No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)

BOOK: No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)
12.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Howard Linskey

NO NAME LANE

Contents

Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin

Also by Howard Linskey

T
HE
D
AVID
B
LAKE
SERIES

The Drop

The Damage

The Dead

For Erin & Alison

Prologue

Girl Number Four

County Durham – 1993

He watched the girl until he was certain she was perfect. Only then did he risk approaching her. It was never difficult to get them to come with him. The hard part was staying calm, even as his heart was thumping so hard in his chest he was convinced she must be able to hear it.

He drove her somewhere quiet then stopped the car, waiting until he was sure they were entirely alone. Sometimes he’d bundle a girl into the boot so he could drive her miles away but this lane was isolated enough, so he’d climbed into the back seat to get to her. He ignored her terrified pleas and reached for her, easily brushing her weak little hands aside, forcing her head back until the flesh of her tiny neck was exposed. He clamped his hands around her throat and began to squeeze, tightening his grip as her desperate struggle began. He closed his eyes. It was better if he could not see the little girl’s face, for she did not understand. How could she even begin to comprehend what he was doing for her? He squeezed harder and harder and wouldn’t let go until the moment when her struggles finally ceased and her tiny body went limp.

He
looked down at the lifeless young girl in his arms and whispered the special words he always used when he had saved one.

‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’

CHAPTER ONE

It all began with a phone call, as these things tend to.

‘Hello.’ Tom answered and there was a pause, as if the person on the other end had suddenly realised the magnitude of what they were doing and decided against it. ‘Hello?’ he prompted.

‘I’ve got a story,’ the woman blurted and he strained to listen to her against the sound of dozens of journalists talking over the tap-tap-tap of busy fingers hitting keyboards while the insistent ringing of competing phones could be heard all across the room.

‘Okay,’ answered Tom, ‘what kind of story?’

There was another pause until finally she said, ‘a bloody big one,’ and there was something about the nervous, agitated way in which she spoke that made Tom Carney take the woman seriously.

Tabloid stories generally start with a tip-off. This one began because a woman chose the biggest red top in the country to tell her side of it. Aggrieved men and women called its London office every day. Some were wronged, others desperate, some just plain demented. It was Tom Carney’s job to perform
triage
on them, as his legendary editor Alex ‘the Doc’ Docherty put it; ‘from the French verb
trier
, meaning to sift and select,’ he was told. ‘Your job is to separate the shit from the sugar.’

The people who called always assumed their story was
worth a life-changing amount of money. It was rare however for their particular grievance to actually make it into print. The tabloid Tom Carney worked for had a daily circulation of four million copies. Everyone wanted to be in the paper; politicians from all sides, models, actors, rock bands, the wannabes, gonnabes, has-beens and never-wasses, along with many thousands of what their foul-mouthed editor called ‘the great unwashed’, by which he meant the general public. Only the really juicy stuff ended up in the paper. Sometimes though, one of these callers would turn out to be peddling neither shit nor sugar but genuine gold.

The anonymous woman who phoned that morning was randomly connected to one of a large number of journalists manning the news desks. Afterwards, Tom Carney would often wonder about the direction his life might have taken had he not been in the office that morning or if the call had gone to one of the many other reporters in the newsroom. The simple act of answering the phone that day changed everything for Tom, though he could never have known it at the time.

‘What’s it about then?’ he prompted when she was not immediately forthcoming, ‘this story of yours?’

‘A very famous man, someone high up.’

‘Right,’ he replied non-committedly, ‘can I take your name, Miss?’

‘No names, not yet, just listen.’

He could have played hard ball, told her to give him her name or he’d hang up but if she really did have a story to tell, he’d only read about it later in a rival newspaper. Besides, there was something about the way she spoke,
the urgency in her voice that compelled him to keep her on the line.

‘So, what’s this famous man been up to then?’

‘Something he ain’t ought to have been,’ and she snorted a laugh then immediately became serious again. ‘He’s married, see, and he’s been seeing us and he ain’t supposed to have been doing that, not in his position.’

‘Who’s us?’ he asked, though he was beginning to get the idea.

‘Me and some others,’ she said, sounding cagey.

‘I see. You and some others,’ his tone was thoughtful. ‘Would I be right in saying that you have been seeing this man in your professional capacity?’ He was trying to be delicate.

‘You mean, am I on the game?’ she snapped.

‘Yes,’ he said simply.

‘Well, say what you mean then,’ she told him. ‘Yes,
we
are, ’course we are.’

‘And who is this family man who has been spending time with you?’

‘I can’t say until I know how much it’s worth.’

‘How can I tell you that unless I know who he is?’

There was a long pause on the line while she weighed up this dilemma. ‘He’s important, like I said, and I’ll tell you everything, for the right price.’

BOOK: No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)
12.87Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Heart of Gold by May McGoldrick
Huckleberry Hill by Jennifer Beckstrand
Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks
R. L. LaFevers by The falconmaster
A Child of a CRACKHEAD II by Shameek Speight
For the Love of a Dog by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.,
Dead Clever by Roderic Jeffries