by M J Lee
‘The man you’re looking for is in here. Who’s next?’ repeated Ridpath.
She nodded. ‘Those were the words, I’m certain.’
Ridpath ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Anything else you noticed, anything out of the ordinary?’
Becky Donachey shook her head.
Amir put his finger to his lips. ‘There was a strong smell down there.’
‘From the body? But I thought you said it was frozen.’
‘No, not from the body, all around. Like the smell of the stuff you use when you put a window in.’
‘Yeah, there was a strong smell,’ echoed Becky Donachey.
Wearing bright white Tyvek suits with a blue line down the centre, the crime scene manager and the pathologist walked up to Ridpath. He didn’t know either of them.
The smaller man put down his doctor’s bag and spoke first. ‘Are you from the Major Investigation Team?’
‘DI Ridpath, and you are?’
He pointed to his chest. ‘Dave Haslam, senior pathologist. This is Ann Summers from the Derbyshire CSI unit.’
‘Hiya.’ Her voice was muffled through her mask. ‘Ridpath? I’ve heard about you from Margaret. You work with the coroner, too, don’t you?’
Did Margaret Challinor know everybody? Ridpath wondered what she had said about him.
‘That’s me.’
‘Busy man.’
‘Have you seen the Derbyshire detectives?’ interrupted the pathologist.
Ridpath pointed back to a pair of plain clothes coppers who were interviewing a pedestrian across the road.
‘So who’s running this investigation, MIT or Derbyshire? I need to know where to send my bill.’
‘Not sure yet. We think the body in the freezer may be a man called Don Brown. He’s involved in one of our cases.’
‘Witness or suspect?’
‘Neither and both,’ answered Ridpath cryptically.
The pathologist frowned. ‘Let me know which it is and who’s running this case. Come on, Ann, I want to check out the body before it defrosts.’
The little man vaguely waved his hand and, taking his bag of tricks, opened the gate leading to the door. The CSI manager waved goodbye and followed the pathologist up the path.
Ridpath turned back to Khan. ‘What was it you said?’
‘The basement, it smelt strongly of the stuff you use to fix windows in their frames.’
‘You mean putty? Soft, grey stuff like playdoh?’
‘That’s it. Putty. A sort of oily, sharp smell.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the pathologist and crime scene manager paused for a moment at the door before vanishing into the house.
‘Putty? A sharp, oily smell? Like strong motor oil?’ he asked.
The PC nodded. ‘Yeah, could have been motor oil. It was coming from a stack of boxes in the back of the room.’
Ridpath glanced across at Emily Parkinson. Then he turned on his heels and started running towards the house, shouting ‘Stop! Wait!’ as loud as he could.
Chapter 33
He watched through the binoculars as the cavalry arrived. Did he have the timing right?
They set up the cordon and expanded it as more and more strobe-lit police cars parked at the side of the road.
The one thing about their behaviour was the total predictability of their actions. They all followed a process drilled into them from every crime scene they ever attended.
Secure the scene. Set up a perimeter. Clear the area. Wait for the detectives and the CSI team. Expand the perimeter.
It was all so predictable.
He spotted Ridpath striding towards the house with the detective from the allotment only a few strides behind him. They stopped in front of the two uniformed police and began to talk.
He focussed in on Ridpath. The man had aged in the years since they last met. He remembered sitting across a table as the man interviewed him.
But he was innocent then. He had always been innocent.
Until now.
He checked his watch. They were late but there was still time for them to arrive.
He spotted the CSI van as it edged towards the outer cordon. The police tape was removed and the vehicle edged its way slowly forward. He panned over Ridpath, still talking to the two police officers.
The van was three minutes late.
He had allowed them ten minutes to get ready and suit up before entering the building.
So far there was still time.
Perhaps, he wouldn’t catch all of them as he had planned. He should have allowed more minutes for the traffic and their slowness.
No matter. It simply meant fewer people would be caught.
This time.
The idea came from reading what the IRA had done to the British Army in Northern Ireland. The plan had simply replicated it. The irony wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t feel sorry for all the CSIs running around like headless chickens. Hadn’t they all failed in their duty?
He could see two people in white suits emerging from the crowd. They would be the pathologist and the crime scene manager, the first to enter the building. One to assess the situation and the resources needed. The other to check out the body.
He glanced down at his watch again. The second hand was sweeping up to the twelve. Not long now.
The two people in white suits stopped for a moment to chat with Ridpath.
‘Get a bloody move on!’ he whispered under his breath.
As if they had heard him, they hurried off towards the house.
Finally. The last thing he needed at the moment was a long chat or briefing.
He lost them for a moment as the overgrown garden obscured his view. A second later they appeared again, mounting the stairs to the door, lumbering like two ungainly spacemen in their white suits and wellington boots.
Then they stopped.
What’s holding them up?
They were examining the door. Why examine the door? Nothing to see there.
He checked his watch again. Only two minutes to go.
Get a move on.
