by M J Lee
‘Is that what you think this is? A “thrill” murder?’
‘I can’t see anything else, Ridpath. The links between the two deaths are tenuous. As you said yourself, the MO is different and there seems to be no connection between the two victims.’
‘But I haven’t seen the pathologist’s report yet.’
‘Neither have we.’ She pointed to herself and Trent.
‘I was at the post-mortems for both victims. The MO was different, but don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence two people are burnt within a day of each other?’
Caruso shook her head. ‘People die all the time, Ridpath. Where’s your evidence the deaths are linked?’
‘You’re forgetting the messages written near the victims.’
‘“Play the game”,’ Caruso sneered. ‘Sounds like an Eighties song title. I’ve read the Manchester Central report. There was no message on the walls when they first discovered the body. The message only appeared after you visited the crime scene…’
Ridpath’s mouth dropped open. ‘What are you saying, Lorraine?’
‘I’m just saying I find the timing very interesting. Myself and the guv’nor were just talking about what you bring to the team, and the day after, we’re suddenly being presented with a mysterious serial killer…’
Ridpath stood up, pushing back his chair. ‘I don’t have to take that from anyone. Are you saying I planted the message?’
Trent scratched her head. The scalp was flaking just above her right ear. Her hairdresser had given her a new shampoo but it was no help; the problem was getting worse, not better. ‘Sit down, Ridpath. Lorraine has raised a valid concern.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Forgive me for being cynical, but where’s your evidence? It strikes me as an immense coincidence the same week I criticise you for your lack of results, suddenly a serial killer turns up on my doorstep.’
Ridpath stared out of the window of Trent’s office, taking three deep breaths and counting beneath his breath. ‘It was only confirmed by the post-mortem yesterday. You’ve seen the CCTV footage. The man watched another human burn to death.’
‘I don’t doubt that, Ridpath, and Central were wrong to ascribe this death as accidental. I believe Mrs Challinor in her role as coroner has asked them to reopen the case, which I am sure Chief Inspector Harrison will do.’ She sat back in her chair and rested the urge to scratch her head. ‘So the only link you have is the spray-painted message on the wall—’
‘And the fact both were doused in an accelerant before being set on fire.’
‘But both men were very different. One lived in a flat in Wythenshawe, the other lived on the streets. Are you sure both offences were committed by the same man?’
Ridpath thought for a moment. Was he sure? Were the two deaths linked? He decided to trust his gut. ‘I’m sure they are linked. Even worse, I have a feeling there will be more.’
Trent stared at him as if looking right through him. ‘We can’t run this department based on your feelings, Ridpath.’
He knew that response was coming. He should have kept his mouth shut about ‘feelings’. He tried one more time. ‘The two deaths are linked, I know they are.’
‘But we don’t know for sure. We may just have two deaths by fire. Both can be handled by the local plod unless they specifically request our help,’ said Caruso.
‘But Jones is cocking it up, moving too slowly…’
Trent spread her arms wide. ‘They are suffering, as we all are, through lack of resources and the necessity for their proper allocation at this time.’
‘So the murder of a homeless man on the streets of Manchester doesn’t really matter.’
Caruso’s eyes rolled.
Trent’s reaction was much more controlled. ‘Such emotive language doesn’t help, Ridpath. Manchester Central and Cheadle are handling two separate enquiries into deaths by fire over the last couple of days.’
‘But the detective in Cheadle has already been pulled from the case!’ Ridpath was losing his cool.
‘My point exactly. Neither station has asked for help from the Major Incident Team. Lorraine’s officers are already stretched. We have two major investigations going on at the moment: one gang-related and the other helping Cheshire CID in a county lines drug case. Unless Central or Cheadle ask for our help, we are not getting involved.’
‘But, guv’nor—’
‘And one other thing. Do you know how much it costs to mount a murder investigation?’
Ridpath shook his head.
‘At least one million pounds. Three million if it becomes a major case.’
