Laughing Boy Read Online Free PDF

the taste of but was possibly new to some of the others. Unusual tyre prints had been found near where Laura died, and the owner of the vehicle that left them had been tracked down. They were cheap imports from the Eastern Bloc, and only two hundred and fifty had been brought into the country, so it wasn’t a difficult task. He admitted being there, but twenty-four hours earlier, and had dumped a mattress and some other rubbish in a farm gateway . Forensics proved the mattress was his, witnesses confirmed it had been there when he said. We did him for littering and moved on, but the review team were not happy about this and I’d agreed that we’d have him in again. It was a waste of time but it made them feel useful. I delegated a few jobs and closed the meeting.
    “Tea, Vicar?” Sparky asked, ten minutes later as he manoeuvred himself into my little office, two steaming mugs in his hands.
    “Cheers,” I said, pushing the papers on my desk to one side.
    Noticing DS Jeff Caton sitting in my visitor’s chair he said: “Oh, am I interrupting?”
    “No,” I told him. “Move that stuff and sit down.”
    “You want a tea, Jeff?”
    “No thanks, Dave.”
    “So what do you reckon?”
    “We reckon that there’s a killer on the loose, that’s what,” I said.
    “And we’ve failed to catch him,” Jeff added.
    “We will do,” Dave assured us. “Wouldn’t like to think I’d done a murder, these days.”
    “Optimism!” I retorted. “From you? What happened to the usual morose Sparky we all know and love?”
    “I have confidence in you, Sunshine, that’s all. Well, inyou and mitochondrial DNA.”
    “Oh God,” I said. “He’s been reading the Sunday Times again.”
    “Something will turn up, just you wait and see.”
    “Yeah, but what if it’s another body?”
    “Blimey, we are down, aren’t we. Is there summat I don’t know about?”
    I shook my head. “No, not really. I’m just not happy about disbanding the team but I don’t know what else we could’ve done.”
    “We need a morale booster,” Jeff said. “Something entirely different to use up our energies and give us a high.”
    “Start the walking club again,” Dave suggested.
    “We can’t. Everywhere’s closed off because of foot- and-mouth .”
    “It’ll soon be over.”
    “We’re always starting the walking club. It fizzles out, mainly due to shift patterns.”
    “How about the London marathon? Or the Leeds marathon? We’d get entries in that.”
    “Too much commitment required,” I said.
    “And we’d look fools, training in our fancy costumes,” Jeff added.
    “You don’t have to wear one, you wally.”
    “In which case you look a fool when all the fancy costumes beat you. Imagine buying all the best gear – the Adidas vest and shorts; Nike shoes; a headband – training for a year, running twenty-six miles and then getting beaten in a sprint finish against a Telly Tubby.”
    “Or Thomas the Tank Engine,” I said.
    “Good point. So what about Karate? Table tennis? Ballroom dancing? Five-a-side soccer?”
    “Mmm, I don’t think so.”
    “The Three Peaks?”
    “We’re always doing the Three friggin’ Peaks. We’ve done the Three Peaks so many times my boots say: ‘Oh no, notagain,’ when the car stops at the Hill Inn.”
    “Ask around, Dave,” Jeff said. “See what the troops think. It’d be good if we could come up with something to keep the team together.”
    “Right,” he replied, adding: “Now can I ask about the crime?”
    “Which crime?” I asked.
    “Mrs Heeley’s murder.”
    “Sure. Fire away.”
    “That killing in Lancashire, near Nelson, the beginning of February. You brushed over it in the debriefing just now because there are no apparent similarities, but I think they could be connected.”
    “Robin Gillespie,” I said. Robin was found dead on the edge of some waste ground just outside Nelson. He’d been hit once on the head with a hammer and his body brought to the spot. He was