by M J Lee
‘The police investigation into child abuse?’
‘The one and only. Jimmy Savile was a regular visitor.’
‘He certainly got around.’
‘Particularly when kids were involved.’
They walked into the kitchen on the stepping tiles, past the last CSI finally leaving the house.
‘All clear, Fred?’ asked Dave Connor.
‘We’re done. Glad to get out of this place. Gives me the willies.’
‘Get Hannah to call me the minute she gets anything.’
‘Will do. Hiya, Ridpath, sorry about the missus, by the way.’
Images of Polly flashed into Ridpath’s mind. Quick reminders of how much he loved and missed her. ‘Thanks, Fred, it’s kind of you.’
The CSI looked slightly embarrassed and edged out of the kitchen, carrying his bag of tricks.
Dave Connor pointed to a door at the back of the kitchen. ‘There’s a room at the end of a corridor behind the door. The backpack was found in there.’ They put on their latex gloves and walked through the door and down the corridor. ‘Apparently one of the film crew was filming in here and somehow managed to kick in one of the wooden panels.’ Dave Connor pointed to the now empty space in the wall. ‘The backpack was inside.’
‘Hidden, or in open view?’ asked Ridpath.
‘Hidden in a secret compartment,’ answered the young detective. He stuck out his elbow in the new manner of shaking hands. ‘I’m Detective Constable Oliver Davis.’
‘He’s new,’ sniffed Dave Connor.
‘Morning, DC Davis,’ answered Ridpath, ignoring the proffered elbow.
The young detective pointed to the wood. ‘Apparently, the panel could be removed. The backpack was hidden in an alcove behind it.’
‘Interesting. Could it have been there long?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Dave Connor.
‘Could it have been there when the house was a children’s home?’
‘So more than fifteen years old?’
Ridpath nodded, examining the small, empty compartment where the backpack was hidden.
‘Maybe. But these are adult hands, according to the doctor, not from kids.’
Ridpath stood up, looking all around him. Light fought its way through the small barred window high on the left-hand wall. He closed the door, instantly feeling a cold shiver dance its way down his spine. The walls seems to move closer, collapsing in on him, He quickly opened it up again. ‘Have you noticed the scratch marks on the back of the door, Dave?’ he said, his voice quivering slightly.
‘One of the CSIs pointed those out. Said they were quite old, from the amount of dirt in them. We took some samples anyway.’
Ridpath looked outside. In addition to the lock there were two bolts: one at the top and another at the bottom. ‘Where’s the key?’
‘I dunno, the door wasn’t locked.’
‘What was this place anyway?’
The young DC spoke again. He’d obviously spent time with the crime scene manager, learning on the job. ‘We’re not sure. Hannah thought it was for storing food. It’s off the kitchen, so it should be a larder.’
‘But why are the windows barred and the door reinforced?’
‘To prevent the mice getting in?’ said Dave Connor. ‘I don’t know, Ridpath. The place closed fifteen years ago.’
‘You need to talk to somebody who worked here then.’
‘You mean somebody who wasn’t locked up?’
‘What?’
‘One of the wardens was charged after Operation Pharaoh. Harold Davidson. He got eleven years.’
‘Still inside?’
Dave Connor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Probably not, you know what it’s like, could be out by now.’
‘You need to find out.’
‘I’ll see if I can find the time. Holloway is on my back for a full report, plus I need to keep the case file up to date.’
‘Can’t somebody else do it?’
Dave Connor looked dramatically around him. ‘I don’t see anybody else, do you?’
Oliver Davis’s face showed no emotion at the comment from his boss, he seemed used to it.
Ridpath sighed. ‘You also need to check up on the backpack. Who made it? When was it made? Where was it sold and who sold it? And you need to organise the uniforms for a local canvas. See if anybody noticed anything unusual.’
‘Oliver and the uniforms are doing it after they search the grounds… when they get their act together.’ He stared pointedly at the younger officer.
Oliver answered. ‘I’m on it, Ridpath, Sergeant Mac and his men are nearly ready.’
