No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (24 page)

The doctor regarded him for a moment, as if he was trying to decide whether this argument was worth continuing. ‘Then I apologise.’

As he often did when he wanted to take some tension out of their sessions, the doctor went to the kettle and turned it on. ‘Since you were good enough to apologise to me,’ the doctor reminded Bradshaw of his earlier humiliating climb-down, forced upon him when his request to end his sessions with the doctor had been turned down flat by his superiors, ‘for your outburst and premature
departure from our last consultation, I would like to repay the compliment.’ He picked up a cup and added a tea bag but did not offer any to Bradshaw this time. ‘I’m sorry if my words were clumsy, Ian. I did not wish to imply you were a homosexual in denial,’ he fished the milk out of the little fridge in his office, ‘though I don’t think everyone would have reacted quite as violently as you did just then.’

Bradshaw sighed. ‘Meaning I’m a homosexual?’

‘No,’ the doctor sounded exasperated now, ‘though perhaps you are a little prejudiced against them.’

‘Rubbish, I’m not prejudiced against anyone. I’ve got nothing against gay men, or lesbian women, come to that. I think you’ll find my generation is a lot more tolerant about that sort of thing than yours.’

‘That sort of thing?’

‘Gay sex,’ Bradshaw clarified. ‘I don’t give a toss what two consenting adults get up to in their own bedroom, I’m merely telling you I’m straight, that’s all. Christ, half of Durham Constabulary is homophobic. Pick on one of them for a change.’

‘I’m not picking on anyone, Ian. This is merely part of your therapy.’

‘My private life and personal relationships? Are they really that valid?’

‘All human relationships are important,’ countered the doctor. ‘The closer the relationship the more relevant it becomes and currently you do not have a close relationship with anybody.’ The doctor held up his hand in a placatory manner. ‘I am merely stating a fact. You have no
one to share the burdens of this life with you. You face them alone. I’m not sure that’s entirely healthy.’

‘Look, I wasn’t in a very positive frame of mind when I broke up with Angela. I wasn’t good for her.’

‘That was shortly after the incident,’ the doctor reminded him, ‘and understandable. But since then?’

‘I just haven’t met anybody.’

‘No one?’

‘Nobody I really liked.’

‘Mmm, yes; well, I can’t help but feel there is a little more to it than that. Have you made any effort to meet anybody?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because …’ he began and realised he had not given the matter any thought himself. ‘… it’s not a great time … I’m busy, I’m
always
busy and …’

‘Too busy to go out for a drink with a lady friend? Surely there’s time enough for that. Even detectives have personal lives, Ian.’

‘I just …’ and he ran out of words.

‘I think it’s something deeper. I’m wondering if, since the accident, you have been deliberately shying away from female contact?’

‘Well I’ve been depressed, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, indeed, but maybe there is another reason?’

‘Which is?’

‘I think at this point it’s very important for you to be open and honest with yourself and with me. I think if we are to make progress here, if we want these sessions to
work, we need to let the barriers come down and I would really like you to tell me the reason. Could you do that, do you think? Please.’

Bradshaw took such a long time to answer he was expecting Mellor to lose his temper at any moment, but instead the doctor merely waited. He made his cup of tea, sat down and waited some more.

In the end Bradshaw answered him without being fully conscious that he was doing so. ‘I don’t want any of that right now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s not something I need.’

‘Need or …’

‘Want,’ Bradshaw said.

‘But why not, Ian? Please tell me. You know it will stay with us, inside this room. No one else will ever know.’

‘I don’t think I …’

‘Say it, Ian,’ urged the doctor, ‘say what’s on your mind.’

‘I don’t think I deserve it,’ and Bradshaw’s face creased slightly in apparent confusion, as if the words had been spoken by someone else, for this was not something he had been consciously aware of.

The doctor nodded, ‘I thought so,’ he said, ‘you don’t think you deserve to be happy, do you, Ian.’

‘No,’ said Bradshaw and he was far more surprised than the doctor to finally discover the truth.

His heart was racing and he was breathing hard. Was he having a heart attack? Was this what it felt like to die? No, he was just spooked. They’d been so close to catching him.

The
girl was standing outside the village hall, like a tethered goat, just waiting for him when he drove past her. Had she missed her bus or was the adult tasked with collecting her running late? Could he risk approaching her, to coax the girl into his car before anyone saw? Then he remembered Isaiah:
The prey of the terrible shall be delivered for I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children
, and this spurred him into action.

He pulled over by the side of the road and watched her in his passenger side mirror. She was the right age but it was still a risk. He looked about him and the streets were silent and empty. She was entirely alone, so he decided to chance it, his heart thumping as he made a U-turn and drove back towards her. She was shielded by stationary cars so he had to park a little way from her and risk getting out. The girl didn’t notice as he started to walk towards her. She didn’t even look up when he was a few yards away. He opened his mouth to speak to her.

‘Andrea!’ someone called then and the girl turned towards the voice, ‘what are you doing?’ asked a man who was approaching her from a path that ran down the side of the village hall, ‘I told you I’d pick you up at the back.’

‘Sorry, Dad.’

‘Come on, let’s get you home,’ her father said impatiently.

Neither of them paid him any attention as he went by. He made a point of walking round the block so it looked like he was just out for a stroll but his heart was pounding. He made sure no one was watching when he returned to
his car. He didn’t want anybody reporting a suspicious man or recording his licence plate.

