Laughing Boy

by Stuart Pawson

  The road levelled out and my strides lengthened. After the steep bits the long gradual slope near the top felt almost downhill. It’s exposed up there, with nothing between you and the Urals. The wind was from the north-east and had an edge to it, chilling the sweat on my back. I kept going, right to the beacon at the very top, where they used to light a bonfire to warn of approaching armies, or the coronation of a new king, or, more recently, the turning of the millennium. Twenty miles to the north, on a similar hill, the peasants would see the blaze and say: “Hey, we’re being invaded, or maybe we have a new king, or else it’s a new millenium,” and they’d hastily start to rub two sticks together to pass on the tidings, whatever they were.

  Trouble was, someone was out there, someone with an aberrant brain, and fate had decreed that it was my job to find him. Millions of words have been expended on proving who Jack the Ripper was, but they were all wasted. Jack the Ripper wasn’t somebody out of the history books, he was John Doe, Mr Nobody or Mr Everyman. Take your pick. Mark Twain said that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by William Shakespeare, they were written by somebody else with the same name. That’s how this case felt. The Property Developer didn’t do the murders, it was someone else with the same name.

  It worked, I was at the top. I stopped and rested, bent over with my hands on my knees, the cold air searing my throat as my lungs dragged it in. I was knackered, but I’d done it. The track to the beacon was closed so I had to be satisfied with the lay-by and a brief rest in the shelter of the wall. There was nobody else up there, picnicking in the warmth of their Renault Megane, and for once I wished there had been. “Have you run all the way up?” they’d have asked, and I’d have smiled modestly and admitted that I had, but there was nobody at all to witness my righteousness, not even a sheep.

  I spent a few moments taking in the view and letting my heart settle down to its normal rhythm. We were a five-minute drive out of Heckley, but it could have been the North Pole. The summit of the fell is a plateau, and all you can see in any direction is brown moorland for about half a mile, until it drops out of sight. It’s the roof of the world, if you have a decent imagination and modest ambitions. “C’mon, legs,” I said, “let’s go,” and started on the gentle jog back home.

  The casserole was cold and uncooked when I checked it. Bugger! It looked as if I’d put it on for ninety seconds instead of ninety minutes. I gave it twenty minutes at high and went for a shower. This time it was done to perfection and there was enough left for Sunday lunch.

  The nationals, even the Sundays, latched on to the killings with varying degrees of sensationalism but we were kept off the front pages of the tabloids by the foot-and-mouth, which topped a thousand cases that weekend. Prostitute is victim number four was the general tenor of the reports, and they called her Naomi Huntley because we hadn’t made a positive identification of her as Norma Holborn. Nor had we released the information that three other murders were attributable to the killer, making his real tally seven. Monday morning, after troop deployment and morning prayers, I had a meeting with Dave and Maggie to discuss progress.

  “No sussies over the weekend,” Maggie stated.

  “Thank God for that,” I replied. Control had been instructed to let me know of any suspicious death anywhere in the region, but no call had disturbed my weekend.

  “Either he couldn’t find a suitable victim or he’s gone into retirement for a while,” Dave suggested.

  “Dr Foulkes says he’s out of control,” I told them. “This time he won’t stop until he’s stopped, by us or someone else. We’re just in a lull while he finds his next victim.”

  “The eye of the storm,” Maggie said.

  “Precisely.” I turned to Dave, saying: “So what did you learn at Leeds University about the letters, if anything?”

  He shook his head. “I spoke to a professor in the English department who’s worked with the police before. Well, he said he has. He found the notes very interesting – fascinating, even – and said he’ll let us have his conclusions as soon as possible.”

  “Jesus!” I cursed. “There’s only about fifteen words for him to consider. Did you tell him that it was a murder hunt?”

  “All the more reason for him to do it properly,” Dave replied.

  “And he wouldn’t want somebody doing time because he’d condemned them for using the past pluperfect where it should have been the present bloody indicative, would he? What about the quotation, if it is one? Did he recognise that?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. Let’s have a look at them ourselves.” I pulled a photocopy of the two notes out of my drawer and Maggie unpinned one from the office wall. “Right, Mags,” I said. “What do you see?”

  She held the page between her fingertips as she studied it. “Done on a computer,” she informed us, after a few seconds. “Set to centralise the printing.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “The spelling is correct, which is probably unusual in notes from psychopaths, but his punctuation is erratic and he uses capital letters in some places and not in others.” She paused for a while, and started seeing pieces of information in the note that had not been immediately visible to her. “He’s computer literate,” she continued, “and has that tendency to use small case letters that most nerds have, but he uses capitals when he calls himself the Property Developer. Maybe there’s a deep psychological reason for that, or maybe it’s just his inconsistency.”

  “OK,” I said. “Well done, but let’s leave the deep psychological stuff for Dr Foulkes. Does anything leap off the page?”

