Laughing Boy (17 page)

Sunday morning I sent Dave to the General to witness the PM while I played at detectives. We’d been too late for Saturday night’s papers and TV journalists like their
weekends
off, too, so we were no nearer to identifying M4. Sixty or seventy people go missing every day, so we
circulated
her description and waited. I looked at my checklist
of similarities between the cases and added another
column
for the latest victim. There were differences, but these were covered by the increased sexual activity theory, and the marks on her neck looked conclusive to me. I studied the pictures photographic had produced and put them in the file.

I knew Professor Sulaiman wouldn’t hurry, and I needed some fresh air, so I drove through town and down the valley a short way until I reached the hamlet where Gina Milner lived. Her father let me in and led me to the front room where she was sitting.

Gina was a bonny girl, but her face was puffy, as if she’d been crying or not slept. She was fully clothed, in jeans and a sweater, with an unbuttoned dressing gown over the top of them. Her dad said: “This is Inspector Priest, come to see you. How’re you feeling, love?”

She gave me a little smile and told her father that she was all right. Mrs Milner came in and asked me if I’d like a cup of tea, and I replied with a nod.

“DC Madison came to talk to you,” I said. “Maggie. We call her Mad Maggie.”

“Yes. She was nice.”

“She said that you go up there every day, to feed some horses.”

“Mmm.”

Mrs Milner re-appeared with a mug of tea and placed it on a small table near the easy chair I was sitting in. Milky and sweet, just how I don’t like it. I thanked her and turned back to Gina.

“Are they your horses?”

“No.”

“You just feed them.”

“Mmm.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“They’re gypsies’ ponies,” she said. “Well, I think they are. They put them in the field for the winter and left them.
There’s no food because the sheep have eaten all the grass. The farmer feeds the sheep but the horses never get any. They’re too shy and polite, and the sheep are greedy, so I take them some carrots and stuff from Mr Moss at the greengrocers. The farmer won’t feed them because they’re not his.”

“She’s been going up there every day before school,” Mrs Milner added. “And at weekends too, before she goes to work.”

“But you didn’t feel like going to work today,” I said, and she shook her head.

“I’m not surprised. It must have been quite a shock for you, yesterday morning. You did very well, ringing us as promptly as you did and I’ve come to say thank you.” “Have you identified the…the lady,” her father asked.

“No, not yet,” I replied.

“Was she murdered?”

“We believe so.”

“Well I never,” Mrs Milner added.

“Gina,” I began. “When you go up there do you ever see anybody else?”

She shook her head.

“Never?” I asked.

“Just one person, sometimes,” she replied.

“Who’s that?”

“Don’t know his name. Man in a Range Rover, comes over the hill. We sometimes meet on a narrow bit and he waves and smiles at me.”

“What colour Range Rover?”

“Black, and it’s always shiny, as if he washes it every day.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Well, I thought I saw him this morning but it was a
different
colour car.”

“What colour?”

“A reddish colour. Maroon.”

“But a Range Rover?”

“I think so.”

“What time would that be?”

“About half past seven.”

I grinned and said: “You must love horses, to get up at that time.”

“She does,” her mother said, sitting on her chair arm and putting an arm around her. “Don’t you, love.”

“Have you seen anyone else, apart from these Range Rovers?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, if you remember anyone, let me know, please.”

“OK.”

“You haven’t been up to see the horses today?”

“No.”

“I don’t think she wants to go up there again,” her
mother
told me.

“So they’ll be hungry.”

“Yes.”

“Get your coat, then,” I said, “and we’ll go feed them together.”

She glanced up at her mother, her face filled with alarm. “Go on,” her mother urged, giving her a gentle push. “You’ll be all right with the inspector.”

She wasn’t sure, but the horses were starving and that was a bigger pull on her than the bogeyman she’d seen the day before. “We’ll have to take some carrots,” she said.

I rose to my feet. “OK, where are they?”

