No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Day Seven

Tom
stifled a yawn as Roddy scanned his notes for the relevant passage. Helen and Tom sat in silence, waiting for him. Helen felt sure Tom was avoiding her eye.

True to his word, Roddy had been ringing round and asking questions. He’d called them both that morning and arranged for them to drop by but now seemed to be having trouble locating the information he’d promised.

‘Here we are,’ he said finally, tapping his notes with a Biro, ‘Jack Collier re-enlisted in his old outfit, the Durham Light Infantry, in 1937,’ Roddy told them, ‘they’ve a record of the date,’ and he looked at them both significantly, ‘about six months after Sean Donnellan disappeared.’ Then he corrected himself, ‘was killed I mean.’

‘Why would he re-enlist if his brother was back with Mary,’ asked Helen. ‘From what Sam said, Jack’s problems should have been solved?’

‘Guilty conscience,’ answered Tom, as if it was obvious, and his tone irked her.

‘Who knows,’ answered Roddy. ‘Jack was part of the British Expeditionary Force that fought a rearguard action in Dunkirk in 1940. More than three hundred thousand soldiers were rescued from that beach. Jack Collier wasn’t one of them.’

‘To
think he survived all that combat in World War One and came home for twenty years only to be killed in another bloody war,’ observed Tom.

‘His luck finally ran out,’ agreed Roddy.

‘So he didn’t get away with it,’ he said pointedly to Helen.

‘And the younger brother; Stephen?’ Helen asked, ignoring Tom.

‘Dead too, I’m afraid.’

‘I was hoping there was someone left alive who might know the truth about all this apart from old Mary Collier,’ Tom said, ‘because we won’t get it from her.’

‘We might,’ protested Helen, ‘if we can show her we know more than she thinks,’ and she turned to Roddy. ‘What happened to Stephen Collier?’

‘Like Sam said, Stephen was institutionalised,’ and he let the tip of the Biro float above his words until he found the necessary passage. ‘In 1951 he was taken to Springton.’ He put down his pen and looked at Helen. ‘It wasn’t far from here. When Stephen was taken there it was officially known as the mental asylum. I’m ashamed to say that when I was a kid we called it the loony bin. By the time it closed, about ten years ago now, it was a psychiatric hospital.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Progress of sorts, I suppose.’

‘And Stephen died there?’ Helen asked.

‘I phoned someone who works at the council office in Durham where they keep all the old patient records,’ said Roddy, ‘nice lady, a bit of an amateur historian like myself, goes to the same meetings,’ Tom resisted the temptation to drum his fingers on the table in impatience. He always wanted to edit Roddy’s conversation to get him to come to
the point. ‘She called me back later,’ continued Roddy, ‘and said that Stephen was there right up until the end.’

‘So who looked after him between Jack Collier re-enlisting and Stephen being carted off to Springton?’ asked Tom. ‘That’s fourteen years. Did Henry take him in when he married Mary?’

‘Must have done. He had nobody else.’

‘What a sad way to end your life,’ said Helen, ‘in a place like that. What was actually wrong with him?’

Roddy shrugged. ‘Back then they weren’t too big on detail; nerves, probably.’

‘Nerves?’

‘It’s a euphemism,’ explained Tom, his tone impatient, ‘a catch-all people used when they were trying to be delicate. They didn’t like to talk about illness or disability when Stephen Collier was a lad.’

‘Exactly, nerves was used to describe any one of a large number of ailments; from acute shell shock to hysteria, anxiety or postnatal depression,’ explained Roddy, ‘and a hundred other conditions that might fall under what we might now think of as a mental disorder. People didn’t understand those things very well back then, so if somebody went off the rails they were pretty much considered barmy and put away. This was the dark ages. Between the wars they even locked up lasses for having sex before marriage.’ His eyes gleamed mischievously. ‘Imagine that now. There’d be no one left in the village.’

‘There was a stigma attached to mental illness,’ said Tom, ‘the people affected were an embarrassment.’

‘And they call it the good old days,’ said Helen.

‘I’ve
got to go back to the office,’ she told him when they left Roddy.

‘Right,’ he said, opening his car door.

‘But I can meet again later if you like?’

‘Sure.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I thought only women were supposed to do that?’ she frowned at him.

‘Do what?’

‘Pretend things were okay when they’re not.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘I’m sorry if I upset you yesterday,’ she said. ‘You were right, I don’t know a thing about your mother. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Oh that,’ and he shook his head as if he had already forgotten about it. ‘It’s nowt.’

‘Then why wouldn’t you look at me in there?’ she asked. ‘You were like a bear with a sore head every time I opened my mouth.’

‘Oh come on,’ he protested then he realised she had a point. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night,’ the memory of the five-mile walk back to Great Middleton in the dark still rankled, ‘and I’m under a lot of pressure right now.’

‘All right,’ she said, his apology calming her. ‘Well, if you ever want to talk about it.’

‘Why would I want to do that?’ he was mock incredulous. ‘I’m a Northern bloke, we don’t talk about our problems, ever.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘must have slipped my mind.’

From
his vantage point on the higher ground he could see right into the playground without even leaving his car but he wasn’t interested in the horrible older kids, the ones who leaned against walls or play fought with each other on their way to smoke behind the rows of garages at the opposite end of the school. It was the young ones that interested him, only the girls; the little angels who still smiled sweetly and were without cynicism or manipulating ways, the ones who hadn’t changed yet. He so badly wanted to save them.

His window was open and he could hear their laughter and squeals even from here. He looked down at the matchstick figures far below him with a sense of great sadness and he wanted to weep, for he knew two things. He would never be able to save them all and this couldn’t go on much longer.