  Dave said: “He uses capitals for Eye Of The Storm, as if it’s the title of something. Maybe the line about property developers is a quote from something called ‘Eye Of The Storm’.”

  “It does have a certain scansion about it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But your man at Leeds didn’t recognise it?” He shook his head. “No.”

  “Perhaps it was too lowbrow for him. You’re the pub quiz whiz-kids, so this is your chance to put all that knowledge to use,” but now they both shook their heads. “OK,” I continued. “Let me tell you this. ‘Eye Of The Storm’ may be the title of a book or a poem or a song. We’re agreed on that?” They nodded. “Right. In England we would normally write a title like that with small case letters for the little words, like of and the. However, in America they usually use upper case letters for all the words in a title. I just thought I’d share that with you.”

  “You mean, he’s an American?”

  “Not necessarily. If you get used to seeing titles printed like that there’s a tendency to adopt the convention because there’s a logic in it. It makes sense. I think the book or whatever is probably American.”

  Maggie looked puzzled, pursing her lips and pressing the end of a pencil into her chin. “How do you know something like that?” she asked.

  “Um, it’s a long story,” I replied.

  “We’d love to hear it.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh yes we would, wouldn’t we, Dave?”

  “I’m falling off my chair with anticipation.”

  “Right. OK. Well, long time ago, when I was very young – at Art College, actually – somebody bought me a guitar and the Bert Weedon instruction book for a birthday present.” I shrugged my shoulders, saying: “Everybody was doing it, those days.”

  “I wasn’t,” Dave said.

  “Nor me,” Maggie added.

  “Well everybody with any talent. There were these books called Sing Out! which had all the words and music in them, and the titles were written like I said, with capital letters. They were considered terribly left wing and subversive, so when I joined the police my musical career went on hold. Otherwise, I might have been the next, um, Craig Douglas.”

  “Is this when you went through your Dylan phase?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s still in his Dylan phase,” Dave growled.

  Jeff Caton’s face app
eared at the window of my partitioned-off office and he made a knocking gesture, his knuckles not quite making contact with the glass. I waved for him to come in.

  “Am I interrupting?” he asked, and I assured him that he was rescuing me from further embarrassing disclosures about my youth. Jeff was handling all the other crime while I was bogged down with the murders.

  “We’re neglecting you, Jeff,” I told him. “I’ve wanted a word. What’s happening on the streets of Heckley that I should know about?”

  “All fully under control, Chas. Nothing at all for you to concern yourself with. I came in to ask about the Three Peaks. Are we doing it up and down the steps, or what?”

  “Depends on the foot-and-mouth,” Dave told him, “but it’s looking like the stairs to me. This lot’ll get worse before it gets better.”

  “Big Geordie’s in charge,” I said.

  “I know,” Jeff replied. “I’ve just been talking to him. Apparently he’s organised some corporate sponsorship from the supermarkets and they’ve offered to supply drinks and stuff. It’s looking good, if we can do it, but it’ll be tough up and down the stairs – a lot tougher than the real thing.”

  “Which is why some of us are in strict training,” I told him. I slid the photocopy of the first letter towards him, saying:

  “Have you ever heard of a song or book called that?”

  “Eye of the Storm?”

  “Mmm.”

  “No.”

  “Well thanks for trying.”

  “There’s ‘Riders on the Storm’, by Jim Morrison.”

  “This is ‘Eye of the Storm’.”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “Ne’er mind.”

  “Have you tried the Internet?”

  I looked at Maggie and Dave. “Why didn’t we think of that?” I asked.

  Dave cleared his throat, saying: “I was just about to mention it.”

  “I bet you were. Thanks, Jeff, you’ve saved the day. Now, what’s happening about the Pakistanis who attacked that youth? I see you’ve managed to keep it out of the papers.”

  “Ah!” he responded. “That is one small piece of grit in the Vaseline of Mr Wood’s life. I went to the Gazette and asked them not to print it because it was definitely dodgy, and they agreed. However, his solicitor has just called the front desk wanting to know the crime number and the name of the investigating officer, because the little scrote is making a claim for criminal injuries. Gilbert will have apoplexy when he hears.”

  “Is this the youth who claims he was attacked by four Pakis?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s twenty-eight, but yes, that’s him.”

  “And what’s dodgy about it?”

  “Just that the four Pakis don’t exist and his chief witness is his wife. She has form stretching back to bullying at school, mugging and ABH on a neighbour. Word is that they are always arguing and had the mother and daddy of a row on the night in question, but nobody will make a statement on the record. We reckon she went for him with the carving knife and they’re making the best of it.”

  “What’s he called?” Dave asked.

  “Paul Usher.”

  “And what’s she called?”

  “Maria-Helena.”

  He sat up at the mention of the name. “She wouldn’t be Maria-Helena Smith, would she, of the Sylvan Fields Smiths?”

  “That’s her. Violence is a way of life with them and none of the neighbours dare say a dicky bird.”

  Dave poked his tongue into his cheek and stroked his chin, pondering on his next move. “Want me to sort it?” he said, eventually.

