No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) (27 page)

Helen let this sink in. ‘I suppose.’

‘And we knew their ages.’

‘Yeah,’ she said uncertainly.

‘And he didn’t. The killer, I mean. He just saw them standing there in the bus shelter or outside the chippy, from his car, across the street.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘I’m saying he has a type. He wants girls who are about twelve years old. He wants them …’

‘What?’

‘On the cusp,’ and he actually looked a little embarrassed, ‘you know, of puberty. I mean they are demonstrably girls
but they aren’t
very
young and they aren’t teenagers either. He gets them just before they reach that stage.’

Helen was silent for a while and then she admitted, ‘You could have something there,’ and she thought for a moment, ‘but I’m not sure how that helps necessarily. I mean what does it tell us about him, really?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but it tells us one thing.’

‘What?’

‘Michelle Summers was different. From what we have read or heard about her and the pictures we’ve seen, she’s not the same.’

Helen let her mind go back to the snapshots the police had issued to the media, hoping to jog the memory of potential witnesses who may have seen a runaway or an abduction; a girl well past the first onset of puberty, a girl nearer a woman than a child, a fifteen-year-old with a defined, womanly figure just waiting for the puppy fat to disappear before she would start to receive the unwelcome attention of every construction worker she had the misfortune to walk by.

‘She was older,’ said Helen, ‘two or three years older but,’ and she paused while she took in the true significance of what he was saying, ‘she looked much older, even in that photo the police blew up for the press conference.’

He nodded. ‘That’s what I can’t get my head round. If it’s the same guy, the same motive, the same warped and twisted logic then why has he suddenly gone from skinny, little pre-pubescent girls to curvy teenagers who could pass for seventeen with a bit of lippy on? It doesn’t ring true.’

Tom transferred his attention to the clippings files and they both began to silently read their contents.

‘There’s
a fair bit of information here but does any of it actually help?’ Helen asked but he didn’t answer. He was too busy reading and she sat near him in silence for a time while he looked at the notes in the clippings files.

‘Well, let’s see,’ he finally answered, ‘are these cases all the same?’ he pondered. ‘From what we can see here, the victims are all young girls,’ and he held up a finger to denote this first similarity, ‘they were all taken out in the open, from bus shelters, roadsides and the like,’ his second finger went up, ‘and nobody saw or heard a thing,’ the third finger, ‘the first four girls were all killed in the same way, by strangulation,’ the fourth finger went up, ‘but there was no rape or sexual assault of any kind, all were found fully clothed.’ His thumb marked the fifth similarity then he put his hand down by his side. ‘If Michelle Summers fits the pattern then they should find her body soon, she will have been strangled but there won’t be anything sexual about it, which makes you wonder why he does it, what he gets out of this?’

‘You’re assuming he’s a frustrated guy who can’t get sex or only likes it when his victim struggles or is helpless,’ Helen said, ‘but this isn’t about sex at all. It’s about power. He gets his excitement from killing them. He must get off on that.’

‘Maybe,’ and he thought for a second. ‘So far the police and all of the papers have focused on the similarities between the Michelle Summers case and the other four victims of the Kiddy-Catcher – but what about the differences?’

‘Well, I’m not sure there are any, except the obvious fact that Michelle was older than the other girls,’ she said.

‘By
at least three years,’ he reminded her. ‘Why was this girl older? She wasn’t his usual type,’ and when she looked uncomfortable he added, ‘of victim, I mean.’

‘The others were all aged between eleven and thirteen,’ she noted, ‘whereas Michelle was nearly sixteen. That could be important but …’

‘But … ?’

‘Maybe she was the only girl he could find. We haven’t considered that. He’s driving around looking for victims when everyone knows there’s a strange man out there abducting and murdering young girls, which makes parents more vigilant than normal. They won’t let their daughters go out on their own until he’s caught.’

‘They’d drive them around instead or make sure the girls travel in groups when they come home from school or to youth clubs and the cinema,’ said Tom.

‘But Michelle’s mother didn’t think to do that because she was older.’

