Tom shook his head, ‘I must be crazy.’
‘Thank you,’ said the girl, beaming at him, as if her problems were solved instead of just beginning.
‘You won’t regret it,’ Andrew told him.
‘I already am.’
Ian Bradshaw sat at his desk at HQ thinking about his partner, if that was the right word to describe his unofficial pairing with Vincent Addison, and the fake professor, both of whom had let him down badly. He was praying that Burstow’s intense questioning would not reveal the private conversation the mad fantasist had enjoyed with DC Bradshaw in the pub, for no good could ever come of that. If Bradshaw was annoyed at himself and more than a little embarrassed at having been taken in by the fake professor, he was hardly alone, however. The entire Durham force had been listening to the lunatic’s theories for weeks and it was all the fault of one man. Detective Superintendent Trelawe had told them Burstow was an expert, so why would they ever have cause to doubt him? Still, it galled Bradshaw that he had ever taken the trouble to listen to the man’s bullshit, assuming it to be science and not fantasy.
Then there was Vincent. Like Bradshaw, he had been discouraged by the realisation that although they’d rumbled Denny as a pervert, with a liking for girls who were borderline legal, they were unable as yet to pin the disappearance of his young stepdaughter on the man.
When they’d been out on the road tailing Denny, Vincent had seemed livelier and more positive than usual. Bradshaw reasoned his partner secretly enjoyed doing a bit of real police work for a change, even if he was unlikely to admit it. DI Peacock’s grim assessment of the lack of evidence connecting Denny to Michelle’s disappearance seemed to dent his partner’s morale, however. Sure enough, when Bradshaw enquired after his whereabouts the next morning he was told by Peacock that Vincent had gone sick with depression, the DI adding the word ‘again’ to his sentence, before concluding, ‘He’s about as much use as a toffee kettle and just as reliable.’
Bradshaw was gutted. He had spent the rest of the morning on the admin that plagued every modern detective: statements, filing, endless form filling, the stuff they never showed you on TV. Now he was eager to get going once more. He had an idea that this might be a good time to revisit Michelle’s mother. If he could have another word with her in the cold light of day, once she’d had a few hours to allow Denny’s betrayal to sink in, she might prove more open; freed from a conflicting loyalty, Fiona might remember something significant. It was certainly worth a try but he would have liked Vincent to be in the room with him. One of them would make the tea and provide sympathy; the other could derail Fiona with a few harsh questions about the appropriateness of Denny’s relationship with Michelle. Good cop, bad cop this time. He wanted to get back out there with Vincent and show everybody just what they were capable of when they put their minds to it but it seemed his new partner just didn’t have the stamina to see things through to the end, so Bradshaw was on his own again.
They sat together on Andrew’s couch; the schoolteacher and his underage lover, still holding hands. Tom sat in the chair opposite them. He placed his tape recorder on the arm of the chair and turned it on then took out his pen, placing the pad on his knee.
‘I’m listening,’ he told them. ‘You’ve got five minutes, no more. I’m going to burn in hell for giving your mother five more minutes of anguish, so this better be one amazing explanation. We’ll start with you, Andrew. Just what in God’s name did you think you were doing, bringing her here?’
‘I didn’t do it deliberately, Tom, you have to understand that. It all began because I bumped into Michelle again, purely by chance.’
‘At the bus stop?’ asked Tom, as it was the last known sighting of the missing girl, and she nodded.
‘It was pouring down that night,’ added Andrew, ‘I was walking back from the pub when I saw her standing there. She looked wet through and so cold. I didn’t know who it was at first but then I realised it was Michelle. I’d taught her years ago, like you said. She was just a little girl back then of course but now here she was again, all grown up.’
‘Not quite,’ Tom reminded him but Andrew ignored this.
‘We talked for a moment but she was shivering and I offered to drive her home. I’d only had two or three and you can never rely on that last bus.’
‘Go on,’ he urged his former friend, needing to hear something, anything that might justify the decision to hide a girl from her family for so long.
‘I agreed to go with him,’ Michelle explained, ‘he was just being kind.’