She had some stuff from the greengrocers in the garage, plus a sack of carrots. She removed yellowing cabbage leaves from a carrier bag and replenished it with carrots, telling me: “These were for yesterday’s breakfast, but I didn’t give them it.”

“They
will
be starving,” I said as I put them in my boot. “So let’s go.”

The horses were poor specimens. They had long broad noses that curled under like a walrus’s, sprouting with coarse hair
and twitching as we approached them. They stood there, heads over the wall, with sagging backs and clod-hopping feet, as patient and dignified as ancient Buddhists awaiting enlightenment. One was black and white and the other brown and white, with ribs like rubbing boards under their winter coats.

Gina was transformed, pulling their ears, talking to them and making a fuss. She shared out the food between them, telling them not to be greedy or they’d get colic, promising to come back tomorrow. I looked at the field, wondering if I ought to have a word with the RSPCA. It was just a churned up morass. A metal feeder was up at the top end, with about thirty sheep standing around it, waiting for the next meal to arrive. They were all looking towards us,
wondering
if it was worth the effort to investigate.

When the horses were fed we drove up the hill to where the tent was, where Gina had found the body. A patrol car was there and the driver got out and came to talk to us. I told him about Gina and he said it must have been quite a shock for her. We looked inside the tent and I showed her that there was nothing there now, all was back to normal, hoping she’d be reassured. Back in the car, heading down the hill, I said: “So what do you normally do on a weekend? Your mother said you had a job.”

“O God, no,” she said, smiling. “I’ll…I’ll…”

“You’ll kill her,” I finished for her. “It’s all right to say it, you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“So what do you do?”

“Oh, it’s embarrassing.”

“Do they pay you?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“On my goldfish’s grave.”

“Well, do you ever drive through town on a weekend?”

“Mmm, quite a bit.”

“Right. So do you know where Henry’s carpets is, in the old cinema at the corner of Church Lane?”

“I know it.”

“Well, that’s me.”

“Who’s you?”

“Me, on the corner, inside the lion suit, dancing about on the pavement. That’s my weekend job.”

I chuckled with laughter. I’d seen her dozens of times, waving to the cars, creating a traffic hazard with her antics. “Honest?” I said.

“’Fraid so.”

“It’s you, inside the suit?”

“That’s right.”

“Ha ha ha ha!”

“You promised not to laugh!”

“Last time I saw you, you were doing the can-can, twirling your tail around your head.”

“One of my specialities.”

“And I’d decided you were a quiet, shy girl.”

“It’s amazing what anonym…anomyn…ano…”

“Anno Domini?” I suggested.

“No!”

“Annapurna? Anaglypta?”

“No!”

“Anabolic steroids?”

“No!” She poked my arm with an elbow. “I can say it. Ano…nymity. It’s amazing what anonymity can do for you.”

“I’ll have to try it, sometime, though I think I’m more a polar bear than a lion.”

We were back at her house. “Thank your mother for the tea,” I said as we came to a standstill.

“Right, and thanks for taking me up to feed the horses.”

“Promise me you’ll go up tomorrow?”

“It’s a promise.”

“Who pays for the carrots?”

“Dad does. They’re called pony carrots, and they’re dead cheap.”

“Right.”

As I drove away I saw her wave and I waved back. One reason for my visit was to see if she was all right, public
relations
, but I think she’d done far more for me than I’d done for her. It was impossible not to compare her with the schoolgirls I see in the mall at lunchtime, pulling on
cigarettes
, moping round the record stores and eyeing the boys in Burger King.

Dave arrived back at the station at the same time as I did. “No joy,” he said.

“What, no sperm?”

“Nah. Not a trace.”

“Damn! Did he have sex with her?”

“There were signs of penetration, but it could have been an object.”

“Before or after death?”

“Um,” he looked down at his notebook. “Perimortem, according to the prof. Didn’t like asking what that was.”

“
At about the time of
,” I said. “Neither one nor the other.”

“So it doesn’t help.”

“No. What about the marks?”