‘She was fifteen,’ he said, ‘and she would know better than to step willingly into a car with a stranger. If it is the Kiddy-Catcher that’s taken her, it brings us back to the question of
how
he is convincing the girls to go with him.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Helen said. ‘Something happened a while back and it came back to me today.’

‘What?’

‘It’s probably nothing.’ She felt self-conscious now, as if her instincts couldn’t entirely be trusted.

‘Tell me,’ he urged.

Helen hesitated at first. ‘I stopped to grab a sandwich at the supermarket on the edge of town. I was in a hurry so I just ate it in my car. While I was parked there a little girl
came running out on her own. She was only about three years old and I remember I was worried she’d get knocked down by a car. Then a woman came chasing after her. Everybody stopped for a moment to see what was wrong but then the woman caught up with the little girl, grabbed her and told her off. As soon as she did that everyone relaxed and carried on as if nothing had happened.’

‘Right,’ he said uncertainly, ‘well they would, wouldn’t they, once they knew she was safe.’

‘How could they know she was safe?’ Helen asked. ‘How did I know she was safe, come to that?’

‘I don’t get it,’ he said, ‘you saw her mum.’

‘Did I? Was it her mum or a child molester trying to kidnap a fleeing toddler?’

He gave a little laugh then. ‘Well, I mean …’

‘Because it was a woman,’ she told him firmly, ‘it never crossed our minds that it could be anything sinister because it was a woman. If it had been a man the whole scene would have looked very different.’

‘So, what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that could be how he gets them to go with him so easily.’

‘By using a woman?’ Tom asked and she nodded, while his mind raced at the thought of smiling women luring young girls into cars, feigning messages from their parents or a manufactured emergency of some kind. It slowly registered with Tom that Helen could be right. ‘Jesus, you know what that would mean?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we’d have another Myra Hindley on our hands.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Day Five

‘You,’
Trelawe addressed the young detective in front of everyone, ‘what do you think you’re doing, coming late to my briefing?’ Trelawe broke off to focus on Bradshaw’s tardiness. ‘You’d better have a damn good reason.’

‘Sorry, Sir,’ answered Bradshaw. The truth was he hadn’t been able to drag himself out of bed that morning, unable to shake the feeling that nothing he did seemed to matter any more, but he could hardly confess to that. ‘I was in Great Middleton, following up a lead.’

Trelawe looked momentarily confused. Lateness for the morning briefing was a capital offence but he could hardly chastise an officer who had taken the trouble to go out onto the streets already that morning. ‘Which case?’ asked Trelawe, postponing Bradshaw’s public humiliation till he had heard him out.

‘The body-in-the-field, Sir,’ answered Bradshaw and he felt the pressure that comes when every ear in the room is listening to you.

Trelawe felt a pang of disappointment. He should have known it would be the less more important case. Clearly this detective had been assigned to Kane’s dead-wood squad and it was little wonder. He remembered Bradshaw
because of the reams of paperwork following the previous year’s incident. ‘So you have a lead?’

‘Possibly, Sir.’

This was the wrong answer. ‘Is it a lead or isn’t it?’ Trelawe demanded.

‘It is, Sir,’ and Bradshaw found an ounce of defiance from somewhere, ‘I have a name for the victim.’

This information was greeted by a surprised murmur from his fellow officers, who’d obviously assumed the likelihood of Bradshaw coming up with anything worthwhile was next to zero. Trelawe raised a hand to silence them. ‘Go on,’ he urged Bradshaw.

‘It will need checking of course.’ He knew he was in deep now. All Bradshaw really had was Tom Carney’s half-baked theory, ‘but I think the dead man is Sean Donnellan, an artist from Dublin who visited Great Middleton back in 1936 to produce illustrations for a book. I don’t have a suspect or a motive yet but it could be sexual jealousy. He was quite a hit with the ladies apparently.’

When Bradshaw had finished he was aware that everyone in the room was staring at him silently, including the detective superintendent. ‘And how did you come by this information?’ asked Trelawe.

Bradshaw was never going to admit that. ‘I picked it up from the door-to-door,’ he said, hoping that would be vague enough, ‘a little bit at a time.’