‘Was he?’
‘When we got to my house she was still dripping wet so I said she could come in and dry her hair. Her shoes were soaking too.’
‘They weren’t the best pair for weather like that,’ the girl admitted with a sheepish grin and Tom stared at her as if she was mad.
‘Anyway,’ was Andrew hesitating now, as if his well-rehearsed justification was about to sound distinctly weak when told to an outsider? ‘I gave her a towel, made her a hot drink and we started to talk. She told me there was no hurry to get home; her mother would be asleep, her stepfather out in the lorry, so there was no rush.’
‘We just talked and talked,’ the girl explained, ‘well, mostly, I talked and he listened. I think he was the first person to listen to me in years.’ And they smiled at the shared memory, grinning like simpletons. It was if they were a proper couple at a dinner party, telling everyone the story of how they first met.
‘What was inappropriate about it?’ asked Andrew innocently. ‘We didn’t do anything, just talked.’
‘Aside from the fact that she is fifteen years old and you are a teacher?’ Tom shook his head. ‘Why didn’t you just take her home?’
‘The more we talked, the more I learned what a special and delightful young girl Michelle had become and how unhappy she was at home.’
‘That’s no reason to keep her here.’
‘I didn’t keep her,’ answered Andrew, ‘she stayed of her own free will.’
‘Why?’ asked Tom incredulously.
‘Well … and this where things got a bit complicated, it became late and I said I’d make us another drink before driving her home. At this stage we thought she could just slip in through the front door and nobody would notice. Her mother’s practically an alcoholic, doesn’t care about her at all in fact but that’s by-the-by. Even if she did wake up, Michelle could just say she was out walking or called in at a friend’s, so nobody would get into trouble.’
‘Nobody meaning you, you mean.’
‘I went back into the kitchen and put the kettle on again but by the time I came out with the hot chocolate, Michelle had fallen asleep on my couch.’
‘And you didn’t think to wake her up?’
‘I was going too,’ he admitted, ‘but she looked so sweet and pretty and peaceful lying there that I just thought it would be a shame to.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I covered her with a blanket. Then I sat down in the chair you’re sitting in and figured she’d probably wake up eventually and I’d drive her home but she didn’t wake up and I fell asleep too. I didn’t open my eyes until six in the morning and by then it would have been too late to drive her back home without a lot of very difficult questions.’
‘But I don’t understand. If you’d done nothing? I mean, what you did do was bloody stupid and you would have been in trouble but if you hadn’t touched her … wouldn’t it have been better to just bring her home? The grief you’ve caused?’ Tom asked, confused.
‘But I didn’t want to go home,’ Michelle answered, ‘I begged him to let me stay.’
‘And by that stage, well, I didn’t know what else to do, so I let her.’
‘You mean you went off to school as if nothing had happened?’
‘What choice did I have?’
‘What choice did you have? A bunch of them! You could have chosen to end the misery of a family who thought their little girl had been murder
ed by a serial killer. Are you both completely out of your minds? You must be!’
‘By then I think we both knew something special had happened between us, something permanent,’ Andrew told him with the wide-eyed zeal of a religious convert. Tom opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words. How could he reason with somebody this deluded? ‘Every night we said we would give ourselves up in the morning but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. We knew it would end eventually and we would need someone to tell our story,’ he continued. ‘Then I met you in the pub and I just knew you’d be the right person to do it. I nearly brought Michelle down that night you came for a drink but we wanted to be together a bit longer. I’ve never felt so alive,’ Andrew assured him, ‘but you must understand that I didn’t touch her. I didn’t view her like that.’
‘You didn’t touch her?’ Tom repeated.
‘No,’ Andrew assured him, as if he was determined to be portrayed as a man of honour, ‘sex wasn’t important to either of us,’ then he cleared his throat, ‘at first.’
‘At first?’
‘That didn’t happen till later,’ he said.
And before Tom could respond to that, Michelle interrupted, ‘And when it did happen, I instigated it. It was my decision.’
