Evil Laughter

Evil laughter. Evil, cackling laughter. The same laughter that I had been trying to trace for the last two months. It was a phantom. Always there, but never quite where you expected it. Wherever it went, destruction always followed behind. Murders, robberies, and countless petty crimes lay behind it. It had led me through the streets of London, always a step ahead, but waiting if I fell behind. The crime scenes were always devoid of clues. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Ever. But always the same cackling laughter. Mostly the trail fell cold in some deserted alleyway, only to pop up again hours later as another crime hit the headlines. This time I had had it cornered. Something, maybe intuition, had told me where it would strike next. So I’d had a constable stationed in every alleyway. How could things have gone so wrong? The constable had got bored and had a booze. I’d found him knocked out cold. Then I heard the laughter again. Louder this time, and coming from behind me. I turned around, but that evil, cackling laughter was the last thing I heard as the shadowed form pulled the trigger.