No Name Lane (Howard Linskey)

by Howard Linskey

  ‘The county council used to cut the verges once a week. About four years ago they changed it to once a fortnight to save money and the parish councils have been up in arms ever since.

  ‘Then there’s dog fouling,’ he told her.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Perfectly and be sure to mention toxocariasis.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A disease caused by worms that live in a dog’s intestines. When they crap, on playing fields and the aforementioned grass verges, they can leave eggs that contaminate the soil. If a kid is playing nearby and he touches the dog shit then accidentally puts his hands in his mouth, eggs can hatch in the child’s intestines and the larvae then head for the brain, liver and eyes, which can cause blindness.’

  ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ she said. ‘Has it ever happened?’

  ‘Not to a kid on the Messenger’s patch thankfully, no, but it’s a theoretical possibility that dog fouling can cause blindness in children in Great Middleton.’

  ‘But it is unlikely to,’ she said.

  ‘But it could,’ he laughed and pointed to her notes. ‘Phone the bus company and ask them if they are planning to increase fares or alter services. If they answer no, truthfully, you can run with “Bus Company denies plan to increase fares”.’

  ‘But is all this ethical?’ she sounded exasperated again.

  ‘Most newspaper editors think ethics is a county near Hertfordshire.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘Well, that district page isn’t gonna write itself.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted, ‘it won’t and I don’t have anything else.’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said, ‘write that all up and you’re almost there.’

  Helen realised her first impression of Tom Carney had been wrong. He may have exhibited a certain cockiness but he knew his stuff. ‘Thanks, I didn’t know any of this before you told me,’ she admitted, ‘nobody ever tells me anything at the Messenger.’

  ‘Well, they won’t,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because knowledge is power and if they tell you everything they know you might turn out to be much better at the job than they are – and where would that leave them?’

  ‘But that’s stupid.’

  ‘It’s the way some of them are,’ he said. ‘Listen, Helen, don’t waste your time like I did, just get the experience you need and move to a bigger paper as soon as you are ready.’ He took a deep breath and smiled at her. ‘Here endeth the lesson.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘I think.’

  ‘Now come and have lunch.’

  ‘What? I can’t.’

  ‘Sure you can,’ he said. ‘We had a deal, remember? I just wrote your district page and now I get to talk to you for a while. I don’t know about you but I’m starving, so I figured we could talk and eat.’

  ‘Can’t we eat here?’

  He lowered his voice, ‘I know a much better place and it’s cheaper. What’s the matter?’ he asked her. ‘It’s not a date.’

  ‘I know it’s not,’ she said firmly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Fiona and Denny answered the door together. They’d found that Michelle’s mother was asked slightly less offensive questions by journalists if Denny’s giant frame was filling the door behind her.

  ‘Fiona?’ he said, when she showed no sign of recognizing him from their earlier encounter on the playing field, ‘Detective Constable Ian Bradshaw and this is Detective Constable Vincent Addison’ and he showed her his ID. ‘Do you mind if we come in?’

  ‘Have you got some news?’ she asked, eyes like a frightened animal.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ and her body slumped – but was it relief or sadness? ‘We were hoping to have a little look around your home if that’s okay with you?’

  She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Purely routine,’ said Vincent dismissively, ‘you’d be surprised what you can find when you look closely. We thought we might start with Michelle’s room, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Well I suppose … but what are you looking for?’

  ‘Won’t know till we find it, love,’ Vincent told her, ‘but there’s usually something; diaries, letters to boyfriends, magazines with destinations highlighted in red that, lo and behold, the missing person has run off to.’

  ‘Your colleagues have looked already, but if you think it will help?’

  ‘As long as you and Michelle’s father don’t mind?’ added Bradshaw.

  ‘Oh, he’s not …’ she began, ‘… this is Denny. He’s my husband but not Michelle’s dad.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Bradshaw, ‘my mistake,’ and he looked Denny right in the eye then. ‘You’re not related to Michelle at all, are you Denny?’

  Was there the faintest flicker of guilt or perhaps fear in Denny’s eye then? ‘No,’ Denny admitted then he mumbled, ‘like she said.’

  Fiona led the way upstairs to Michelle’s bedroom with Bradshaw next, then Denny. Vincent made as if to follow but hung back at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Is it always like this?’ Bradshaw said as he reached the girl’s room.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Bit tidy isn’t it?’ he asked, ‘I thought most teenaged girl’s rooms looked like someone threw a grenade into them.’

  ‘I tidied,’ Fiona said.

  ‘It’s usually a right mess,’ said Denny and his wife shot him a look that told him he was being disloyal.

  ‘That’s kids though, isn’t it?’ Bradshaw indicated the posters on the walls: ‘Likes her music then.’

  ‘Yeah,’ her mother’s mood lightened for a moment, ‘if you can call it that.’

  ‘Take That,’ he read the name on one of her posters, ‘I was into The Jam myself at her age. What about you?’

  ‘Eh?’ asked Denny.

  ‘What music you into?’ he said, as if this was a normal question in a missing girl’s bedroom.