‘But guv’nor, money shouldn’t be our concern—’
‘Read my lips, Ridpath. We are not getting involved. Correct case management is the allocation of the three precious resources – time, money and people. We are short of all three at the moment, so the respective CID departments will continue to handle the investigations. I’ll inform Mrs Challinor of my decision personally.’ She turned ostentatiously to her number two. ‘Lorraine, I’d like to discuss the Moston gang case with you.’
Ridpath got the message. He was being dismissed.
He packed up his notes and put the CCTV discs back into their boxes, standing up to go out.
‘Make sure Ted Jones gets the CCTV and your notes, Ridpath,’ said Caruso as he closed the door.
Outside, he leant back against the wall and took a deep breath. Why didn’t they understand?
The deaths had to be linked, there was no other explanation. And there was a serial killer at large in Manchester.
Then an idea struck him with absolute certainty.
Unless he did something, they were going to be faced with a lot more deaths.
Chapter Thirty-Five
After a minute of calming himself and collecting his thoughts, Ridpath walked back through the MIT office.
Everywhere was a hive of activity. Detectives sat at their desks on the phone, others were typing reports, still more were researching information on the Police National Database. Some of them he knew well, others he was on nodding terms with. There had been so many changes of personnel since Charlie’s time. Most of the old guard had gone, to be replaced by newer, younger officers, many of them on the fast track scheme; bright bunnies but with little experience of practical policing.
He waved to Chrissy Wright. At least she was still here, and still behind her desk wearing her City scarf. The one indispensable member of MIT who managed to survive every new DCI and guv’nor.
He pressed the button to open the security door. As he did so, Harry Makepeace came through, one of the last survivors from Charlie Whitworth’s time as guv’nor.
‘Hello, Ridpath, what are you doing here? Don’t often see you outside of our weekly meetings.’
‘Work, Harry, what else? How’re you doing?’
‘Don’t ask! Up to my bloody eyeballs in it. Even worse, I have to go off to Liverpool in a minute…’
‘The county lines drug case?’
Makepeace’s eyebrows raised. ‘You know? Bit of nightmare. I don’t mind working with Cheshire, but the worst part is dealing with all the whining and moaning Scousers… and that’s just those in the police. You heard I passed my probation? I’m full inspector now.’
Ridpath hadn’t heard, but it was a sore point with him. He had been appointed probationary inspector before Makepeace, but the cancer scare and then the transfer to work with the coroner had meant that was exactly where he stayed. And without somebody actively fighting his corner, that’s where he would stay for the foreseeable future. ‘Congratulations,’ he finally mumbled.
‘Anyway, got to go. See you for a pint sometime.’
Ridpath knew this was the usual meaningless offer never meant to be taken up. ‘Sure, would love to. When you get back from Scouseland. Check your pockets before you leave, though.’
‘What do you mean? Check I still have some?’
They both laughed and Makepeace began to move away. Ridpath had
a thought. ‘Harry, can you do me a favour? You don’t know where I can find a Rob Johnson, do you?’
‘Rob, the HOLMES liaison man? He’s on the fifth floor with all the other nerds, boffins and IT guys. Watch out, though, you don’t know what you might catch there. Sticky palms, you know what I mean?’
Ridpath left the MIT office and took the lift to the fifth floor, where he bumped into a female support officer. ‘Is Rob Johnson working today?’
‘He’s second on the left, but I warn you he’s busy.’
Ridpath strolled down the grey carpeted corridor and knocked on the door, going straight in.
A large man with a full beard was sitting in front of a computer, hastily opening a new screen. He glanced back as Ridpath entered the tidiest office he had ever seen in HQ.
‘Are you Rob Johnson?’
‘I am, but I’m busy now. If you want to come back later, Mr…?’
‘Actually, it’s Detective Inspector Ridpath, I’m with MIT but temporarily assigned to the coroner’s office.’ That was stretching it a little as it was probably the other way round these days. ‘And I’d close the Game of War if I were you. The icon is still flashing on your desktop.’
