No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ asked Helen, ‘that romance is stupid and love is just some practical thing to be worked at?’

  ‘The young know nothing of love,’ affirmed the old lady, ‘they all think they do, of course, but it’s just a fantasy conjured by Hollywood for silly little girls. Real love is waking up next to the same man every morning for thirty-five years and still caring whether he goes off to work with a good breakfast inside him and a clean shirt on his back. It has nothing to do with S. E.X,’ Helen noted that Mary felt compelled to spell the word rather than say it, ‘or fancying somebody. All of that is so fleeting, yet the young obsess about it, poets and writers waste their lives on it and not one of them has the faintest clue. Why do you think all of those romance novels and films end with marriage? Because they can’t think of a way to make the time afterwards seem exciting. Well it isn’t exciting and it’s not meant to be, but it is love and love doesn’t have to be exciting. Rollercoasters are exciting but I wouldn’t want to spend thirty-five ruddy years on one.’

  Helen didn’t know what to say after that and Mary looked quite weary after her tirade. Instead of speaking they both surveyed the framed black-and-white photograph on the bookcase.

  ‘Is that your husband?’

  ‘Taken just after he was made headmaster,’ and there was pride in her voice. The couple were standing in the garden together, the man in a grey suit and Mary in a dark blue dress. Helen guessed she’d have been about thirty but she was still a beautiful woman, with long dark hair and striking features.

  ‘The children loved my husband,’ Mary said.

  ‘You have children?’ asked Helen, ‘I didn’t know.’

  Mary shook her head, ‘at the school. The pupils always loved him,’ she said, ‘but not me. I think most of them were a little scared of me. There were some that respected me, learned from me and were grateful for that learning because it helped them get away from this ruddy place but they never loved me. Not like they loved Henry. He was one of that very rare breed; a teacher who is both loved and respected. There are a number who are one or the other but to be both? It’s hard, you see, to be loved and respected at the same time in any walk of life, let alone ours. I think it’s because he started out among them,’ she added before saying almost absentmindedly, ‘he did well for himself, did Henry.’

  Helen had spent some time in Mary’s company before now but this was the first time the older woman had opened up to her in this way. Perhaps the surprise showed on the young reporter’s face, for Mary suddenly said, ‘Shall we sit down?’

  Ian Bradshaw crunched Polo mints as he drove. He was, as usual, contemplating the hole he had dug himself into. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. It’s always the same, thought Bradshaw. If he hadn’t taken the call about the body in the field, if he’d left it to someone else, waited for the message to reach the DI, he’d have still been in the dog house right enough, because he resided there pretty much permanently these days, but the ill-will directed towards him wouldn’t have been quite so intense. But Bradshaw had taken the call and acted on it, in a final, misguided effort to redeem himself, and his reward? To be stuck in the dead-wood squad. He really was in the dog house now, with the windows boarded up and the door nailed firmly shut.

  You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t – and it was the same with the visits. Oh God, how he dreaded the visits; every one of them excruciating, every one of them, without fail. He knew, however, they were a small price to pay. After all, he only had to endure the effects of his stupidity for an hour a week. Alan Carter had to live with them for the rest of his life and so would his family.

  Carol met him at the door. Carter’s wife used to be a pretty little thing. Bradshaw had secretly fancied her. He’d envied his colleague and quite enjoyed the thought of ending up with a wife like Carol. She was in her mid-twenties, looked better in denim jeans and a simple T shirt than most women did made up to the nines and always had a smile on her face back then.

  Carol didn’t smile any more though. These days she didn’t even bother to brush her hair. It was always tied back, unwashed and a little greasy. Her face was pale and bare of make-up and she had deep, black grooves under her eyes that told of ruined sleep.

  ‘Go on through,’ was all she said and Bradshaw trudged across the living-room carpet like a man walking to the gallows.

  There was a conservatory on the back of the house, somewhere nice for Carter to sit and look out at a garden he could no longer tend.

  ‘How are you doing, mate?’ said Bradshaw. They weren’t really mates though. They’d been colleagues who never really had that much in common. If it hadn’t been for the incident they would have worked together for a while then eventually parted when one of them was assigned to new duties. There’d have been a small leaving do down the pub, a few jokes and some banter, the obligatory collection for a leaving gift and they would have gone their separate ways, destined to exchange Christmas cards for a year or two until they both lost interest. Instead, because of what had happened, they were now trapped together forever in a circle of guilt and despair. The guilt was all Bradshaw’s, the despair they shared and most likely would do until the grave.

  ‘I’m great,’ Carter replied in his familiar, dead voice, as he spun the wheelchair round to face Bradshaw, ‘up early, walked the dog, playing five-a-side later.’

