No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘As you know when a youngster goes missing, the first couple of days are vital. If she is a runaway, we’ll find her soon enough or she’ll be picked up in London and they’ll pack her back up here but we can’t wait for that; not while there is a killer out there targeting young girls, so we need you to be all over this one – and I do mean all over it. Now the Chief Superintendent has an important announcement.’

  ‘Thank you, David.’ Chief Superintendent Trelawe was young for his rank and always struck Bradshaw as a man in a hurry. ‘Five children,’ he told them sharply, ‘five young girls taken from their families in eleven weeks, lifted off the streets they once considered safe.’ He paused for effect, ‘and not a single lead worth a damn from any of you.’ He looked around the room. ‘Not one worthwhile scrap of information that has led us anywhere but back here to this briefing room, as we once again contemplate how these atrocities could be committed in our own backyard. You may feel I am being harsh and if you do, you can tell that to the parents of the last victim.

  ‘Now I expect you all to redouble your efforts. I want you to get out there, find this man and bring him to justice but I have come to realise you are unlikely to achieve that on your own,’ added Trelawe and Bradshaw knew that statement wouldn’t go down well, ‘which is why I have asked Professor Richard Burstow to join us here today.’ All eyes turned to the civilian standing next to the senior officers. ‘The professor is an expert in the relatively new field of forensic profiling, having worked with, amongst others, the Metropolitan Police and the FBI. He has kindly offered us his assistance and we have asked him to draw up a psychological profile of the man we should be looking for. Professor …’

  The Chief Superintendent turned to the professor and stepped to one side, allowing the older man to come to the front. He looked every inch the academic, sporting items of clothing – a tweed jacket, blue striped shirt, grey trousers and red tie – that failed to match.

  ‘If there is one thing I want you to keep today,’ he told them all confidently, ‘it’s an open mind.’ And his eyes roamed the room. ‘Some of you may be familiar with the science … for it is a science … of psychological profiling … and some of you will have doubts about the validity of the notion that by observing the scene of a murder and analysing the evidence contained therein, one can detect consistent patterns of behaviour and, thereby, deduce characteristics the murderer is likely to possess.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ The word wasn’t shouted but nor was it whispered. Instead, DC Skelton uttered it just loud enough for Bradshaw and his immediate colleagues to hear. Whether the professor heard or not, he chose to continue.

  ‘I have worked with America’s Federal Bureau of Investigations in Langley, Virginia on a number of high-profile cases. The FBI is at the forefront when it comes to applying modern technological and scientific methods to crime detection. You might doubt the effectiveness of psychological profiling as an investigative tool but they do not and if it’s good enough for the FBI …’ He left the sentence unfinished but the inference was there, thought Bradshaw. The professor thought the members of this small north eastern police force were all dinosaurs by comparison. ‘Remember also that there were those who once doubted the use of fingerprinting or forensic analysis in solving crime. No one queries that now.’

  He waited to see if anybody was going to challenge him, asking ‘Any questions?’ and when none were forthcoming, continuing his lecture. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘the man you are looking for is white …’

  ‘In the North East?’ hissed DC Bob Davies incredulously, ‘never.’ And there were a couple of low chuckles. Even Bradshaw had to concede he had a point. It wasn’t that migrants were more or less welcome in the North East than any other part of England but they tended to follow the jobs, and there was always a shortage of those around here.

  ‘… He’s never had a meaningful relationship,’ the professor went on, ‘he’s inexperienced sexually, possibly a virgin or, if he has had sexual relations with a woman, it was a traumatic episode that left him scarred in some way.’

  Behind Bradshaw, Trevor Wilson muttered, ‘He must have been shagging your missus,’ causing the guy on the receiving end of this bit of banter to stifle a laugh by turning it into a fake cough.

  ‘So he’s single, lives alone or possibly with an elderly mother. Look for the absence of a father figure, probably from a young age.’

