‘It’s not necessary, Mrs Sykes, we can do it ourselves.’
‘No, I’ll help you. I have to release Stewart anyway.’
She stood up and walked with them to the door of the living room, stopping before she reached it. ‘When can I see his body?’
‘I wouldn’t advise it, Mrs Sykes, the burning…’
Mrs Sykes nodded once, opening the door.
‘But when I come back this afternoon, I can help you with the details of the funeral.’
‘The funeral? I hadn’t thought about the funeral. What shall I do?’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll talk about it this afternoon.’
As he was leaving the living room, Ridpath noticed a framed photograph high up on the wall. ‘What’s that, Mrs Sykes?’
She looked upwards, following Ridpath’s pointing finger. ‘It’s Samuel and his five-a-side team the day they won a tournament. He was a good footballer was Samuel.’
‘Could I borrow it?’ Ridpath asked, already reaching up to unhook it from the wall.
‘I suppose so, but please return it, won’t you?’
‘Of course, Mrs Sykes.’
They were ushered out into the hall.
‘I hope the funeral won’t cost too much, we just live on Father’s pension.’
Mrs Challinor turned round in the doorway. ‘Don’t worry, there are things we can do. I’ll take you through them when I come back.’
Mrs Sykes closed the front door and they walked down the driveway to the gate.
‘What was all that about, Ridpath? Why did you want the photograph?’
‘Because I saw exactly the same one in Joseph Brennan’s house.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
As soon as Ridpath arrived back at the coroner’s office, he went through the email sent by the crime scene manager, Helen Charles, after the Wythenshawe fire, finding the picture almost immediately.
He placed the printouts side by side. ‘See, this one is cropped more tightly, but it’s the same picture.’ He pointed to the one they had taken from the Sykes house. It showed five boys dressed in a football kit of red shirts and white shorts, with two adults standing behind them. Only the right arm and shoulder of one of the adults was visible. Above them was a banner with the initials ‘NAGBC F—’ but the rest was cut off. In front of the team was a handwritten placard: ‘Manchester and District Under-13s Five-a-Side Champions 1994.’
Mrs Challinor leaned across. ‘Sam Sykes is in the centre holding the trophy. Is that Joseph Brennan on his right?’
They compared the thirteen-year-old Brennan with a picture of him as an adult. ‘I think so,’ said Ridpath. ‘He certainly looks the same around the eyes.’
Ridpath began to remove the frame from the Sykes picture. ‘If the mother is anything like mine, she writes names on the back.’ He took the photograph out of the frame and turned it over. ‘Mothers seem to be the same the world over.’
In positions corresponding with the team’s pose were written five names:
Tony Doyle
Tommy Larkin
Sam
Joe Brennan
Harry McHale
In the space at the top was written:
Coach: David Mulkeen
There was no name given for the other adult.
‘Is this the link, Ridpath?’ asked Mrs Challinor.
‘I don’t know, but it’s a bloody big coincidence two children in the same photo are found dead just one day apart, and both had their bodies burnt.’
A knock on the door.
‘Enter,’ called out Mrs Challinor.
Sophia came in. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I thought Ridpath should see this.’ She held out an envelope. ‘It came in last night.’
‘You’re working too?’ asked Mrs Challinor.
‘I knew Ridpath was going to be here so I thought I’d come in. Either that or stay at home and listen to my aunties asking why I’m not married yet.’
Ridpath tore the envelope open as she spoke, scanning the contents. ‘It’s the post-mortem report from Dr Schofield. He states that in his view both men were killed before they were set alight.’ He turned over the page. ‘The accelerant used on both of them was the same: methylated spirits.’
‘He’s also confirmed a match between the dental bridge and one created for Joseph Brennan by his dentist,’ added Sophia.
‘Do we have the evidence now, Ridpath?’ asked the coroner.
He nodded.
‘It looks like you need to go and see Claire Trent again. I’ll call her now.’
Ridpath’s heart sank. If he couldn’t convince her this time, his career was over. He was going to be as dead as the corpses in Dr Schofield’s mortuary.
Only worse; he would still be breathing.
Chapter Forty
He was ready.
He had confirmed the address on the sex offenders’ register and already scoped out the man’s habits. Luckily, two of his victims had lived in the same town, as if drawn like moths to the same place or to each other. It had made life easier for him. He’d been able to kill two birds with one stone.
Or in his case, one lighter.
The television on the table in his room had just shown the news. They had found the psychotherapist on the moors above Marsden. Of course, they didn’t know who he was yet, but he guessed they would find out eventually.
Not to worry. He would be finished soon.
He remembered the day he’d discovered the truth, found his meaning in life.
The psychotherapist had been treating him for six months using Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing, or EMDR as the man called it. Forcing him to tap his bloody leg while different sounds played through the headphones and he tried to remember what happened.
A waste of bloody time.
God, the man loved his acronyms. PHQ, PTSD, DIS, CBT, HRSD, IPT and MDD were just a few he used in their sessions.