Tom stopped writing. He put down his pen and pad and stared at them both, ‘Oh well,’ he told them scathingly, ‘that’s all right then!’ He shook his head. ‘Teachers can’t just have relationships with schoolgirls!’
‘Why not? We’re not the first and we certainly won’t be the last. Is it better for her if she goes with some spotty sixteen-year-old who has no idea how to treat her? I love Michelle and she loves me. Please be happy for us. I thought you might understand this.’
‘Understand it? Me? Are you completely barking? You’re banging on about love and things being permanent? Can’t you see it, Andrew? You’re going to jail! They are going to throw the bloody book at you!’
‘I don’t think it’ll come to that,’ answered the teacher, ‘but even if it did, that’s a risk I’m prepared to take, for Michelle,’ he squeezed his lover’s hand and she smiled at him reassuringly, ‘and no matter how long it takes, she will wait for me.’
‘You idiot,’ Tom told him, ‘you still don’t get it, do you. Your whole life is fucked, Andrew, you’re going to prison and when you get out you won’t be able to get a job, you’ll lose your house, everything and there is no chance they are going to allow you to contact her. None! Can’t you see that? If there is one thing I am certain about, it’s this: when I make this phone call you will never see Michelle again, ever. That much is bloody guaranteed!’ and he picked up the mobile phone and began to dial.
For the first time Andrew looked rattled, as if the thought of being denied access to his one true love had never crossed his mind. ‘Well,’ he said uncertainly, his voice cracking a little when confronted with Tom’s certainty, ‘we’ll see, won’t we?’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Bradshaw was still annoyed at Vincent, who was physically no sicker than he was. The man was suffering from an attack of laziness or an onset of the blues but, if it really was depression that had caused Vincent Addison’s current absence, then he would get no sympathy from his younger colleague. If Bradshaw had to carry on and muddle through whenever the black dog of his own depression was biting down hard, then why shouldn’t Vincent? His absence was all the more frustrating because of its timing. Vincent had gone home to his bed just when they had begun to make some serious progress. What chance did they have of ever being taken seriously, if his partner abandoned a case at such a critical point because he wasn’t feeling up to it?
Well, Bradshaw wasn’t going to allow that to happen. He’d dug out Vincent’s address and he was going round there to talk him back onto the Michelle Summers’ case. Bradshaw was on his feet, a second from leaving HQ, when his phone suddenly rang. He almost didn’t pick it up at first then he cursed and answered.
‘Bradshaw,’ he said.
‘Ian, it’s me, Tom Carney.’
‘And I was having such a good day,’ said the detective. ‘What do you want?’
There was a slight delay on the line while Tom Carney seemed to be trying to find the right words, then he said, ‘I have found Michelle Summers.’
‘What?’ Was this some kind of sick joke?
‘I have found …’
‘I heard what you said,’ interrupted Bradshaw, ‘but what do you mean? How could you have … Are you saying, you’ve found her body?’
‘No,’ said Tom, ‘she is alive and …’ Could he use the word ‘well’? He decided on ‘unharmed’. She’s been staying with a teacher in Great Middleton. His name is Andrew Foster.’
‘Jesus.’
Tom Carney gave Ian Bradshaw the address then and sealed the teacher’s fate.
‘She’s in Great Middleton?’ asked Bradshaw and Tom was glad he wasn’t the only one questioning his own sanity.
‘You can come and get her,’ said the reporter quietly and he hung up.
For a second Ian Bradshaw stood holding onto the phone as he struggled to digest the significance of this while everybody else in the room carried on working, oblivious to the news he had just been given. Bradshaw had become convinced Denny was responsible for Michelle Summers’ disappearance, refusing to believe any other theory, but now he’d been told she was alive and well and hiding in the village whose front doors had become so familiar to him lately. He glanced towards Peacock’s office and realised the DI wasn’t there, then he looked around the room at the detectives manning their desks, calmly taking calls and making notes. He asked them all, ‘Where’s DI Peacock?’ When nobody answered him Bradshaw called louder, ‘Where’s the boss?’ but all he got in return was an uninterested ‘Dunno,’ from his nearest workmate.