  As usual, Bradshaw didn’t know what to say in return. Instead he looked around helplessly to see if Carol was nearby. Perhaps he could offer to go and make the tea but she was nowhere to be found. Carol had initially encouraged the visits, so Bradshaw was never sure what her husband had told her about the events of that night. Perhaps Carter didn’t blame him entirely. No, that wasn’t true, Bradshaw was sure that he did. It was one of the unspoken aspects of the godawful visits. They both knew they were part of Ian Bradshaw’s penance. There was a tacit understanding between them that one of the few pleasures Alan Carter had left in life was to sit in that wheelchair, watching his former colleague squirm while he judged him. Look at me, he was saying, every time he put his hands on the wheels of that damned chair and manoeuvred his way clumsily around the room, I’m useless, shot, fucked for life and it’s all down to you. This is what you have done to me. This should be you.

  When Tom pulled up outside Mary Collier’s house the first thing he noticed was Helen’s car parked outside it. He decided to wait it out until she left. To kill time he read articles from that day’s Paper, noting there was nothing new on Michelle Summers’ disappearance and precious little about the body-in-the-field. The Paper’s Northern correspondent may have contacts in the police, thought Tom, but the reporter didn’t seem to have any more information than he did.

  Tom had read the paper from front to back when Helen finally emerged and drove away.

  Mary Collier answered her own door this time. ‘Oh,’ she said, with little warmth, ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘I’m back in the area,’ he explained, ‘for a little while.’

  ‘I’ve just been talking to your successor,’ she told Tom as he followed her into the old vicarage, ‘have you met her?’

  ‘Briefly.’

  ‘What did you make of her?’ Mary stopped in the hallway and turned back to face him while she asked the question.

  ‘Seems nice enough.’

  ‘She’s pretty and intelligent,’ Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘A lot of men would be frightened by that combination,’ she eyed him for a moment, ‘but not you.’

  Mary ushered him into her lounge. The tea things had yet to be cleared away. ‘It’s been like Piccadilly Circus here this morning,’ she observed.

  ‘Who else has been round?’

  ‘As well as you and Helen Norton? The police.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Betty Turner has lost her marbles,’ Mary said, ‘she came looking for them here,’ then she added, ‘in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘wh
at brought her to your house?’

  ‘Who knows? You might just as well ask what possessed her to go out in the pouring rain in only her carpet slippers and dressing gown.’ She gave him a look that indicated she had no idea what motivated Betty Turner, beyond madness of some kind. ‘The police found her thumping on my front door. I can only assume she wanted to come in out of the rain. Thankfully, I slept through the whole thing. They came round this morning to see if I could shed some light on her peculiar behaviour. Obviously I could not.’

  ‘Are you close friends, you and Betty Turner?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Then why choose your house?’

  ‘I have no idea. We were friends when we were children, if you can possibly imagine that far back, but not for a very, very long time now.’

  ‘Why not,’ he asked and she gave him a look as if that was none of his business, ‘if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘People change, Tom,’ she said with finality.

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘They took her home. I assume she has dried out by now. Anyway, what did you wish to see me about? It’s hardly going to be the local history page now that you’ve left for pastures new.’

  ‘It’s about the body,’ he said, ‘in Cappers Field. I was wondering if you had any idea who it might be.’

  ‘None,’ she replied quickly. ‘That’s exactly what Miss Norton just asked me. It could be anybody. I might know a great deal about this village Tom but I’m not Miss Marple.’

  ‘It was just a thought,’ he said, when he really wanted to challenge her assertion that it could be anybody. Not in a village this size. He wondered why she hadn’t offered him tea or cake like she usually did when he called. She didn’t ask him anything about his new life in London either, which he would have expected her to do out of politeness if nothing else. Tom came to the obvious conclusion that she didn’t want him there. For a moment, he was tempted to ask her why Betty Turner had chosen that very night to walk across the village in a downpour then bang on Mary’s door, less than twelve hours after police found the body-in-the field? But he sensed she would clam up, leaving him with nothing, ‘I’ll not keep you then,’ he said.

  ‘Could you lift something out of the garage for me before you go, Ian?’

  ‘Of course,’ he was relieved to be asked, desperate to get out of that room. ‘See you next time eh, mate?’ he said to Carter.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  As Bradshaw followed Carol down the driveway he had a premonition that something important was about to happen, he could sense it. Her tone had been too self-consciously matter-of-fact and the task assigned him too vague. ‘Ian, could you give me a hand getting something out of the garage please?’ Not, ‘can you help me get the lawnmower out’, or ‘the wheelie bin shifted’.

  Had her husband finally told her the whole truth? Was she about to inform Bradshaw that he was vermin who had ruined their lives forever? If she was, he would stand there and take it until she was done then he would tell her how sorry he was, for he knew she was well within her rights.

  He watched her hips swivel as she padded towards the garage in her tight jeans. Carol still had the ‘nice, tidy arse’ Carter used to joke about before he became a paraplegic. Bradshaw found himself wondering how long it had been since she last had sex, had they tried anything since the accident, could Carter even get it up now or, if he could, would he still want to? Everyone wondered that but no one dared to ask. Perhaps one day Carter would ask him to take care of Carol. ‘I’d rather she was safe and not out with a stranger, you’ll be doing me a favour, mate.’ Bradshaw couldn’t deny the thought excited him.