These acronyms weren’t meant to help him or explain his treatment. Instead they were used to cloud and confuse, to place the psychotherapist on a higher plane; the owner of secret, arcane knowledge. Like the priests of old mouthing their incantations in a Latin neither their congregation nor they themselves understood.
After two months, he started the RCT. A Randomised Clinical Trial to assess his depression. Not to help him, but to help the psychotherapist publish a paper for his next conference.
But whatever he was doing worked. One day, he was sat in his chair watching television and the song came on. Immediately, he was transported back to that time.
The pain.
The laughter.
Their taunts.
Everything he had buried for so long back with him as if it had only happened yesterday.
He knew then what he had to do.
Sunday evening was the beginning. The psychotherapist had to be the first, of course. He knew everything and it was all his fault anyway. If he hadn’t meddled, the memories would have stayed hidden, buried beneath years of denial.
The man had been reluctant to get into the car initially, but a sharp tap with the ball peen hammer had soon made him understand it might be a good idea to obey.
‘Don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you say, just don’t hurt me.’
He had forced the man to drive out from Manchester along the A62, through the wasteland that was Oldham and up past the delightfully named Delph, Diggle and Dobcross onto the moors above. He had mapped out the route the week before, knew the exact time it would take, the place to park and the length of time it would take to kill this man.
The psychotherapist didn’t know he was going to die. Oh, he probably had an inkling, but in situations like this, the human brain refuses to accept the inevitable. It hangs on to hope like a man tiptoeing across a termite-rotten wooden bridge.
‘Douse the lights and get out.’
The man did as he was told. They didn’t have far to walk to the place he had chosen.
‘Go down there. I’ll follow y
ou.’
‘Where are you taking me? What are you doing? I’ll pay you, pay you anything, just let me go back.’
‘Go down there.’
‘But it’s dark, I can’t see where I’m going. Release me, I’ll pay you.’
He hated the pleading. The psychotherapist should have listened to him properly when he told him about the plan. Instead, he had said, ‘You mustn’t indulge these fantasies, they’re not good for you.’
They weren’t fantasies. They were real, as he was about to discover.
He took the backpack from the rear seat of the car and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Move.’
The psychotherapist obeyed, slipping down the path to the old pack bridge crossing the stream. He had often come here in the past, sitting beside this small moorland rill, hearing the burbling of the water and the trills of the robins in the nearby trees. All the while thinking of murder: what it would feel like, what it would smell like, what it would taste like.
A wonderful time when a terrible beauty would be born.
The psychotherapist didn’t understand when he was told. God, the man was stupid. ‘If you persist in these, these morbid thoughts, I will have to report you to the police.’
The threat was the last straw. If the police knew, they would stop him.
And he couldn’t be stopped. Not any more.
‘Walk across the bridge and follow the path beside the stream. Seventy-five metres along you will come to a single rowan tree. Stop there.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I’ll be right behind you.’
He had chosen a moonlit night and the path was clear. The psychotherapist’s mouth opened, flapped once, but no words came out. Then the man turned and walked over the bridge, taking the path towards the rowan.
He followed. Closer now; the man mustn’t get away.
Not now.
Not when he was so close to being free. Free of the nightmares and of the dreams haunting him for so long.
This was simply the first step.
A week from now he would be free.
Once the plan had been implemented. Because freedom was never handed to anybody on a plate. It had to be seized with both hands and held aloft. Or in his case, seized back from those who had robbed him of it all those years ago.
The psychotherapist stumbled on the path, his comfortable loafers not really designed for walking along the barren moors. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady had loved this area too, burying their victims in the deep, peaty soil not far from here on Saddleworth Moor. Some of them must still be up here, their flesh ravaged by time and the acid in the soil. The quiet bleakness a perfect setting for death.
So it goes.
But he wasn’t going to emulate those two. For one, he had a simple plan to avoid being caught. And secondly, there was a beauty to the way his victims were going to die. A terrible beauty.
The man was breathing heavily now. A combination of fear, the slight uphill gradient and obesity. Sitting down all day on his fat arse, passing judgement on the poor fools who believed in him, did nothing for his fitness.
‘You can stop now.’
The psychotherapist slowly began to turn around.
He hit him with the ball peen hammer on the back of the head, just above the right ear. The man dropped like a sack of Spanish onions.
Was he dead?’
No. A barely perceptible whine was coming from the man’s mouth.
Never mind, he soon would be.
Putting his backpack down, he dragged the psychotherapist the rest of the way up the hill to the rowan tree. He should have made the man walk closer to it. Why expend energy uselessly? He would remember for the next one.
Propping him up against the tree, he adjusted the man’s jacket so it hung correctly across his body and wiped the shoes clean. He couldn’t stand dirty shoes, such a bad advert for any man’s cleanliness.
He checked all the pockets were completely empty and returned to the backpack, admiring the symmetry of the man’s body against the tree and the moonlit sky, like the logo on his Kindle. Except this man wasn’t reading his book, he was about to die.
