“Hi, Boss. It’s Rod at the cemetery. Ferriby’s just packed all his stuff in his car, looks as if he’s going home. What do you want us to do?”
“You’d better do the same, then, Rod,” I told him.
“Do you want us to pick him up again in the morning?”
“Um, no, come in here. Oh, and keep the afternoon free.”
I told the front desk that very shortly they’d be receiving a call from an irate citizen who’d found all his clothes slashed and I had a word with drug squad. They had no intelligence whatsoever about Cole, Graham Allen or Mister Blue, but wanted part of the action. I gave them a formal invitation to the party, put my jacket on and placed my mug on the tray with the other dirty ones. If we don’t take her for granted the cleaning lady washes up for us.
There was a reception committee waiting on the front steps for me, comprised of a young woman in an ambitious suit and an I-mean-business hairdo, a cameraman and a spotty youth with a sound boom.
“Inspector Priest,” she gabbled, “Belinda Mayhew, Triple K News, is it true that you have consulted a medium in your attempts to find the murderer who is terrorising the district.”
“No,” I replied, ducking under the boom which the youth was waving around as if he’d just caught a squirrel on the end of a pole.
“That’s not the information that’s coming out of headquarters.”
“Well have a word with headquarters, then.”
“We have done. They say that Julia LeStrang, the well-known psychic healer and medium, is assisting you with your enquiries.”
I’d reached my car. I opened the door and stood with one foot inside. “Perhaps,” I began, “perhaps she’s assisting us on the psychic level, and the news hasn’t filtered down to me yet. Meanwhile, I deal with facts, not hocus-pocus.”
“Are you any nearer finding the killer.”
That was the sucker punch. I dropped my head for a second, then shook it. “No,” I admitted. “I’m afraid we’re not.”
“Do you expect him to kill again?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Then why not allow her to help you?”
I was on TV. People were being murdered and this woman with the fuck-you haircut was making me look like a monster. I said: “We need all the help we can get. If any of your viewers have any suspicions about somebody they know, then I beg of them to inform us. Somebody somewhere must know who this person is. He has brothers and sisters, parents, a wife or a girlfriend. Please voice your suspicions before he kills again.”
I slipped into the driving seat and slammed the door. She turned to the camera looking pleased with herself as she recited her by-line, and I drove off.
Saturday morning Mrs Jordan-Keedy came in to work on the train but the only person following her was one of the team. She had a busy morning in the office and caught the 13:17 back to Salford.
The drugs squad brought their latest secret weapon with them. She’s called Delilah and she stared at me with eyes like chocolate marshmallows all through the briefing. I desperately wanted to tickle her behind the ears, but wasn’t sure if that was permissible. At five to two we received a message saying that two Asian girls had arrived at Mister Blue and Graham Allen had taken them next door, to the unit leased by Bernie Cole. Everybody except me decanted down to the mall.
I picked up all their coffee cups and took them along the corridor to the kitchen. This time I rinsed them under the tap myself and left them to dry, upside down. Back in the office I found my drawing pad again and spread it out on a spare desk, but I wasn’t in the mood for sketching.
The psychologists call it his signature. The MO is how he does the deed – in this case bludgeoning, stabbing and strangling – but everything else he does, all the unnecessary stuff, is his signature. Except, with this one, it was more what he didn’t do.
One thing was certain – he wasn’t mentally ill. At least not by the normal parameters. He was cold, calculating and intelligent, and that meant sane. A classic sociopath if ever I knew one. The phone rang.
“Charlie,” I said into it.
“It’s Dave. T1 is back in Mister Blue. He’s left the girls in the shop next door.”
“Can you see them in there?”
“No, they’re in the back room. There’s some right talent going in and out of Mister Blue, though. You ought to be here.”
“No sign of Cole?”
“Afraid not.”
“OK, keep me informed.”
“Will do.”
Chances were that our strangler had lived down south, in North London, and had moved up here. Not necessarily, but it looked that way. I had somebody checking the feasibility of comparing electoral rolls, but they are not updated very often and he could have changed his name. And if he was drawing benefits the DSS in both places would know about him, so we were checking with them, too, but they were longshots.
Was he married? That was a dodgy one. Inadequate singletons often try to strike up a relationship with their victims, but this one just killed them. If he’d come into the killing business by accident, after a road traffic accident as Chief Superintendent Natrass had suggested, it was probably arbitrary whether he was married or not. Then there was that eighteen-month gap. Had he married in that time, or divorced? Had he found a soul-mate and resumed his evil ways with her? A female friend would certainly help with the abductions. I left that one open.
“These seats in the mall aren’t half uncomfortable,” Dave complained, next time he rang. “My arse is as numb as a penguin’s fanny, and they don’t have a backrest.”
“That’s so you don’t linger too long on them,” I told him. “They want you on your feet, doing the shops, not loungingaround all afternoon.”
“The crafty so-and-sos.”
“There’s no clock anywhere for the same reason. You’re supposed to lose all track of time as you enjoy the unique shopping experience. The architects who design these malls are cynical bastards. So what’s happening?”
“I’m having a doughnut.”
