Free Blue Murder by Cath Staincliffe

allotments in the Whalley Range district of Manchester today. Police have launched a murder enquiry … ”
    Sarah got up and took a step towards the telly.
    They were showing a shot outside the Tulley’s house and Janine and Richard leaving. ‘That’s not my best side.’ Janine pointed out.
    “... In Lancashire another two in a series of off-licence robberies … ”
    ‘Oh, my god!’ Sarah turned back to Janine.
    Janine turned the sound off. ‘You know him?’
    ‘Know of him. Through the union. He was disciplined for hitting a pupil. And last year, the lad he’d assaulted came back to school and stabbed him in the playground.’
    Janine’s mind was racing. Someone had stabbed Tulley before?
    ‘Can you remember the boy’s name?’
    Sarah nodded. ‘Yeah, Ferdie Gibson, became a sort of shorthand for dangerous pupils, anyone like that we’d call it having a Ferdie in the form.’
    Janine grabbed her phone. They needed everything they could get on this Gibson.
    Sarah watched her. ‘What?’
    ‘First solid lead,’ Janine told her. ‘Sounds like this could be the bloke we’re looking for.’
     
    *****
     
    Dean lay on the sofa bed in Douggie’s lounge with just the glow from the VCR to take the edge off the darkness; he waited till he reckoned the others were asleep. There’d been no sounds from upstairs for a while. The place had cellars: one room with a washer/dryer in, two others derelict under the back of the house. One of them would do. He could have asked Douggie for a safe place but, since he’d learnt what Douggie was wrapped up in, he knew he should be cautious. Safer all round to keep it to himself. He had stretched over and switched on the table lamp, retrieved the carrier bag from his holdall.
    The lounge door creaked when he opened it but he figured if either Douggie or Gary heard him they’d assume he needed to take a leak or get a drink. The light in the cellar worked, he went carefully down the wooden steps. Washing machine straight ahead. Turned back on himself to the empty cellars. Doorways into gloom. The first took a bit of light from the bare bulb hanging on the wire at the bottom of the stairs. Enough to spill across the dusty floor over bricks and old milk bottles and to the edge of a pile of junk up against the far wall. The place reeked of coal, the tarry smell rich in the cold, damp air, a whiff of mould too, catching at his throat.
    Dean stood and examined the possibilities. He moved closer to the pile of junk. The chassis of an old pram, thick with rust, cardboard boxes, rags. There was a folding chair, striped canvas clotted with black mildew. Dean opened it a little and put the bag in the middle, folded it shut. He lifted up a piece of rotting blanket from the floor and draped it over the chair. Pushed the whole thing round to the right hand side of the rubbish, the darkest part. It wasn’t perfect, Douggie or Gary could come down here and start rooting about but it was better than leaving it lying around upstairs. Ripe for anyone to pick up. That my shopping? Bloody ‘ell, look at this. What you doing with this, Dean? Looking at him in a new way, thinking all sorts because of what he had in the bag.
     
    *****
     
    He was lying on the table in the garden. Lesley called to him but he didn’t answer. She walked over to him but suddenly there was a crowd around the table and they wouldn’t let her pass. ‘He’s my husband,’ she shouted to them, ‘please, I have to help him.’ People pushed and jostled her, called names. She fought her way through them with a terrible urgency.
    Then she was beside him, the others fell silent.
    ‘Matthew,’ she took a pace back, her breathing heavy, the sweat cooling rapidly on her arms and legs. Matthew moved. He raised himself up and turned to face her. He smiled.
    Why had she been so frightened? He was fine. ‘Oh, Matthew.’ He held out his arms and she walked into them, he embraced her and she let her tears fall on his