  ‘I like country.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ answered Bradshaw, ‘I s’pose you would.’

  ‘How’d you mean?’

  ‘Being a lorry driver, all that open road; bet you like Glen Campbell or a bit of Charlie Rich?’

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ he said brightening, ‘she prefers The Carpenters.’

  Bradshaw could see the irritation on Fiona Summers’ face. There was tension here between them but was it the understandable stress caused by a missing daughter, or something deeper? Bradshaw spent the next fifteen minutes quizzing Fiona and Denny about their home life, Michelle’s friends and boyfriend, whether she liked school and any hobbies she may have had, aside from an interest in pop groups. None of this mattered to Bradshaw. He just wanted to give Vincent enough time.

  ‘Should I put the kettle on,’ said Fiona after he had run out of questions.

  ‘Tea, thanks,’ said Bradshaw, ‘milk and no sugar.’

  When she had gone Bradshaw walked round Michelle’s room. Denny watched as the detective constable picked up some of the girl’s personal items, looked at them then put them carefully back down again; a book, a snow dome, a music box.

  ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘Mmm?’ replied Bradshaw absent-mindedly.

  ‘To help?’ asked Denny, ‘can I do anything to help?’

  ‘Why don’t you give your missus a hand with the tea?’

  Denny didn’t look as if he felt comfortable leaving Bradshaw alone in Michelle’s room but he went anyway. As he was going down the stairs he remembered the other police officer. Sure enough when he reached the hallway, Vincent was coming back through the house towards him. Where had he been while they were in Michelle’s room?

  Vincent didn’t say anything as he passed Denny.

  Bradshaw was holding a school exercise book covered with a page from a copy of Smash Hits, so that the boyish faces of Take That were staring out at him. ‘Didn’t t
hink they were your type?’ Vincent said self-consciously, as if it had been a while since he’d engaged in laddish banter with a colleague.

  Bradshaw dropped the exercise book back on the chest of drawers and said, ‘There’s nothing here,’ then he realised his colleague was looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘Guess what I found?’

  They went in his car and there was certainly nothing flash about that. The Rosewood café was a single-story building on the outskirts of Durham city, with whitewashed walls and blue and white checked curtains hanging either side of steamed-up windows. The place was half full.

  Tom ordered an all-day breakfast, while Helen chose a BLT before asking the waitress, ‘Do you do cappuccino?’

  ‘We do tea and we do coffee,’ she was told, as if she had just asked for Lobster Thermidor.

  ‘Tea will be fine.’

  They took a small table by the wall. ‘I like this place,’ he said, ‘it’s good for people watching.’

  ‘Why would you watch other people?’

  ‘Don’t you do that? I like to try and work out who they are what they are up to. It’s good practice for a journalist to try and read people.’

  ‘You can’t know people just by looking at them.’

  ‘’Course you can,’ he told her, ‘give it a go.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ she asked.

  He realised she was taking the bait. ‘Pick one.’

  She glanced around the room. Two guys who looked like builders were demolishing all-day breakfasts. Next to them was a harassed young mum, with a sleeping baby in a buggy and a toddler. Two elderly ladies were gossiping about someone and an old couple sat opposite each other silently having a cup of tea and a toasted teacake. They looked like they’d run out of things to say to each other years ago but Helen chose a younger man.

  ‘That guy by the window,’ she said, ‘he works in a bank or an office, probably the latter because he doesn’t have a name badge pinned to his shirt. He’s a bit of a Billy-no-mates, happier reading the paper than hanging out with colleagues. Probably looking at the jobs section so he can leave.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Wrong,’ he assured her.

  ‘How do you know I’m wrong? How can you be so sure?’

  ‘He’s not here on his own. He’s meeting someone for lunch. It’s a woman. He’s afraid she isn’t going to show up. It matters.’

  Helen’s forehead creased into a frown. ‘How could you possibly know that, just from looking at him?’

  ‘He keeps looking at his watch,’ he told her, ‘he glanced at it twice while you were watching him.’

  ‘If he’s on his lunch hour he would look at his watch.’

  ‘Every few minutes but not every few seconds? Anyway, that isn’t the only thing.’

  ‘Dazzle me with your powers of observation.’

  ‘He hasn’t turned the page of his newspaper since we walked in. It’s a prop. He’s pretending to read it. He’s waiting for someone and he doesn’t know if she’s going to show up.’

  ‘I’m not sure if you are really good or just winding me up. If his lunch date doesn’t turn up we’ll never know anyway.’

  ‘True,’ he admitted.

  ‘What about me then?’ and she folded her arms.

  ‘You mean apart from the defensive arm-folding?’

  She immediately unfolded her arms. ‘This could get annoying.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t normally do it to my friends.’

  ‘Are we friends?’

  ‘We could be.’

  ‘Why do I suspect you don’t have very many female friends?’

  ‘I have lots of female friends. I like women.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ she told him, ‘sleeping with a woman does not make her your friend.’

  ‘Harsh.’

  ‘But fair, according to the girls in the office.’

  ‘Who obviously all know the inner me,’ Tom said drily. ‘I thought we were doing you though.’