“Good, keep your strength up.”
How old was he? Twenty to thirty? No, probably older than that. Rapists were usually younger, serial killers a bit older. Call it twenty-five to thirty-five, but what difference did it make?
Lifestyle and class. Did he work for a living and if so, at what? Did his job not bring him into contact with the opposite sex? Was he a loner, introverted?
How was I supposed to know? How the fuck did they expect me to know? I ripped the sheet off the pad, which was a waste of paper because I’d hardly written anything on it, and ripped it into shreds.
The phone rang again before I could snap all the pencils and trash the office.
“Charlie!”
“T2 has arrived but unfortunately T1 is back in Mister Blue.”
“Damn. We need both of them in there, if possible.”
“I know. I’m in the Happy Burger now, having one, just across the way. It’s much more comfortable in here.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
One of the problems was that the game was changing all the time. Sex was starting to rear its ugly head. The reasons for the latest killings were probably different to those for the early ones. I tipped my chair against the wall, put my feet on the desk and closed my eyes.
The phone woke me. “Don’t tell me – you’re having a milk shake.”
“No.”
“You’ve been sick.”
“No.”
“Go on, then.”
“We’re working, you know. We’re not just having a good time. I could be at the match this afternoon, even if it is only Chesterfield.”
“I’m suitably chastised. So what’s happening?”
“T2 joined T1 in Mister Blue, then they went for a bite at the Italian place upstairs. Now T1 is in Mister Blue and T2 is next door, or maybe it’s the other way round.”
“Allen’s in his shop and Cole’s in his.”
“That’s
it.”
“Well why not say so.”
“Because that’s not the proper way.”
“OK, keep watching. What’s Delilah up to?”
“Don’t know. They don’t allow dogs in the mall.”
“Eh! Since when?”
“It’s a by-law.”
“So the whole operation is in jeopardy because of some poxy little by-law?”
“They’ll bring her in when necessary.”
“They’d better.”
At four o’clock I made a coffee and took it into my little office. The phone was ringing again before I’d taken the first sip.
“Charlie,” I said.
“Sorry to disturb you, Sir,” I heard Sparky intone. “This is DC Sparkington. Just thought you’d like to know that we have apprehended two gentlemen in a shop in the mall under suspicious circumstances.”
“I’m on my way!” I told him as I grabbed my jacket from behind the door.
Quite a crowd had gathered around the entrance to the shop. I muscled my way through and winked at the two bobbies standing implacably in either side of the doorway. Their big hats made them look about seven feet tall and their uniforms bristled with all the paraphernalia that a modern policeman carries: extending side-handle baton, radio, pepper spray, handcuffs and a pouch of documents, ready to start the paperwork. Mustn’t forget the paperwork. The front of the shop was empty, all the activity taking place in the back rooms.
The two Asian girls were sitting at one side, looking like a pair of frightened mice. Serena, our only Asian WPC, was kneeling before them, pouring on the reassurance. Graham Allen and Bernie Cole were seated in another corner, dejection oozing from every fibre of their bodies as Sparky went through the routine of asking them the preliminary questions.
“I’m not saying nowt without my solicitor,” Cole asserted.
“Take him in,” I said to Dave with a shrug. He was already handcuffed. They’d march him through the mall to the police van with his jacket over his head, and that would probably be the hardest part of whatever happened to him. Indignity and embarrassment are powerful forces. Once he was in the dock, with his senses and sensibilities gathered and reinforced by a solicitor, he’d be as cocky as a bantam. But right now he was smarting, and if I could have rubbed salt in I would have.
This was the stockroom, I thought, looking around. The walls were lined with shelves and about a quarter of them were piled up with denim clothing, probably all jeans. Two heavy-duty sewing machines were against one wall, illuminated by Anglepoise lamps, and two of my detectives and two from drugs were rummaging about in a pair of large cardboard boxes that stood next to the sewing machines.
One of the detectives came over with a large manila envelope and handed it to me. It was bulging with designer labels as sewn on the backs of jeans. He gestured for me to follow him and indicated piles of the labels on the sewing machines, then pointed to the floor which was scattered with other labels. These had strands of cotton blurring the edges and had been removed by the girls from all the garments that were heaped near their machines. A movement caught my eye and I realised it was Delilah’s tail, poking out from a pile of cardboard boxes, vibrating like a fiddler’s elbow.
So Graham Allen was in the counterfeit jeans racket. Big deal. A fine, maybe community service, and a short jail sentence for Cole, who had previous. There’s no such thing as victimless crime, they say, but counterfeit clothing must come close. The jeans are made in sweatshops in the Far East, paying pennies to kids who are little more than slaves.
The big names pass them on at several thousand percent mark-up and the people who buy them can’t tell the difference between the eighty quid ones and the fifteen quid ones, apart from the label. I wouldn’t be shedding tears for them.
“Nice business associate you have,” I said to Graham.
He looked up at me but didn’t answer.
“Did he set this up?” I hoped he would agree with me, accept the lifeline and tell me all about it, but he still didn’t answer.
“I was talking to Monica Ferriby yesterday,” I told him, “and I know all about her husband’s little problem. You could help yourself by telling us where to find whatever it is we’re looking for.”