  Oh God, what was he thinking? What was wrong with him? Here he was, following the wife of a man he has crippled into their garage and all he can think about is picking her up, lying her down on that work bench and slipping her one. Christ, was there no dark pit too deep for him to sink to in his own mind? But it wasn’t as if he had been getting any either. He hadn’t been near a girl since the incident and that was more than a year ago. It didn’t seem right somehow – and who the hell would want him anyway?

  More guilt.

  Was there no end to it?

  Carol bent down to place the key in the lock of the garage, turned it then pulled the metal door upwards. But when Carol turned round she didn’t pull off her T shirt or unzip her jeans. She didn’t beg him to take her here before Carter suspected a thing. Nor did she begin to berate him for crippling her husband.

  Instead, she just put her hands on her hips and said, ‘I don’t think the visits are helping.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said simply, and all at once he felt a surge of joy, at the tiniest prospect of being released from this obligation and at her request. He would be free and blameless. Bradshaw now concentrated hard on trying to put the right disappointed look on his face then he immediately felt guilty again. What kind of human being was he to find joy in being released from a commitment to a man he had crippled?

  ‘I thought they were a good idea,’ Carol continued, ‘a bit of human contact to take his mind off things, to stop him from just sitting there, hour after hour.’ Was there a trace of resentment in the words ‘hour after hour’? She must have been trying so hard to make Carter feel better, while single-handedly keeping the house going, then wondering why she was bothering if all he wanted was to feel sorry for himself day after day, week after week, month after month. Bradshaw assumed she would look back on her irritation later and feel bad about it.

  More guilt.

  Her guilt, his guilt, guilt piled onto guilt.

  ‘But I think they are doing more harm than good. He gets really sullen after you’ve gone, like he’s reliving what happened,’ she added.

  Who wouldn’t? Bradshaw had, countless times, and he wasn’t the one stuck in a metal chair for the rest of his days.

  ‘I could leave it a while,’ he hoped he hadn’t sounded too eager, ‘if you think that’s best,’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I only want to do what’s right by you and Alan.’ Perhaps he need never knock on their door again, God he felt elated for the first time in months. ‘You could always call the station if he wants me to pop by.’ It was a nice open-ended offer that hopefully she would never take him up on.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘Could you wheel the lawnmower out onto the back lawn and plug in the extension cable, so he doesn’t think we’ve just been talking about him?’

  ‘’Course.’

  She didn’t thank him. Why should she?

  He wondered when the lies had started. He didn’t think Carol was the kind of girl who would have gone behind her husband’s back before his ‘accident’. Now he was in a wheelchair she must find herself telling him lie after lie, talking about him behind his back to the doctors, her family, her friends, his friends. There’d be many more lies from Carol before Alan Carter found any peace in this world.

  ‘I don’t think the visits are helping,’ she’d said.

  You’re telling me, love.

  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Back in his car Tom couldn’t shake the feeling that Mary Collier seemed rattled and that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. Perhaps he could get Betty Turner’s side of the story.

  Betty was an old stalwart of the Women’s Institute and he’d been to her home, a two-up two-down council house she shared with three middle-aged sons who refused to grow up, on a number of occasions in his early years with the paper to publicise W. I. events. Betty had always been nice enough but her late husband had been ‘a bit of a one’, as Tom’s own grandmother had euphemistically put it, meaning he was a drinker, a lay-about, a petty thief and a fighter to boot. Betty’s lads seemed to have taken after their father and their names had all featured in the Messenger’s court reports at one time or another.

  That morning Betty’s house seemed quiet but Tom couldn’t be sure if she was on her own
until he knocked. Betty was a well-known figure in Great Middleton and not just as the ageing matriarch of the infamous Turner clan, for she had run the village shop for more than twenty years, which had made her a celebrity to every kid in the village when Tom was a boy. If you wanted pear drops, cola bottles, wine gums, love hearts or Refreshers you went to Betty’s shop and got a ten-penny mix-up in a white, paper bag. She’d been retired ten years or more by now but the woman who answered the door didn’t look senile.

  ‘Hello, Betty,’ he said, ‘remember me? Tom from the Messenger,’ he didn’t tell her who he worked for these days, ‘I used to publicise the W. I. meetings for you.’

  She stared at him warily then said, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I was wondering if I could come in,’ he said but she didn’t move, ‘I wanted to have a word with you,’ then he took a risk, ‘about last night, when you went to the old vicarage.’

  ‘Oh,’ he was expecting resistance but instead she said, ‘come in then.’

  She went to the kitchen automatically and started to fill the kettle, as if it wouldn’t cross her mind to invite anybody into her home without offering them a drink. While it began to boil he asked her, ‘So, what was it all about then? Were you trying to talk to Mary Collier?’