‘You’ve already interviewed the film crew?’
Dave Connor nodded. ‘Yeah, nothing from them. The producer did a recce on Monday morning but didn’t see anything. The others only turned up for filming late on Monday night. I checked out their YouTube channel. It’s the usual scary stuff. I’ll type up the interviews back at the station.’
Ridpath’s phone rang. It was Jenny Oldfield again. ‘Ridpath.’
‘Hi there, it’s Jenny. The coroner would like to see you.’
‘I’ll be in soon, we’re nearly finished here. What’s so urgent?’
‘I think you’ll have to ask her, not me.’
‘You have to go?’ asked Dave Connor.
Ridpath nodded. ‘I’m needed for some reason. Can you send me pictures of the backpack, and the case file numbers? And can you also send me the witness statements from the film crew when they are ready? I’ll take a look at them when I’m free and see if there is anything else I can come up with to help.’
‘You’re a star, Ridpath,’ said Dave Connor with a smirk.
‘One more task, check if there have been any reports of missing hands recently. Perhaps some medical students have been messing around stealing stuff from anatomy departments or from funeral parlours. Could be someone’s weird idea of fun.’
‘I’ll check, but this is too strange even for medical students.’
‘I’ll call you later, Dave, if I get anything. Let’s meet later at the mortuary.’
‘You’re going?’
‘Somebody from the coroner’s office has to be there.’
Dave Connor looked down at his feet, suddenly finding a speck of dirt on his scuffed shoes. ‘I don’t know if I can make it, Ridpath.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll send Oliver.’
‘You should be there, Dave.’
‘I hate post-mortems, give me the willies, they’re like a butcher’s shop. Oliver can watch the ghoul and listen to his squeaky voice.’
The young DC smiled innocently.
‘Have you ever been to a post-mortem before?’ asked Ridpath.
He shook his head.
‘Bring the Vicks.’
Chapter 8
‘You wanted to see me, Claire?’ Detective Chief Inspector Turnbull’s bulk filled the doorway.
Claire Trent looked up from her spreadsheets. ‘Come in, Paul. Take a seat. Won’t be a minute. The acting chief constable wants them before the end of today. Stats time. Unless I finish these numbers, we won’t have a bloody department.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse.’
Turnbull took his seat in front of his boss, Detective Superintendent Claire Trent, as she peered into the long list of percentages and case numbers. Officially, she ran the Major Investigation Team, but if he had his way, it wouldn’t be for long. ‘Still, trying to tweak the stats, boss, rather you than me.’
‘Just a minute.’ Her pen poised over the printout and then scored a deep line though one of the items. She placed the pen down and sat back in her chair. ‘How’s morale at the moment?’
Turnbull shrugged his shoulders. ‘As good as can be expected. Being put in special measures by the Inspectorate of Constabulary was a kick in the teeth for the team. Most of them had worked their guts out only to be told everything they were doing was shit.’
‘Not exactly tru
e, Paul. We had reporting issues, a failure of the systems, it was not the work of the force.’
‘People don’t see it that way, boss.’
‘It’s your job to convince them. Just because the chief constable took a hit and retired, doesn’t mean we’re out the woods.’
‘On a nice, sweet pension. Any news of a replacement?’
She nodded her head. ‘Somebody from Yorkshire, apparently, but I don’t know anything about him except he has a reputation for sorting out failing organisations.’
‘Bringing in a new brush to sweep the place clean?’
‘Something like that. Above our pay grade, Paul.’ She leant forward, placing her elbows on the table. ‘Our job is to keep going, locking up the bad guys and working cases. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
‘How are we right now?’
Turnbull sighed. ‘Stretched very thin, boss. The Liverpool gang shooting is taking up a lot of resource. The Rochdale murder, the county lines investigation with Cheshire, and the ongoing drugs investigation with South Yorkshire. Not to mention a spate of Post Office robberies in Levenshulme and Fallowfield. Plus we’ve had intelligence the Salford and Cheetham Hill mobs are about to kick off again.’
