When the Guilty Cry

by M J Lee

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re going to film yourself as you say the script.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Kira film me?’

  ‘That would be difficult with the door closed, the space is too small for two people.’

  ‘Door closed?’

  ‘How’s sound, Dan?’

  ‘I’m attaching a wireless mike. Should be fine.’

  The soundman was fiddling with the presenter’s collar.

  ‘You want me to go in there alone?’

  ‘Won’t be long, Ian. Say the lines and come straight out. It’s gonna look great and set the atmosphere.’

  The presenter nodded doubtfully.

  ‘Here’s the camera, keep it pointed at your face.’ The producer gently pushed him into the room. ‘You know the script, Ian?’

  He nodded.

  She closed the door.

  From the inside, the room was six feet square with a glimmer of moonlight seeping through the iron-barred window set up high on the left-hand side. Lime-washed plaster walls came halfway down where they joined to white-painted wooden panels.

  ‘Ready?’ the producer asked.

  He shivered, looking around the walls of his cell. ‘I don’t like it in here, Pam, let me out, please.’

  ‘Just say the lines and you can come out.’

  He heard the sound of a metal bolt being slotted home.

  ‘Why are you bolting the door?’

  ‘For atmosphere.’ The producer’s voice was muffled. Ian could have sworn he heard the sound of laughter from outside. Was it the crew? Or something else?

  ‘Stay calm,’ he said to himself, ‘it’s just a room like any other.’

  The presenter switched on the camera, his hands shaking as the green light on top illuminated the room, throwing the shadows into sharp relief. He glanced over his shoulder before pointing it at his face. ‘I’m in one of the rooms on the ground floor.’ He panned around the small room, focusing on the walls and the barred window. ‘It was in this room, only six feet square, where the children who broke the rules were locked for hours on end, screaming to be released.’ A long pause was written in the script. ‘But their cries went unheard and unanswered.’

  He focused on the door. The white paint was covered in long, thin scratches.

  ‘Right, I’m done. Let me out,’ he shouted at the closed door.

  No answer from the film crew.

  ‘You can let me out now, guys.’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Hey, the joke’s gone far enough. Let me out.’

  He banged twice on the door with his free hand.

  ‘Pam? Kira? Dan? Are you there? Let me out.’

  He kicked the door with his foot, again and again. He could feel the sick taste of panic rising up in his throat. He kicked the door again. ‘Let me out.’

  The room was closing in on him. It felt so small and terrible and cold. ‘Let me out,’ he screamed, kicking wildly at the door and the wooden panels surrounding him, hearing one splinter and break as his foot crashed through it.

  The noise was followed by the sound of the bolt being pulled back and the producer’s voice. ‘Coming in now, Ian.’

  Light flooded through the open door. The producer stood there. ‘The film of you panicking was great, but you didn’t need to kick in the wooden panels.’

  But Ian wasn’t listening to her. He was staring through the gap in the wall he had made with his foot. ‘There’s something inside here. It looks like a bag of some sort.’

  She pushed him out of the way and reached into the opening, pulling out a faded green and red striped backpack.

  ‘You told us not touch anything,’ said Ian. ‘It could have been left here by a junkie.’

  She carried it out into the corridor and walked back towards the lights in the kitchen, followed by the rest of the crew. She placed the backpack in the centre of the table. ‘Can you swing the light over here, Dan?’

  The soundman put down his machine and moved the light so it shone directly at the backpack. On the wall, a large black shadow loomed large.

  ‘You’re not going to open it, are you?’

  ‘Of course we are, Ian. Could be something important.’

  Pulling the toggle holding the zip, she peered into the backpack. There was something inside. What was it? She pulled the opening wider.

  ‘Careful, there might be rats nesting. Or worse.’

  She ignored the presenter. ‘Can you bring the light closer, Dan?’

  The producer peered inside. There was something hard and white. Slowly, the shape coalesced in her head. She jumped backwards. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she shouted.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it’s a hand. A human hand.’

  Chapter 3

  Two people were already waiting behind police tape when John Schofield arrived. A constable held the log sheet for him to sign in. ‘Sorry I’m late, it’s Monday.’

  A shadow loomed over him. ‘Actually, it’s Tuesday morning, 3.10 a.m. to be precise…’

  ‘You’re right, Hannah. Good to see you again, we’ll have to stop meeting like this.’

  The crime scene manager smiled. ‘Fat chance in Manchester these days.’ She was already wearing a full protective suit.

  A small, rotund man stepped forward. ‘Good morning, sir. DS Dave Connor, local CID.’ He stuck his hand out and then retracted it, stepping backwards to maintain distance, remembering that lockdown protocols still existed. ‘Sorry, force of habit.’

  The sky was still dark, the house looking even more sinister reflected in the flashing blue lights of the police cars. Off to one side the film crew were hanging around impatiently, stamping their feet, arms wrapped around their bodies to keep out the chill and damp of a Manchester morning.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ asked Schofield, his high-pitched voice almost boyish rather than that of an experienced pathologist.

