No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Read online

  Howard Linskey

  * * *

  NO NAME LANE

  Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  Also by Howard Linskey

  THE DAVID BLAKE SERIES

  The Drop

  The Damage

  The Dead

  For Erin & Alison

  Prologue

  Girl Number Four

  County Durham – 1993

  He watched the girl until he was certain she was perfect. Only then did he risk approaching her. It was never difficult to get them to come with him. The hard part was staying calm, even as his heart was thumping so hard in his chest he was convinced she must be able to hear it.

  He drove her somewhere quiet then stopped the car, waiting until he was sure they were entirely alone. Sometimes he’d bundle a girl into the boot so he could drive her miles away but this lane was isolated enough, so he’d climbed into the back seat to get to her. He ignored her terrified pleas and reached for her, easily brushing her weak little hands aside, forcing her head back until the flesh of her tiny neck was exposed. He clamped his hands around her throat and began to squeeze, tightening his grip as her desperate struggle began. He closed his eyes. It was better if he could not see the little girl’s face, for she did not understand. How could she even begin to comprehend what he was doing for her? He squeezed harder and harder and wouldn’t let go until the moment when her struggles finally ceased and her tiny body went limp.

  He looked down at the lifeless young girl in his arms and whispered the special words he always used when he had saved one.

  ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’

  CHAPTER ONE

  It all began with a phone call, as these things tend to.

  ‘Hello.’ Tom answered and there was a pause, as if the person on the other end had suddenly realised the magnitude of what they were doing and decided against it. ‘Hello?’ he prompted.

  ‘I’ve got a story,’ the woman blurted and he strained to listen to her against the sound of dozens of journalists talking over the tap-tap-tap of busy fingers hitting keyboards while the insistent ringing of competing phones could be heard all across the room.

  ‘Okay,’ answered Tom, ‘what kind of story?’

  There was another pause until finally she said, ‘a bloody big one,’ and there was something about the nervous, agitated way in which she spoke that made Tom Carney take the woman seriously.

  Tabloid stories generally start with a tip-off. This one began because a woman chose the biggest red top in the country to tell her side of it. Aggrieved men and women called its London office every day. Some were wronged, others desperate, some just plain demented. It was Tom Carney’s job to perform triage on them, as his legendary editor Alex ‘the Doc’ Docherty put it; ‘from the French verb trier, meaning to sift and select,’ he was told. ‘Your job is to separate the shit from the sugar.’

  The people who called always assumed their story was worth a life-changing amount of money. It was rare however for their particular grievance to actually make it into print. The tabloid Tom Carney worked for had a daily circulation of four million copies. Everyone wanted to be in the paper; politicians from all sides, models, actors, rock bands, the wannabes, gonnabes, has-beens and never-wasses, along with many thousands of what their foul-mouthed editor called ‘the great unwashed’, by which he meant the general public. Only the really juicy stuff ended up in the paper. Sometimes though, one of these callers would turn out to be peddling neither shit nor sugar but genuine gold.

  The anonymous woman who phoned that morning was randomly connected to one of a large number of journalists manning the news desks. Afterwards, Tom Carney would often wonder about the direction his life might have taken had he not been in the office that morning or if the call had gone to one of the many other reporters in the newsroom. The simple act of answering the phone that day changed everything for Tom, though he could never have known it at the time.

  ‘What’s it about then?’ he prompted when she was not immediately forthcoming, ‘this story of yours?’

  ‘A very famous man, someone high up.’

  ‘Right,’ he replied non-committedly, ‘can I take your name, Miss?’

  ‘No names, not yet, just listen.’

  He could have played hard ball, told her to give him her name or he’d hang up but if she really did have a story to tell, he’d only read about it later in a rival newspaper. Besides, there was something about the way she spoke, the urgency in her voice that compelled him to keep her on the line.

  ‘So, what’s this famous man been up to then?’

  ‘Something he ain’t ought to have been,’ and she snorted a laugh then immediately became serious again. ‘He’s married, see, and he’s been seeing us and he ain’t supposed to have been doing that, not in his position.’

  ‘Who’s us?’ he asked, though he was beginning to get the idea.

  ‘Me and some others,’ she said, sounding cagey.

  ‘I see. You and some others,’ his tone was thoughtful. ‘Would I be right in saying that you have been seeing this man in your professional capacity?’ He was trying to be delicate.

  ‘You mean, am I on the game?’ she snapped.

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘Well, say what you mean then,’ she told him. ‘Yes, we are, ’course we are.’

  ‘And who is this family man who has been spending time with you?’

