No Name Lane (Howard Linskey) Read Online Free Page B

you’re right,’ the doctor’s face would be a picture of geniality now but if Mellor couldn’t get a simplefact like this right then what chance was there that he could actually help Bradshaw to conquer his ‘demons’, as they were both encouraged to call them?
    ‘I am,’ confirmed Bradshaw.
    The doctor cleared his throat and asked, ‘would you like some tea?’
    Always the same offer, always the same reply. ‘No.’
    ‘I will have some, if you don’t mind,’ the doctor said.
    ‘Why would I mind?’
    He heard the doctor pad across the carpet then the snick of the kettle as he switched it on. ‘So, as a young man, how did you feel about yourself, Ian? Would you mind telling me that? Take as long as you need.’
    ‘If you like.’ Ian Bradshaw didn’t really care. He just wanted the seconds to tick by until they made minutes, and then for the minutes to accumulate as quickly as possible until there were sixty of them and the hour was up, whereupon the doctor would solemnly announce, as he always did, that ‘alas and alack our time is through,’ before moving on to his next victim – the money-grubbing old goat.
    Bradshaw thought for a long while before answering, so long that he heard the kettle hiss then bubble as its watery contents slowly began to drift to the boil, then the words came out, seemingly of their own accord. ‘When I was a boy I used to think the world was a movie about my life and I was its star.’
    ‘Interesting,’ said the doctor and he began to pour.
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Yes, it is,’ Bradshaw could hear the clink, clink, clink of the metal spoon against the bone-china cup as the doctorstirred. ‘And now, Ian,’ he probed gently, ‘how do you feel about yourself now?’
    Again, there was a long silence before the younger man spoke.
    ‘Like a bit-part player,’ answered Bradshaw, ‘non-speaking.’
    Mellor contemplated DC Bradshaw’s response for a time.
    ‘Shall I tell you what I think?’ asked the good doctor eventually.
    ‘Isn’t that the whole point of the exercise?’ replied Bradshaw.
    ‘Therapy is a two-way street, Ian,’ Doctor Mellor reminded him, ‘you talk to me, we establish a bond of trust, over time. I feel it’s only fair for me to repay that trust.’
    ‘So, you’re going to tell me about your childhood?’ asked Bradshaw.
    ‘No, no, Ian,’ a slight grimace of irritation from the usually unruffled doctor, ‘that’s not what I am going to do and I suspect you know that. No, I am going to tell you what I think. What we have here is a classic case of a life failing to live up to really quite unrealistic expectations. I believe you to be a romantic at heart, Ian, with a romantic’s overblown view of the world and I don’t just mean where the fairer sex is concerned, though you are currently single,’ the doctor needlessly reminded him. ‘We have spoken before about your long-held desire to join the police force, which I feel was the nearest thing to your childhood comics filled with heroes who would somehowsave the day. You expected that the job of a police officer would be something you could fall into quite naturally and were subsequently quite unprepared for the frustrations of the job.
    ‘Don’t you see, though, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you,’ the doctor suddenly announced cheerfully, ‘apart from a quite temporary sense of shock and despair caused by the trauma of the … er … incident of which we have previously spoken at length. Aside from that, the realities of day-to-day life simply fail to live up to your expectations.’ The doctor spoke those last words as if he had just discovered a cure for cancer or at least the particular tumour that afflicted Bradshaw. This time the silence went on for so long the doctor felt compelled to prompt the detective constable with a ‘right?’
    ‘I know that,’ said Bradshaw and he sat bolt upright on the couch. ‘I bloody know that. Jesus Christ, six sodding hours for you to