Where the Silence Calls

by M J Lee

  Trent nodded her head. ‘This seems to be a comprehensive list of the consistent MO of this killer. Anybody disagree?’

  No response from the detectives.

  ‘Anybody have anything to add? Ridpath?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think Chrissy’s done a great job in a short time.’

  ‘There is one more thing I’d like to show you.’ Chrissy Wright adjusted her City scarf and moved across to the final section. Two names were printed on it in large black letters, one above the other.

  Tony Doyle

  Harry McHale

  ‘We’ve checked with the registrar of deaths and Doyle died of a drug overdose in 2010. Heroin. McHale died three years ago in a car accident. He drove his Ford into a wall. Another DUI.’

  Trent took two steps back. ‘But… but… that means all the people in the photograph are dead.’

  A silence descended on the room. A clock ticked noisily on the far wall. The detectives stared at the picture of the smiling young boys kneeling in front of their coach, proudly displaying the winning trophy.

  Ridpath walked towards the picture. ‘You’re wrong, guv’nor.’ He tapped the cut-off arm and shoulder. ‘This man is still alive.’

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Trent brought the briefing to a close. ‘Right, the priority is to find out who this man is or was. He’s our most likely suspect. Somehow he has committed at least five murders in the last week and we’ve only just discovered he exists. If the newspapers ever find out, we’ll be hung, drawn and quartered.’

  Harry Makepeace coughed. ‘That’s what I was just about to tell you, boss. They’ve already got wind of it.’ He held up a copy of the Manchester Evening News. The headline was in strong bold type: ‘Is a serial killer stalking Manchester?’

  He then read out the first paragraph of the article, detailing the deaths of Joseph Brennan and Sam Sykes, but not mentioning the other deaths, or the link to child sexual abuse.

  ‘Shit, that’s the last thing I need.’ Then she fixed each detective in turn with a stare. ‘If I find out any of you bastards have been leaking to the papers, you’ll be out so quick your feet won’t touch the floor. Is that clear?’

  ‘It could have been Derbyshire, guv’nor, or the mortuary, or just an inquisitive reporter following up on a story. They haven’t made the link to the other murders, but it will only be a matter of time.’

  ‘Thanks, Ridpath. Any other words of wisdom?’

  ‘I’m not sure this man is the suspect. It could be somebody else, somebody we don’t even know about yet.’

  ‘You really are a bearer of good news this afternoon, Ridpath.’ She tapped the picture hard with her manicured fingernail. ‘Unfortunately, this is the only lead we have at the moment. Lorraine, I want you to follow up on the two deaths in Bakewell. Push the pathologist hard. I want the post-mortem and test results yesterday.’

  ‘OK, boss.’

  ‘Chrissy, I want the wall updated, there are quite a few gaps in it at the moment.’

  ‘It’s because all the information isn’t in yet, boss.’

  ‘I know, but I want it completed ASAP. Understand? And arrange that briefing from the head of the soccer investigation. We need to know more.’

  Chrissy shrugged, the Man City scarf still around her neck. ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Lorraine, I want you to find out who this man is.’ She tapped the shoulders on the cropped photograph. ‘Was he another coach? A parent? Who the hell is he? And where was this five-a-side game held? Find out all you can about it.’

  ‘Yes, guv’nor.’

  ‘You might want to start looking at all the local newspapers for 1994. This looks like one of the shots taken by a staff photographer. Was there a stamp on the back? Local newspapers make extra money selling prints to happy parents and anyone in the shot.’

  ‘Thanks, Ridpath,’ Caruso replied without looking at him.

  Trent sniffed. ‘Harry, get on to Rob Johnson. I want those HOLMES results put in a report ASAP. I’ll have to show something to the chief constable…’

  As if on cue, a detective popped her head around the door. ‘The chief constable’s on the phone, guv’nor. Apparently he’s read some newspaper article…’

  ‘Just what I need. The bloody mayor will be on my back soon, you wait and see.’

