No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (12 page)

‘What?’ he asked her groggily and he felt as if he had just been woken from a very deep sleep.

‘The lights,’ she informed him, ‘they’re green.’

And when he finally looked he realised she was right, they were, and the noise in his head was the sound of a car horn blaring continuously, as if the owner of the car behind them had finally lost all patience. He thought it
best not to acknowledge his foolishness to his daughter, so instead he drove silently away.

Tom drove to the highest point in the village and parked up by the church. He even had to climb out of his car to get a signal. ‘Please work, please work,’ he told the phone, and it did. It rang three times then, to his great relief, Terry answered. He sounded like he was at the opposite end of a wind tunnel and Tom was forced to shout to be heard. He told Terry about the body in the field, silently praying he would be interested in the story.

‘We’re on it already,’ said Terry and Tom realised he’d been wasting his time, ‘our Northern correspondent’s got it. He has a contact at police HQ, someone high up. He wouldn’t be much of a correspondent if he didn’t. You haven’t given me anything I don’t already know.’

‘I figured as much,’ said Tom with forced cheerfulness, ‘thought I’d better call it in anyway, just in case,’ he was trying hard to hide the crushing disappointment he was feeling, ‘how are things there?’

‘Awful,’ he was informed, ‘we’re not just dealing with a cabinet minister here. It’s his wife too.’

‘His wife?’

‘She’s a barrister and a psycho from hell. Her nickname in legal circles is “The Bitch”, which is quite something, coming from other lawyers. They reckon even the PM is shit-scared of her. Everybody is.’

‘Including the Doc?’

‘Especially the Doc,’ conceded Terry, ‘she phoned him this morning, had his balls in a vice for over an hour. We
might as well have put a white flag on the roof of the building.’

‘So what will he do?’

‘You did not hear this from me,’ Terry told him, ‘but we might have to settle.’

‘You’re kidding?’ This couldn’t be happening. Surely the legendary Doc wasn’t really going to roll over at the first mention of a libel case.

‘It’s a strong possibility,’ admitted Terry, ‘substantial damages, a retraction, an apology.’

‘Doesn’t this woman care that her husband was shagging hookers?’ Tom was incredulous.

‘Doesn’t believe it,’ said Terry, ‘or chooses not to. She’s tied her entire life, her future and the future of her children to that man. If he rises they rise, if he falls, they come crashing down to earth with him. So, if he’s been dipping his wick elsewhere, that’s not her priority.’

‘Jesus, I can’t believe the Doc’s going to settle. The man’s as guilty as sin.’

‘It’s under consideration,’ Terry lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘the atmosphere is terrible here right now. There are people crying in the toilets and I’m not just talking about the women.’

‘I must be pretty popular.’

‘Don’t expect an invitation to the Christmas party.’

‘How did it go?’ asked Peacock, who’d been waiting in his DCI’s office for Kane to return.

‘Four men,’ Kane told him.

‘What?’ Peacock didn’t bother to hide his frustration.

‘But
we can choose them.’

‘Right,’ his tone became more measured, but DI Peacock still wasn’t happy, ‘so the Super actually wants us to remove four men from an ongoing investigation into a missing girl to put them onto this?’

‘Look, John,’ Kane lowered his voice as a uniformed WPC walked by the opened door, ‘he’s basically given me the go-ahead to take our most feeble blokes off the Michelle Summers case and plonk them onto the-body-in-the-field. Draw me up a dead-wood list, containing the four men least likely to provide us with any kind of breakthrough. I’ll reassign them to this …’ he was searching for the right word, ‘… skeleton.’

‘I can think of four I wouldn’t shed any tears over and that’s just off the top of my head.’

‘Who?’

‘Vincent obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Kane nodded, ‘he’s as much use as a condom machine in a nunnery.’

‘Davies, because he’s always on the sick; Wilson, because he’s always on the sauce, and Bradshaw because he’s always bloody wrong.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with any of those.’

Betty Turner was sitting upright in her bed, her back ramrod-straight, waiting. It was late and raining outside but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except letting the other woman know that she knew.

She knew all right.

The old lady had waited till the house was silent and her three grown sons all asleep, before she padded softly down
the stairs and slipped the raincoat on over her nightie. She opened the door, the rain was coming down hard. She stepped out into it and closed the door softly behind her. Betty walked over the wet pavement in her slippers, ignoring the cold, thinking only of her destination.

The streets were empty at this hour and nobody witnessed the old lady’s slow and unsteady progress across the village. Her slippers were sodden and her feet soaking but she did not turn back. Betty was soaked through by the time she reached the front door of the old vicarage.

‘It was you,’ Betty told the locked, heavy wooden door as she slapped her palm hard against it, knowing that somewhere within those walls, someone was listening. She banged again, harder this time, ‘It was you!’ The rain stuck Betty’s hair to her scalp and she wiped it away with an impatient hand, ‘It was you!’

Betty had been right. Mary Collier wasn’t sleeping. She was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin, eyes tightly closed and she could hear the slap of Betty’s hand on her front door, as regular and insistent as a drum beat, ‘It was you …’

Mary knew who was out there, taunting her. The voice was muffled by the door and the rain but the words were still audible, ‘… it was you …’ and each one of them pierced Mary Collier like a blade.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Day Three

DC Bradshaw didn’t have to be told he was on the subs bench. One glance around the room that morning at his fellow misfits was all it took for him to realise he was no longer part of the first team. There was the pot-bellied, permanently booze-flushed figure of Trevor Wilson, who made no secret of the fact that all he really wanted was a quiet life. Bob Davies was probably contemplating how soon and with what ailment he could feasibly go back on the sick again. In the past couple of years, Davies had taken long spells off work with a number of complaints, including backache, neck-pain, anxiety, stress, depression and, impressively, Crohn’s disease. The one common factor all of these ailments shared, aside from the fact that Davies claimed to be afflicted by them, was the difficulty in diagnosing or, more importantly, disproving them, which meant Davies’ suspiciously lengthy absences from work continued to go unpunished.