  ‘I can’t say until I
know how much it’s worth.’

  ‘How can I tell you that unless I know who he is?’

  There was a long pause on the line while she weighed up this dilemma. ‘He’s important, like I said, and I’ll tell you everything, for the right price.’

  ‘I understand.’ If she was legit then this could be just the kind of kiss-and-tell story the paper might be interested in but who really cared if some town councillor, minor actor or daytime game-show host had been dipping his wick where he shouldn’t? ‘Is he someone I will have heard of?’

  ‘Everybody has heard of him.’

  ‘He’s not a politician then?’ The public were notoriously awful at recognising politicians unless they were either the Prime Minister or some lunatic with flog-em and hang-em views that turned them into a ‘character’, and eventually, a national treasure.

  She must have grown tired of his questions. ‘He’s only in the bloody government, all right?’ she snapped at him, ‘the cabinet. Now how much is that worth to you?’

  Tom Carney straightened. He gripped his pen firmly in his hand and let it hover over the page of his notepad. If this woman really was telling the truth and she could prove it then this was dynamite. The Tory government with its back-to-basics, family values had a cabinet member who was shagging hookers? It couldn’t be better. ‘Quite a bit I should think,’ he said in a voice that was a lot calmer than he was, ‘if you can prove it. Now, why don’t we meet to discuss this further?’

  ‘I asked how much,’ her voice was hard, with a trace of fear behind it.

  At this point, Tom wasn’t about to let her know his true status at The Paper, a probationer on a six-month contract so the editor could see if he ‘had the chops’ to make it there, and so he blagged it. ‘Top end of five figures, six even, maybe, but you have to be able to prove it.’ There was a silence on the line that told him she was still interested. ‘So why don’t you tell me where you want to meet and I’ll be there. That’s what you want isn’t it, to sell your story?’

  Maybe it was the use of the word sell that finally landed her.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Girl Number Five

  Six Weeks Later

  It had taken Michelle Summers fifteen long and singularly uneventful years to realise it but tonight, as she stood shivering in the dark, beneath the rotting timbers of the ancient bus shelter, while the rain beat down in a steady, staccato rhythm on the roof above her, she finally acknowledged the sad and simple fact: she hated her mother. Hated … hated … hated her … the stupid, fat cow.

  If her mam ever said anything to her these days it would start with the words, ‘you used to’. ‘You used to be so nice … you used to be fun … you used to be such a pretty little thing,’ implying of course that she was no longer any of these things. Michelle Summers had little enough self-confidence without her own mother repeatedly reminding her that she wasn’t nice, pretty or fun any more.

  Michelle watched as rivulets of water rolled down the inner walls of the shelter till they met in pools on the rutted, grey concrete floor. The spreading water forced Michelle out of the bus stop’s innermost corners and the wind whistled through the wooden shelter. In Michelle’s view, she lived in a shabby village in the middle of nowhere, at the arse end of the north east of England, and there was nothing that wasn’t at least a bus ride away, even her home. Michelle swore that when she was finally old enough, she would leave Great Middleton forever, because there was absolutely nothing great about it. Everybody knew everyone else, everybody’s parents knew everyone else’s parents and everybody minded everyone else’s business. You couldn’t get away with anything in Great Middleton.

  Michelle had arrived at the shelter just in time to see the penultimate bus of the night pulling asthmatically up the hill ahead of her, farting black smoke out of its rear end, as it forced itself slowly over the summit like the little-engine-that-could. Now she was glad she had given in when her mam insisted on her wearing a coat, even though it covered the cool top she had worn that night and the body that was developing very nicely, thank you very much. Even her mam was jealous of that. ‘Eh, I wish I had a flat stomach like you our Shell,’ she’d say, ‘and a bum that small. It’s like a peach!’

  Denny had certainly noticed the change in her this past year, the dirty perv. Michelle hated her stepdad almost as much as her mam and loathed the way they both called her ‘Shell’, like she was something washed up on a beach. With a bit of luck her stepdad would be out in his lorry by now. He did more and more night jobs these days, ‘to beat the traffic’, he said, but she wondered if he was just as sick of living in their house as Michelle. Her mam would likely be asleep on the couch, a lukewarm gin and orange cordial congealing on the table next to her. It would be half-drunk, just like her mam, and Michelle could creep quietly upstairs to her room.

  It wasn’t a very nice thing to admit you hated your mother. Michelle knew that. She was supposed to love her mam, go out on shopping trips with her, share jokes, talk to her about boyfriends and stuff, buy her chocolates on Mother’s Day, that sort of thing. She knew girls who did have that kind of relationship.