Rob Johnson reddened as he clicked his mouse and the icon vanished.
‘Charlie Whitworth sent me, said you were the best.’
‘Charlie was always a good judge of character. We worked together a few times. Good man, Charlie, shame what happened.’
‘He said you knew how to operate HOLMES.’
The man nodded. ‘I know my way around the system. It’s not very well coded and the graphics are Neanderthal. Anything the Home Office touches is screwed up before they start, but it’s still the best system we have.’
‘Could it help with my enquiry?’
‘Depends what you want it to do. The Home Office Large Major Enquiry System is hopeless at finding out who did it, but if you want it to crunch large amounts of data from all across the country and make links between the data, nothing beats it. What’s your problem?’
Ridpath liked this man. Like all experts, he made what he did sound easy. ‘At the moment it’s a detective superintendent and a detective chief inspector who don’t believe we have a serial killer in our midst.’
‘And you do? Why?’
Ridpath took him through the two deaths he had discovered.
‘So you want me to see if there are any others with the same MO?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘You’ve come to the right man. You see, HOLMES is great, but if you put rubbish in you get rubbish out. That’s where I come in. My speciality is reading the language from different police reports across the country and categorising it correctly so HOLMES can work its magic. Nobody better at it than me.’
‘And nobody more modest.’
The bearded mouth smiled. ‘Aye, that too. It’s why they pay me the big bucks. When do you want it?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘That slow, huh. I’ll get on it straight away. You got a case number for this?’
Ridpath shook his head.
‘Thought so. Seeing as you’re a mate of Charlie’s, I’ll put the hours down as testing the system. Nobody ever checks anyhow.’
‘Thanks, Rob.’
‘I’ll call you when I’ve got anything. You want the whole of England?’
‘No, just check the north for now, anything above Birmingham. Should be elementary for you.’
‘OK, the north it is, makes my job easier.’ Then Rob Johnson did a second take. ‘Haha, but I’ve heard them all before. “The game’s afoot.” “Elementary, my dear Johnson.” You’re not the first, Ridpath, and you won’t be the last. Thank God my name isn’t Watson.’
Ridpath stood up and made a gesture of holding a phone to his ear. ‘Call me, Rob.’
‘Actually, I’ll call you Thomas, if that’s OK.’
‘I prefer Ridpath. Thomas always makes me think of the tank engine.’
‘I know, my real Christian name is Boris…’
‘Poor man.’
‘At least I didn’t go to Eton.’ A pause. ‘If you see Charlie, wish him well from me. A bloody good copper was Charlie.’
As Ridpath left the room, his phone rang. ‘Hello, Mrs Challinor.’
‘Ridpath, I just received a report from the West Yorkshire coroner. They’ve found another burnt body.’
‘Where?’
‘Just off the A62 near Huddersfield, place called Marsden.’
‘Where they had the moorland fires recently?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Ridpath, they found a can of spray paint next to the body.’
A slight pause. ‘I’m on my way.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
It took Ridpath forty minutes to drive to Marsden. Sophia texted him the address of the incident and he entered it into his satnav.
As he got closer to the small town, he realised he didn’t need the address. Three Scene of Crime vans and even more police cars were parked in a small lay-by on a sharp right-hand turn on the A62, near a place called Close Gate.
Ridpath had been walking around here, where the Pennine Way crossed the escarpment known as Standedge, a beautiful place to just sit and watch the clouds scud across the sky, listen to the skylarks and imbibe the beautiful solitude of it all.
There was no chance of any solitude now, though. Police in wellingtons and Scene of Crime officers in their white suits milled around the area. Ridpath showed his warrant card and signed in at the outer cordon.
He was met by an Inspector Grange. ‘You’ll be the chap from Manchester?’ he said in a heavy Yorkshire accent as he shook Ridpath’s hand. ‘What’s tha doing all the way out here?’
‘Checking out a theory.’
‘You’d better come with me then.’