‘The last thing we need right now, another gang war.’
‘We could do with some more warm bodies, boss.’
‘Not going to happen, Paul. We make do with what we have at the moment. Budgets have to be balanced.’
‘We’re burning through a lot of overtime…’
It was Claire Trent’s turn to sigh. ‘You have to do more with less, Paul.’
‘The only thing you do with less is less, boss.’
‘I’m afraid I have to give you something else.’ She slid a file across his desk. ‘A film crew discovered a backpack when they were filming.’
‘I heard about it. Thought it was con, paranormal investigators looking for free publicity.’
She ignored him. ‘Three human hands were discovered inside the backpack. We don’t know how long they have been there.’
He picked up the file and flicked through it. ‘Just the hands, no other body parts?’
She nodded. ‘The CSI team has finished its work and the full post-mortem results will come in soon.’
‘DNA?’
‘Sent off to the lab. But they are backed up, results could take a while.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Sent off. But—’
‘I bet they are backed up too…’
‘Got it in one. We’ll get the results when we get them.’
‘Can’t the local CID handle it?’
‘They don’t have the resource.’
‘Neither do we.’
‘Could be a big case, could be nothing. A few medical students having a joke.’ Claire Trent stared across the table. ‘I’ve already promised the assistant chief constable we’re going to help the local plod.’
Turnbull didn’t look up from the file. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. ‘Has this already been reported to the coroner?’
‘I presume so.’
‘And they will be holding an inquest?’
‘Probably. What are you thinking, Paul?’
‘Why don’t we give it to Ridpath? He’s going to be looking into it for the coroner anyway, and we still pay for him. He’s not doing anything for us right now.’
Claire Trent thought for a moment without answering.
‘It’s a win–win for us, boss.’
‘Could be a conflict of interest.’
‘I’m sure we could work out something. If it turns out to be something, we can put more resource on it later.’
The detective superintendent sat back in her chair, chewing the end of her pencil. ‘I’ll have a chat with Mrs Challinor.’
‘And you’ll tell Ridpath after this afternoon’s meeting?’
She nodded and stared at Turnbull as he stood up. ‘Why are you giving Ridpath a case, Paul? I thought you and him didn’t see eye to eye?’
‘At the moment, we have no other choice, our resources are so stretched. Plus it sounds like the sort of investigation Ridpath is good at.’
‘And keeps him out of your hair?’
Turnbull ran his fingers along his newly shaven bald head. ‘You could say something like that.’ He turned to go, stopping as he reached the door. ‘You did say the hands could have been in the backpack for a long time?’
‘The CSIs weren’t sure how long. We should know more after the post-mortem.’
‘Doesn’t that make it a cold case? If Ridpath doesn’t find anything, we could move it quietly across to Holburt and his team, especially if it links to an old murder.’
‘And off our stats?’
‘Win–win–win, boss.’
Chapter 9
Ridpath walked into the coroner’s office to find Sophia, his assistant, waiting for him at his desk. ‘You’re here, I was about to call you.’
‘Am I?’ He pretended to check his arms and body. ‘So I am, and here was I thinking I was in Barbados lying on a beach holding a long, cool cocktail with a paper umbrella sticking out of the top.’
‘Nah, you’re in sunny Stockfield and we’re about to look at East Manchester deaths for the last week. Here’s your drink.’ She passed him a latte. ‘Starbucks aren’t doing paper umbrellas today. How was Northenden?’
‘Same as ever; cold, windy, beside the Mersey and now with the addition of three human hands in a backpack.’
‘At least they’re not in a curry. Here’s the WIP list.’ Sophia passed him the photocopied sheets; it ran to three pages.
He glanced down at it. ‘One hundred and fifty-five deaths over last week…’
‘About normal for this time of year, despite Covid. I’ve highlighted the ones I think the coroner will want to talk about. And here’s the updated calendar from Jenny. There’s an inquest on Wednesday and Thursday in Court One with Mrs Challinor presiding, and another on Friday in Court Two with Helen Moore in charge.’
