She walked him to the front door and he asked, in what he hoped was a casual tone, ‘Is Michelle’s stepdad working today?’
She nodded but it was too quick and emphatic, as if she wanted to believe the lie too.
Unable to get a signal between Fiona’s house and the Greyhound, Tom fed coins into the public phone at the pub then waited for Bradshaw to answer before identifying himself.
‘I said I owed you one.’
‘You do,’ the detective agreed.
‘You might want to check out the stepdad,’ said Tom. ‘I think he’s moved out.’
‘Moved out? Why would he … how do you know that?’
Tom recounted his visit to Michelle’s home before adding, ‘You didn’t hear this from me.’
Bradshaw snorted, ‘I’m in enough bother. I won’t be mentioning your name.’ But his tone softened slightly: ‘Thanks. We’ll check it out.’
‘Any word on Sean Donnellan?’
‘They’re still looking,’ said Bradshaw.
At least they are looking, thought Tom.
He swept past Vincent’s desk on his way to the smoking room. His fellow detective did not look good today. Don’t go sick on me now, you bugger, he thought to himself, I’m going to need you. Bradshaw knew this was his chance.
DI Peacock was having a cigarette with Skelton and O’Brien when Bradshaw walked into the smoking room, a recent innovation that had caused extreme annoyance amongst the twenty-a-day mob, who loudly proclaimed that smokers were being victimised, due to some entirely unproven theory on passive smoking. The air in the tiny room was permanently stale and rank with smoke.
‘What is it?’ asked Peacock irritably.
‘Sorry to interrupt. I’ve got some information on the Michelle Summers case and I wanted to pass it to you straight away.’
‘Let’s hear it then.’
‘Michelle’s stepdad might have moved out.’
‘Moved out?’ answered his DI in disbelief. ‘Did you know about this?’ he looked at Skelton and O’Brien accusingly.
Skelton shook his head and O’Brien asked, ‘What makes you think that?’
Bradshaw knew he was out on a limb now. ‘I got a call from a neighbour. He wouldn’t give his name but he knew me from my door-to-door. He reckons he saw a note Denny left on Fiona’s table.’
‘What kind of note?’
‘An apology; saying he couldn’t stay and he was …’
‘What?’ interrupted his DI. ‘He was what?’
‘Asking for forgiveness.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Skelton, ‘you sure about this, Sherlock? You haven’t just imagined it, have you?’
Bradshaw ignored him but Peacock didn’t. ‘Shut up Skelton.’
‘Let me track him down,’ Bradshaw urged his DI.
Peacock turned back to Bradshaw and eyed him carefully. ‘Reckon you could look into this without messing it up?’
Bradshaw nodded. ‘Just give me the chance.’
‘Do it then,’ ordered Peacock.
‘Should we go and see Michelle’s mother again?’ asked Skelton when Bradshaw had gone.
Peacock shook his head. ‘She’s not all there,’ and he took a long reflective drag on his cigarette. ‘Sherlock’s out to prove himself, so let’s see what he comes up with. If he can find out why Denny’s been feeling guilty, I reckon we’re halfway there.’
Vincent Addison was staring off into space when Bradshaw walked up to his desk and spread his palms on it, leaning in close. ‘Remember all that bollocks I told you about us being a team and me needing your help when you were ready?’ he demanded.
‘Er, yes.’
‘Well, we are a team and I do need your help but it cannot wait until you’re ready,’ he told his startled colleague, ‘so grab your coat, ’cos we’ve got a job to do.’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
He didn’t expect her to show but he should have known better. Ever the professional, Helen Norton drove into Mary Collier’s street at the allotted time and stopped in front of his car. Tom had parked some yards from Mary’s house. If there was going to be a row he didn’t want the old lady to witness it.
They both got out of their cars at the same time and he waited for Helen to say something about the kiss. He was expecting some form of telling-off but instead she said, ‘What happened to you?’
He had forgotten about his bruises. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I told you there were some unpleasant people in this village. Frankie Turner is one of them.’
‘He did that?’ she said and he was relieved to see she was still concerned. ‘Have you reported it to the police?’
Tom shook his head. ‘No point, Frankie will have half a dozen people lined up to say they were with him when it happened. The police won’t be interested,’ he was dismissive, ‘and I’ll live.’
Relieved she had shown up at all and not even commented on their kiss, he took her silence as his cue and said, ‘Shall we see if she’s in?’
Helen nodded and they started to walk up the street together.
This time Mary Collier was at home but their latest attempt to see the old woman was thwarted by the arrival a moment later of a be-suited, middle-aged man who looked like an insurance salesman. While they were still some way from the old vicarage, the man emerged from a maroon Rover that had pulled up right by Mary’s house. He knocked on the front door before being admitted by Mary’s housekeeper.
‘Bollocks,’ muttered Tom.
‘Should we wait?’ Helen asked him.