He said: “I am not saying anything until I have spoken to a solicitor.” The words came out all wrong, as if it were the first rehearsal of a Shakespearean play. He wasn’t as well versed as his partner in crime, but he’d learn. I was about to tell him to have it his way when Delilah started barking.
OK, I admit it. I have a thing about designer labels. I also have a thing about the type of training shoe that is categorised as air. Put them together – designer air shoes – and I go into a tizzy.
When you pay a lot of money for a pair of trainers, what you are buying is lightness. That’s fair enough. Exotic materials used in the construction of shoes are light but they are also expensive. Hence the price hike. But air is free. And it’s light, too. “Why not,” Mr Heap Big Trainer Manufacturer said, “simply hollow out the soles and heels and let air do the work? We could even put the price up a bit for the innovation.” So that’s what they did.
“She’s found something,” the dog handler said, diving into the pile of boxes after her. “Find it, girl! Find it!”
We gathered round and after a few seconds he emerged holding a shoe box. It said: ‘Top Speed Air training shoes’ on the side, with a logo of a sprinter in full flight. Delilah was jumping around, yelping with excitement. He patted her head and gave her a biscuit from his pocket. The shoes inside the box were wrapped in tissue paper. Delilah’s handler lifted one out and turned it over in his hands, carefully sniffing it. He held it down for the dog and she looked up at him and barked again, as if to say: “I’ve told you once.”
I wanted to say something, but decided that they were the experts and besides, it was probably obvious. The heroin was in the air space. This time the trainers really did warrant their price. I looked across to see Graham’s reaction but his head was in his hands.
It was a result, of sorts, and would let the ACC know that we weren’t sleeping on the job. Sunday I was invited round to Dave’s for lunch. We went for a brisk walk along the road to the top of the fell and back via the Ancient Shepherd, where we stayed a little too long, but not long enough to spoil the Yorkshire puddings.
The ACC wasn’t impressed, and invited me to HQ for a review meeting, ten fifteen Friday morning. He might not have been impressed but Dave, Maggie and Pete were, Monday morning, when I put the phone down and told them.
“Ten fifteen,” Pete said. “That sounds serious.”
“They’ll take it off us,” Maggie added.
“They’ll bring in some mutton-head from another division, who’ll rake over everything we’ve done and come up with nowt,” Dave asserted.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s go over it again. What have we forgotten?”
That evening I had another long telephone conversation with Dr Foulkes, but nothing new came out of it. Sex offenders were not his main speciality but he agreed to talk to someone in that field. It might be possible to type-cast our man, find someone who’d done something similar and use him as a template. Meanwhile, we’d continue monitoring everybody who’d ever wiggled their winky in the park who happened to live within twenty miles of Heckley. None of them had ever lived in North London – we’d already checked that.
Afterwards I did the town again. It was raining, so I put on my Gore-Tex coat and hung around the hospital watching the visitors. People came and went, carrying their burdens: nervous husbands, chain smoking, sprays of carnations held at an awkward angle; women with umbrellas and carrier bags of goodies; Asian taxi drivers who deposited whole families right in the doorway. It’s not easy to be invisible, to hang around for half an hour or more without being noticed, but that’s what Laddo must have done as he selected his victims. Mrs Jordan-Keedy and a few others had claimed that they were being stalked, but apart from Mrs J-K these had been inve
stigated and dismissed. One woman who contacted us in a state of high agitation had been followed on three successive nights from her place of employment at the DSS offices in Huddersfield all the way to her home in Church Grove, Heckley. On the fourth night we nabbed him and discovered that he was an auditor with the DSS, currently working in Huddersfield and living in Church Grove, Heckley.
A thin woman in a plastic mac walked straight past the bus stops and headed towards town. There’s a dark stretch of road where it passes the cemetery, so I followed her. At the edge of town she went into a pub called the Marquis which is frequented by city workers during the day and gays late at night. In between times, you might be standing next to a barrister having a swift one before retreating to his New York-style loft apartment or an out-of-work choreographer soaking up local colour. I went in and saw her approach a man in a Greenwoods jacket and a cap with fur earflaps, turned up. He was sipping a pint and a glass of dark liquid stood on the table, waiting for her. I decided I didn’t need a drink but as I turned to leave I saw a figure I recognised hunched at a table, deep in conversation with somebody else I knew. They didn’t see me so I sneaked out and fetched the car.
I parked about fifty yards down the road and waited. Their glasses had been nearly empty and I didn’t think they’d be staying for a session. After a few minutes I saw Tony Madison, Maggie’s husband, appear in the doorway. He paused to look at the weather, turned up the collar of his coat and stepped into the road. I drove past him and stopped, reaching across to open the passenger side door. He looked inside, saying: “Hello, Charlie,” as he recognised me.
“Get in,” I said. “I want to talk.”
Halfway back to his house I pulled into a lay-by. “What was it tonight?” I asked. “Night class?”
“Yeah. Spanish for beginners. How to say five pints please, with egg and chips, in twelve easy lessons.”
Laughing Boy Page 22
