Free Laughing Boy by Stuart Pawson Page A

you’ve just given us his MO.”
     
    I walked downstairs with the doctor and thanked him again for his time. From the front desk I rang HQ and arranged for every policeman in the division to look out for a vehicle with a piece of rope, possibly clothes line, dangling from the passenger seat headrest. I wanted them to inspect every car or van they saw, and if they found it I wanted the driver arrested. It was a long shot, but murderers get sloppy, just like the rest of us.
    “Has Maggie gone?” I asked when I was back upstairs in the super’s office.
    “Only to refill the perc,” he replied.
    “Good. Only place I know where you can get a decent cup of coffee. So what do you think?” It’s a catchphrase. Say it first and you win yourself some time to consider your own thoughts.
    Gilbert shook his head and looked grave. “Poor kid,” was all he said.
    “She was a thoroughly modern woman,” I told him. “Fighting fit, training for the toughest sport there is but still feminine, liked her fashionable clothes. Not all the younger generation are couch potatoes and substanceabusers, thank God.”
    Maggie came back and plugged in the percolator. “If you don’t need me I’ll get back to Mrs Jones,” she said.
    “Is anybody with her at the moment?” I asked.
    “WPC Renfrew and several assorted neighbours. Claire Renfrew has the press statement if they start harassing her.”
    “Hang on a bit, then, Maggie,” I said. “You can give us the female perspective, and three heads are better than two, as they say.” I showed them the ring we’d found that had belonged to Colinette, and told them about the neighbour’s indiscreet comment about ex-boyfriend Graham Allen.
    “Sound like she hurled it there in a moment of reckless abandon,” Maggie stated. “How far into the field was it?”
    “About thirty-five yards.”
    “Phew! She must have been in a mood.”
    “If you’re free this evening we’ll go talk to young Mr Allen,” I said.
    “Right. I can’t wait. Have you tracked him down?”
    “Mmm. Got his address from the DVLC. He has form for speeding and careless driving, but that’s all.”
    “Any word about the missing umbrella?” Gilbert asked.
    “No, and she was only wearing one shoe when she was found, so finding the other is a priority.”
    “Are we assuming that she was picked up by someone in a car?”
    “She must have been.” I turned to Maggie. “OK, Maggie,” I said. “Put yourself in her place. It’s peeing down with rain, you’re half a mile from home and wearing unsuitable shoes. Who would you accept a lift with?”
    Maggie thought for a few seconds before answering and the percolator gurgled impatiently in the background. “I wouldn’t attach too much importance to the rain,” Maggie said, eventually. “It was quite bad but it wasn’t a cold night and she’d be used to training in it. I don’t think she’d accept a lift with anyone unsuitable just because it was raining.”
    “What if she’d lost a shoe or broken her heel?” I asked.
    Maggie shook her head. “Nah. She’d either limp home or back to the shop.”
    “Might somebody stop in circumstances like that?” Gilbert asked.
    “Yes,” Maggie agreed. “Some white knight, or a chancer, might stop and proposition her. She was young and attractive . Who knows?”
    “But you don’t think she’d have got in the car if she didn’t know him?”
    “No. And we haven’t found a broken heel, have we.”
    “No. So who would you get in with?”
    Maggie raised a hand and touched the thumb with her other forefinger. “Someone I knew,” she said.
    “Yep. Go on.”
    “A policeman.”
    “Right.”
    “And…a woman. Perhaps I’d get in with a woman.”
    “Anyone else?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “A taxi?”
    “No, no way, not if I hadn’t waved him down.”
    “Right.”
    “The coffee’s ready.” She walked over to the little table in the corner, near the plug, where Gilbert did his brewing.
    “What