‘I have a feeling he’s going to be a while,’ Tom said. ‘Fancy a walk?’ She wondered if he meant the pub but instead they set off over the hill together.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked but he didn’t answer. Helen didn’t push the matter. She was just glad they were still capable of working together and relieved he had not commented on the night before, even to apologise, which would have been excruciating. When she had driven away, she’d been angry with Tom but even angrier with herself. He had kissed her, which was very wrong, but she had kissed him back, which was even worse for she was the one with the boyfriend. The guilt at this betrayal of Peter had been eating away at her ever since. It would surely have confirmed his worst suspicions about her and Helen’s first instinct had been to phone him and tell him what had happened, for she had never kept secrets from him before. Something had stopped her from doing this though, an instinct that it would be too much for him perhaps and that Peter’s pride would force him to end their relationship there and then. She felt almost as guilty keeping it from him as she did about the kiss. Now she walked silently next to the man who had caused the problem between her and her boyfriend, but all she experienced was relief that he felt no need to refer to it. It seemed they were both happy to forget the foolish events of the night before – or at least pretend they never happened.
For once, the weather was mild. The rain had stopped and there’d been enough time for the ground to dry. When they reached the bottom he steered her away from the main road to an unmarked track alongside farm land. There was a stile here and a sign denoting a public footpath. ‘No Name Lane,’ he told her, ‘it leads down to the river. I thought you might like to see the spot where Sean Donnellan drew his landscapes.’
‘Why is it called No Name Lane?’
‘Because it doesn’t have a name.’
‘But everybody calls it No Name Lane?’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘So it does have a name.’
‘I suppose,’ he said, as if it didn’t really matter.
They rounded a bend and the river came into view, its level swelled by the recent rains till it threatened to burst its banks, the water flowing at an alarming rate. ‘Funny to think this place hasn’t changed one iota since Mary Collier walked here as a young girl.’ Tom looked exasperated then. ‘It’s driving me crazy,’ he admitted, ‘we are so close to the truth but I wonder if we will ever really know what happened that night because everyone who could hav
e told us is dead. My money is still on the soldier but a knife in the back doesn’t sound like Jack Collier’s way of doing things to me.’
‘Does it sound like Henry Collier’s way of doing things?’ Helen asked disbelievingly, ‘or even Stephen’s?’
‘A mentally disturbed man who lurks in the shadows, peeping on half-dressed girls, has violent episodes and blackouts and can remember nothing about them afterwards?’ he asked. ‘So what does that make him I wonder; a homicidal maniac or a simple-minded soul who doesn’t understand that his actions are inappropriate? It’s anyone’s guess.
‘It doesn’t sound like any of them, does it?’ he admitted, ‘but one of them must have done it – or all three. Who else could it have been?’
‘Mary Collier,’ she observed, ‘according to Betty Turner. It was you, remember?’
‘But did she mean it literally?’ asked Tom, ‘or was she saying it was Mary’s fault, indirectly? I don’t think Betty Turner knows the truth any more than we do but I’m sure the Colliers were responsible for Sean’s death somehow.’
‘Like you said, they’re all dead. So we’ll never know now, will we?’
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘probably not.’
They had reached the famous part of the river, where the rains caused it to swell at its widest, deepest point and the water swept past them at great speed, as if in a rush to get where it was going.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, as they watched the swell.
‘And scary,’ said Helen.
It had been a relatively easy matter to locate Denny that morning, for his movements tallied exactly with the itinerary he had submitted in advance to Durham Constabulary in case they needed to track him down if they got news of Michelle’s whereabouts. The hard part was staying interested and alert as he covered mile after mile of motorway while they followed him at a discreet distance. Vincent and Bradshaw tailed him all the way down to Cannock in the West Midlands, where he unloaded a consignment of canned goods, then followed him back up the A1 again.
‘Just what exactly are you hoping to find?’ asked Vincent, not for the first time.
‘I told you,’ Bradshaw reminded him, ‘I don’t know. Something, anything, because this guy is not right. I am telling you, Vincent, that man is hiding something. I just know it.’
When his colleague failed to respond enthusiastically, he added, ‘And I intend to find out what it is.’
They walked for nearly an hour along the river bank and talked about Mary Collier and Sean Donnellan. Then, when there was nothing new left to say on the matter, they transferred their attention to Michelle Summers’ disappearance but were soon going over old ground here too.
It was Helen who changed the subject. ‘Do you still have family up here?’
‘Only my sister,’ he said, ‘she’s married, lives in Newcastle, got two lovely little girls.’
‘You’re an uncle?’
‘You sound surprised. I’ll go and see them when this is all over. Everyone else is gone; Nan, Dad.’
‘Do you miss your dad?’
‘We never really got on. We used to argue all the time,’
‘What about?’
‘Everything – but the miner’s strike really drove a wedge between us.’
‘Didn’t you agree with it?’
‘It wasn’t that. I just thought it was unwinnable and badly handled. He didn’t see it that way or at least didn’t want to.’
They arrived hopefully back at Mary Collier’s home but the maroon-coloured Rover was still parked outside.
‘Well, she won’t go far,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a bite to eat at the Greyhound.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘Fuck Frankie Turner,’ he told her, ‘if he walks in I’ll belt him with a pool cue,’ and she was left to wonder whether he was joking or not.
‘What is he playing at?’ asked Vincent as he watched the seven and a half tonne truck, ‘he’s been here over an hour and hasn’t even left his cab.’