  ‘What makes you so sure about all this?’ asked a voice from the back. Bradshaw didn’t bother to turn to identify the man. He was more interested in the professor’s answer.

  ‘Look at the condition of the four previous victims and the way they were found. There was nothing hidden away, there were no shallow graves. All of them were left on open ground in rural areas. It’s as if he wanted us to find them. This man was proud of his work,’ he let that sink in, ‘but not one of them was assaulted sexually. Their clothes were undisturbed, without even a partial undressing of any of them. Why not? Why is he not curious about them sexually?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Because he is not interested in his victims as sexual beings. This man is a misfit. He cannot relate to an adult woman, all that complexity, the hair, bodily fluid, menstruation; all of this disgusts and repels him so he chooses young girls instead. What he wants is an ideal, a dream, an entirely innocent female, something he can cope with, control and contain … someone he can manipulate and play with … a small child … a doll.’

  It was a chilling idea and, as the professor continued, Bradshaw sensed the atmosphere in the room begin to change. The detectives were still sceptical but they were listening to him.

  ‘He’s physically strong, can strangle a young girl as easily as wringing the neck of a chicken, so there’s power there. You are looking for a manual worker, a builder perhaps, this guy does not work in an office. He’s blue collar and likely to be frustrated by his work. Perhaps he feels he should be special and cannot understand why the world does not agree with him.’ Inwardly Bradshaw winced as he recalled his conversation with Doctor Mellor.

  Some of the younger, eager beavers were making notes. It looked like the professor had convinced most of them he knew what he was talking about.

  Before he could stop himself, Bradshaw asked, ‘How does he get them to come with him?’ Everyone turned to look at him and he cleared his throat.

  The professor peered back at him and offered an apologetic smile. ‘I wish I knew.’ And he addressed the whole room. ‘I can tell you a great deal about our man but not that, I’m afraid. Any more questions?’ He spotted a young female DC who had raised her hand. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will he do it again?’

  The question was blunt and so was the answer, ‘Oh yes,’ and he looked her in the eye. ‘Why?’ he asked her in turn, ‘because he enjoys it too much to stop. He loves the control he has over these young girls. It makes him feel …’ He paused as he considered a suitable phrase.

  ‘Like God,’ someone had uttered the words out loud and, when everyone in the room turned to look at DC Bradshaw, he realised it must have been him.

  ‘Precisely,’ answered the professor.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Helen Norton looked up from her desk just as Martin, the deputy editor of the Durham Messenger, marched purposefully into his boss’s office. She was too far away to hear what was being said but it was enough to energise their editor, which took some doing. She could see the two men exchanging words, grim-faced. Malcolm Hardy then picked up his phone and made a call. When Helen glanced up again she could see that Malcolm was laughing and joking with whoever was on the other end of the line. Then he hung up the phone and both men peered out at her. Helen quickly carried on writing up her piece on a charity fun-run. A moment later, her editor was standing over her.

  ‘Helen,’ he asked her with a leering smile that instinctively made her want to button her blouse up to the neck, ‘remind me how long you’ve been with us?’

  ‘Ten weeks.’

  ‘Then I reckon it’s time for
your first death knock?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said quickly, getting to her feet and picking up her bag. Helen hadn’t even blinked while he surveyed her for a response, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing how she was really feeling. It wasn’t just Malcolm; she wanted the other journalists to take her seriously too, even if she did only work on a ‘weekly’, as Peter had been foolish enough to remind her during their latest argument about her chosen career.

  The Durham Messenger was a good start as far as she was concerned; a well-respected ‘regional’ that covered the whole county, with a decent reputation for solid, if unspectacular, journalism that stretched back decades. It certainly beat working for a ‘free-sheet’ that would be dropped into every letterbox for nothing, whether the recipient wanted a copy or not, its front pages dominated not by news but tacky adverts for cheap carpets or bedroom furniture.

