More from Stuart Pawson

1. Extract from Laughing Boy
2. Tangled Web Page Reviews

LAUGHING BOY

It is late Friday evening in Heckley nick. Everybody has gone home except Charlie, who is making a list:

"1, I wrote, then drew a circle around it. All deaths apparently motiveless.
2. All outdoors.
3. All in early evening.

I looked out of the window. Lights were going out in offices all over town, but were coming on in homes at the foot of the fells. The outer office door opened and the two cleaning ladies came in.

4. All three murders clinical and determined.
5. Car almost certainly used in M1 and M3.
6. Perpetrator "organised" in all three.
7. All victims creatures of habit. Movements predictable.
8. Murders committed Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday. i.e. working days early in the week.
9. Weapons: hammer, knife, ligature. Is this a progression?
10. Bodies M1 and M3 transported elsewhere but no attempt to hide them. Moving them apparently pointless.

The cleaning lady popped her head round the door and asked if she could do my office. I said: "Sure," and moved out. I stood looking out of the window as she hoovered the floor and dusted the radiator. The road outside was jammed with traffic whilst an articulated delivery lorry attempted an impossible manoeuvre into Marks and Spencer's loading bay. One of my sergeants came in with a sandwich and said he wanted to do a report and some studying while things were quiet. Mr Wood looked in to say goodnight on his way downstairs, told us not to stay too long. 11, I wrote, but I couldn't think of an eleventh.
I logged on, typed it out and ran-off ten copies. I wrote a brief note, put it in an envelope with one of the copies and addressed it to Dr Adrian Foulkes, Department of Psychology, Heckley General Hospital. The note ended with the words: Are the murders linked and if so, will he kill again? Even as I sealed the envelope I knew that the answer to both questions was "Yes".

On the way home I called in the supermarket to buy a curry from their oriental counter. They have them loose and you choose any combination you like, with different rices and naan bread. I'd decided to have chicken jalfrezi, but the container was nearly empty and definitely lacking in chicken. "Do you have any more jalfrezi?" I asked the big fair-haired girl whose nametag told me was called Julie.
"No problem," she said with a smile that was over and above that required by her employer. "I'll fetch some; won't be a sec."
She vanished backstage and returned almost immediately carrying a huge plastic box of the stuff. It had sticky address labels on the side with the name of the store and bar codes and the logo of one of those express delivery companies that you see hurtling up and down the motorway.
It was a revelation. I'd always thought that there was a little Indian or Bangladeshi chef in the back, a headband stopping the sweat running into his eyes, as he toiled away chopping meat and vegetables and carefully weighing out all the spices for the different flavours.
I hadn't appreciated the scale of the enterprise, but it suddenly hit me. This supermarket had about a thousand branches. Somewhere there must be a giant curry factory sending its wares to every city and town in the country. In Europe, possibly. Lorry loads of the stuff would be departing every minute of day and night in the impossible task of alleviating our craving for spicy food. Huge tankers, labelled in some esoteric code only understood by supermarket managers and firemen, were at this very moment rumbling outwards to the distant corners of the land. That's what those orange stickers were on the backs of lorries. The Hazardous Chemicals code. When it said Hazchem code 1234, it probably meant that it was carrying vindaloo, so watch out.
And the opposite would be true. A similar number of articulated lorries, and probably trains, too, would be converging on the factory from all directions, bringing chickens and lambs on their final journey, together with onions, tomatoes, peppers and more exotic vegetables. Smaller, faster lorries, the equivalent of the old tea clippers, would race to bring spices and herbs from the far-flung outposts of the globe. They would carry cardamom from Cordoba, paprika from Papua, turmeric from Turkistan and basil from … Basildon.
Julie handed me the goods with another smile and I rewarded her with my best lopsided one. I collected a six-pack of Sam Smith's from the beer shelves and went home. That was Friday night catered for."