No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘Who found her?’ asked DI Peacock moments later as Bradshaw’s car sped down the hill towards the school.

  ‘A JCB driver,’

  ‘Where is he now?’ DCI Kane was in the back seat, with DI Peacock riding shotgun in the front.

  ‘In the headmaster’s office with a cup of tea and a biscuit, so he can’t blurt anything to the press or passers-by.’ He could tell by their silence they were happy with that. ‘The kids are all in the main hall in the centre of the school, for a “special assembly” until they work out the best way to get them out of there with the minimum of fuss,’

  ‘Anyone else know about this?’

  ‘Another workman, he’s also in the building,’ Bradshaw repeated virtually every word the desk sergeant had told him, ‘and there is a local politician – a borough councillor who was walking the grounds with the headmaster when the body was found,’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ muttered the DI

  They got out of the car then walked round the building towards the playing fields at the rear. Bradshaw told himself that the outcome had been entirely predictable. Nobody expected poor Michelle Summers to turn up alive and now they would concentrate on finding her killer. In a strange way, as he walked side by side with the DCI and his DI it almost felt like he was back in the fold.

  There was a uniformed officer standing by the JCB and newly ploughed earth piled up by its digger. Bradshaw could see the rim of a distinct but uneven hole and he began to prepare himself for the sight of the young girl’s body.

  They walked briskly across the first playing field until they reached the spot the JCBs had been levelling. The ground was muddy and their progress slow. The uniformed officer looked as if he wanted to snap to attention when the three detectives reached him. ‘It’s over here, Sir,’ the PC told Kane unnecessarily as he gestured towards the hole.

  Kane reached the spot and peered over the edge to survey the scene. Then he froze. ‘What’s this?’ the DCI rounded on Bradshaw sharply. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  Bradshaw was behind him and had no way of knowing what he was referring to. He could only watch as DI Peacock stepped forward and looked down into the hole.

  ‘You have got to be kidding me?’

  Detective Constable Ian Bradshaw stepped forward then, almost lost his footing on the soft pile of earth. He peered down into the hole made by the digger but couldn’t begin to comprehend the sight that greeted him.

  Mary Collier didn’t believe in a sixth sense but some form of instinct must have drawn her to the rear window that afternoon, just as the police cars started to arrive.

  The old vicarage overlooked the school fields from an outcrop at the very top of Church Lane next to St Michael’s church. The house had been used by generations of clerics until the Church of England had decided it could make more money from selling the place and putting the vicar in a humbler property at the foot of the hill. Mary had lived here first with her father, when he had been vicar of Great Middleton, then later with her husband when he became headmaster of the old junior school. Henry had somehow managed to scrape together the money to purchase the property. Mary’s husband had been dead for almost twenty years now, her father for more than forty, but, to the people of Great Middleton, who seemed to still regard her with a combination of mild deference and suspicion, Mary was always the vicar’s daughter or the headmaster’s wife, never a person in her own right.

  Mary often watched as the children swarmed across the playing fields during their break or spilled noisily out of the building at home time. The ambitious, modernist, self-publicising headmaster was almost always in her local paper these days; full of grand ideas but not a patch on her Henry. He’d been a real teacher and a proper headmaster. This one was all crust and no meat, as her father would have said.

  The gnarled, arthritic knuckles of one hand gripped the heavy velvet curtains for support in case her ageing legs betrayed her. She watched as men walked purposefully to and from a vivid, dark brown scar that had been carved into the field that morning. Call it instinct, call it a premonition or a ghost from the past but whatever it was, Mary Collier watched the events unfolding below her with a sad and heavy heart and a growing sense of trepidation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Fiona Summers was alerted by a loud banging on her front door, the volume alone indicating its urgency. She was closer than the female police liaison officer and had a head start. ‘I’ll get it,’ she told her.

  Fiona opened the door to find her sister standing on the doorstep, wild-eyed with a tear-streaked face, ‘Susan,’ was all Fiona could manage, ‘have they found her?’

  Susan had dashed to her sister’s house as soon as word reached her that the police had discovered something at Great Middleton junior school and that something was a body. Now that she’d arrived on her sister’s doorstep, panting, breathless and tearful, she realised she didn’t know what to say. How could she find the words to tell Fiona that her precious daughter was gone? Instead all she managed was a nod.

  ‘Oh my God,’ gasped Fiona, ‘where?’

  It was becoming an overcrowded crime scene and DI Peacock took control, telling the uniformed officers to move back and fan out to keep everybody away from it. Kane, Peacock and Bradshaw moved away to let the forensics guys do their thing.

  Bradshaw felt sick. How could he have been so stupid?

  When Ian Bradshaw had taken the call he hadn’t bothered to check if the body was a young girl. Instead he worked on the understandable assumption that two bodies in one week, in a place the size of Great Middleton, was a statistical impossibility and that it must have been Michelle Summers who had been found dead in the school grounds.