  ‘Okay,’ she allowed, ‘so do me then.’

  ‘Right,’ he said it unsurely, ‘and you won’t get pissed off with me?’

  ‘That depends on what you say, obviously.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ they were looking right at each other now, ‘I’d say you weren’t the oldest in your family but not the middle child either.’

  ‘I have an older sister. How did you know that and why am I not the middle child?’

  ‘She’s a bit of a high-flyer, works for some blue chip company?’

  Helen nodded. ‘She works in marketing.’

  ‘So you had something to live up to,’ he said, ‘but you wanted to do something different, not just follow in her footsteps?’

  ‘That’s factually correct but it’s not the reason I wanted to be a journalist. And the middle child?’

  ‘You don’t look like you suffer from middle-child-syndrome. You’re not the afterthought. You know, when the oldest child is the first to go off to university so it’s a big deal and the youngest can do no wrong, because they are the baby of the family. The middle one can feel a bit irrelevant. I don’t see that in you.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘A serious person.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m immensely serious.’

  ‘Bet you never bunked off school.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘You’re not the type. I bet you even liked it, school I mean.’

  She sniffed, ‘It was okay.’

  ‘You’ve not had lots of boyfriends.’

  ‘Haven’t I?’

  ‘Two or maybe three, the first when you were eighteen.’

  ‘Seventeen,’

  ‘Seventeen, and you went out with him for at least a year, made him wait before you slept with him, you had to be sure it mattered. You broke up when you went to university, tried the long-distance thing but it didn’t work out, you drifted apart, became two different people.’

  ‘You could be describing thousands of people my age.’

  ‘You broke it off though, not him. He was gutted.’

  ‘How do you …’ she stopped herself but not in time.

  ‘He just would be,’ he chuckled. ‘You broke it off because you began to fancy someone else, probably an older guy, a mature man of say … twenty,’ she gave him a lopsided look as if she was about to ask him how he knew all this, ‘and it wouldn’t be right to cheat on your boyfriend so you broke up with him before you started seeing the new guy and you were head over heels with this one.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Yeah, you were but I’m guessing he was a dick.’

  ‘What was wrong with him?’ She folded then immediately unfolded her arms.

  ‘He wasn’t as keen on you as you were on him, which was great at first because it was exciting but, after a while, you realise it’s going nowhere and he’s never going to be the one, so you break up with him,’ she let out something between a snort and a mirthless laugh, ‘and then you stay off men for a while, concentrate on your studies, spend time with your friends. Then, probably in your final year, you meet someone who doesn’t take you for granted but won’t idolise you either. You can rely on him, he’s ambitious like you, wants to make a name for himself and you can see yourselves together way off into the future; the house, the kids. Am I right?’

  ‘Some of that was right and some of it wasn’t.’

  ‘Which bits were right?’

  ‘Not telling.’

  ‘Spoilsport. You do have a boyfriend then?’

  ‘Yes, but I met him in my second year, not the third.’

  ‘Damn it,’ he said, ‘I’m no good at this at all, am I?’

  ‘You are disconcertingly good at it,’ she admitted.

  ‘He must be very proud,’ Tom said, ‘of you I mean; being a journalist,’ and when she hesitated before replying, he added, ‘or not.’

  ‘He’s fine with it,’ she replied.

  �
��Fine with it,’ he nodded, ‘that’s good then.’

  ‘You can stop now. We are supposed to be talking about Michelle Summers and the mysterious body-in-the-field.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ’You went to see Mary Collier and you asked her if she knew about the body.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you did that because … ?’

  ‘She seems to know everything that goes on in the village.’

  ‘Like Roddy Moncur?’

  She nodded, ‘I found their numbers in your local history file.’

  ‘Malcolm gave that page to you?’ She nodded again. ‘You poor sod. So that’s why you went to see Mary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It had nothing to do with Betty Turner washing up on her doorstep in the middle of the night?’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I would have preferred to have heard it from you. We are supposed to be sharing.’

  ‘Point taken.’

  ‘How did you know Betty Turner went down there?’

  Helen told him about her meeting with DI Reid.

  ‘And she was just banging on Mary’s door?’

  ‘And shouting.’

  ‘What was she shouting?’

  ‘ “It was you.” ’

  ‘And Mary Collier dismissed the incident as the ramblings of a senile old dodderer?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I got the impression she was being economical with the truth.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ she said, ‘so did I.’

  Tom thought for a moment. ‘So, we have an ancient, unidentified corpse accidentally dug up in a field and that very night, old Betty Turner treks all the way across the village in her jim-jams in the pissing-down rain, so she can bang on Mary Collier’s door and tell her “it was you”?’

  ‘Yep.’

  He smiled at her then, ‘Well, I’m intrigued. Don’t you think this has the makings of a heck of a story?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Did you follow this up with Betty Turner?’

  ‘I didn’t get the chance. I was called back to the office, to interview the new Miss Darlington.’

  ‘I bet that was riveting.’

  ‘It was,’ she said drily, ‘she’s “over the moon”, her mum and dad are over the moon and as for her boyfriend …’