Where the Silence Calls

by M J Lee

  ‘I’ve already finished my homework, it was so easy. Mum said I could watch before I went to bed.’

  ‘She did, did she?’ Ridpath pretended to leave the room. ‘Shall I ask her?’

  Eve sat where she was.

  Ridpath was left holding the door, not exiting the room.

  ‘You can’t kid a kidder, Dad. Is that one of your police interview techniques?’

  He nodded. ‘One of them.’

  ‘You’re not very good at it, are you?’

  He laughed. ‘I suppose not. Come on down and chat with me while I eat my fish cakes.’

  ‘Mum’s specials? I would watch for the bones, she always forgets to take them out.’

  ‘Come on.’

  She glanced at the video playing on YouTube and switched it off. ‘You should really get into BTS, Dad,’ she said, getting up from her seat. ‘They’re mint.’

  ‘Mint? Is that Trebor’s or the Royal?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sometimes, Dad, I really don’t know what you’re on about.’

  They went downstairs. Ridpath devoured the fish cakes, he hadn’t realised how hungry he was. Eve told them all about Jungkook and how the girls, even Molly Beamish, thought he was so dreamy. Polly sat with them both and drank two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc.

  Ridpath loved being a family again, all the highs and lows of it.

  But as he sat there, he couldn’t stop his mind going back to the moment at the building site when he’d felt something strike his head. And it wasn’t just the bump that he could still feel on his skull.

  Three questions kept running inside his brain.

  Who had hit him?

  What the hell were they doing there?

  And why had they been spraying the same words as he’d seen in Joseph Brennan’s flat?

  Questions that were to haunt his dreams later that night.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Using a ruler and a thick orange pen, he marked Sam’s face with a large cross. Stepping back, he checked his progress. Four down, just two left.

  He was nearly there, not long left now, just the adults to go.

  He placed a large map of Manchester over the pictures, in case his landlady came nosying around his room when he was out, and then lay down on the boarding house’s rickety bed.

  On the table next to him, some stupid comedy was flickering on an old television. A comedy where the only laughter came from a machine and always sounded the same. He had turned the sound down, bored by the inanity of it all.

  Still, he couldn’t switch it off. Maybe after he had finished the plan he would be able to, but not at the moment.

  He didn’t like sleeping in the dark.

  Not since that time so long ago.

  His mother had always understood, never criticising him or forcing him to switch it off.

  She understood. She always understood. But now she was gone, leaving him all alone.

  His mind flashed back to earlier in the day. He had enjoyed killing Sam. The knife across his throat. The flames searing his skin. The intoxicating smell of burning flesh. He remembered it all.

  It was beautiful.

  But he would have to be more careful next time.

  That copper returning to the scene had surprised him. Who would have expected him to come back, especially when it was going dark and the night was threatening rain? What was he doing there? What was he checking out? Surely they hadn’t linked the deaths yet?

  Never mind, he had taken care of it. A quick strike to the back of the head and the man collapsed like a house of cards.

  He remembered looking down at the prostrate body for a few seconds, thinking whether to finish him off with the hammer to make sure he was dead.

  But he stopped. He didn’t like killing people unless it was absolutely necessary. He raised his head from the pillow, checking the bag that lay next to the TV. He had forgotten to use it to protect his face when he ran out from the building site. Hitting the copper had spooked him. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Next time, he would plan it better, leave nothing to chance.

  Would they check CCTV?

  Probably.

  But never mind. He would be finished soon. Just two left to go and then he would be free.

  And so would they.

  Day Four

  Friday, April 26, 2019

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The next morning chaos reigned in the Ridpath household yet again. Eve couldn’t find her special BTS hair clip. Polly couldn’t find her lesson plans and the boiler decided it didn’t want to have anything to do with any of the taps in the house.

  Ridpath spent twenty minutes turning it off and on, fiddling with the burner switch and checking the electrics. It still wouldn’t work.