The can of spray paint was in the side pocket. He took it out and sprayed his message across the top of the gorse. ‘PLAY THE GAME.’
Off in the distance a fox barked at the moon.
Then silence, a silence that called to him as it always had.
He let his head fall back and drown in its peace, before taking out the methylated spirits and sprinkling it all over the body.
He sparked the lime-green lighter and lit the end of the rag. It crackled for a moment and then burst into flame.
The flames took hold and he tossed the rag onto the man. There was a whoosh as the dry branches of the tree also went up in flames.
He checked the surrounding area to see if he had left anything behind and then walked slowly back down the path to his car.
Behind him, the night sky began to glow with a new source of light. Halfway down, he stopped for a second and listened to the sound of the tree crackling amid the dancing flames.
He couldn’t resist it any longer; he glanced back. The man’s body had dissolved into a roar of orange flame. The fire was spreading now through the dry grass and gorse, up the side of the bank and over the moor. An orange line sparking the night sky.
He sat back up in bed, drawn back from his memories to the small room in his boarding house by a familiar sound on the television.
They were playing the song.
He took it as a good omen. Not long to go before he would be free.
Chapter Forty-One
Mrs Challinor sat in the car outside the house in Bowden. She had just finished talking to Sandra Sykes, after returning as she had promised in the late afternoon. It hadn’t been the easiest conversation.
‘You said he was burnt to death?’
‘Sorry, I should have made myself clearer. His body had been set on fire after he was murdered.’
The mother’s hand went to her mouth. Her husband sat next to her, staring at Antiques Roadshow with the sound turned down, a half-finished bowl of soup on the table next to him.
‘Oh, my poor son.’ Tears appeared in the woman’s eyes. ‘Why would anyone do a thing like that to my son?’
‘We don’t know, Sandra, but the police are investigating the death as we speak. They will find out who did it.’
The woman was quiet for a moment. ‘When can I see the body? I’d like to see the body.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it, Sandra. When a body is severely burnt, it—’
‘I want to see him.’
‘I’ll check with the pathologist when it can be released.’
‘Pathologist?’
‘In all suspicious deaths, a post-mortem has to be performed.’
‘You cut up my beautiful boy? You cut up Sam?’ she shouted.
Her husband looked across at her but didn’t move.
‘We had to order a post-mortem, Sandra, it’s the law.’ Then Mrs Challinor reconsidered her answer. ‘As the coroner, I had to order a post-mortem—’
Before she could finish her sentence, the woman was on her feet. ‘Get out of my house. How could you cut up my poor boy?’
‘Mrs Sykes, Sandra, I—’
‘Get out. I want you out of my house.’ The woman pointed to the door.
Mrs Challinor gathered up her briefcase, leaving her business card on the side table. ‘Call me if you want to discuss anything. Call me anytime—’
‘Get out!’
Those words still echoed in Mrs Challinor’s ears as she sat outside their home in her car, staring out through the rain-spattered windscreen. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours.
She thought about walking up the path, knocking on the door and trying to explain to Sandra Sykes that it was her job to investigate the dead, discover who they were and how they had died, but there was no point. Sandra Sykes w
ould have to come to terms with her son’s death in her own time. Intruding on her grief at this moment was not something that would help. In fact, it would only hurt the poor woman even more.
Mrs Challinor tried to do her job to the best of her ability, but it was at times like these she wondered if it was worth it. People were always going to die. Perhaps it would have been a better use of her life to save the living rather than explain the dead.
Enough. There was work to do.
She picked up her mobile and rang Ridpath. He answered immediately. ‘Your meeting with Claire Trent is tomorrow morning at nine a.m. She was very reluctant to see you, Ridpath. What happened last time?’
‘I may have pushed her too hard.’
‘Well, don’t do it again. Just take her through the evidence we’ve found.’
‘Will do.’ There was a pause at the end of the phone. ‘Are you OK, Mrs Challinor? Your voice, it sounds—’
‘I’m fine, Ridpath. Just don’t let me down tomorrow, that’s all.’
She switched off her phone. Perhaps she had been too harsh with him. Should she call him back and explain what had just happened?
‘He’s a grown man, he’ll get over it,’ she said out loud before switching on the engine, putting the car in gear and driving to the end of the road.
Instead of turning right, towards her own house, she turned left. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t go home right now. Couldn’t face the silence calling to her in that empty place. Both her children were away at university and her husband, well, he had found a younger model over five years ago now.
She couldn’t face going back there.
Not this evening.
She turned right onto the A56 heading back towards the city centre. She knew where she was going, of course. It was something she sometimes did on a Sunday evening when the loneliness of home drove her onto the streets and no work remained to force her to stay inside.
Through Stretford, past Old Trafford with its floodlight towers standing dark in the rain, on through Hulme, rebuilt now after being devastated by the post-war plans of tower blocks and crescents that ended up as homes for the dispossessed and addicts. On up Deansgate, old Victorian buildings standing next to glass-and-concrete towers. Homes for the young and trendy and witless.
Where the Silence Calls Page 16
