No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (15 page)

Instead,
she just put her hands on her hips and said, ‘I don’t think the visits are helping.’

‘Oh,’ he said simply, and all at once he felt a surge of joy, at the tiniest prospect of being released from this obligation and at her request. He would be free
and
blameless. Bradshaw now concentrated hard on trying to put the right disappointed look on his face then he immediately felt guilty again. What kind of human being was he to find joy in being released from a commitment to a man he had crippled?

‘I thought they were a good idea,’ Carol continued, ‘a bit of human contact to take his mind off things, to stop him from just sitting there, hour after hour.’ Was there a trace of resentment in the words ‘hour after hour’? She must have been trying so hard to make Carter feel better, while single-handedly keeping the house going, then wondering why she was bothering if all he wanted was to feel sorry for himself day after day, week after week, month after month. Bradshaw assumed she would look back on her irritation later and feel bad about it.

More guilt.

Her guilt, his guilt, guilt piled onto guilt.

‘But I think they are doing more harm than good. He gets really sullen after you’ve gone, like he’s reliving what happened,’ she added.

Who wouldn’t? Bradshaw had, countless times, and he wasn’t the one stuck in a metal chair for the rest of his days.

‘I could leave it a while,’ he hoped he hadn’t sounded too eager, ‘if you think that’s best,’

‘Would you?’

‘I
only want to do what’s right by you and Alan.’ Perhaps he need never knock on their door again, God he felt elated for the first time in months. ‘You could always call the station if he wants me to pop by.’ It was a nice open-ended offer that hopefully she would never take him up on.

‘I will,’ she said. ‘Could you wheel the lawnmower out onto the back lawn and plug in the extension cable, so he doesn’t think we’ve just been talking about him?’

‘’Course.’

She didn’t thank him. Why should she?

He wondered when the lies had started. He didn’t think Carol was the kind of girl who would have gone behind her husband’s back before his ‘accident’. Now he was in a wheelchair she must find herself telling him lie after lie, talking about him behind his back to the doctors, her family, her friends, his friends. There’d be many more lies from Carol before Alan Carter found any peace in this world.

‘I don’t think the visits are helping,’ she’d said.

You’re telling me, love.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Back in his car Tom couldn’t shake the feeling that Mary Collier seemed rattled and that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. Perhaps he could get Betty Turner’s side of the story.

Betty was an old stalwart of the Women’s Institute and he’d been to her home, a two-up two-down council house she shared with three middle-aged sons who refused to grow up, on a number of occasions in his early years with the paper to publicise W. I. events. Betty had always been nice enough but her late husband had been ‘a bit of a one’, as Tom’s own grandmother had euphemistically put it, meaning he was a drinker, a lay-about, a petty thief and a fighter to boot. Betty’s lads seemed to have taken after their father and their names had all featured in the
Messenger
’s court reports at one time or another.

That morning Betty’s house seemed quiet but Tom couldn’t be sure if she was on her own until he knocked. Betty was a well-known figure in Great Middleton and not just as the ageing matriarch of the infamous Turner clan, for she had run the village shop for more than twenty years, which had made her a celebrity to every kid in the village when Tom was a boy. If you wanted pear drops, cola bottles, wine gums, love hearts or Refreshers you went to Betty’s shop and got a ten-penny mix-up in a white, paper bag. She’d been retired ten years or more by
now but the woman who answered the door didn’t look senile.

‘Hello, Betty,’ he said, ‘remember me? Tom from the
Messenger
,’ he didn’t tell her who he worked for these days, ‘I used to publicise the W. I. meetings for you.’

She stared at him warily then said, ‘What do you want?’

‘I was wondering if I could come in,’ he said but she didn’t move, ‘I wanted to have a word with you,’ then he took a risk, ‘about last night, when you went to the old vicarage.’

‘Oh,’ he was expecting resistance but instead she said, ‘come in then.’

She went to the kitchen automatically and started to fill the kettle, as if it wouldn’t cross her mind to invite anybody into her home without offering them a drink. While it began to boil he asked her, ‘So, what was it all about then? Were you trying to talk to Mary Collier?’

Betty thought for a moment. Tom was sure there was more to her nighttime trek to Mary Collier’s house than early senility but would she give a journalist her reasons? While Tom waited for her to answer, he heard a sound from upstairs. One of her sons must have been moving around up there. They were all the same; large, thick-set men who liked to throw their weight around, bullies who’d barely worked a day in their lives between them. He knew they weren’t likely to take kindly to this intrusion. Tom needed answers from Betty and he needed them quick.

‘Not talk to, no.’ she finally answered. She seemed uncertain now he had challenged her about it.

‘Why did you go there then?’

Upstairs,
a door slammed and male voices were having a muffled conversation. There was more than one of them in the house but they were unaware of his presence.

‘To tell her I knew,’ said Betty simply.

‘That you knew what, exactly?’

‘That it was her.’

There was the sound of another door opening, then footsteps across the landing above him. Please don’t come down, thought Tom. Not now.

‘What was?’

‘That it was all down to her,’ Betty said it as if he must surely know what she was referring to. Tom began to wonder if maybe she
was
losing it after all. ‘I wanted her to know that I knew,’ she said firmly.

There was a creak from upstairs that sounded as if someone had trodden on a loose floorboard, then heavy feet were on the stairs. Someone was coming down.

Tom only had seconds, ‘Was this something to do with the man?’ he asked quickly, ‘the body-in-the-field?’

‘Of course,’ she said, as if he was an idiot, ‘that’s what I’m telling you.’