  ‘I’ll give British Gas a call to come and check it,’ he told Polly.

  ‘Won’t that cost us a fortune?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s part of their HomeCare package. We pay a fortune for it every month, to make sure we don’t pay a fortune when it goes wrong.’

  Polly and Eve made do with washing their faces. Ridpath took a cold shower, enjoying the refreshing feel of the icy water across his body. A decision he was to regret as soon as he stepped out of the house. The wind was howling and Storm Hannah was blowing in from the west.

  As he drove to Stockfield, he wondered how they came up with such innocuous names for such evil bouts of weather. Did they think that by calling it something fluffy, the ordinary man in the street would think the weather wasn’t so bad after all?

  He parked and went into the old Victorian building where the coroner’s court was situated. Mrs Challinor was in already. ‘Good morning,’ he called out as he walked into her office.

  ‘Morning, Ridpath,’ she said, without looking up from her paperwork.

  ‘I went to the building site last night where the body of the homeless John Doe was found.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Dirty, decrepit, ugly. Like building sites everywhere. If you hadn’t told me somebody had died, I wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘The area wasn’t cordoned off?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ She passed over an incident report. It was signed at the bottom by DS Ted Jones. The John Doe’s cause of death was written as ‘presumed accidental, but waiting on post-mortem report’. And later on, he seemed to have made up his mind: ‘A lethal combination of drinking methylated spirits and smoking illegal drugs led to an unfortunate accident’.

  ‘Looks like we were barking up the wrong tree, but we were right to check it out,’ Mrs Challinor said.

  ‘I’d like to carry on working on it.’

  Mrs Challinor frowned. ‘Why?’ She tapped the incident report. ‘You’ve read this. The SIO thinks it was an accident.’

  Ridpath sat down in front of her. ‘For some reason, it doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Copper’s instinct?’

  Ridpath rubbed the back of his head. ‘That and a bump the size of Old Trafford.’ He could still feel the large, sore bruise at the back of his head.

  Mrs Challinor rushed out from behind her desk. ‘What happened? Are you OK?’

  ‘Somebody decided to whack me last night when I went to the building site.’

  He felt her fingers running over his head gently. She had a nice touch, a soft touch.

  ‘Have you had this checked out, Ridpath? You need to go to hospital, you could have concussion.’

  ‘I’ve seen enough hospitals to last me a lifetime. I’m OK, just a bump.’

  She picked up her phone. ‘I’m ringing for an ambulance.’

  ‘Please don’t, I’m fine and we have so much work to do.’

  Reluctantly she put the phone down. ‘What happened?’

  He told her exactly what had taken place at the building site the previous evening and described the wet paint of the message.

  ‘Interesting. You think there’s a link?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t
know, but it doesn’t smell right.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Ridpath thought for a moment. ‘First, I need to see Charlie Whitworth at eleven a.m.’

  ‘Is he still suffering?’

  ‘Using a wheelchair and a walking stick, and not a happy man. I promised I would see him this morning. I’ll tap his brains about this too, if that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Fine, the more help the better. After that?’

  ‘We need to order a post-mortem on the John Doe from the building site.’

  ‘I’ll get a note to Schofield. I hope our pathologist isn’t too busy at the moment.’

  ‘I’ll also have a chat with Ted Jones. Find out why he thinks it was an accident.’ Ridpath felt the bump on his head again. ‘Listen, the attack on me might have nothing to do with the John Doe’s death…’ Ridpath didn’t finish his sentence.

  ‘Or?’

  ‘It might have everything to do with his death. I’ll check out the CCTV from the area, see if I can see my attacker on it. There might even be footage of the time our John Doe died.’

  ‘Won’t the police have already done that?’

  ‘Not if they think it was an accident. Why waste the time?’

  Mrs Challinor was quiet. ‘Don’t forget the other arson death in Derbyshire. I’ll give David Smail a call to make sure he sends the file through. And there’s one more thing I have to ask you, Ridpath. I’m afraid it’s a personal favour.’