  ‘I’ve already put him on hold; thought you’d like to speak to the chief first.’

  Trent started to pick up her files.

  Harry Makepeace put up his hand.

  ‘What is it, Harry?’ she said brusquely.

  ‘It may be nothing, guv’nor, but that’s a song.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘“Play the Game”. It’s a song by Queen. And now I come to think of it, the music video even has flames behind Freddie’s head.’

  Claire Trent stared back at the words written on the board. ‘Follow up on it, Lorraine.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  The detective superintendent strode towards the door.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Ridpath before she could leave.

  She stopped and then turned back slowly. ‘I think you’ve done enough, Ridpath, don’t you?’

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Eve looked up guiltily from her iPad. ‘Dad, you’re home early.’

  Polly came rushing out from the kitchen. ‘Are you OK? Not coming down with something?’

  Ridpath shook his head. ‘I’m fine, just thought I’d come home early today.’

  The truth was that after Claire Trent’s curt dismissal of him, Ridpath had thought about going back to the coroner’s office, but the idea of driving all the way out to Stockfield didn’t appeal. Instead he gave Margaret Challinor a call to fill her in on what had happened.

  ‘You weren’t in today, Ridpath,’ she said sternly before he had a chance to begin. ‘Sophia did her best to cover for you but she didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Challinor, I got caught up in events. I should have let you know. The killer has struck again. This time in Derbyshire. You were right about the link to the Bakewell death.’

  Her voice softened. ‘Being right gives me no pleasure, Ridpath.’

  Ridpath took her through the timeline.

  ‘My God. I’ll send an email to the coroners for West Yorkshire and Derbyshire to let them know. The inquest on Joseph Brennan is scheduled for May 7. I may have to postpone it until the police have completed their investigations.’

  A strange feeling ran through Ridpath’s body. ‘Don’t postpone yet, Mrs Challinor. For some reason this killer is working to a timetable. He’s committed five murders in the last week.’

  ‘So why is he killing now? And why use fire, Ridpath? What’s the significance of fire?’

  As ever, Mrs Challinor had reached the core of the investigation quickly. ‘We don’t know,’ answered Ridpath honestly. ‘I’ll be in tomorrow morning, Coroner. I’ll catch up with the backlog and brief Sophia on the new cases, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Of course.’ And then a slight pause. ‘Any news about my brother?’

  In all the excitement, Ridpath had forgotten completely. ‘I’ll follow up straight away, Mrs Challinor.’

  ‘Thanks, Ridpath. Sorry to hassle you about this, but I feel something has happened to him. It’s like there’s something missing and I don’t know what it is.’

  Ridpath knew what she meant. He always felt the same in the middle of an investigation when he didn’t know where he was headed. That sense of loss, of absence, of something being missing. A piece of the puzzle they hadn’t seen yet or didn’t even know about. ‘I’ll follow up right now.’

  He hung up the phone and immediately called Ted Jones.

  ‘Hello, Ridpath, I heard you covered for me with Claire Trent.’

  News got around quickly on the jungle drums of GMP. ‘Yeah, you should have pushed the investigation harder, Ted. We now know this man has been killing other people in exactly the same way.’

  ‘Shit, jus
t what I needed on my record. A missed collar.’

  ‘You’ll be OK. You kept the investigation going, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, yeah…’

  ‘So that’s how it will read – ongoing investigation into an unexplained death. Get onto Lorraine Caruso at MIT, find out the details from her, and then reclassify your case. It will be transferred to MIT anyway once they do the paperwork.’ Ridpath didn’t know why he was protecting such an empty suit as Ted Jones. It was just what they did in the police force. It was always ‘us’ versus ‘them’. ‘Them’ being anybody who wasn’t part of the tight bunch of people who worked at GMP. Including the bosses who sat in their ivory towers playing politics.

  ‘Thanks, Ridpath, I’ll get onto it right away. I owe you one.’