The girl would never know how close she’d come to being saved but he knew how close he’d been to being trapped. He’d almost given himself away and he vowed to be far more careful from now on. He wasn’t ready to be caught.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Tom
went back to his room in the Greyhound and wrote up his story in longhand. He had to admit it didn’t amount to much but he was now convinced Sean Donnellan was the body-in-the-field. On re-reading it however, the piece lacked authority. So far all he had was the word of a half-batty old lady.

This wasn’t good enough for The Paper, or anybody else. What if Tom was wrong and it wasn’t Sean after all? He’d look like a complete idiot. If he had still been at The Paper, he could have done some digging. Remaining members of the victim’s family could be traced to see if he really had disappeared back in 1936. There was no way Tom could manage to do that on his own though, with no contacts and a mobile phone that could barely manage a signal.

Tom just couldn’t risk calling the story in as it was. It was too damn flimsy. For all he knew, Sean Donnellan could be sitting in a pub in Dublin right now, nursing a Guinness.

Helen had a cover story but as they left the news room not one of her colleagues asked her why she stayed. She decided to wait half an hour in case a reporter or photographer returned late from a job.

When the time had elapsed she stood up and
tentatively approached the cabinets, which contained Malcolm’s famous cuttings’ files. Helen opened the drawer of the first cabinet and peered in. She then tackled the alphabetised filing system and withdrew the necessary documents one after another until she had a small stack of files, each one relating to a missing girl. She opened the first and began to read when she heard a sound from the reception area just beyond the newsroom’s double doors. Helen froze. She could dimly make out a muffled conversation. Someone was heading her way.

She quickly pushed the heavy drawer closed and ran back across the room, still clutching the files. She was halfway to her desk when the buzzer sounded to indicate that someone had swiped their pass across the electronic lock of the newsroom door. Helen threw herself into her seat, wedging the files between her knees and the underside of her desk so they could not be seen then sat straight in her chair just as the door opened.

Malcolm was standing in the doorway and he did not look at all pleased to see Helen, nor was he alone.

Ian Bradshaw bought a pint of bitter and walked to a quiet corner of the pub. He sat down heavily and pondered the fruitless day he’d just spent investigating an ancient murder nobody seemed to know anything about. His strange session with Doctor Mellor, which had actually forced him to think about his personal life for the first time in a long while, had been sandwiched between several hours of knocking on doors and getting exactly nowhere,

Being a police officer, Bradshaw was used to hostility
from sections of the general public and not just the criminal element. There were a fair number of folk who should have known better; including left-leaning students and even some of their tutors, who routinely labelled him and all of his colleagues as ‘fascists’, without ever stopping to contemplate what their world would actually be like if they were left unprotected by a police force. Bradshaw could live with that, but Great Middleton was an unusual place to make door-to-door enquiries. Nearly everyone seemed suspicious of him and his routine questions. Some refused to talk. Others didn’t even bother to hide their contempt. There were a few who were friendly enough, usually the younger ones with small children, but they were in a clear minority and, importantly, none of them had any information. Everyone, young and old alike, denied knowing anything about the identity of the body-in-the-field, much less the reason for its presence there.

Thank God he was finally off duty. He was halfway through the sports pages of a discarded newspaper when someone spoke to him.

‘Ian Bradshaw?’ He looked up to see Tom Carney staring down at him. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’ Bradshaw was sure he did not know the man standing opposite him and that could only mean trouble.

‘I thought so,’ Tom smiled at him. He had a pint of IPA in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other. ‘Tom Carney,’ he told the bemused Bradshaw, ‘you were at my comprehensive, the year above me, or maybe two. You won’t remember me but I saw you play football a couple of times. You were bloody good.’

Not
quite good enough, thought Bradshaw. ‘Thanks, I was okay I suppose, many moons ago.’

‘Mind if I join you?’ Bradshaw did mind but he slid a chair out with his foot and Tom sat down. ‘Cheers. So what you up to now then?’

‘Police.’

‘That explains it. Are you investigating the missing girl or the body-in-the-field?’

Bradshaw didn’t want to admit the truth. ‘Both.’

‘Then maybe we could help each other out,’ offered Tom.

‘How’s that?’

Tom explained what he did for a living and Bradshaw visibly tensed at the word ‘journalist’.

‘I’m not suggesting anything dodgy, Ian. I might come up with some information you’d value and you could repay the compliment,’ and he smiled, ‘in the time-honoured tradition of these things.’

Bradshaw knew that members of the police force had been tipping off reporters in exchange for a second income for many years now but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go down that route. It wouldn’t matter that the practice was widespread, it was still against the rules and it would be just like him to be the one who was caught and made an example of. His superiors could then use it as an excuse to get rid of Ian once and for all.

‘What makes you think you could uncover something I can’t?’

‘The locals round here aren’t too forthcoming where the police are concerned.’

‘Maybe not.’ Tom was certainly right about that, though
Bradshaw had no idea why. ‘We have had a few leads though.’

‘Go on, admit it,’ grinned Tom, ‘you might have had some help with your missing girl, they’d want her back obviously, but I bet you’ve had radio silence on that old murder.’

Bradshaw lacked the will to lie to Tom’s face and hoped the shared school connection might mean the younger man was less likely to stitch him up in print. ‘They’re saying bugger all about it.’

‘Unsurprisingly.’

‘Why unsurprisingly?’

‘Because people have long memories and they haven’t forgotten what your lot did,’ said Tom.

‘What do you mean my lot? What are we supposed to have done?’

‘The battle of Orgreave,’ Tom said, ‘during the miner’s strike. The police went in hard on the pickets and I do mean hard.’

‘That was miles away and it was the South Yorkshire Police, not us.’

‘Yeah but striking miners travelled from all over, including a fair few from this village.’