He’d almost been caught and the shock and sudden realisation of how close he had come to ruin had thrown him. He knew he could do one more, perhaps two or even three but eventually the net would tighten. Something would go wrong and he would be taken.

Perhaps he could just stop and then maybe then they would never find him. He could run away, go so far that nobody would ever imagine he could be the one they called The Reaper. It was an intoxicating thought. But no, who would do God’s will then?

He knew what he had to do. St Augustine had told him, ‘
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.’

Helen spent the afternoon talking to a monosyllabic youngster who had just won a regional piano contest then went
straight to an interview with the council’s new Chief Executive for a profile piece in the
Messenger
’s so-called business pages. She arrived at the Greyhound that evening before Tom was down from his room. There was a rough-looking bunch standing at the bar and one of the men scowled at her. Frankie Turner must have belatedly realised Helen had conned him. Either Betty gave the game away the moment she left their house or he’d actually bought the local paper hoping to be in it and seen nothing there about hard-working families.

Helen quickly ordered a drink and sat down in a quiet corner. Tom didn’t keep her waiting long but she could feel the atmosphere change slightly as he walked into the bar. There was a tangible sense that something had been brewing here. Some of the men had obviously been discussing them both.

Tom nodded at her and pointed to her drink. She shook her head, having barely started the one she’d ordered. When he ordered his own drink, Frankie Turner straightened and when he spoke, the words were loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

‘Your bird’s over there.’

‘Thanks,’ replied Tom with a smile that said he wasn’t taking the man seriously, ‘but I’ve only got eyes for you, Frankie.’

Helen was immediately afraid he had gone too far. She wasn’t surprised when Frankie didn’t let it go. ‘I’m surprised at you Colin, serving him.’

‘How’d you mean like?’ asked the landlord.

‘Thought you said you were going to bar all of them journalists,’ he said, while the landlord pulled Tom a pint, ‘you
said they were parasites, come to dance on a little girl’s grave. That
is
what you said?’ he reminded Colin.

‘Aye, well, I wasn’t meaning Tom,’ the landlord replied, ‘we’ve known him for years man.’ Other drinkers were openly watching now.

‘They’re all the fucking same. He’s not even with the local paper any more. I wouldn’t use the one he works for to wipe my own arse.’

‘You’ve started wiping your arse have you, Frankie?’ asked Tom calmly. ‘When was that then?’

There were one or two uncertain laughs from corners of the room but they stopped when they saw the look on Frankie’s face. The big man took a step forwards. Tom picked up his pint and took another sip, a picture of steadied calm. Helen’s heart was in her mouth, expecting him to be viciously assaulted at any moment.

‘The
Messenger
’s a pile of shite,’ Frankie told everyone in the bar, ‘but it’s nowhere near as bad as that lying Cockney rag he works for.’

‘You didn’t think the
Messenger
was shite when you won the leek show did you?’ said Tom and Colin smiled knowingly. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so chuffed to get his picture in the paper.’

‘Fuck off, I never …’ but Frankie Turner was already blushing at the memory.

‘As soon as Johnny Patcham got his camera out, Frankie here was stood to attention next to a table piled high with his prizewinning leeks and onions. His shirt was so new it still had creases in the front and he’d even combed his hair, do you remember, Colin?’

‘Aye,
I do as a matter of fact,’ the landlord smiled at the memory.

Frankie wasn’t liking this one bit. There was a definite shifting of the balance of power; people were openly grinning at Tom’s recollections. ‘ “Make sure you get me onions in the picture, perhaps I could hold one of them up”,’ Tom mimicked.

‘That’s shite,’ hissed Frankie.

‘You remember Johnny Patcham, don’t you, lads?’ There was a murmur of agreement from the men. ‘Five foot four in his stocking feet but he took one look at Frankie here and said, “Now listen here bonny lad I’m the photographer, not you, so we’ll do it my way or not at all.” ’ Tom pointed at the humiliated Frankie and said, ‘And this dizzy twat just looked dumbstruck and said “Okay, mate.” ’

Frankie looked round to see everybody laughing at him, even his own mates; especially his own mates. The man seemed to shrink visibly in front of Helen, all the threat gone from him.

‘Fuck off, the lot of you!’ And he marched out of the pub to loud ironic cheers, leaving his half-drunk pint on the bar.

‘You took a risk,’ Helen told Tom when he sat down opposite her, ‘not that you were even aware of it. You were as cool as a bloody cucumber.’

He regarded her oddly. ‘No I wasn’t,’ he told her with a frown. ‘I was bricking it. I thought Frankie was going to glass me. He’s not a nice man, you know.’

‘But
you looked so calm.’

‘Outwardly,’ he told her simply, taking another big swig of his beer, ‘inwardly, no,’ and he grinned at her.

She opened her mouth to answer but any words she might have uttered were drowned out abruptly by an ear-splitting din from the opposite end of the bar. A man in his mid-thirties was clutching a microphone and staring determinedly at a screen mounted on a nearby wall as words began to scroll along it to the accompaniment of very loud music.

‘Bloody karaoke,’ shouted Tom, so she could just about hear him, ‘it’s everywhere these days. Whatever happened to coming to a pub for a quiet pint and a chat?’ he added, sounding like an old man for a moment.

The singer was already destroying Neil Diamond’s, ‘Sweet Caroline’ and as soon as
hands
started
touching hands
, Tom called to Helen, ‘Come on!’ and he rose from his seat, ‘bring your drink!’