No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (50 page)

‘I can’t just drop everything, leave everyone and come to London with you.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I have a life. I have a job and a family and …’

‘A boyfriend?’

‘Yes, a boyfriend.’

‘And you love him?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘I think it is my business, under the circumstances.’

‘You can think what you like.’

‘And you can do what you like. It’s allowed. People go off and do things they want to do. They don’t have to stay where they are if they are unhappy.’

‘People don’t just abandon other people like that.’

‘Yeah they do,’ he said drily, ‘believe me.’

‘And I can’t believe you are seriously suggesting it, after what you went through,’

‘I was four, he’s twenty-four. He’ll get over it!’

‘Do you realise how cold you sound when you talk like that?’

‘And
do you realise how wrong it is to stay with someone if you are not happy with him? It’s unfair on him and it’s not fair on you.’

‘Who says I’m not happy with him?’ Tom let out a snort of derision and she rounded on him then, ‘You don’t know everything about me!’ Helen stormed out of the Greyhound, causing every head at the bar to turn in her direction.

When he left Alan Carter’s home, Ian Bradshaw felt completely drained. All he really wanted to do was go home. Reluctantly he drove to the cop shop and went straight to Kane’s office.

‘We could do with a bit of good news at the moment,’ the DCI told him, once he had established that Bradshaw was basically okay, ‘what with Vincent Addison about to give every police officer in the country a bad name, so you’re going to be made a DS,’ Kane told him, ‘acting, to start with, obviously.’

Bradshaw wasn’t expecting that. He had half-expected a telling off when Kane called him in, for breaking some ill-defined, unwritten police rule about health and safety when he took off after Vincent then dived into that river.

‘The chief constable wants his picture in the paper with you,’ Kane added wryly, ‘so you are going to get a commendation too. He reckons we could use a few heroes right now and I can’t argue with that.’

Bradshaw said nothing. It felt as if Kane was discussing somebody else, not him.

‘Anyway, you did well out there,’ and when Bradshaw still did not respond, he added, ‘well done.’

‘Thank
you, Sir,’ he managed.

‘I’d say this is your chance, wouldn’t you?’

‘Sir?’

‘To put things behind you and turn your career around,’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘So don’t fuck it up,’ Kane told him, ‘there’s a good lad.’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Anyway,’ and he regarded Bradshaw thoughtfully, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he was indeed the officer about to be honoured and promoted, ‘that’ll be all for now.’

This time Tom had to run to catch up with her and their argument continued all the way down the hill, until they reached Roddy Moncur’s house. It was just beginning to get particularly heated when Roddy, showing a level of poor timing and insensitivity that even Tom would not have given him credit for, opened his kitchen window and leaned out to call to them.

‘Oi!’ he shouted, ‘I’ve been looking for you two! Where’ve you been?’

‘Don’t you bloody start!’ Tom shouted back at him and Roddy belatedly realised that he and Helen were both red-faced and looked furious with one another.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, maybe this won’t interest you then but I thought it was important.’

‘What is?’ demanded Helen, ‘for God’s sake can’t you just explain yourself for once, man!’

Roddy seemed taken aback at being shouted at by Helen, but he recovered sufficiently to say, ‘I dropped a bit of a bollock.’

Roddy
looked agitated when he opened his front door to them.

‘I saw her, you see,’ he began to explain, ‘at a meeting,’ and they followed him into his kitchen.

‘Who?’ asked Helen, not bothering to hide her exasperation.

‘Wendy, my contact who works at the council records office, the one who told me all about Stephen Collier.’

‘Right,’ she said.

Roddy hesitated before continuing. ‘And it turns out I made a mistake. A pretty big one, actually.’

‘Go on,’ Tom urged.

‘I asked her if there was anybody still alive who might remember Stephen, someone who might be willing to talk to you, so you could learn a little more about him and what happened.’ Roddy seemed embarrassed at the recollection.

‘And what did she say?’

‘She said, “Why don’t you just speak to Stephen?” ’

It took a moment for Tom to take this in. ‘Talk to Stephen? You mean he’s alive?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘But you said he was dead.’