Finally, one of them stood up straight and took the first step across the threshold, followed by the other, vanishing from view.
He could relax now. His work was done. The watch said just one minute to go.
He heard a faint shout, followed by another, louder this time.
He panned away from the door. Ridpath had broken away from the uniformed coppers and was running towards the house.
What are you doing? Stay away, it’s too early.
The man was opening the gate and running down the path to the stairs in front of the door.
He checked his watch. Just thirty seconds to go.
Ridpath jumped up the stairs and vanished inside the house.
He was saving Ridpath for later, the main course in his menu of revenge. But no matter, if it happened now, it happened.
Now.
He looked at his watch. Only fifteen seconds to go.
He hoped they enjoyed the fireworks.
Chapter 34
Mrs Challinor had finished her third interview of the day. She was tired, grumpy and her back hurt. Even worse she hadn’t found a replacement for Ridpath.
The first man had been fine on paper. She had found him through an advertisement in the Coroner’s Office website: a degree in forensics from Leeds Uni, three years working in a lab followed by two years as a coroner’s officer in the North East.
He sounded perfect on paper, but as soon as she met him, she knew he wasn’t right. This was only confirmed when he stipulated he only wanted to work a thirty-seven-hour week as his wife didn’t want to move from Sunderland. As an additional codicil to his interview, he stated he wouldn’t be working weekends as he was going to commute back to the North East on Friday night.
She was polite and explained she expected more commitment from her officers. They both agreed he wasn’t the right person for the job.
The second candidate was a
woman who had done a biology and a forensic science degree but lacked any investigative or police experience. She would have been great as an officer in two years’ time but not now unfortunately.
The third was a small man with greasy hands and a badly fitting suit. When she explained that a lot of the work involved dealing with grieving families, work requiring an understanding and empathy with the stages of grief, he asked her about his working conditions and holiday pay. When she asked him why he wanted the job, he answered because it was a pensionable career. And when she mentioned the sort of commitment she was looking for in terms of safeguarding and protecting the less fortunate in society, he stated there was too much mollycoddling of people these days.
He definitely wasn’t right.
She sat back in her chair wondering what to do. She had only ten days left to find Ridpath’s replacement. It wasn’t going to be easy, they shared so much in common in their approach to the work and their attitudes to life and society. They had a mission to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. To be the voice for the dead in the world of the living.
‘Damn the man, why doesn’t he just stay?’
There was a knock at the door and she wondered if she had spoken too loudly.
Jenny, the office manager entered. She was wearing a bright purple skirt which flared out over her hips and her dyed blonde hair was held in place by a pink headscarf. ‘Anything you need me to do before I leave?’
‘Thank you, Jenny. Please check on the Garland case for me. I’ve set the inquest for a week on Tuesday.’ The coroner paused for a moment before asking, ‘Any more enquiries about Ridpath’s replacement?’
‘No additional CVs or enquiries, Coroner. I’ll check once more before I leave this evening. I’ve empanelled the jury for the Robinson inquest tomorrow and all the witnesses have confirmed their attendance. Do you want me to give Ridpath a call? He was supposed to be in this afternoon.’
‘No, I know he’s on a case. I’ll call him myself later.’
‘Fine, I’ll leave early tonight if that’s ok?’
‘Thanks, Jenny. Nice outfit by the way.’
‘Do you like it? It’s forties night at the community centre. I was wondering whether it was a little too purple. I mean, I don’t want to look like a Tesco aubergine.’
‘It’s perfect.’
The office manager smiled broadly, the purple lipstick making her mouth seem wider than it was. ‘I’ll follow up on the Garland case before I leave.’
‘Thank you, Jenny.’
The door closed in a swirl of petticoats and cheap perfume.
Margaret Challinor stared out of the large sash windows giving an expansive view over the modern wasteland that was Stockfield.
What was she going to do about Ridpath?
Chapter 35
Ridpath ran down to the gate and pushed it open, rushing up the path. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he shouted.
The hallway was empty and dark.
He stood just inside and shouted again. ‘Dr Haslam. Come out now.’
There was a muffled response from below his feet. They were in the basement.
He searched for the door to the cellar. There it was beneath the stairs. He pulled it open, hurrying down the stairs past a solitary light bulb hanging from a long brown flex, almost tripping at the bottom.
‘What are you doing here, Inspector? We haven’t cleared this crime scene yet.’ The CSI tried to block his way into the basement. He caught a glimpse of the pathologist looking up from a freezer against the left-hand wall.
‘You have to leave the basement.’
He tried to get round the CSI to talk directly to the pathologist. She blocked his way, shouting. ‘You’re not suited, you’ll contaminate the scene.’
‘I think there’s a bomb here.’
‘What?’ He could see her eyes sandwiched between her face mask and the hood of the Tyvek suit over her head. There was now fear in them. ‘What did you say?’
‘There’s a bomb. The smell. Linseed oil, like putty. It’s classic C-4.’
She sniffed the air. ‘I can’t smell anything.’