  ‘And that’s the other reason I’m calling. I need you to find somebody for me. A Robert Challinor, aged fifty-six. He’s living on the streets.’

  ‘A bit old for that sort of life. But I can check the shelters and the flophouses for you, plus get onto the local PCSOs. The mayor’s on one of his clean-up drives again, getting the homeless off the streets.’

  ‘Putting them where they can’t be seen?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Thanks, Ted, but get moving on your case. The sooner you get it across to MIT, the better.’

  He switched off the phone and decided to drive home.

  Now here he was, with his wife and daughter both fussing around him.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Dad, you’re never home this early,’ said Eve.

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ said Ridpath, pulling them closer to him to give them a hug. ‘Now, I thought I’d cook my super special spag bol, and then we could play a game of Scrabble. We haven’t done that for ages.’

  ‘Yay, great!’ shouted Eve, dancing on the spot.

  ‘I’ll finish the marking and then I’m free. I fancy a spag bol tonight too.’

  So for the first time in a long time they ate together as a family and played Scrabble. Eve won of course, with the connivance of her parents. Ridpath was particularly good at setting her up for a big score.

  Afterwards, they watched a bit of telly, before sending Eve off to bed with the usual admonishment against being grumpy in the morning.

  ‘I can’t promise, Dad. I’m not really a morning person. But can I have pancakes tomorrow for breakfast?’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want porridge?’

  ‘Yeeeuuw, no way, pancakes would be great.’

  ‘Pancakes it is then.’

  Lying in bed later that night, Polly put her arms round him. ‘I like it when you come home early.’

  ‘I like it too.’

  ‘Feels like we’re a family again.’

  As Ridpath drifted off to sleep, his mind inevitably returned to the murders and Mrs Challinor’s questions.

  Who was he?

  Why had he started killing now?

  And why use fire?

  Before the oblivion of sleep drowned his thoughts, Ridpath realised with a sudden flash of clarity that the killer would kill again tomorrow.

  Could he stop him?

  Day Eight

  Tuesday, April 30, 2019

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  As soon as he woke up, Ridpath knew what he had to do.

  Polly lay snoring gently beside him, the spring light was just creeping through the curtains and the alarm clock had not yet buzzed its welcome to the day.

  He knew what to do, but the question was, should he do it?

  In that strange way the mind works, his brain had been mulling over the problem as he slept. He now saw that the key was the photograph of the young five-a-side team. Somehow that picture, or what happened at the time it was taken, was the catalyst for all the recent events.

  But he was a coroner’s officer, he wasn’t a copper any more. He should tell them what he thought and leave them to do their job, working the case.

  But what if Lorraine Caruso ballsed it up? Her track record hadn’t been great so far. What if Claire Trent decided she’d had enough and wanted to get rid of him? Would he still have a job?

  Then something Mrs Challinor said came back to him. ‘Our job is to represent the dead in the court of the living.’ He knew then what he had to do.

  Find out who the man in the picture was. Maybe he was a suspect, as Trent thought. Or maybe he was something far more worrying.

  The next victim.

  He looked across at his wife sleeping beside him.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ he whispered.

  Ridpath eased himself out of bed and crept downstairs. Over a mug of coffee, he worked out a plan. He knew Caruso would be far too busy running the investigation to get onto this right away. But if she didn’t, he was sure another man would die today.

  He rang Sophia Rahman on her mobile. ‘Sorry for calling so early.’

  A sleepy voice answered. ‘Ridpath, it’s… six thirty-five.’

  ‘Sorry, but I’ve had an idea about the murders and I need you to help me. There’s too much to go through on my own.’

  The voice was sharper, more awake. ‘Sure, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Meet me at Central Library as soon as it opens at nine a.m. I’ll brief you there.’

  ‘What about the coroner’s office?’

  ‘I’ll send an email to Mrs Challinor explaining everything. She knows what’s going on.’ A slight white lie, but for Ridpath it was always better to act first and ask for permission later. He logged on to his laptop and sent the email.