  Malcolm held out his hand to offer a slip of paper he’d scribbled a name and address on. She tried to take it from him but he deliberately held on to it. ‘You sure you’re ready?’ he asked with insincere concern.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said it as if he wasn’t entirely convinced of this but he did at least release the piece of paper into her care and began to brief her, ‘Lee Wallace is no more,’ he explained, even though he knew she wouldn’t have a clue who he was referring to, as she’d not been living in the area long enough to know any of the local characters.

  ‘He’s a bit of a hard-knock,’ he told her, ‘a one-man teenage crime wave – or at least he was.’ He actually smirked. ‘He’s only managed to crash a stolen car into the concrete strut of a bridge at something like eighty miles an hour.’ Shaking his head at Lee Wallace’s folly, he continued, ‘Now he has gone to the great big borstal in the sky we need you to get down to his house and speak to his family, see if you can get some sense out of one of them. Off you go then.’ He jerked his head towards the door and she left the news room without protest.

  Helen Norton had reserved judgement about her editor till that point but she was beginning to realise the truth. The man was an idiot. It was not that Malcolm wasn’t competent enough to oversee the creation of a new edition each and every week without messing it up entirely but the Durham Messenger’s quality was largely down to its journalists and its continued success was despite Malcolm, not because of him.

  Malcolm seemed to spend an inordinate amount of his time walking up and down between reporter’s desks making what he thought were wisecracks. He was the kind of man who laughed at his own jokes and no one else’s and his were never that good.

  And he was lazy.

  To Malcolm, a strong news story on the last day before going to print was an irritation not an opportunity, something that got in the way of the smooth running of his domestic life. He didn’t encourage his journalists or make them strive for greater things. Instead he merely expected them to churn out enough copy so that he could fill the pages of the paper as early as possible in the week then go home. It seemed everyone at the Messenger put up with this state of affairs but no one took the guy very seriously.

  As she climbed into her car, Helen felt a little sick but she told herself to get a grip. She was twenty-three years old, a mature, educated and intelligent young woman, with a degree in English and a post-grad in journalism that was endorsed by the National Union of Journalists and approved by the NCTJ, the National Council for the Training of Journalists. She even had a press card, a little blue plastic one with her picture on it. Helen was so proud of this that in her first week, she had to resist the temptation to keep pulling it out surreptitiously to take another look at it. It was in her bag right now, next to Peter’s apologetic card.

  Helen had wanted to be a journalist for as long as she could remember and was now part of a team of reporters on a well-respected newspaper. So why was she filled with dread each morning and not excitement? Maybe because she felt as if she didn’t really have a clue what she was doing? Yep, that was it. Sometimes she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was an imposter; a little girl, playing a game of dress-up in her mother’s old clothes, but now she’d been thrown in the deep end.

  The death knock. Every student journalist knows about them and dreads the day they will be called upon to make one. Helen Norton had been expecting this of course but the suddenness caught her by surprise and she was trying hard to compose herself as she drove to the unfortunate family’s house.

  People killed by terrorists or murdered in lawless parts of the globe, stabbings and shootings, car crashes and pedestrians mowed down by fleeing criminals or, sometimes, the police who pursued them; all of them end up in the newspaper, their photographs looking out at you while their deaths are explained and somehow rationalised in quotes from partners, parents or loved ones. Helen wondered if anyone ever stopped to question how those quotes were obtained and where the intimate photographs came from; those pictures of beautiful brides who drown in the sea on their honeymoons, of promising students killed by hit-and-run drivers, of little boys and girls whose lives are cruelly cut short by accident, illness or murder. There is no database of photographs of the country’s population stored on some enormous computer, waiting for the day when an image can be plucked from it to accompany a newspaper’s tragic story. Those pictures have to be acquired, taken from the albums of the poor victim’s family, prised from the clutches of the bereaved and grieving when they are at their most anguished.