Bradshaw surveyed his uncomprehending colleagues and felt a rising anger at their lack of urgency. ‘Where’s Peacock?’ he shouted at the top of his voice and everybody froze. They all stared back at him like he was mad but at least he had their full attention now. ‘Where’s the boss?’ he shouted once more.
‘I think he’s in the smoking room with the DCI,’ answered Marie Ryan, one of Durham Constabulary’s few female detectives. ‘What’s up?’
‘Go and get him,’ Bradshaw demanded as he pulled on his jacket, ‘get them both and get them now! Michelle Summers has been found!’ He thrust the address he had scribbled on the paper towards her, then raced from the room with every eye upon him.
When Tom Carney phoned Michelle’s mother to break the news, he did it quickly. ‘I have found Michelle and she is alive,’ he said, in case she assumed the worst.
‘Oh my God, oh my God!’ Fiona was hyperventilating on the end of the phone. ‘Oh God, I don’t believe it, oh God.’ Then finally, when the news had sunk in, she asked, ‘Where is she?’
‘In the village.’
‘In the village?’ She wasn’t expecting that; she was clearly assuming London or at least Birmingham but not in the village. ‘Where in the village?’
Tom told her, then he hung up and made one last call.
Afterwards, Ian Bradshaw would be unable to remember anything about the journey to Great Middleton that day but he took every twist and turn at speed, shouting, ‘Come on, come on,’ at any driver who moved too slowly in front of him.
Eventually, he reached Great Middleton and chose the first turning that would take him up the hill, almost losing the back end of his car in the process. At the top, he took a sharp right which brought him into the street Tom Carney had mentioned then he sped along it, scanning door numbers till he reached the right one. He slammed on his brakes, abandoning his car in the middle of the road, not even bothering to close the door as he alighted.
Only then did it cross Bradshaw’s mind that if Tom Carney was somehow wrong, deluded or just winding him up, he would be in the kind of trouble it would be impossible to come back from. Surely Michelle Summers could not have been staying at thi
s quiet, little house nestled in a row of similarly innocuous properties, right in the heart of her village, without anyone knowing about it? It didn’t seem possible.
Bradshaw was about to bang on the door when it opened. Tom Carney was standing there. The journalist did not say a word to the detective. He simply held open the door to admit him, then stepped aside.
Bradshaw walked straight into Andrew Foster’s living room and there in front of him was a miracle. Tom Carney had not been deluded, nor was he winding Bradshaw up. Seated on a sofa was a young girl. Though he had never met her, Bradshaw instantly recognised Michelle Summers from her description and photograph. Even if she was a little more grown-up than the image the police had been using, this was clearly the same child. It was almost too much to take in at first. Against all the odds of probability, Michelle Summers was alive and seemingly unharmed.
The young girl was sitting next to a man in his twenties who Bradshaw had to assume must be the teacher Tom had mentioned. They both had anxious looks on their faces and if the sight of them sitting together was not shocking enough, Bradshaw suddenly realised they were holding hands.
‘Michelle?’ asked Bradshaw in disbelief, and when the girl slowly nodded, he demanded of them both, ‘What the bloody hell has been going on here?’
Andrew Foster opened his mouth to answer on their behalf but his words were drowned out by the sound of police sirens.
Helen was the first reporter on the scene, if you didn’t include Tom Carney. She heard the sirens of multiple police cars and instantly abandoned her post at the W. I. event because that kind of din could only mean something major had happened or was just about to.
As she left the village hall, Helen looked towards the sound just as it dimmed. Ahead of her was a small village green in front of a steep hill, with two public footpaths snaking up it, one on either side. They rose until they combined at the top as they reached a road and a row of small houses set back from it on the high ground. Three police cars were parked carelessly outside an insignificant-looking house with whitewashed walls. They blocked the road, their lights blinking pointlessly, the officers having seemingly abandoned their vehicles to attend to something urgent inside the house.
No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Page 32