  Bradshaw had concentrated on the current whereabouts of the JCB driver, the headmaster and councillor, then shot down to the house to pick up his DI and DCI. When they had all stepped forward to peer into the hole however, it did not contain the remains of young Michelle Summers. Instead they were confronted by the spectacle of an ancient skeleton, one that, even to Bradshaw’s untrained eye, had clearly been underground for decades, judging by the state of its yellowing bones, dirt-encrusted eye sockets and the greying rags wrapped round its body. The gaping mouth, as if caught by surprise at the moment of death, mirrored Bradshaw’s own shock.

  ‘Bradshaw,’ asked DI Peacock, once he’d realised this was not the girl, ‘are you a complete moron?’ and Bradshaw was unable to answer him. Instead he stood back as the field began to fill up with cars. Just when Ian Bradshaw was thinking his life could not conceivably get any worse, there was a blur of movement and he watched helplessly as Fiona Summers came barrelling down the hill towards them, sweeping past a slow-moving uniformed constable in the process. ‘Shit,’ he muttered and Peacock turned towards her.

  ‘Jesus,’ he hissed, ‘that’s all we need,’

  ‘Michelle!’ the poor hysterical woman was screaming her daughter’s name as she powered towards them, dress flapping in the breeze, ‘Michelle!’

  Bradshaw moved instinctively to block her path to the body. He’d played football and rugby at school but tackling Fiona Summers wasn’t easy, even for a man of his size; she was a short but bulky woman who crashed into him at speed and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to prevent her from reaching her daughter. Bradshaw managed to grab her but she twisted and wriggled in his grasp, flailing her arms at him, all the while shouting her daughter’s name.

  ‘Let her through, Bradshaw,’ his DI told him calmly and when Bradshaw looked at his boss he was told, ‘What difference does it make?’

  He meant that a crime scene as ancient as this one couldn’t be contaminated any further if Fiona Summers ran over the ground they’d already trampled underfoot. It would be easier to let her see the corpse than try to convince her it was not Michelle. She was hardly likely to jump in the ditch and embrace it. As soon as he released her, Fiona went straight to the hole in a stumbling run, peered down into it then froze, before turning back to them.
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  ‘What?’ gasped Fiona and it was left to the DI to state the obvious.

  ‘It’s not her,’ he told the panicked mother, ‘it’s not Michelle.’

  When they returned to the station, DI Peacock took Bradshaw to one side and gave him some clear direction, ‘I want you to go and sit in the canteen,’ he told the detective constable, ‘I want you to take that big file with you, the one with the details of all the known kiddy-fiddlers and rapists on our territory and I want you to lay it on the table in front of you. I want you to take a pen and a pad so that anyone who looks in on you will think there is s a man who is working incredibly hard on DI Peacock’s case. He’s checking out suspects, trying to find a lead, looking for a breakthrough.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘But do you know what I really want you to do in there?’

  ‘Er …’

  ‘Nothing,’ he told Bradshaw, ‘not one thing. I want you to sit there all afternoon, drinking tea and keeping well out of my way. I don’t want to see your face again until tomorrow. Even then it will be too soon. I don’t want you under the feet of real police officers who know what they are doing. Do you know why?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I messed up, Sir.’

  ‘No,’ Peacock assured him, ‘incorrect, Bradshaw. That’s not the reason. Anyone can mess up from time to time, even me. No, I don’t want you around because you are an idiot Bradshaw. Despite all of your A levels, you don’t know what fucking day it is. I don’t have qualifications like yours but I do have the sense I was born with. I have worked extremely hard to get as far as I have and I’m not going to allow you to fuck it all up for me, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Go to the canteen?’

  Peacock nodded, ‘and … ?’

  ‘Stay there?’

  ‘Congratulations Bradshaw, you finally got something right.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Helen dropped her bag on her desk and was about to sit down when Mel, the reporter who occupied the desk next to her, said, ‘They found a body at Great Middleton while you were gone; in the field behind the school.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Helen, cursing the fact that she’d wasted half a morning interviewing a teenage cross-country runner who been picked for the county and immediately throwing her bag back onto her shoulder.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Mel told her, ‘he’s just asked Martin to cover it for you.’

  ‘It’s my patch,’ Helen told her firmly.

  Helen stepped out in front of Martin’s car and waved him down. He made a point of braking theatrically and lurching forwards. Then he slowly wound down his window.

  ‘Bloody hell, Helen, it’s a good job I was watching where I was going.’

  ‘They told me Malcolm asked you to cover for me at Great Middleton,’ she said breathlessly.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘Well I’m back now, so there’s no need.’

  She could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t happy with that but if he wanted an argument he’d picked the wrong woman in the wrong week.

  ‘I’m on my way now,’ he said stubbornly, as if this was a massive inconvenience.

  ‘You haven’t even left the car park,’ she told him.

  ‘Look, love,’ he began, ‘you’re still the new girl and I’ve been doing this since God was a boy. Why not leave this one to me, eh? If you mess up a murder, Malcolm will not be impressed. We don’t get many of them.’

  ‘Thanks for the offer, Martin,’ she managed, ‘but I won’t mess it up.’

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ he said it thoughtfully, like he was Helen’s dad contemplating the wisdom of allowing her to go to her first teenage party.

