbow I’d have been as content as a little green caterpillar in a peapod. “Always enjoy a good mystery myself,” he went on. “Envy you chaps. Now, what’s it all about?”

“I’m admiring the paintings, Mr Young,” I said. “Do you have any problems with them fading in all this sun?”

“No,” he replied. “Not so you’d notice, but Michelle does them, and what she doesn’t sell ends up on the wall. She knocks them off like breeding rabbits.”

“Don’t belittle her talent,” I chided. “They’re very good.” I meant it. Watercolours require something called
painterliness
, and these had it. Every stroke of the brush was done with confidence and there’d been no going back. And she’d caught the Dales in all their moods. “Where is Mrs Young?” I asked.

She was out walking the dogs. Funny, I thought, how “walking the dogs” carries connotations about class that “walking the dog” doesn’t.

“We understand,” Pete began, “that you held some sort of a dinner party here just over a week ago, on the evening of the twenty-first. Is that so, Mr Young?”

“Er, yes, as a matter of fact we did,” he replied.

“Do you have a guest list, Sir?”

“No, I’m afraid not. We don’t bother with anything like that; it’s all rather informal. Not a dinner party, as such. We put on a buffet and just stand around and chat.”

“How many attended?”

“Twenty-two couples. Forty-four including ourselves.”

“So how do you draw up the invitations?”

“We don’t. We’re just a group of like-minded friends, and if you want to bring someone else along, that’s fine. Could you tell me what this is all about, please? Is someone in
trouble
?”

I said: “And you hold one of these parties on the third Wednesday of the month?”

“Yes,” he replied, “but not here. We don’t hold them all here. We rotate, somewhere different each time.”

“I see.”

“Were a couple called Jason and Janet Towse at the party, do you remember, Sir?” Pete asked.

He looked thoughtful. “Jason and Janet?” he repeated. “No, I don’t think I met them. You’ll appreciate, of course, that one can’t remember everybody’s name, and there were one or two new faces present last Wednesday. Jason and Janet? No, I don’t think so. We tend not to bother with surnames.” A car door slammed and the sound of barking dogs
interrupted
our conversation until it receded to the back of the house. “That’s Michelle,” he said. “She might remember them.”

“But you can’t?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

A door closed and a voice shouted: “Hide behind the sofa, Trev, I think the bloody Mormons are in the street again,” immediately followed by Michelle Young making her entrance.

I fell for her instantly. She was a big woman, wearing a long full coat and flowing silk scarf, with bleached hair and tinted spectacles. We stood up and I said: “Actually, we’re the bloody CID.”

She gave a hearty laugh and shook my hand, then Pete’s, as we introduced ourselves. She’d have looked good in a
trilby
hat, tilted over one eye, drawing on a cheroot.

“So, what’s the bloody CID want?” she asked, after telling us to sit down again.

“We came to ask a few questions about your Wednesday night party,” I told her.

“Has Trevor offered you a coffee?”

“No, we’re fine.”

“Trevor! Where’s your manners?” She turned back to me, saying: “Tch! I’ve tried to train him but most of it fell on deaf ears.”

“No coffee,” I protested. “We’d just like to clear up something about one of your guests, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, if you insist. Which one?”

“Right, thank you. Now, can you tell us if a couple called Jason and Janet were at the party?”

“Yes,” she stated, emphatically.

“You sound quite certain,” I said.

“I am. They were here.”

“Well I don’t remember them,” Mr Young admitted.

“Of course you do, darling. You spent most of the evening talking to him.”

“I don’t remember anyone called Jason. Damned stupid name. I’d have remembered that.”

“Not Jason!” she declared. “Rowena! Surely you
remember
Rowena. Rowena and Janet.”

“Ah, Rowena!” he exclaimed. “Now I remember. Does something in wood, I believe.”

“Rowena?” I echoed.

“Rowena?” Pete added, determined not to be left out.

“That’s right, Rowena,” Mrs Young confirmed. “He was wearing a fetchingly simple fuschia button-through with white accessories. He couldn’t get the handbag right, but it
was
the poor darling’s first appearance in public, so to speak. He is all right, isn’t he?”

I looked at Pete and he looked at her and I looked at Mr Young and she looked at me. “Um, yes, he’s, er, all right,” I mumbled. “He’s, er, very…all right. But…I think I could manage that coffee, now, if that’s, um, all right.”

We didn’t speak much on the drive back. Once a month forty-odd like-minded people of both genders met for
canapés and dressed in their partners’ clothes. They stood around and talked, mainly about fashions, had a few drinks and went home. It was a brief island of relief, a safety valve, before they immersed themselves once more in the daily grime of living a lie and being normal, whatever that meant.

“Reckon he’s in the clear, Chas?” Pete asked as we swung into the station yard.

“Forty-three witnesses say he is,” I replied.

“They weren’t sure what time he arrived.”

“True.”

“And a pickup
was
seen.”

“I know. Keep on it Pete – that only leaves four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others to check out.”

“Thanks.”

“Monday’ll do.”

Everybody had gone home, so we followed them. There was a note from Geordie on my desk telling me to bring my gear in the morning. He’d organised a jog round the park,
followed
by a swim at the sports centre, followed by a
well-earned
pint, so I abandoned my plan to go on a solo run and had a pizza from the freezer.

I was disappointed, no point in denying it. The pickup was the first red-hot lead we’d had, but now we were back to square one. Worse than that, square none. We had a database of possible offenders and could check the ones who owned motor vehicles, but Adrian Foulkes had told me that our man probably didn’t have a criminal record.

I put a week’s washing in the machine and gave it the
delicates
cycle. A lady a couple of doors away irons my shirts for me, and I’d take them round tomorrow. Ironing is one domestic task that I haven’t mastered. I found a can of lager in the fridge and wandered into the front room to get a decent glass from the cabinet, but by the time I got there I’d forgotten what I wanted. Back in the kitchen I saw the can on the work surface and remembered that I needed a glass. I
made it at the second attempt.

Dave rang to say that they were back from their trip south. Everybody had been helpful and they’d collected a load of paperwork. I told him to bring his kit in the
morning
and declined his offer of a swift half or two in a nearby hostelry. I emptied the swing bin and did all the washing-up and rounded off an evening at home with some laddish
television
. All in all, not a memorable Friday night, but better than someone’s. Much better than someone’s.