‘Maybe he’s been kipping in it?’ suggested Bradshaw.
Denny’s lorry was parked in the corner of the large, rough patch of muddy, pockmarked land that served as a car park. The truck stop was a few miles south of Wetherby. They had tucked their unmarked car in behind a large lorry with German plates, leaving just enough room to watch Denny’s cab and the front door of the café but Michelle’s stepdad didn’t go into the greasy spoon. He didn’t do anything at all, in fact.
‘Join the police, they said. Crack some heads and nick some villains,’ said Vincent, then sighed, ‘and now look at me.’
‘I don’t recall anyone saying that,’ Bradshaw corrected him.
‘You know what I mean,’ Vincent complained, ‘what a wasted day. I’ll be getting piles from sitting here in the cold.’
‘Stop moaning.’
Just then the door of the truck stop opened and a young girl emerged, dressed in a white shirt and black skirt, partly covered by a baggy anorak.
‘Just a waitress,’ Vincent said, for she could not have been anything else out here. When she started to cross the car park, however, Denny’s cab door finally opened and they watched him climb down.
The young girl started walking more quickly then. While the watching detectives were trying to work out what was going on, Denny opened his arms wide and she marched straight into his embrace. He clasped his arms tightly round her for a moment then they broke off, but only so they could begin kissing passionately.
‘Bloody hell, how old is she?’ asked Bradshaw in disbelief.
‘Sixteen,’ replied Vincent, ‘seventeen at a push.’
‘The dirty bastard,’ observed the detective constable.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
A familiar car pulled up alongside Tom as he was leaving the pub.
‘Get in,’ ordered O’Brien.
‘Again?’ said Tom, ‘get a life, will you.’
‘What’s going on?’ asked Helen.
O’Brien ignored her. ‘Our DCI would like a word,’ he told Tom.
‘So get in before we drag you in,’ added Skelton.
Helen looked alarmed at that but Tom said, ‘It’s okay,’ and Skelton held open the rear door for him. ‘If I’m found hanged in my cell later, it was these two,’ he told Helen then he winked at her and she was left standing there as they drove away.
At least this time they kept to the main roads and Tom was soon back in the town again. Skelton steered his Sierra into the car park of the cop shop, as the police station was known locally. Tom held his tongue as Skelton and O’Brien escorted him to DCI Kane’s office but when he saw the senior officer sitting calmly behind his desk, he could no longer contain his anger.
‘What’s this about? Am I under arrest? On what charge?’
‘Calm down,’ Kane told him, ‘you’re obviously not under arrest. I’d like a word, that’s all.’
‘Really, well I like to have a choice about who I speak to. I prefer not to be lifted off the street by your goon squad and dragged here. So the answer is no, whatever you want. Now, are you going to take me home, do I have to order a cab, or are these two going to beat me up in a quiet cell somewhere first?’
‘Relax, we didn’t drag you here,’ and then he noticed the sheepish looks on the faces of his two detectives. ‘Bloody hell,’ he told them in exasperation. ‘I said to ask him nicely.’
‘Sorry, Guv,’ answered Skelton.
DCI Kane eyed Tom closely for a moment until the younger man cottoned on. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘the bruises were there already.’
‘I never doubted it,’ said Kane but he turned to his men then, ‘be good lads and bugger off while I speak to this young man,’ and they trudged out of his office. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Tom, ‘those two can be intimidating even when they’re not trying to be but they are basically good coppers.’
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree on that,’ replied Tom. ‘I think they’re a disgrace.’
‘It’s n
ot their fault they’ve been keeping such bad company for the past twenty years. It tends to come with the turf.’
‘Don’t you think the lines get a little blurred after a while?’ asked Tom, ‘that the guys tasked with catching the villains can become almost as bad as the men they are after?’
‘No I don’t,’ answered the detective chief inspector, ‘that’s a naïve view and you wouldn’t share it if you’d done the job as long as they have. There’s a very big difference between them and the villains they lock up. They might ruffle a few feathers along the way but they are on the right side of the law, believe me, which is more than can be said for some of your mob.’
‘Yeah, there’s bad journalists out there right enough, I’ll admit that, but every one of them has two or three coppers on his payroll feeding him stories for beer money,’ said Tom. ‘Now, what exactly did you want to see me about?’
Kane regarded Tom for a long while, as if he was deciding whether to continue. ‘I wanted to speak to you because I hear you are a good journalist, one of the better ones, and you’re discreet.’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere … just not with me. What do you want?’
‘I have a story for you …’
‘Oh here we go …’
‘I don’t want paying for it. It’s not like that.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘This story … it’s a big one, it’ll do you some good and it’s bound to leak sooner or later anyway. I reckon the public have a right to know about it and they can’t hear it from me,’ he shrugged, ‘so they may as well hear it from you; if you are interested of course?’
Tom forced himself to calm down. He told himself the one thing he couldn’t afford to do right now was pass up a good story. ‘I could be,’ he admitted.
‘There’s just one thing.’
‘What?’
‘This conversation,’ Kane looked him right in the eye, ‘it never happened.’
‘Obviously.’
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 27