No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) by Howard Linskey

couldn’t reacha higher level, the bitch-whore-slag started ‘seeing someone’. And how had he found this out? His own daughter had told him. ‘Mam’s got a boyfriend,’ she’d said matter-of-factly, as if her mother had just bought a new pair of shoes. He didn’t know why he was so shocked. He already knew she was a whore but perhaps he hoped she might not be so blatant about it while she was living off his money.
    He was handing over nearly all of his wages so she could raise his daughter without him, paying for a house that another man was screwing his wife in. Where was the justice in that? It made him sick to his stomach whenever he thought of them doing it in his home, with his daughter asleep in the next room, his ex-wife rutting like a pig with a new man. It made him want to kill them both.
    ‘Dad? Dad!’ Lindsay was calling and she was agitated. He hadn’t heard her at first. Sometimes he got so lost in his dark thoughts about his ex-wife that he let his coffee go cold or forgot there was food in the oven, until an acrid smell of burnt plastic reminded him that his supermarket ready meal was ruined. He became dimly aware of a sound then; a continuous jarring noise that was competing for his attention along with his daughter’s urgent voice.
    ‘What?’ he asked her groggily and he felt as if he had just been woken from a very deep sleep.
    ‘The lights,’ she informed him, ‘they’re green.’
    And when he finally looked he realised she was right, they were, and the noise in his head was the sound of a car horn blaring continuously, as if the owner of the car behind them had finally lost all patience. He thought itbest not to acknowledge his foolishness to his daughter, so instead he drove silently away.
    Tom drove to the highest point in the village and parked up by the church. He even had to climb out of his car to get a signal. ‘Please work, please work,’ he told the phone, and it did. It rang three times then, to his great relief, Terry answered. He sounded like he was at the opposite end of a wind tunnel and Tom was forced to shout to be heard. He told Terry about the body in the field, silently praying he would be interested in the story.
    ‘We’re on it already,’ said Terry and Tom realised he’d been wasting his time, ‘our Northern correspondent’s got it. He has a contact at police HQ, someone high up. He wouldn’t be much of a correspondent if he didn’t. You haven’t given me anything I don’t already know.’
    ‘I figured as much,’ said Tom with forced cheerfulness, ‘thought I’d better call it in anyway, just in case,’ he was trying hard to hide the crushing disappointment he was feeling, ‘how are things there?’
    ‘Awful,’ he was informed, ‘we’re not just dealing with a cabinet minister here. It’s his wife too.’
    ‘His wife?’
    ‘She’s a barrister and a psycho from hell. Her nickname in legal circles is “The Bitch”, which is quite something, coming from other lawyers. They reckon even the PM is shit-scared of her. Everybody is.’
    ‘Including the Doc?’
    ‘Especially the Doc,’ conceded Terry, ‘she phoned him this morning, had his balls in a vice for over an hour. Wemight as well have put a white flag on the roof of the building.’
    ‘So what will he do?’
    ‘You did not hear this from me,’ Terry told him, ‘but we might have to settle.’
    ‘You’re kidding?’ This couldn’t be happening. Surely the legendary Doc wasn’t really going to roll over at the first mention of a libel case.
    ‘It’s a strong possibility,’ admitted Terry, ‘substantial damages, a retraction, an apology.’
    ‘Doesn’t this woman care that her husband was shagging hookers?’ Tom was incredulous.
    ‘Doesn’t believe it,’ said Terry, ‘or chooses not to. She’s tied her entire life, her future and the future of her children to that man. If he rises they rise, if he falls, they come crashing down to earth with him. So, if he’s been