  ‘Ask away, Mrs Challinor.’

  ‘Remember I told you about my brother living on the streets?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is there any way to find him? It would have to be informal, and I couldn’t ask you to do it during office hours.’

  Ridpath thought for a moment. ‘I could put the word out on the street, ask a few coppers if anybody has come across him.’

  ‘His name is Robert Challinor. You understand this is completely unofficial, Ridpath? Nothing to do with your work in this office.’

  ‘Of course, Mrs Challinor, I’ll ask around.’ He stood up. ‘I’d better get moving.’

  ‘Ridpath,’ she called to him as he was going out the door, ‘shouldn’t we let Claire Trent know what’s going on?’

  Ridpath thought for a moment. ‘Not yet. She has enough on her plate and this could just be an accident, like Jones says.’

  ‘What about the message on the wall? Surely that indicates the deaths are linked?’

  ‘I know, but how? From my experience with Detective Superintendent Trent, we need to be absolutely sure before we approach her.’

  ‘Be careful, Ridpath, something smells about this one.’

  He nodded. ‘This one stinks like a dead fish.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ridpath settled in his car and immediately put Aladdin Sane into the disc player. It was definitely a ‘Jean Genie’ and a Bowie kind of morning. He always found the driving rhythms of the guitar riff helped him think.

  He put the car in gear and drove away as Mick Ronson’s guitar destroyed the speakers. Were the two cases linked? He didn’t know, but it couldn’t be a coincidence that the same message was found at both locations. And if they were linked, why? He shrugged his shoulders, even though there was nobody else in the car to see the action.

  And if they were linked, the deaths couldn’t have been accidents. Somebody else must have been present.

  He passed Lyme Park on the right. Here, Colin Firth had famously waded out into the middle of the lake during an episode of Pride and Prejudice, sending most of the nation’s women into a collective swoon. It was his wife’s favourite BBC series. The DVD even had scratch marks on the cover. From his wife’s nails or from overuse, Ridpath was yet to discover.

  He glanced across at the bottle of Glenmorangie sitting on the passenger seat. It was taken from the cabinet at home, left over from his illness, when he found a glass or three in the evening helped him sleep. He had fussed over what to take Charlie. Flowers? Chocolates? Something to read? He finally settled on the single malt whisky, the sort of present he would want if he was confined to his home.

  He signalled left to drive down Charlie’s road. Just as he began to pull around the corner, a young man ran out from the left to cross the road. Ridpath jammed on his brakes and waited for the man to run in front of his car. For a moment, he had a quick flashback to another young man doing exactly the same on the M25 last year. A man whose death had started the Connolly investigation.

  He shook his head to clear the memory and put the car in gear again, accelerating to park outside Charlie’s bungalow on the left.

  Ridpath glanced over to the single-storey house. All was quiet. Time to see his old boss again; why was he so nervous? He stepped out of the car, making sure to lock the doors. It would never do for a copper to have his car nicked, especially not outside the home of a former detective chief inspector. He would never live it down in the canteen.

  He paused for a moment, hoping his ex-boss was better than last time he saw him.

  Taking a deep breath, he walked down the driveway.

  Ridpath rang the bell at the front door, carrying the bottle of Scotch like a baby. He waited a minute or so, then rang it again. A voice came from inside: ‘Coming.’

  Thirty seconds later, a distorted shadow appeared through the window panes and the door opened wide. ‘You’re late, Ridpath, you were supposed to be here ten minutes ago.’

  The same old Charlie, still as cantankerous as ever, but now hobbling around with a walking stick.

  ‘Well, what’re you standing there for? Come in, before the wind decides to blow me over. And I’ll take that.’ He reached up to grab the Scotch. ‘Mustn’t let Maureen see it, or she’ll put it out of my reach.’