  It had been nagging him for a while what the ‘NAGBC’ stood for in the background of the photograph. He Googled it and immediately the answer was staring him in the face. It was the National Association of Girls and Boys Clubs and, even better, they held a national five-a-side competition every year as part of their activities. On their site was a link to the local association, the Girls and Boys Clubs of Greater Manchester. A name that just tripped off the tongue, but was known as the GBCGM.

  Ridpath quickly scanned a history of the movement. It had been created amidst the squalor and poverty of Manchester’s Victorian society as a solution to the growth of what were known as Scuttling gangs. He’d heard of these gangs, who used chains and belts to fight with other gangs in the late Victorian era. Ridpath laughed to himself. ‘The more it changes, the more it stays the same.’ Even in those days they had problems with street gangs.

  Reading on, it seemed the founding clubs provided a means by which young lads could gain a basic education and vent their energies in a range of positive and purposeful activities. God, they needed them now more than ever. He looked through the rest of the website. The five-a-side picture must have been taken at one of these club events.

  He checked his watch: 7:15. Time to get moving. He quickly cooked the pancakes, made coffee for Polly and left a note on the kitchen table telling them both he had to go to work.

  He would miss the grumpy Eve enjoying her breakfast, but it couldn’t be helped.

  He closed the door as quietly as he could and drove into central Manchester. The roads were busy but he made good time. It would cost him a fortune to park in the city centre, but it couldn’t be avoided.

  At 8:50 a.m., he arrived outside Central Library to find Sophia Rahman already waiting for him, two Starbucks cups in her hands.

  ‘I figured you’d need one of these, Ridpath. What’s going on?’

  By the time he had briefed her, a uniformed attendant was unlocking the big brass doors and opening them wide. Three students rushed in before them.

  ‘You know this is a long shot, don’t you, Ridpath? What happens if the photograph wasn’t taken by a local newspaper? What if it was just a parent who made copies for the other families?’

  Ridpath shrugged. ‘You could be right, but at least we’ll know and have exhausted one line of enquiry. At the moment we have nothing else.’

  They walked up the wide marble stairs and entered
the first-floor reading room. Ridpath sucked in his breath. The place always amazed him. He had first visited here as part of a school project when he was fourteen. Back then, the immense domed building with its eau-de-nil ceiling and the beautiful red marble pillars was dominated by stacks of bookcases and redolent of the peculiar damp smell that comes from old books.

  But now, after the recent renovations, the place was bright and airy. The old bookcases had been removed to be replaced by reading tables, and the dome had been repainted in a brilliant white with gold corniches. The clock in the centre was still there, though. It had been regilded and cleaned and now dominated the surroundings.

  Ridpath asked the attendant where they could find local newspapers.

  ‘Try downstairs at local history, you’ll find them there.’

  Reluctantly Ridpath and Sophia left the reading room and stumbled downstairs to a far more practical place. He approached one of the librarians, showing them his warrant card. ‘I’d like to look at the local newspapers for 1994,’ he said.

  ‘Which one?’

  Ridpath shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’re not sure.’ He showed the librarian the picture. ‘We think this was taken by a local newspaper in 1994, but it’s been cropped. We’d like to see the original if possible.’

  The librarian frowned. ‘It could be in any of the newspapers.’

  ‘There are a lot?’

  ‘About fifty at that time in Greater Manchester, maybe more. We hold a few here, but others are held in the local history libraries in districts like Bolton or Trafford.’

  Ridpath’s heart sank. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.

  ‘I could take a look at GMLives for you. There might be something on the site.’

  She went to a workstation and tapped in a code. Up popped a website with an old picture of Manchester. She typed ‘five-a-side’ into the search box. ‘Just one result from Hulme in 1994, but it’s not the same picture.’

  Ridpath’s heart sank for the second time.

  ‘It looks like you’ll have to go through them manually, I’m afraid. Do you want me to bring you all the local newspapers we have on microfilm for that year?’