‘That was the mistake,’ he admitted, ‘when I spoke to her on the phone, I thought that’s what she was telling me. She said “Stephen was housed at Springton right up until the very end,” so I took that to mean he was there until he died.’

‘Right,’ Tom was trying to keep the excitement from his voice.

‘But she meant the end of
Springton
, when it was closed
in 1980. When Springton was shut down, Stephen was transferred.’

‘Transferred?’ said Tom, ‘Transferred where?’

‘Milton Mews.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Newcastle. It’s a residential care home for the elderly, which houses low-risk mental patients.’

Tom blinked at Roddy, ‘So you’re telling me the one person left alive who might be able to fill in the gaps of the Sean Donnellan murder is living in a care home a few miles from here?’

‘Yes,’ replied Roddy, ‘that’s exactly what I’m saying.’

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Tom
was striding towards the car, Helen struggling to keep up with him.

‘Do we even know if he’s compos mentis?’ she asked.

‘No.’ He was almost at the car. Helen had never seen him move with such purpose.

‘He could be completely senile,’ she reminded him.

‘Yep.’

‘Or just not all there to begin with,’ she said, breathlessly.

‘True.’

‘He might not know anything about what happened that night,’ she concluded.

Tom climbed into his car and started the engine, just as the passenger door opened and Helen climbed inside. Tom turned to look at her. ‘You’re coming then?’

‘Too bloody right I’m coming.’

They thought they would need a cover story so they worked one out on the way there: they were cousins from a branch of Stephen’s family and had only just discovered they had a relative in the care home. Luckily they were met a by a young, trusting employee who let them into Milton Mews as soon as they announced they were there to see Stephen Collier.

‘He’s in the lounge,’ the young girl told them as she led
the way along a corridor carpeted in threadbare Axminster. ‘I’ve never known him have a visitor before. I didn’t know he had any family left,’ she told them and Helen just smiled back at her disarmingly but made no comment. They walked silently along three narrow corridors until the girl said, ‘Here he is.’

They entered the room and Tom silently prayed they would find somebody capable of engaging with them. Half a dozen old ladies were seated here, dozing or reading newspapers half-heartedly. They followed the girl up to an old man who was sitting on his own. He was staring through a large window that overlooked rose bushes and a freshly mown lawn, ‘Stephen, you’ve got visitors,’ she said to him, but he didn’t react.

Stephen Collier was a small man dressed in ancient carpet slippers, baggy grey trousers and a cardigan that must have been hurriedly done up by a carer that morning because the buttons were askew. His skin was grey from years without enough sunlight and he had liver spots on a face that was lined but bony, giving Helen the impression that he did not eat enough. The young girl persisted. ‘There’s someone here,’ she told him, ‘family to see you!’ she called as if he was deaf. She placed her hand gently onto Stephen’s arm to gain his full attention, ‘That’s nice isn’t it?’

Stephen Collier turned his uncomprehending face very slowly towards them and Tom expected him to ask who the hell they were but he seemed calm enough. The carer concentrated her efforts on levering him out of his chair. ‘Let’s get you into your room, shall we, where it’s nice and private.’

It
took a long time for Stephen to shuffle along the corridor in his slippers and they were both filled with nervous excitement. They knew that at any moment someone in authority could come along and demand to know who they were before kicking them out, ending their last opportunity to get to the truth. Finally they reached a sparsely furnished ground-floor room and the carer sat Stephen in a shabby armchair. There was one other chair by the door but Helen perched on the end of Stephen’s bed so she could face him and Tom stayed on his feet.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ offered the girl, then she turned back to Stephen. ‘I’m sure I can sort one out for you and your visitors,’ she told the silent old man.

‘We’re fine, really,’ Tom told her.

‘Okeydokey, I’ll leave you to it then.’

Tom waited until the girl was halfway down the corridor before he spoke. Stephen was staring through his bedroom window, as if they weren’t really there.

‘Hello, Stephen. This is Helen and I’m Tom.’