  ‘A film crew found a backpack with what they think is a human hand inside.’ Dave Connor pointed towards the four members of the film crew, now whispering to each other. One of them began filming with a phone. ‘They called 999 and we responded. I looked inside the backpack and called you and Hannah.’

  ‘You didn’t touch anything else?’

  The detective shook his head. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘No body?’

  ‘None we can see, Dr Schofield,’ replied the crime scene manager.

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t a prank, or a publicity stunt?’

  Hannah shrugged her shoulders. ‘No, but they were adamant there was a human hand inside the backpack—’

  ‘And if there is, you have to call me out.’ He shook his head. ‘Have you checked it yourself?’

  ‘Not yet, waiting for you.’

  ‘And the other CSIs are on their way?’

  ‘Me first, I’ll call the others out after you’ve checked out the backpack and confirmed the hand is human and not some plaster model.’

  ‘Right, give me a second while I put on my gear and you can show me where it is.’

  Five minutes later, Schofield returned in a full Tyvek bodysuit complete with mask and eye protectors, carrying his medical examiner’s bag. ‘You can’t be too cautious when dealing with human remains.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Connor dubiously.

  While the detective sergeant stayed outside, Hannah Palmer and the pathologist stepped carefully though the open door, avoiding the detritus on the floor and, using stepping tiles, edged along the hall to the kitchen.

  ‘What was this place?’

  ‘According to the film crew, it was a children’s home, but it closed in 2006.’

  The backpack was sitting on the table, exactly where the producer had left it.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘It is, Doctor.’

  ‘And nobody has touched it?’

  ‘Only the person who found it. A Ms Pamela Best, the producer of the film.’

  ‘What were they doing here late on
a Monday night?’

  ‘They’re paranormal investigators.’

  Both Schofield’s eyebrows and voice rose. ‘What?’

  ‘Apparently it’s all the rage on the internet. Film crews visit old houses looking for ghosts. My son watches them.’

  Schofield grunted. ‘OK, let’s take a look at what we’ve got. I hope this isn’t some stunt pulled by the film crew.’

  ‘If it is, they’ll be spending the rest of the week down the nick, charged with wasting police time.’

  ‘Isn’t that a hanging offence?’

  ‘Should be.’

  They both stared at the backpack. The only light was provided by the arc lamp left behind by the film crew. Schofield took out a lamp attached to a headband from his examiner’s bag, putting around it around his head so the bulb looked like a giant third eye in the centre of his forehead.

  He switched it on and the light immediately illuminated the faded green canvas of the backpack, a large white label sticking out from one side with the word CLAK in bright red letters.

  Hannah followed suit, pointing her luminescent white-light torch at the dark opening. The top of the backpack looked like the mouth of a giant toad, the inside dark and forbidding.

  Schofield reached into his doctor’s bag and took out a pair of stainless steel forceps. ‘You’d better have an evidence bag ready in case there is something inside.’ Cautiously, he peered into the top.

  There was something there.

  In the light from his headband, it looked greenish white and slightly scaly with a hard, discoloured yellow top.

  He widened the opening in the top of the bag with the forceps, the light revealing something longer with a hard dirty yellow nail at the end and a green tinge to the cuticle.

  ‘Is it human?’ asked Hannah.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he answered.

  He sniffed the air. No smell of putrefaction. Strange.

  He reached in with the forceps and pulled. The hand gave a little, then stuck fast.

  ‘Damn.’ He widened the opening in the bag. He could see the whole hand now. Quite large, short fingered with a masculine heaviness, the hand of a middle-aged man, perhaps.

  He reached in again with the forceps, gripping the hand on either side of the palm and pulling. ‘Got you.’

  He held the hand up to the light from his lamp. ‘A human hand severed from the arm though the scaphoid and lunate bones, all metacarpals and phalanges intact, it would seem.’ He examined it carefully. ‘A right hand, from the position of the thumb.’

  Hannah held open the evidence bag and he dropped the hand into it.

  She took it off to one side, sealed it and wrote her name, time and location on the cover. When the CSIs arrived, she would catalogue it, assigning the correct number.

  ‘When you’ve finished, can you send it on to my lab? And make sure it’s placed in some ice. I don’t want it to decay any further.’

  ‘No problem, Doctor. This is a crime scene, then?’

  He pointed to the hand. ‘Well, it’s human, separated from the arm through the wrist. I could see saw marks on the bone.’

  ‘Where’s the rest of the body?’

  Schofield looked around the old house. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  He was about to call for Dave Connor to come in when it occurred to him to re-check the interior of the backpack. He looked inside, noticing a zipped-up internal pocket.

  ‘Hang on, there may be something here.’

  With his gloved hand, he reached in and pulled the zipper across. It moved smoothly, as if it had been recently opened.

  Hannah Palmer moved closer to him, directing her light inside the new opening.

  Another hand.

  More decayed this time, as if it had been in the bag for longer, the flesh sloughing off to reveal the gleaming whiteness of a finger bone beneath.

  Schofield reached in with the forceps and grasped it firmly, pulling it out to hold under the torch light.

  ‘Is this the left hand?’

  Schofield thought for a moment, stared intently at the hand and then shook his head. ‘This is another right hand. And from its smallness and the length of the fingers, I would say a female.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Hannah.