“Right. He was more forthcoming about them. He said the contusions were caused by a ligature across the front of the throat. I asked him how they compared with those on Colinette and he said that they were similar but there were more of them and they were not as pronounced.”

“In other words, he’s getting better at it.”

“Yep. That’s what the prof said.”

She’d died sometime Friday evening. I walked across to the window and looked out. Down below, a patrol car left the station yard and a passing motorist let him out although there was no other traffic. The windows of the office block opposite were in darkness and the only sign of life was two pigeons in a courting ritual on a ledge with a third one
looking 
on, awaiting an opportunity to oust his young rival. The sky had clouded over and somebody to the south was having a storm.

“It’s been nine days between the last two,” I said, still
facing
the window. “Last time I spoke with Adrian Foulkes he said it was like a drug. He said the highs level out, so he has to take a little bit more. And not only that, he has to take it more often.” The female pigeon flew off with the young male in hot pursuit. The old one didn’t bother. I turned around. “We’ve got to catch him, Dave. God help us, we’ve got to catch him.”

Monday morning we still hadn’t identified M4. There were old bruises on her arms and legs, and in the language of the PM she was a woman of some sexual experience, supporting my first impression that she was a prostitute. Fingerprints and dental impressions had been taken and the small amount of jewellery she was wearing – a wedding ring and a thin gold chain – was photographed. These would be circulated where appropriate in the hope of finding a match. After the usual round of meetings and deployment of the staff I collected Dave and Maggie and we locked ourselves in my office for a pow-wow.

“The Range Rover’s in the clear,” Dave told me. “Partner in a firm of estate agents in town. Likes to make an early start. The black one was in for a service and the garage loaned him the maroon one.”

“Fair enough.” I opened my notepad to a fresh page and laid a pen across it. “Outside there,” I began, waving an arm towards the window, “a murder enquiry is under way. It’s a routine investigation into the death of a young woman, coloured by the fact that the perpetrator has almost
certainly
killed three times before. We, however, are in a privileged position. We know that before this sequence of killings he – we’ll call him
he
– has murdered another three people in the south. He arranged those bodies in an X, a Y and a Z, so that he could boast about them afterwards. In other words, there was a link between them all. Now, has he left a link between our killings? My guess is that he has, so have a think about it. It may not be much, and it may not help us, but we need to find it. Meanwhile, what else can we glean from the
additional
information we three have?”

Dave pursed his lips and Maggie looked puzzled. Dave said: “Up to now, we’ve been thinking that he probably lived in Yorkshire, Heckley, even. Meanwhile, the Hatfield police have been looking for someone who lives down there.
Knowing what we know, that the same person did all the murders, he probably lives in Birmingham.”

“Which is a big help,” I added, downbeat.

“Yep. A big help.”

“Unless he’s moved,” Maggie suggested.

“That makes sense. There was an eighteen-month gap. Where was he then?”

“In jail?”

“Adrian thinks he’s a first offender.”

“Maybe he was in for something unrelated, like burglary.”

“All the killings were out of doors. Burglars like to break and enter.”

“In the army? Abroad? Had a job which didn’t give him the opportunities? Maybe he’d fallen down a ladder and
broken
both legs and he spent all that time in traction. It’s
anybody’s
guess.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, “so what we have to do is decide when to go public with all seven murders. What are the chances of the general public coming up with a list of
suspects
who fit in with laddo’s movements: lived near Hatfield; somewhere else for over a year; then moved up here?”

“You’d get a list of suspects, all right,” Maggie stated, “from all the grudge-bearers and crackpots. The Prime Minister top of the list, closely followed by Prince Charles.”

“We’ve checked, but they were both out of the country. So if we don’t publicise the fact that he’s done seven, not four, we need another way to go pro-active on this one. He’s gonna kill again in the next week or so. We can’t just sit on our backsides while they look at ten thousand tyre prints and trace five thousand white Toyotas. He won’t come to us, so we’ve got to take the hunt to him.”