‘I’ve got stress,’ he protested once, when challenged by a colleague in the canteen, as to whether he was ever coming back for more than a week at a time; then he’d searched the room for a potential ally until his eyes rested on Bradshaw and he announced loudly that ‘he knows what it’s like,’ instantly giving Bradshaw an association with a lazy, skiving bastard he could ill afford at that point. When Bradshaw
failed to give a response, Davies had hissed, ‘Thanks for your support,’ at him, ensuring that nobody in the room retained any respect for Bradshaw, not even the malingering Davies.

The rest of the group was made up of Vincent Addison and Ian himself. We are the misfits, thought Bradshaw, too old or too young, too lazy, too sick or too damaged. He knew what this was. It was a dead-wood squad.

DI Peacock briefed them. ‘You are to conduct a thorough and methodical door-to-door in Great Middleton, in an attempt to identify the corpse in the school field and uncover a possible motive for this murder. Your presence on the streets sends an important message to the population of the village and crucially, the media, as to how seriously this case is being taken. However, we do not want you to rush this enquiry, in case you miss something vital and all leads will be reported back to me before any follow-up action is taken. Is that clear?’

In other words, acting on their own initiative was actively discouraged. None of the other men seemed bothered by this limitation, but Bradshaw still itched for the opportunity to prove he was not a complete idiot, even though he had begun to doubt that himself.

DI Peacock concluded his briefing by conceding their task was far from easy, ‘Forensics reckon the body has been there for nigh-on fifty or sixty years, so this killing could have happened during the war or even before it, which obviously means the usual plea for witnesses is going to be redundant. However, you have got a sizeable retired population in Great Middleton, so find the old fogies and question them, see if we can’t find something out about this man. Who was he, who did he fall out with
and why, when did he die, why was he killed and how come nobody reported him missing all those years ago? Didn’t he have any friends or was the whole village delighted to see the back of the poor bastard so they all kept quiet in some big criminal conspiracy? I doubt it, don’t you?’ Nobody replied, Peacock continued, ‘Was he living there or passing through? Did he con someone, fall out with somebody or knock someone’s daughter up? Remember, it was a very different world back then. Stuff we’d consider trivial now was a big deal half a century back, so change your outlook and think differently. A lot of those old dears can’t remember their own names but I’ve got an aunt like that and all of a sudden she’ll start telling you about the coronation or World War Bloody Two as if it happened yesterday, so use that.’ He noted the men’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘If nothing else, you’ll get a few cups of tea and the odd slice of Battenberg cake.’ And he looked at the apathetic faces before him, ‘maybe that’ll motivate some of you,’ before he gave up and left them to it.

The four men stood silently looking at one another for a moment, then Vincent spoke.

‘I’ll put the kettle on, should I?’ Christ he couldn’t even make that decision without checking with everybody first, ‘I mean, he said there was no hurry and it’s a bit early for a door-to-door.’

Nobody bothered to give Vincent the courtesy of an answer, nor did they contradict him. He shuffled away to make a brew. Wilson and Davies sat back down. Davies even picked up a newspaper and started to read the sports pages.

‘I
think I’ll get going,’ said Bradshaw to universal disinterest, ‘make a start,’ and he left before any of them could summon up the energy to tell him he was wasting his time.

Helen called into the police station for her meeting with Inspector Reid. Each day one of the
Messenger
’s journalists went through the same routine; Reid would detail every crime reported in the previous twenty-four hours and they would write down the numerous acts of vandalism, burglary and TWOC, hoping for a story.

Inspector Reid was close enough to retirement to not mind spending fifteen minutes every day in the company of a young, female reporter but even he seemed to lack enthusiasm that morning. Perhaps he felt excluded while his plain-clothed counterparts searched for missing girls or dug up ancient corpses while he manned a desk at HQ. His voice was a monotone, ‘Burglary in Newton Hall, not much taken; set of golf clubs and a bike.’

‘Did they break into the house?’ asked Helen hopefully, thinking that sleeping residents terrified in the night by burglars might make half a story.

‘Garden shed,’ he answered, shattering that idea, then he glanced down at his list again, ‘Got a car taken without consent from Coronation Avenue? Joyriders probably,’ he looked up at her, ‘no?’

‘Not exactly the great train robbery.’

The Inspector smiled at her, ‘I’d have thought there’d been enough excitement on your patch lately.’

‘There has,’ she conceded, ‘but we’ve still got our district pages to fill. Is there nothing else,’ she was almost
pleading now, ‘that doesn’t involve stolen cars, golf clubs or broken pub windows?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ he said, ‘well … one incident … but it was nothing really.’ Her face told him she was interested. ‘Our lads escorted an old lady home,’ then he stopped himself, ‘I’m not sure I should be telling you this. No crime was committed.’

Helen smiled. ‘Between us then.’

‘I doubt you’ll be able to do anything with it. An old dear in Great Middleton walked half the length of the village in the pouring rain in her slippers and dressing gown. Our lads got her back home before she caught pneumonia. It’s not really news, but you did ask me if there was anything out of the ordinary and that doesn’t happen every night.’

‘I did,’ she admitted, ‘and you’re right, I probably couldn’t use it; wouldn’t be fair on the old lady, if she’s senile.’

‘I wouldn’t say Betty Turner was senile exactly.’

‘You know her?’

‘I know the family,’ he said, ‘she’s a nice old dear but she’s got three sons and no control over them. We’ve been to the house countless times, nothing serious but you know,’ and he shrugged to indicate that Betty Turner’s offspring were basically low-lifes.