  ‘No, this one is female.’

  ‘I meant—’

  ‘I know what you meant, and I would prefer it if you didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

  Hannah Palmer ignored the admonishment and held open another evidence bag. Schofield dropped the smaller hand into it.

  As she wrote on the outside of the evidence bag, he peered into the backpack once more.

  ‘You’d better get me one more of those.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s another. It’s a right hand too.’

  ‘Jesus,’ whispered the crime scene manager under her breath.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 4

  Mornings were always the most difficult for Ridpath. It was when he missed the elegant chaos of his wife the most.

  The continual drinking of endless cups of the strongest black coffee to kick-start her brain. The perpetual loss of this textbook or that piece of marking as she packed her briefcase before school. The constant indecision over which clothes to wear or not wear, as if the ten-year-olds she taught were fashion critics from Vogue. The last-minute search for lip gloss, or eyeliner, or blusher, or any other cosmetic enhancement to help a female teacher create a mask to hide from her class.

  It was in the mornings he missed Polly the most.

  Nowadays, he only had to shout upstairs three times before his daughter dragged herself out of the wasteland she called a bedroom.

  ‘Eve, it’s time to get up.’

  ‘Eve, you’re going to be late.’

  ‘Eve, if you don’t get up right this minute, I’m coming upstairs and turfing you out of bed.’

  ‘Eve—’

  ‘There’s no need to shout so loudly, Dad, you’ll wake the neighbours. Remember, Mr Dawes is on nights at the Park Hospital this week.’

  They had moved into the new house a month ago. It was closer to Eve’s new school and after nearly a year in a serviced apartment, he was happy to have a place of his own. Luckily, Eve had come to live with him before the second lockdown, or was it the third? He couldn’t imagine not being with her over December or the New Year.

  They had spent the time together during the pandemic in their own little bubble, Eve skyping her friends and grandparents, and as the daughter of a key worker, still attending school.

  He still went into the coroner’s office, of course, and Greater Manchester Police, but figured out more and more ways of working from home. He knew for others it had been a difficult time, but for him, he had been strangely happy. It was a time to be with his daughter, watch her grow up, become the spitting image of his deceased wife in looks and in character.

  Selling the old house had been relatively easy – it was close to good schools and the quasi-bohemian delights of Chorlton. Neither of them could live there again after what had happened to Polly just over a year ago.

  She still haunted Ridpath’s dreams at night, though. The ring of the doorbell. Her shout of, ‘I’ll get it.’ Mrs Seagram at the door. Two loud bangs and Polly was lying in the hallway, her blood staining the carpet and the acrid smell of cordite in the air. The life slowly dimming in her eyes as the blood flowed from her chest.

  Ridpath breathed in deeply three times, concentrating on his safe place, high on the hills in the Peak District, wind blowing through his hair, as the memories flooded in of that terrible day.

  ‘Earth to Dad, come in, Dad. What’s for breakfast?’

  He shook his head. ‘Boiled eggs with toast soldiers. Orange juice on the side.’

  ‘Great, I’m starving.’ Eve stumbled past him, into the kitchen.

  It was either feast or famine at the moment with Eve. She either didn’t want to eat or was perpetually hungry. Lik
e all parents, he worried about eating disorders and teenage girls, but he couldn’t see her obsessing about her weight or vanishing into the toilet after meals. Instead, she seemed to have no interest in food. For her, it was only fuel that gave her the energy to exist, not a pleasure to be enjoyed. With one exception: sushi. For some obscure reason, she loved the Japanese raw fish and rice. Perhaps it was another taste she had inherited from her mother.

  He followed her into the kitchen and sat down opposite, sipping his black coffee. ‘What’s on today?’

  ‘Double Maths, History and then PE. God, I hate PE. I think the teacher has been to a special school for sadists. She seems to spend most of her life working out how to embarrass all the girls. The other day, Maisie Watson’s bra strap broke and her boobs were all over the place when she was running. Like two jellies in a sack.’

  ‘Too much information, Eve.’

  Despite the lockdown, Eve had started at her new school as planned last September. She had seemed to handle the experience well, making new friends and settling in comfortably, according to her teachers. She still went once a month to see the child psychologist, more because Ridpath forced her to rather than out of any desire to go herself. He too reported that she was coping with her mother’s death, and was able to explain and understand her grief.

  Sometimes Ridpath worried she handled it too well. As if she were too adept at putting the emotions she didn’t want to deal with into a little box deep inside herself and closing the lid.

  ‘Earth to Dad again. You seem to be a bit dreamy this morning. Worried about something?’ She spoke to him through mouthfuls of egg and toast.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What’s your day like?’

  ‘Meeting, then another meeting followed by, guess what? Another meeting.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’

  ‘Yeah. The usual WIP at the coroner’s office, followed by an update on the latest Covid stats around the country, and afterwards a meeting at Police HQ.’

  ‘You coming to pick me up this afternoon?’

  ‘Can you take the bus home?’

  ‘No problem, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Remember Maisie Watson?’

  ‘Her of the two jellies in a sack?’