  Ridpath could smell Scotch already on his breath, even though it was only eleven in the morning. Perhaps the Glenmorangie wasn’t such a good idea. ‘Where is Maureen anyway?’ he said, following Charlie down the hallway, peering into the lounge.

  Charlie carried on down to the large kitchen at the back. ‘She’s away at her mother’s. The old trout has had a heart attack. I never thought she even had a heart,’ he said over his shoulder.

  He went into the kitchen and plonked the bottle down on the table, sitting heavily on a chair and leaning his walking stick against the wall. ‘Can’t get around without this bloody thing any more. Hopalong bloody Cassidy, that’s me.’

  In front of him an array of pill bottles, tablets and capsules was strewn haphazardly on a plate. He saw Ridpath staring at it. ‘Just having breakfast. I swallow more tablets these days than the Happy Mondays. Shaun Ryder and Bez have got nothing on me.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re necessary. The doctors wouldn’t prescribe them otherwise.’

  ‘Doctors,’ he grunted. Then he fixed Ridpath with a stare. ‘I forgot, you know all about doctors, don’t you, Ridpath?’

  ‘More than I should and more than I want.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Anyway, make yourself useful. Pass me a glass down and get one for yourself. I need something to wash these down with.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m working.’

  ‘Well, I’m not, so pass me one.’

  Ridpath reached up to a shelf and grabbed a glass, handing it to Charlie. ‘How are you?’

  His former boss cracked open the seal and poured a large measure of the golden liquid, yellow light through the glass reflecting onto the St Christopher medallion Charlie always wore around his neck. ‘Much better when I get a drop of this inside me. The wife hides it, you know.’

  ‘Hides what?’

  ‘My whisky, says I drink too much.’

  ‘She may have a point. It’s only eleven o’clock, Charlie.’

  ‘What are we now, Ridpath? The fucking alcohol police? I seem to remember you being fond of a drink when you were ill.’

  Ridpath immediately flashed back to the time when he had cancer. The only thing that would dull the pain from the chemo was a few shots of whisk
y.

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Exactly the opposite. I feel nothing from here downwards.’ He measured from his stomach to his feet. ‘You can’t imagine what this has done to my sex life. Not that I had much of one to start with.’

  Ridpath didn’t know what to say. He ended up with, ‘How you keeping? Eating well?’

  Charlie Whitworth grimaced, taking a long drink from his glass before picking up his phone. ‘Inside here are some of the best restaurants in Manchester. Italian, Chinese, a curry, all on speed dial. I don’t know what I’d do without it.’

  Ridpath had the impression that Charlie’s wife had been away for a while. He looked around the kitchen. A black plastic bag stuffed with takeaway boxes sat in the corner.

  Charlie followed his eyes. ‘You can take that out for me before you go. It’s bloody difficult carrying stuff and hobbling around with a walking stick.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  Suddenly Charlie’s mood changed. ‘Don’t patronise me, Ridpath. I was your bloody boss, remember that?’

  Ridpath held up his hands. ‘No offence, Charlie. How’s everything else?’

  ‘Well, I don’t sleep much any more. And I watch a lot of telly. Jeremy Kyle has a lot going for him.’ He held up the glass. ‘And I drink, when the wife lets me. And I take lots of pretty coloured tablets. But other than that I lead a fruitful and rewarding life. What are you up to, Ridpath? Still brown-nosing Claire Trent?’

  ‘Still working between the coroner’s office and MIT. Don’t know how long it will continue. Claire Trent has been muttering a lot in my ear recently about resource allocation and budget cuts.’

  ‘She’s just keeping you on your toes, Ridpath, keeping you hungry. I used to love winding you up too.’ He was silent for a moment then stared down at his lap. ‘Sorry for not bringing you back to MIT after your illness. I know what it feels like now, being thrown on the scrapheap just because you’ve been ill.’

  Ridpath tried to improve his mood. ‘I thought they’d offered you a new job?’