‘Anything else I need to know?’
‘Nothing at the moment. Our side is all under control.’
Sophia had joined the office in 2019 straight from university and since then, she had made herself indispensable to Ridpath. He knew his strength wasn’t in the bureaucracy of any large organisation. Even in the police he had found the endless form filling, ass covering, memo-sending and general paper-shuffling to be tedious in the extreme. Sophia handled it all five times more quickly than he did and with ten times more grace.
‘Shall we go through?’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sophia.’
She smiled over her shoulder at him. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’
All the others were already in the meeting room as they entered. Mrs Challinor was sat in her usual place at the head of the table. She looked up from her notepad as they entered. ‘Ah, Ridpath and Sophia, as you’re here, we’ll get started.’
Beside her, Jenny Oldfield, the office manager, was dressed in bright purple with matching eyeshadow, her vibrant colour choice standing out against the wood panelling of the room and the corporate black and white clothes of all the others.
On Mrs Challinor’s right sat Helen Moore, the area coroner. She had only been at East Manchester for a year, having to deal with the worst of the pandemic and all it entailed, as well as handling her other work. For some reason, Ridpath had kept her at arm’s length. He didn’t know why, she was certainly competent at her job, but there was something about her that left him cold.
As he sat down at the table, Ridpath nodded to David Smail, the part-time coroner from Derbyshire. The whole Coroner’s Service in England and Wales operated a strange system of coroners from different districts working part-time in other areas. Ridpath had once asked Mrs Challinor why, and had received her usual blunt answer.
‘Money. It’s cheaper to do this than hire a full complement of coroners and, as the system is funded by local councils and not central gove
rnment, the number of part-time coroners has increased as the funding has decreased.’
It was one of the things he loved about working for this woman. She called a spade a spade. It wasn’t a metal implement for moving dirt. Corporate speak, most of it American, had taken over the police in the last few years, introduced by the myriad consultants who’d been hired and fired to tell coppers how to police a city.
Ten-thousand-foot view. Org charts. Actionable. Face time. Headcount. Change agent. Back burner. Bang for your buck. Behind the eight ball. Skillset. Best practice. Timeframe. Core competency. Due diligence. Value-added. Level the playing field. Low-hanging fruit. Micromanage. Pushback. Ballpark. Stakeholder. Take away. Zero-sum game.
He hated all of their catchphrases with a passion. Luckily, with Mrs Challinor, he heard the truth in plain English and that was good enough for him.
‘Jenny, why don’t you lead us through the work-in-progress?’ The coroner opened the meeting.
‘Thank you, Mrs Challinor. We have experienced a hundred and fifty-five deaths this week. The first death the coroner wants to discuss is Mark Deane from Fallowfield, number 3657/21DE.’
Ridpath looked down and found the name already highlighted by Sophia.
‘This man died in a house fire on last Tuesday afternoon. He was seventy-five years old and lived alone. There seem to be no suspicious circumstances, but we’re still waiting on the pathologist, police and fire examiner’s reports—’
‘Once we receive them I’ll see if it’s necessary to hold an inquest,’ Mrs Challinor cut in. ‘Ridpath and Sophia, did you follow up?’
‘I went to the scene last Wednesday, Mrs Challinor. From my discussions with the fire inspector, there seems to be no suspicious activity. He thought the man was smoking and fell asleep, the cigarette dropping onto the sofa and starting the fire. I have asked Mr Schofield to perform a post-mortem. You should wait until you receive the official reports before deciding whether an inquest is necessary.’
Mrs Challinor nodded.
Jenny continued. ‘The next case is Fiona Olugwe, case number 3876/21OL…’
The rest of the meeting examined the cases Sophia had highlighted. No action was advised on two of them, with the remaining four considered for public inquests after further investigation. Ridpath was instructed to open communications with each family and advise them of the possibility of a coroner’s inquiry.