  ‘My mam’s pretty cool,’ they’d say, ‘she talks about sex and everything, she’s going to put me on the pill when I’m older.’ But Michelle wasn’t going to talk about sex with her mam, not in this life. Her sole pronouncement on the subject, once her daughter had started seeing Darren ‘Daz’ Tully on a fairly regular basis, was to mutter ‘don’t forget, Shell, nothing below the waistline.’

  She didn’t want to go shopping with her mam either, the fat cow would probably only want to buy chocolates, crisps or gin. The woman had completely given up. She wondered what Denny saw in her at all. Really, did they even still do it any more? They were both over forty after all. Maybe they just didn’t bother. Perhaps you didn’t when you were that old.

  That would explain why Denny was such a perv; always hanging round outside the bathroom with that stupid grin on his face. The first time wasn’t long after her fifteenth birthday and she’d come out of there with only a bath towel wrapped round her. There he was, standing on the landing like he’d just that minute climbed the stairs, but she knew differently. ‘Whoops,’ he’d said, like it was all a big accident, but his eyes had given him away; they’d lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning, and he had definitely given her the once over, just like the boys at the youth club; his glance travelling south from top to bottom; face, tits then bits. Michelle had wanted to retch. She’d rushed past him to her room, ignoring his ‘night, night, pet,’ before slamming the door hard behind her. Men were dogs, all of them. She’d learned that much already.

  Now she didn’t dare go anywhere near the bathroom unless she was fully dressed in neck-to-ankle PJs and towelling dressing gown. Not that it mattered these days, as the house was colder than a morgue. Heating being just one more thing they couldn’t afford.

  She’d told Suze all about Denny.

  ‘He probably thinks about you when he plays with his thingy,’ her best mate had offered matter-of-factly.

  ‘Suze!’ Michelle shouted, ‘you’re disgusting!’ But she’d laughed when she’d said it.

  Suze was still laughing, ‘I bet he does you know, loads. I reckon that’s all he does.’ She had a point. It had been a long while since Michelle had been disturbed in the night by her mam and Denny rattling the head board. The first time they’d done that Michelle was still a little girl and she’d woken abruptly, filled with concern for her mam’s safety because the thumping against the wall was accompanied by moaning sounds. Dull with sleep, she’d wandered into their room, only to discover Denny lying on top of her mother, who screamed when she saw Michelle. Denny shouted then swore and Michelle turned on her heels and fled. Her mother walked into her room moments later, in her ratty old dressing gown. She sat down next to Michelle on the corner of her bed and explained that there was nothing to be frightened of, that Uncle Denny was giving Mummy a sp
ecial hug and they had both screamed because Michelle had startled them. Not long after that Michelle was moved into the smaller, draughtier back bedroom, ‘Uncle Denny’ began living with them on a permanent basis and a date for the wedding was set. Things had been okay with Denny before then, when he was trying to wheedle his way into her mother’s life by taking her and Michelle on trips to the pictures or the zoo, buying her ice creams and dollies. All that soon stopped ‘once he’d got his boots under the kitchen table’, as her Nan put it. There were no more trips, precious few presents and the ice creams became less and less frequent. Money was ‘tight’, her mother and stepfather repeatedly explained to her, though she suspected it was actually her new stepdad that was tight.

  Michelle was snapped from her thoughts quite suddenly by a fresh torrent of rain water that broke free from the wind-rattled guttering and tumbled to the ground in front of her, splashing her in the process. Why could she not have been born somewhere else, like London or even twenty miles away in Newcastle? At least there was stuff to do in a city. There was nowt to do in a village except smoke cigs and get felt by boys round the back of the village hall. That was all Darren Tully wanted to do. They’d been going together for a little over two months now and already Michelle could only vaguely remember how excited she had been when he first asked her out. Even Suze had confirmed that Darren Tully was officially ‘lush’ and for once in her life she’d felt special and wanted. But the reality of going out with Daz had been quite different from her imaginings. Tonight had been typical. There was always a bit of snogging, he made that much effort at least, but the persistent thrusting of his tongue in and out of her mouth and his tobacco-flavoured kisses behind the village hall were hardly the stuff of a girl’s dreams. The continuous groping always ended with her pushing his hands away and him muttering ‘You are so tight,’ like she was the last virgin in the village, before informing her that he’d have to dump her soon unless he started ‘getting summat’.

  ‘I have to get summat. There’s no point if I don’t get owt,’ he’d informed her that evening, as if this was a suggestion so romantic she would never be able to resist it.