The pathologist left the freezer and walked to the boxes at the back of the basement. ‘The smell is stronger over here. Just as you said, smells like putty.’
The CSI looked back at Ridpath. ‘Are you sure?’
‘You need to get out now, both of you.’
The pathologist and the CSI glanced towards each other. At the same time, they began to run for the stairs leading up to safety.
Ridpath waited until they were both clear and followed them. What if he was wrong? What if the owners were just storing oil here rather than in their garage?
This could be the end of his police career. He had contaminated the crime scene of a major case.
He reached the top of the stairs. The CSI was already heading out the door, followed by the pathologist.
‘Keep going, and get them to push the cordon back even further,’ he shouted, running out of the door after them, stopping just for a second to look back at the dark house.
As he did so an enormous explosion ripped through the basement, shattering the glass windows and lifting the house from its foundations.
It was followed almost immediately afterwards by an earth-shattering noise like the thunder of a thousand storms. A whoosh echoed through his ears and it felt like the air was being sucked out from around his body.
Ridpath was thrown into the thick bushes on the right-hand side of the path. The undergrowth saved him as shards of exploded glass rained down from the sky, embedding themselves in the ground and branches of the trees.
He covered his face and hands, feeling the glass impact on his clothes. A large shard impaled itself in a tree trunk next to his head, its sharp point sticking horizontally out of the wood.
A plume of dense smoke rose up into the sky, followed by the sharp aroma of cordite, like the aftermath of Bonfire Night.
Ridpath lifted his head, shaking the leaves and dirt and glass fragments from his hair. His ears were ringing and his head felt light. He tried to sit up but collapsed to the ground again as his head spun. Blood dripped from a cut above his eye, down his face and onto the dirt at his feet.
He tried again to sit up. More slowly this time, making sure he didn’t black out. His head was still spinning and his ears ringing. He felt woozy and rested on his right elbow shaking his head to clear it.
The first orange and blue flames begin to lick out from the windows of the basement and up the walls of the house.
He had to get out of here.
Slowly raising himself to a sitting position, he stopped for a moment to take three deep breaths and grabbed an overhanging branch to pull himself up.
The smell of burning was stronger now, the heat warm against his skin.
He levered himself upright, avoiding the larger shards of glass and stumbled back out onto the path.
Behind him, the house was fully ablaze, orange flames shooting out of the basement windows, stroking the granite walls.
On the first floor, another window shattered from the heat and exploded.
He stumbled down the path. The pathologist and the CSI were both being treated by paramedics on the ground. Blood was pouring out of the CSI’s leg, staining the white Tyvek suit bright red. A medic was attempting to staunch the flow of blood.
‘Lie back, let me handle it,’ he shouted at her.
The CSI was struggling to get up, to run away, the fight or flight instinct deciding she had to get as far away from here as possible.
The medic pushed her back to the ground and shouted. ‘Lie still, I need to stabilise your leg.’
Another medic appeared from nowhere, taking Ridpath’s left arm as he staggered past the CSI. Emily Parkinson took hold of his other arm. She was saying something to him. Her lips were moving but he couldn’t hear anything.
‘What?’ he shouted.
She put her mouth close to his ear and spoke loudly. ‘Are
you alright?’
He nodded. ‘But hearing gone, the blast…’ He shouted again.
They led him to an ambulance parked at the edge of the cordon. The medic sat him down and began examining him.
He stared out at the ground as the ringing in his ears lessened in intensity. What had happened? Had somebody planted a bomb?
Why?
In the distance, he could hear the distinct sounds of sirens. Not police this time, the fire brigade.
Emily Parkinson stood nearby watching him as the medic went through his triage. ‘Seems ok, no concussion, but the cut needs stitching. We’ll take him to Tameside right away.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
They slotted the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
‘The pathologist?’ Ridpath asked, trying to get up.
‘He’ll be ok.’ The medic pushed him gently down.
‘I need to check the house, the crime scene.’
‘You need to check nothing,’ the medic insisted, fastening a strap across Ridpath’s chest.
Then the detective’s head became extremely heavy and the world went dark.
He was tired, so tired, too tired.
Chapter 36
Ridpath woke when he was being rolled in the gurney into A&E. A doctor with a strong Indian accent was giving orders, as others came in and out of view. All were dressed in green masks and gowns.
‘Name?’ a nurse asked.
‘Thomas Ridpath.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘October 4th, 1982.’
The nurse rushed off and the doctor began to examine his chest and mouth as he was rolled into a curtained area.
‘You were involved in the explosion?’
Ridpath nodded.
‘Can you please answer me? Any pain in your chest or throat?’
‘No. A little tightness but that’s all.’
The doctor examined the cut above his eye, removing the emergency dressing applied in the ambulance.
A light was shone in his eyes and his eyesight was checked. ‘Any aches in your head or pain?’
‘The cut above my eye stings like hell.’
The doctor performed an examination of the rest of his body, checking for any other cuts or broken bones.
