Free Laughing Boy by Stuart Pawson Page B

about a man and a woman, Maggie,” I called across to her. “Would you get in with a man and a woman?”
    She came back with the percolator and poured Gilbert the first cup. “I don’t think so,” she replied, “but what if the man was hiding behind the seat? Then Colinette would have thought it was just a woman, on her own.”
    “Hiding behind the seat,” I repeated as I offered her my mug for refilling, “with the loose end of the cord wrapped around his fist.”
     
    I picked up Maggie at seven o’clock, after she’d fed Tony, her husband. He’s a schoolteacher, hanging on until early retirement ,and is used to me borrowing his wife at odd hours. This is a job that tests relationships to breaking point. In the car Maggie told me bits and pieces of information that she’d gleaned from Mrs Jones about Colinette. Nothing heavy, just snippets that helped fill in a few blanks in the picture I had of a healthy, likeable girl.
    Graham Allen lived in the downstairs flat in a converted house on the edge of old Heckley, where once lived the management classes in the wool industry and all the related occupations. The wool barons, who lived elsewhere, needed managers to manage what needed doing, solicitors to tell them what they were allowed to do, and accountants to count the money. This was where they once lived, side by side with each other in big stone houses, with room in the attic for a servant or two and space in the cellar for the odd bottle of port. Maggie pressed the bell and after a few seconds a woman’s silhouette appeared behind the frosted glass.
    “DC Madison and DI Priest from Heckley CID,” Maggie said to her when the door opened. “I believe Graham Allen lives here. Could we have a word with him, please.”
    The room was by Ikea, with a little help from Laura Ashley and Modigliani. Graham and the woman were in the middle of a take-away pizza, but we didn’t offer to come back later. First impressions of him were that he was a handsome so-and-so with enough charm to lure the linnets out of the bushes, but they faded rapidly. He was tall, about six feet, with a mop of fair hair that fell over one eye in a manner designed to melt the heart of every woman he met. The black polo necked sweater emphasised his height and the jeans were faded just the right amount. “Is it about Colinette?” he asked, when I was alone with him.
    His lady friend, whom he introduced as his partner, was called Becky. She was nearly as tall as Graham, with platinum hair that hung over her shoulders. Apart from that she had a much more pleasing shape. Much more pleasing. Becky tooktheir food into the kitchen, to keep warm, and Maggie followed her.
    “Yes,” I replied. “When did you hear about her?”
    “Tonight, driving home from work, on Pennine news. Do you know who did it?”
    “Not yet. Where do you work, Mr Allen?”
    “I manage a shop for my parents. Designer wear, in the mall.”
    “And how long did you know Colinette?”
    “About, oh, five or six years. We were at the same school.”
    “I’d say you were a bit older than her. Is that so?”
    “Um, yes. I was in the sixth form, she was in a lower one.”
    “How old are you now?”
    “Twenty-six.”
    “So you’d be eighteen and she’d be…what…fourteen when you met?”
    “Yes, I suppose so.”
    “Were you engaged?”
    “No, nothing like that. We just palled about together, a whole crowd of us. Nothing serious.”
    “That’s not what her mother said. She told me you were engaged when Colinette was fifteen.”
    His charm began to crumble at the edges, and so did his looks. First impressions had faded and now his mouth looked just a little too full, his teeth too big, like the wolf must have done to Little Red Riding Hood.
    “Mrs Jones,” he said, with a shrug of dismissal. “She was a bit…I don’t know, possessive. It was Colinette this, Colinette that. Got on my nerves with it.”
    I fumbled in my pocket for the plastic bag containing the