  Helen decided she’d had enough of this conversation, ‘Look, Martin, this story is on my patch. If you want to race me down there to cover it, that’s up to you, but I am going. We can arrive together if you want, then we’ll both look like idiots.’ And before he could answer, she headed for her car.

  He leaned out of his window and called after her, ‘There’s no need to talk to people like that!’

  She whirled round then, ‘Isn’t there?’ she said. ‘Oh sorry, love, can’t you take a joke?’ she was mimicking the loud hectoring tone the older men on the Messenger used towards young women in the office.

  ‘Bit sensitive, aren’t you? What’s the matter? Time of the month?’ And Martin’s head ducked quickly back into his car.

  He was busily parking it once more when she sped past him.

  Tom Carney had only been back in the North East for one night but he woke that morning with a hangover that would have felled a lesser man. How had he managed that?

  He had virtually decided to give himself a day off when Colin the landlord informed him that the police had found a body and it was all everyone in the village was talking about. He managed to force himself to leave the Greyhound and arrived at the scene moments later, flashing his press card at a young, uniformed bobby who was manning the school gates. ‘Is it her?’ he asked with no preamble.

  The constable shook his head and this surprised Tom. ‘What exactly have they found then?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask them,’ and the constable jerked his head towards the school building, ‘they’re in the field out back.’

  ‘Can’t you just tell me?’ asked Tom, knowing that cooperation from stressed detectives at such an early stage in proceedings was unlikely.

  ‘You’ll get me shot if I do,’ said the bobby. ‘Get your arse down the hill and ask them. Maybe they’ll tell you something.’

  Whatever they’d found it must have been important, judging by the number of police officers moving backwards and forwards between the field and the school building, many of them dressed in protective clothing to ensure they did not pollute the crime scene. A large white canopy had been erected to keep out prying eyes, while a JCB stood idle by the spot.

  Tom approached a detective. ‘I can’t tell you anything at this stage,’ he was told firmly. ‘This is a crime scene, give us room to do our job,’ and when Tom tried to ask a question he was told, ‘and I do mean now.’ The response was so emphatic there seemed little point in arguing, so Tom did as he was told, walking back up the hill away from the scene. He still couldn’t say with any certainty whether there were human remains under that white tent or if something else had aroused police suspicion. He could hardly come up with a news story based on a rumour overheard by Colin.

  Tom hung around the periphery, taking pictures of the activity on his old Olympus camera. It was ten years out of date but still worked and suited him because it was small enough to slip into a jacket pocket, along with its compact telephoto lens. He spotted her then, as she walked down one side of the school building, questioning a detective who was batting her enquiries away. Even from this distance and without hearing a word, he knew she’d be getting the usual, non-committal bullshit replies with nothing ruled in or out, by a police force that was becoming highly sensitive to journalistic criticism right now.

  Tom raised his camera and took a picture of Helen. Maybe she sensed it, for she turned to look straight at him before asking the detective another question. Tom went back to the school gates and the uniformed police constable.

  ‘Thanks,’ he told the bobby, ‘I got everything I need,’ before adding, ‘How long will you be stuck here then?’ as if he was just passing the time of day. ‘These things must take an age.’

  ‘They do,’ confided the constable, ‘I’ll probably be here all day.’

  ‘Really? Will you not even get a lunch break? Do you want me to grab you a sandwich from the shop round the corner?’

  ‘One of the lads will sort me out,’ he replied, ‘but thanks anyway.’

  ‘No bother,’ said Tom. ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘What’s up?’ asked the copper.

  ‘I forgot to ask who found it,’ said Tom,
‘and I don’t really want to go back down there again and annoy your lot when they’re busy. You don’t need them in a bad mood, today of all days.’

  ‘Too right,’ said the constable, ‘it was the JCB driver. He was flattening the land for the new school building. His digger went into the soil and up it came.’

  Tom wondered how far he could push this without giving himself away. ‘Must have been a shock?’ he offered.

  ‘You’re telling me. It’s not every day you accidentally dig up an old corpse.’

  Tom felt a surge of excitement. He now had confirmation that a body had been found on the school grounds and, if it was old, it couldn’t have been Michelle Summers. He almost had a story but he would need more than that.

  ‘It’s one to tell his mates down the pub I suppose,’ and the copper smiled at this. ‘Must have been there a while?’ Tom ventured.

  The constable sniffed, ‘Didn’t they tell you that?’ There was suspicion in his words.

  ‘They didn’t have to,’ said Tom casually, ‘if he dug it out of Cappers Field. It’s not much more than marsh half the year, always has been.’

  The constable seemed satisfied with that explanation. ‘They won’t know exactly how long he’s been down there until the forensic guys have had a prod but they’re guessing fifty, maybe sixty years or more. Who knows whether we’ll ever be able to identify the guy?’

  ‘It’s difficult when he’s been down there that long if there isn’t anything distinctive about him.’

  ‘Apart from the knife in his back, you mean,’ and Tom experienced another thrill as he was given this key information.