There was no response from the old man and Tom began to fear that years in an institution had robbed him of all of his remaining faculties. ‘We came to visit you today because we would like to ask you a few questions.’ The old man continued to stare blankly ahead of him. ‘Would that be all right?’ and when there was still no reply, Helen added, ‘It won’t take long.’ She gave him a big, beaming smile. ‘Wouldn’t want you to miss your dinner, would we?’

Tom watched Stephen Collier. There was the merest flicker from the old man at the sound of the pretty girl’s
voice then he turned his head slightly towards Helen, took in her presence at the foot of his bed but said nothing.

‘Can you hear me okay, Stephen?’ asked Tom. ‘Do you understand why we are here? We just want to ask you a few questions.’

Helen opened her mouth to add something but Tom gestured to her and she stopped. Tom felt that if they both carried on talking at the old man he would never take the trouble to reply. Eventually the silence stretched out so far in front of them it became clear Stephen was not going to say anything. Tom sighed, ‘I think we could be wasting our …’

Before he could complete the sentence, Stephen Collier finally spoke but his voice was a low whisper and neither of them made out the words. ‘What did you say?’ Helen prompted him and Stephen started to cough. Once more Tom found he was holding his breath, hardly daring to breathe. He wanted so badly to get through to this old man.

‘I’m not daft,’ said Stephen suddenly and once again Helen and Tom exchanged glances. ‘I can hear you.’

Tom nodded at her, prompting Helen to address him.

‘Nobody thinks you are daft, Stephen.’

‘They do,’ his voice was a rasp but they could clearly make out the words now. ‘They all do in here.’

‘Well, we don’t,’ answered Helen, ‘you’re clearly not daft.’

‘No,’ he continued. ‘I can’t do adds and takeaways, that’s all,’ and he tilted his head so he could look at Helen directly, ‘and if I try to count to a hundred I get confused
and have to stop,’ he told her earnestly, ‘but that doesn’t make me daft.’

‘Of course it doesn’t,’ she assured him.

Tom noticed the way the old man suddenly seemed to lock on to Helen. He was looking at her smiling face as if she’d been sent from heaven to greet him.

‘Helen here will be asking the questions today,’ Tom said, hoping she would understand.

Stephen frowned then. ‘Who are you?’

Tom cut in before Helen could answer: ‘We’re the people who are asking the questions, Stephen. That’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘Questions?’ he asked suspiciously, ‘what about?’

‘Something that happened a very long time ago,’ Helen explained. ‘We want to ask you what you remember about a night many years ago when you were a young man.’ Did Stephen look a little nervous then?

‘What night?’

Helen glanced at Tom but he just jerked his head in a gesture that meant ‘Go on.’ She was nervous herself now, fearful of messing things up if she upset the old man.

‘We need to hear what happened that night, Stephen,’ she forced her voice to sound calm, ‘when the Irishman had an argument with your brothers, Jack and Henry. You remember, don’t you?’ No reply from Stephen. ‘Sean Donnellan quarrelled with your brother in No Name Lane, perhaps both of them, because he was going to run off with young Mary, Henry’s fiancé.’

The old man lowered his head, his face a picture of confusion, or was it fear. ‘You don’t have to worry about any of it. We just want to clear it all up, that’s all,’ said Tom.

Nobody
will get into trouble,’ added Helen, ‘it was all such a very long time ago and everybody is gone now, so there can’t be any harm in telling us the truth, can there?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ said the old man firmly.

‘Please, Stephen,’ Helen urged him, ‘we know almost all of it anyway. You wouldn’t know about it, living all the way out here, but they found Sean Donnellan,’ Stephen Collier seemed to flinch slightly then, ‘his body I mean. We know there was a big quarrel about Mary. Henry was very upset and Jack wanted to help him by making the Irish man go away. We understand all that.’ No response from Stephen. ‘We also know there was a fight and, during that fight, Sean got stabbed with Henry’s knife.’ She watched Stephen closely for signs of recognition but his face betrayed nothing. ‘All we need to know is how it happened, that’s all,’ and Helen waited for an answer. When none was forthcoming, she asked, ‘Was it Jack,’ to no response. ‘Was it Henry?’ Again, no reply.