Trelawe said nothing at first. Instead he glanced at DCI Kane, then looked round the room at his officers. Finally his gaze settled back on Bradshaw and he nodded, ‘you see that is what I am talking about: proper police work,
information gained from diligent, door-to-door questioning and a strong lead to follow up. What a pity Bradshaw is the only one who has been listening to me.’

At the earliest opportunity, Tom rang his editor. He used the pay phone in the corner of the Greyhound’s empty bar before it opened. As expected, the Doc’s PA intercepted the call.

‘Jennifer, it’s Tom.’

Her silence told him everything.

‘Can I have a quick word with the Doc?’

‘He’s busy.’

‘Yeah, I know he’s busy,’ said Tom, ‘he’s always busy. I was just hoping that I could squeeze a word in with him between everything else.’

‘And I just told you no,’ she was being the gatekeeper, protecting her boss from unwanted interruptions. ‘He doesn’t want to speak to you, Tom.’

‘Did he tell you that?’ Tom demanded. ‘Did he use those exact words?’

‘I know the Doc,’ she said, ‘he doesn’t want to speak to you.’

‘Bitch,’ Tom whispered to himself but his mouth was still too close to the phone.

‘What did you just say?’ her voice was shrill with indignation.

‘I said “son-of-a-bitch”,’ he answered quickly. ‘Look, I’ve got a good story here and I need to speak to the Doc about it. He’s going to like it. Can you at least tell him that and get him to give me a call?’ he implored her. ‘Please, Jennifer.’

She
took so long to answer he wondered if she had cut him off because he’d been stupid enough to call her a bitch. Eventually she said, ‘I’ll pass the message on.’

‘Thank you,’ and before he let her go he made sure she took down the number of the Greyhound’s phone in case the Doc couldn’t get through to him on the mobile.

‘Are you doing this to me deliberately?’ Peacock asked Bradshaw when he hauled the younger man into his office.

‘Doing what, Sir?’ he asked uncomprehendingly.

‘Ignoring the chain of command,’ Peacock told him, ‘going over my head.’

‘But I haven’t …’

‘You just did!’ Peacock snapped, ‘out there, in the morning briefing.’

‘But the super asked me …’

Again, Peacock interrupted him, ‘I know what he asked you. You should have said you were pursuing a number of leads and were hoping for something concrete soon.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Bradshaw protested, ‘I thought you’d be pleased I’d come up with something.’

Peacock sighed, ‘I know you don’t get it, son, so at least I can put this latest round of stupidity down to ignorance and not malice. When you uncover something you come to an adult; meaning, me. What you don’t do is offer it up to cover your own arse in the middle of a collective bollocking. You made me and the DCI look like clueless tossers and gave everybody else in your squad another reason to hate you.
Now
have you got it?’

And he had.

The
familiar, debilitating weariness enveloped Bradshaw, along with the realisation, reinforced on a daily basis by his superiors until he had started to believe it himself, that he was useless. All he wanted was to accept this latest kicking, get out of Peacock’s office, go home and pull the covers over his head. He was pretty sure they would neither notice nor care if he did. ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘We will check out this fellah Sean Donnellan. You get back on the streets and carry on with your door-to-door.’ Bradshaw supposed he should have been grateful to have avoided another afternoon sitting in the canteen. ‘Now get out.’

A little before midday, Tom walked back into the bar of the Greyhound.

‘A lass phoned for you,’ Colin told Tom, ‘Helen-something; said she couldn’t meet you.’

‘Thanks,’ muttered Tom. His day, which had started promisingly enough, was not panning out the way he had intended. By now, he had hoped to have given the Doc a new story for The Paper, based on Ian Bradshaw’s confidential tip-off, which would have reminded his editor that Tom’s contract might be worth renewing after all. He had also hoped for confirmation from Bradshaw that his superiors were treating Sean Donnellan’s name as a promising new lead in their enquiry into the body-in-the-field. But Bradshaw’s silence was deafening, Helen had blown him off, and the Doc still hadn’t called him back. He was reluctant to leave the Greyhound in case he missed a return call from his editor and he couldn’t trust the mobile phone, which meant he was stuck here in the pub.