The footsteps grew louder and a voice called, ‘Mam? Who are you talking to?’

Tom ignored this and ploughed on. ‘Who is it, Betty? Do you know? Who was buried in that field?’ Betty looked visibly upset, her bottom lip came out like a child’s and she looked as if she was about to cry. ‘If you know then tell me,’ urged Tom, just as the thump-thump of heavy boots ended. Someone had reached the hallway and would be with them in an instant. ‘Please,’ he said.

‘Sean,’
was all she managed to say before the tears began to fall.

‘Sean?’ repeated Tom, hoping he might get more than this but just then the kitchen door flew open.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ a well-built and very angry middle-aged man, who Tom recognised as Frankie, Betty’s middle son, was standing in the kitchen doorway. Then the man noticed the tears on his mother’s cheeks. ‘Have you been upsetting her?’ demanded Frankie and he set his face in a snarl and took a step towards Tom.

Tom held up a hand to placate him. ‘No, it’s okay,’ he said, ‘I’m a journalist.’

With hindsight, Tom would realise this was not the best response he could have given. ‘I know who you are and it’s not okay,’ hissed Frankie Turner and he grabbed Tom’s jacket by the lapels. ‘You’ve made my mam cry.’

‘Simmer down, man,’ Tom urged him, ‘I was only asking her some questions …’ but he wasn’t allowed to explain further. Instead he was flung forcibly from the room and propelled through the hallway. ‘She was happy to talk to me,’ Tom protested but another shove sent him closer to the door, then Frankie seized him by the hair and banged his head against the front door, causing him to cry out in pain.

‘Don’t come back here, you bastard, or I’ll break your back,’ and with that Frankie Turner released him, opened the front door and pushed Tom out through it, hard. He left the house so quickly that he tripped on the stairs and fell, landing heavily on his side. ‘Now fuck off!’ The door was slammed in his face.

Tom lay there for a moment to see how badly he was
hurt but there seemed to be no lasting damage, apart from a sharp pain where his head had connected with the front door before he went through it and a bang on his arm where he had landed roughly. He picked himself up gingerly.

There was a row going on inside the Turner home now, with a shout of ‘Why did you let him in?’ from one male voice, then another joined in. It crossed Tom’s mind that a second member of the Turner clan might think he had been dealt with too leniently, so he didn’t hang about.

Welcome home, Tom thought, as he dragged his bruised body back to the car.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Day Four

Though
the dead-wood squad were now working another case, their presence in the morning briefings was still obligatory, in case they came up with something that might help in the search for Michelle Summers. Detective Superintendent Trelawe was giving them all what he considered a much-needed kick up the arse.

‘We have had twenty-five detectives working on this case and still not a single lead worth a jot,’ he told them. ‘It’s not good enough and it won’t do. So far, we’ve all been asleep at the wheel,’ by
we
, he of course meant
they
had all been asleep at the wheel, ‘so from now on, I shall be conducting the morning briefing myself, every day, until the case is cleared up.’ He knew they wouldn’t appreciate that. ‘Thoughts, gentlemen?’ he demanded.

There was a long pause, during which Trelawe wondered if everyone was actually going to ignore him.

Finally, it was DC Skelton who broke the silence. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘has anyone given some thought to the fact that it might not actually be the Kiddy-Catcher?’

‘Please don’t use that offensive nickname in this room,’ Trelawe told him.

Skelton continued unabated, ‘I mean there’s a stepdad isn’t there?’

‘Yes,’
confirmed DCI Kane, ‘there is.’

‘Well, there you go,’ Skelton said with some finality, ‘that’s got to be worth it,’

‘Worth what exactly?’ asked Trelawe.

‘A look, Sir,’ Skelton frowned, ‘well I mean, if there’s a stepdad and the girl was what? Fourteen?’

‘Fifteen,’ DCI Kane corrected him.

‘Even better,’ Skelton nodded emphatically, ‘fifteen, all those hormones, and what with her not really knowing what it’s for and him having it paraded up and down in front of him all the time like that, and her not a blood relative,’ Skelton shrugged. ‘His missus is no looker either,’ he looked around him, as if drumming up support for his view. ‘Well I mean, that’s got to be worth a look, hasn’t it?’

Some of the men chuckled. The detective superintendent showed no emotion.

‘He’s a lorry driver isn’t he?’ it was DS O’Brien’s turn to pipe up.

‘Yes he is,’ confirmed Kane.

‘There you go,’ said Skelton.

‘What do you mean by that, Detective Constable?’ asked Trelawe.

‘Most of them are dirty pervs, for starters,’ Skelton told him. There were more chuckles from the squad, who were clearly loving this. ‘It’s all that time they spend on their own,’ Skelton added.

‘You’re saying that all long-distance lorry drivers are potential murderers?’ asked Trelawe.

‘Well, not all of them,’ Skelton qualified his statement, ‘not murderers, no,’ then he looked to his DS for support,
‘but, I mean, how many of them have we banged up over the years, for all kinds of things?’

‘A fair few,’ answered O’Brien, a shorter, squatter man who was slumped so low in his chair he was almost horizontal. The two men were affectionately known as Durham’s Regan and Carter, by colleagues in awe of their cavalier attitude to the law they were sworn to uphold. Bradshaw despised them both.

Skelton started counting the crimes off on his fingers, ‘assault, lewd conduct, gross indecency, sexual assault, rape, whore-battering …’ he said the last one like there was an official criminal offence of ‘whore-battering’, ‘… domestic abuse … incest … and, yes, murder, at least one I can think of,’