No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) by Howard Linskey Page A

shock.
    ‘Bradshaw,’ asked DI Peacock, once he’d realised this was not the girl, ‘are you a complete moron?’ and Bradshaw was unable to answer him. Instead he stood back as the field began to fill up with cars. Just when Ian Bradshaw was thinking his life could not conceivably get any worse, there was a blur of movement and he watched helplessly as Fiona Summers came barrelling down the hill towards them, sweeping past a slow-moving uniformed constable in the process. ‘Shit,’ he muttered and Peacock turned towards her.
    ‘Jesus,’ he hissed, ‘that’s all we need,’
    ‘Michelle!’ the poor hysterical woman was screaming her daughter’s name as she powered towards them, dress flapping in the breeze, ‘Michelle!’
    Bradshawmoved instinctively to block her path to the body. He’d played football and rugby at school but tackling Fiona Summers wasn’t easy, even for a man of his size; she was a short but bulky woman who crashed into him at speed and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to prevent her from reaching her daughter. Bradshaw managed to grab her but she twisted and wriggled in his grasp, flailing her arms at him, all the while shouting her daughter’s name.
    ‘Let her through, Bradshaw,’ his DI told him calmly and when Bradshaw looked at his boss he was told, ‘What difference does it make?’
    He meant that a crime scene as ancient as this one couldn’t be contaminated any further if Fiona Summers ran over the ground they’d already trampled underfoot. It would be easier to let her see the corpse than try to convince her it was not Michelle. She was hardly likely to jump in the ditch and embrace it. As soon as he released her, Fiona went straight to the hole in a stumbling run, peered down into it then froze, before turning back to them.
    ‘What?’ gasped Fiona and it was left to the DI to state the obvious.
    ‘It’s not her,’ he told the panicked mother, ‘it’s not Michelle.’
    When they returned to the station, DI Peacock took Bradshaw to one side and gave him some clear direction, ‘I want you to go and sit in the canteen,’ he told the detective constable, ‘I want you to take that big file with you, the one with the details of all the known kiddy-fiddlers and rapists on our territory and I want you to lay it on the table in front of you. I want you to take a pen and a padso that anyone who looks in on you will think there is s a man who is working incredibly hard on DI Peacock’s case. He’s checking out suspects, trying to find a lead, looking for a breakthrough.’
    ‘Yes, Sir.’
    ‘But do you know what I really want you to do in there?’
    ‘Er …’
    ‘Nothing,’ he told Bradshaw, ‘not one thing. I want you to sit there all afternoon, drinking tea and keeping well out of my way. I don’t want to see your face again until tomorrow. Even then it will be too soon. I don’t want you under the feet of real police officers who know what they are doing. Do you know why?’
    ‘Yes, Sir.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I messed up, Sir.’
    ‘No,’ Peacock assured him, ‘incorrect, Bradshaw. That’s not the reason. Anyone can mess up from time to time, even me. No, I don’t want you around because you are an idiot Bradshaw. Despite all of your A levels, you don’t know what fucking day it is. I don’t have qualifications like yours but I do have the sense I was born with. I have worked extremely hard to get as far as I have and I’m not going to allow you to fuck it all up for me, do you hear?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘So what are you going to do now?’
    ‘Go to the canteen?’
    Peacock nodded, ‘and … ?’
    ‘Stay there?’
    ‘Congratulations Bradshaw, you finally got something right.’



CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Helen dropped her bag on her desk and was about to sit down when Mel, the reporter who occupied the desk next to her, said, ‘They found a body at Great Middleton while you were gone; in the field behind the school.’
    ‘Shit,’ said Helen, cursing