  “How?” Jeff asked.

  “Whoa!” I said, slamming my chair down on to all four legs and holding up a restraining hand. “Just what have you in mind?”

  “Nothing too illegal, indecent or dishonest,” Dave replied. “You bring Usher in for an interview and find out where his wife will be at the time. After I’ve had a quiet word with her I’d be very surprised if she didn’t withdraw her statement.”

  Everybody was looking at me. Sometimes, an ounce of local knowledge is worth all the highfalutin’ expertise you can throw at a case. Having all the acronyms in the alphabet backing you up is no substitute for a pair of eyes on the street and experience of the people you are dealing with. But there were risks, too. The Paul Ushers of the world had a good grasp of what we could do and what we couldn’t, plus free legal advice on tap. They knew their rights, as they often reminded us, and had little to lose and much to gain by turning the tables on the police. And then there was his wife, Maria-Helena. We had her safety to think of, too.

  “No,” I said. “It’s too risky.”

  We didn’t have access to the Internet at the station because of fear of collecting a virus. For the same reason it is forbidden to bring diskettes from home or take any home. Command and control at HQ have access but they’d have wanted to know what it was all about and I was wary of leaks. Normally I’d have seen someone I knew in the pornography squad and done it on the QT, but Dave said that his son, Daniel, was at home on a revision day, so the three of us went to see him. He haggled like a Moroccan souk trader but I stuck out at minimum wage and he agreed to help us. Dave fetched three more chairs and arranged them behind Dan’s.

  “Which search engine do you want to use?” Dan asked.

  “You tell us, we’re paying you enough.” He clicked a button and the screen was filled with advertising bumph.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Try Eye of the Storm, please.” He typed eye and storm into the box and clicked the search button. Within seconds we had a list of references. They included a couple to do with hurricane tracking, a company that made horse drawn carriages and book about a day in the life of Jesus. “That could be interesting,” I said, pointing to the book – the Bible is the favoured reading of most serial killers. There was another site to do with the Florida presidential election and one that proclaimed: Eye Of The Storm; the legend of Tim Roper. “Print them out, please,” I said, and Daniel leaned past me to switch on the printer.

  “What next?” he asked when the printer had stopped.

  “Try Property Developer,” I said and within seconds we were staring at another list names and references. It started with a couple of books about how to make millions out of property developing, and was followed by dozens of companies who had probably done just that, with or without the book. They were mainly in the Far East, as far east as Australia and New Zealand, with a preponderance in Malaysia.

  “They don’t look very helpful,” Dave said.

  “There’s hundreds of them,” Daniel told us, and demonstrated by paging through a seemingly endless list. “Same with Eye of the Storm – there’d have been lots more.”

  “Try XYZ,” I suggested. When it came up all we had was a predictable list of more companies, consultants and productions that had all chosen the name in an effort to stand out in their local telephone directory. The only intriguing item was details of a John Adams speech in 1797 about “the XYZ affair.”

  “Print us the first three or four pages of every reference we’ve looked at, please, Dan,” I said, “and I think we’ll have that one in full, plus the Jesus one.” I pointed at the John Adams entry.

  “Before that,” Maggie interrupted, “can we have a quick look at this, please.” She’d been studying the list that Dan had printed earlier, and now she was holding it in front of him, pointing at the name of Tim Roper. Dan back-paged several times until he was there, adjusted the mouse until a little fist appeared above the name and left-clicked it. The middle of screen went blank and I watched the blue bar slowly extend in its little box, like the mercury in a thermometer. It was probably coming all the way from America, so I told myself to be patient.

  Eye Of The Storm, it said. Welcome to the official Tim Roper and The LHO website. There was a menu across the bottom of the page and Dan clicked on Tim. A photo started to unfold, strip by strip, until we were looking at a clean-shaven, handsome
boy with long hair, wearing a T-shirt. He was leaning forward, looking at the camera, with an electric guitar across his body. Tim Roper, it said, 1944 to 1969 – elegido por Dios.

  “He was quite a dish,” Maggie observed.

  “And died young,” Dave added.

  “What does that mean, Dan?” I asked, pointing at the screen.

  “Chosen by God.”

  “Thanks. It must be nice to be educated.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “Let’s see some more.”

  Tim Roper, we learned, was a singer-songwriter in Los Angeles, forming his group, The LHO, in 1960 while at high school. He earned fame of a sort for his anti-war lyrics and his stance against commercialism, and died of gunshot wounds in mysterious circumstances while being investigated by the CIA for un-American activities. His most famous song was ‘Eye Of The Storm’ but he was believed to have written one called ‘Theo’s Tune’, which went to number one in several charts in the winter of 1969, after his death.

  I read it all twice, then said: “Click The songs, please.”

  The screen unfolded and there it was, near the bottom of the list. “Oh my God,” Dave whispered. “Oh my God. It’s there, look.”

  Chapter Eight