Free Laughing Boy by Stuart Pawson

be too stretchy?” I wondered.
    “No, it doesn’t stretch.”
    “What about its size. Does the diameter indicated by the marks fit with clothes line?”
    “Yes, precisely. In fact…” he reached down into his oldstyle briefcase and produced a short length of pink line, “…I have a typical sample here, courtesy of Mrs Sulaiman, but don’t tell her.”
    “So it looks as if we have a murder weapon,” Gilbert concluded as he ran it through his fingers.
    “Yeah,” I said reaching for my coffee and one of Gilbert’s chocolate digestives, “available from every other shop in the country.”
    Gilbert offered the biscuits round but left the packet at his corner of the table. “Was there any sexual interference, Doc?” he asked.
    The doc shook his head slowly as he swallowed biscuit, in a way that indicated he wasn’t sure. “She was wearing those very brief knickers that are so popular these days,” he told us.
    “A thong,” Maggie said. “She was wearing a thong. Lots of the younger girls wear them.”
    “The nurses at the hospital have started wearing them under their tunics,” the doctor divulged. “I’m not sure if the effects on the patients are detrimental or restorative. However, back to poor Colinette. She was wearing a thong and it appeared to have been pulled down, but only a little way. As if our perpetrator had had a feel at her private parts, but that’s all.”
    “Touched her up,” I said.
    “Yes indeed.”
    “Wonder if he’ll be happy with that the next time?”
    All eyes turned to me. I looked at Dr Sulaiman. “Back to the strangulation marks, Doc,” I said. “Some of them were side by side and some were probably superimposed on each other. Would any one of them have killed her?”
    “Yes,” he replied. “Any one of them would have resulted in death had it been sustained for long enough.”
    I didn’t voice my thoughts. He’d strangled her until she was unconscious, then let her revive for a while before doing it again and again. Six or ten murders for the price of one. And poor Colinette, waking each time from the worst nightmare anybody had ever had, only to find that it wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.
    “You said, Doc,” I began, “that you’d come back to the question of how she was strangled. I know you’re not in the business of conjecture, but…”
    “Ah yes,” he replied. “Unfortunately once again I have to apologise for the lack of photographs, and I’m not even sure if the photos will capture what I saw, but I have put it in the record. When I studied the marks on her throat there was a slight suggestion that they were deeper at the right side than at the left. Now why could that be?”
    I looked puzzled, Maggie said: “She struggled and twisted sideways?”
    “Possibly,” the doc agreed, “but when he did it again you’d think that she might twist the other way, wouldn’t you?”
    Maggie looked glum and nodded.
    “The other explanation is that more force was applied at the right side than at the left.”
    “Spell it out, Doc,” I invited.
    “OK.” He picked up the piece of clothesline and bent it into a horseshoe shape. “Colinette’s neck is here,” he said. “The perpetrator pulled back, like so.” He pulled the loop towards himself. “As you see, it is necessary for him to have something to pull her back against.”
    “Like a car seat,” I said. “She must have been in a car for him to dump her where he did, and he strangled her from behind while she was in the front passenger seat.”
    “With her head against the headrest,” Maggie added.
    “It’s a possibility,” the doctor agreed with a shrug of modesty.
    “So why are the marks more pronounced at one side?” I asked.
    “One reason,” the doctor said, “could be that this end of the line was attached to the headrest support on the left hand side. He would then only have to pass the loop over her head and pull on one side.”
    “Brilliant, Doc,” I said. “I think