  It’s not an easy matter to call on someone when they have lost everything, when their world has been destroyed by the death of a son or daughter, a wife or husband and ask them how they feel about it. You must convince someone who is beside themselves with grief to trust you with a picture that was precious before but now more priceless than ever. There will be no new photos of that loved one after all. You have to get them to part with a memory and all the while, at the back of your mind, you’re praying whoever takes it from you at the newspaper returns it in the same condition, for these things matter greatly.

  Helen parked her car in a long, terraced street on the outskirts of Darlington then went the remaining distance to number thirty-nine on foot. She walked slowly, practising her opening words silently in her head, hoping they were as appropriate as they could be under the circumstances. She reached the front door, took a deep breath, then knocked.

  She stood for a moment, half hoping there would be nobody there, then she heard advancing footsteps and, all too soon, the door was pulled open. A woman, who had to be the mother, was standing on the doorstep – but if Helen was expecting tears, there were none. This woman was big and hard looking and she said nothing, merely surveyed Helen dispassionately.

  ‘I am so sorry to disturb you,’ Helen began, ‘I really am.’ The woman folded her arms and continued to watch Helen, showing no sign that she was a mother who’d been robbed of her teenaged son that very morning. Helen ploughed on somehow, adding, ‘I’m from the local paper and I wondered if you might be prepared to talk to us about Lee.’

  Helen watched the woman as she unfolded her arms, rolled her eyes and in a voice that held no trace of anguish asked, ‘Bloody hell, what has he done now?’

  As Tom walked dumbly past the rows of reporters, nobody paid him any attention. The Doc’s voice had a way of travelling and he kept his door open for a reason; so that everybody knew who was on the receiving end of his temper and would pray they weren’t going to be next. All of a sudden everyone was very busy. If you were on the wrong side of the chief nobody would give you the time of day, they didn’t want to be you or even be associated with you. You were a ‘Winston’, after Winston Smith, the hero of Orwell’s 1984, because sometimes the people on the wrong end of those bollockings would literally disappear and never be seen again.

  Tom had witnessed this before and now it was his turn. He felt sick. How could a day have turned from triumph to outright disaster so quickly? He glanced at his watch. Jesus, he thought, not even ten o’clock and I’m already on garde
ning leave. The girl from the water cooler quickly picked up the phone as he reached her desk. There was no smile this time. She didn’t even look at him.

  By now Tom couldn’t wait to climb into the lift and get out of there. He had almost reached the last line of reporters’ desks when a voice came from the end of a row. ‘Hey Tom!’ It was Angus Boyle, self-styled ace crime reporter. ‘You’re from the grim old North,’ he was reminded. ‘Do you know Great Middleton?’

  How weird was this? On the verge of his greatest humiliation and he receives a timely reminder of his past. ‘Yeah,’ mumbled Tom, ‘I used to live there, years ago. Moved away when I was still a kid but I covered the area for the local paper before I moved down here.’

  ‘It’s your home town?’

  ‘It was. It’s actually a village.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  Why the hell was Boyle asking him this? Nothing ever happened there and it was hardly a holiday destination. ‘Small,’ was all he could think to say by way of an answer, ‘semi-rural, with a farm at either end,’ he could see Boyle was still interested, so he thought he’d better make an effort, ‘one junior school, four pubs, a village hall, about twelve hundred people living there. Why do you ask?’

  Boyle snorted, ‘Don’t you read your own bloody paper?’ Tom had read it that morning but limited his interest to the first five pages, which dealt exclusively with the supposed downfall of Timothy Grady. ‘A young girl’s gone missing,’ Boyle said it matter-of-factly as journalists tend to, ‘so they’re saying he’s done it again, the Kiddy-Catcher.’

  The official tabloid nickname given to the child killer was ‘The Reaper’ but off the record, journalists and police officers alike had taken to calling him ‘the Kiddy-Catcher’, using a macho, gallows humour, so they didn’t have to ponder the realities of the case.