Ridpath was led down a path and across an old bridge, turning immediately right up a steepish hill. The area looked like a moonscape: blackened and charred vegetation crunched underfoot, a few drifts of smoke still rose from dark patches of scorched earth. The acrid smell of burning suffused everything. At least it wasn’t raining.
‘Three days ago this was an inferno. Burning moorland in springtime? Unheard of in my lifetime. All the moor from here t’reservoir burnt to cinders. Shocking it is, shocking.’
They walked up a black path snaking through the burnt vegetation, their feet giving off little puffs of soot with every step. Up ahead, Ridpath could see a white tent erected beside a stream.
‘Our forensic pathologist is just examining the body. We should be able to close the scene down soon.’
‘When was it found?’
‘This morning around eleven o’clock. A couple of fire fighters were checking the moor, making sure the fires were out, and they spotted a large shape leaning against a tree.’
‘It wasn’t seen before?’
‘Too much smoke, and anyway, the fire burnt this area three days ago. We’ve been over near Buckstones Reservoir fighting the bloody thing, trying to make sure it stops spreading. The winds of the last few days didn’t help, but at least we had some heavy rain last night.’
As they walked up, the pathologist stepped out, accompanied by the crime scene manager. He was an old man with a tired, creased face and grey hair. ‘You can close it up now, Inspector. The mortuary lads are removing the body.’
As he spoke, four men carrying a shape covered by a white Tyvek cover on a stretcher came out of the tent. Ridpath recognised the shape. It had the same raised arms as the others. What had Schofield called it? The pugilist’s stance, that was it.
They crept slowly down the hill, carrying the body carefully, making sure they didn’t drop it.
Ridpath approached the coroner. ‘My name is Ridpath, I’m with the East Manchester coroner’s office.’
‘How is Margaret? Still dancing the Charleston?’
Ridpath made a mental note to ask Mrs Challinor about her dancing skills. There were so many things he didn’t know about
her. ‘She’s fine. We’re just checking if this death had any links to others in Manchester recently. I believe you discovered a can of spray paint.’
The crime scene manager answered. ‘We did. Right next to the body. It had exploded of course, the pressurised contents couldn’t stand the heat, but strangely the metallic label did. It was orange spray paint.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘We haven’t discovered an identity yet. No documents or wallet survived the blaze. We’re hoping he’s on the DNA database. If he isn’t, we’ll have to work on his dental records.’
‘We’re checking missing persons as we speak,’ said Grange.
‘You might want to include Manchester in the search.’
The inspector nodded, making a note in his book.
‘And did you test for the presence of accelerants?’
‘Accelerants?’ asked Inspector Grange.
‘Petrol, kerosene, methylated spirits, turps, anything like that.’
‘I do know what an accelerant is, Inspector Ridpath, but why are you asking about them?’
‘We’ve found two bodies recently with messages sprayed in orange paint next to them. Perhaps this death is linked—’
‘That explains it,’ interrupted the crime scene manager.
‘Explains what?’
‘The streaks of orange paint we found on some unburnt gorse next to the stream. The can had been used before it was discarded.’
‘Was there a message?’
The crime scene manager shook his head. ‘Couldn’t see one. But the area was completely burnt in the fire. Only the one patch of gorse survived.’
‘Hang on.’ The pathologist held up his hand. ‘If there was a message and the possible use of accelerant, are you telling me this man committed suicide?’
Ridpath shook his head slowly. ‘No, I’m not telling you he killed himself. I’m telling you this man was murdered…’
‘But… but…’ stammered Inspector Grange.
Ridpath ignored him, ‘…and we are now looking for a serial killer.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It had been a long drive home for Ridpath, accompanied only by the sounds of the Casualeers, the Impressions and Jamo Thomas. There was nothing like a bit of Northern Soul when you were feeling troubled. His fingers tapping the steering wheel as he drove through the industrial wasteland that was Oldham Road, a place where people had once lived and loved and brought up kids, but was now just a desolate corridor of car parks, warehouses, fried chicken joints and traffic lights. Modern England at its worst.
