Where the Dead Fall

by Where the Dead Fall (retail) (epub)

  Ridpath followed his eyes.

  Another man was standing there, slightly older, stockier, dressed in a black hoodie and jeans and holding a gun in his right hand. A breath of wind blew for a second and the man’s hood lifted away from his face.

  Hard features, like an avenging angel.

  A lorry on the inside lane wiped across Ridpath’s vision, blocking the man with the gun from view.

  The young man in front of his car took his hands off Ridpath’s bonnet and began to run to his left, taking two paces before he was hit by a green articulated lorry.

  The body sailed up into the air like a rag doll being thrown away by a bad-tempered child, landing with a sickening thud on the tarmac.

  Chapter Two

  Ridpath sat there, stunned.

  The lorry skidded to a halt, jack-knifing around the young man on the ground, the trailer narrowly missing his body.

  Ridpath reacted first. He flicked on his warning lights and opened the door, running to where the young man lay.

  Just a few seconds ago this young man had been a living, breathing person. Now he was a just a heap of tangled remains; one arm bent backwards above the head, the right leg at an impossible angle to the torso. Ridpath stared at the face, or what remained of it.

  The head must have been caught by a wing mirror; a deep gash lay across the middle of the skull. Blood oozed from between the broken edges of the wound. Inside, bright white bone flecked with blood peeped through the tangled hair and skin.

  Ridpath looked away from the body. Cars were still cruising slowly past in the inside lane, drivers gawking at the twisted remains lying on the dark grey road.

  He searched the hard shoulder for the man with the gun.

  Nothing.

  Just a wooden fence protecting the motorists from the landscaped woods of Sale Water Park.

  He scanned up and down the motorway.

  Still nothing.

  Where had the man gone?

  ‘I couldn’t do nowt, he just ran in front of me truck.’

  A man standing in front of him, wearing a checked shirt with sleeves rolled up to reveal tattooed arms. The lorry driver.

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  Ridpath bit his tongue. Behind him, the impatient noise of honking from drivers getting louder as it spread from one car to another.

  He ignored them, kneeling down beside the body, checking the wrist for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  At the side, the cars still crawling past on the inside lane. Ridpath saw a child, his face pressed to the rear window, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the mess of limbs lying at Ridpath’s feet.

  He had to do something.

  ‘This is a crime scene. Do you have breakdown kit?’

  The driver nodded.

  ‘Use it to block the inside lane. Don’t let anybody past. Understand?’

  The driver nodded again, staring down at the body beneath his feet.

  ‘Hurry, man.’

  The lorry driver ran back to his cab.

  Ridpath reached for his mobile phone, dialling 999.

  ‘Emergency, which service?’

  ‘Police and ambulance.’

  ‘Putting you through.’

  There was a buzz down the line for a second before a female voice came on the line. ‘Police, what is the nature of your emergency?’

  Ridpath kept his voice calm. ‘This is Detective Inspector Thomas Ridpath one-nine-eight-seven, comms. Major incident on M60 eastbound opposite Sale Water Park at B 11.0. Request urgent assistance from police and ambulance, plus an armed tactical response team and a scene of crime unit. Over.’

  A buzz of silence.

  ‘M60 Motorway Control are aware of the incident, DI Ridpath. Traffic and medical responders are arriving asap. ETA two minutes. Over.’

  The accident and the subsequent build-up in traffic must have been spotted on CCTV. Ridpath stared down the motorway. A tall yellow pylon with a camera on top was focused on the road.

  ‘Repeat again, comms. Request armed tactical team asap as well as a SOC unit. Armed man with gun spotted on hard shoulder. Over’

  ‘Message received, DI Ridpath. Tactical team informed and the SOC unit. Will confirm time of arrival asap. Over.’

  Ridpath clicked off the phone and ran to the rear of his car, opening the boot to pull out his triangular warning sign. The lorry driver was vainly trying to stop a Mercedes from swerving around him using the hard shoulder to get past. The driver was shouting insults through his open window.

  Ridpath ran in front of the Mercedes placing his warning sign in front of the car.

  The old man leant out of his window. ‘What do you think you’re bloody doing?’ Get that thing out of my way.’

  He pulled out his warrant card, flashing it at the driver. ‘Detective Inspector Ridpath, Greater Manchester Police Major Incident Team. You will wait here and not move your car. If you do, you will be charged with failing to stop at the scene of an accident. Do you understand… sir?’

  The man meekly nodded.

  ‘Switch off your engine and don’t start it again until told to do so by a police officer. Do I make myself clear?’

  Quickly the man reached forward and killed his engine, placing both hands on top of his steering wheel.

  Ridpath ran to the lorry driver.

  ‘They wouldn’t bloody stop.’

  ‘Don’t worry, they have now.’

  Ridpath peered over the top of a black Volkswagen. Behind it cars were beginning to pile up. A shimmer of blue exhaust rising like heat waves into the April sky.

  ‘You stay here, make sure nobody drives past.’

  ‘I couldn’t do nothing. He just ran straight in front of me.’

  He patted the man on the back. ‘Just make sure nobody drives past.’

  Ridpath ran towards the hard shoulder. Was this where the man with the gun was standing? He looked up and down the motorway. It could be anywhere within a hundred yards of here. He tried to remember the background behind the man, but all he saw were trees and a wooden fence.

  His phone rang. ‘DI Ridpath.’

  ‘Comms here, Ridpath. Armed tactical squad ETA in twelve minutes. Traffic and ambulance in two minutes. Still waiting on SOC response. Over.’

  Ridpath pulled the phone away from his ear. In the distance, the reassuring discordant wail of sirens.

  ‘I can hear them, comms.’

  ‘How many injured?’

  ‘Just one man. I think he’s dead.’

  ‘Will inform first responders and Traffic. Over.’

  ‘Thank you, comms. Over.’

  The sirens were already getting louder. Ridpath glanced across at the lorry driver, still standing in the middle of the inside lane with his arms spread wide as if herding recalcitrant cattle, the cars in front of him belching blue smoke.

  He ran back to the body lying crumpled on the tarmac of the M60. Blood seeped from the man’s injuries, pooling on the road. From the head a soup of blood and brains drenched his right shoulder. The angel’s wings were still there, untouched by the accident. For some reason, the tattoo was bluer now against the white skin and the grey background of the tarmac.

  A motorbike pulled up on the hard shoulder. A paramedic took off his helmet and calmly gathered his case before walking across the road and kneeling next to the body.

  ‘How long?’ asked the paramedic in a broad Scottish accent.

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘How long since the accident?’

  Ridpath kicked himself. In the chaos, he hadn’t made a note of the time. ‘I’m not sure. About seven minutes I think.’

  The first responder noted it on his pad, before slipping on a pair of light green gloves. He reached over and placed his fingers on the young man’s neck, leaving them there for fifteen seconds while he stared at his watch.

  ‘He’s dead. Looks like it was instantaneous. Was he hit by that?’

  The paramedic pointed to the artic.


  ‘Ran right in front of it.’

  The paramedic wasn’t listening to his answer but writing something on his response sheet.

  ‘And your name is?’

  ‘Thomas Ridpath. DI Thomas Ridpath.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ridpath could see a police car pull up on the hard shoulder behind the parked Mercedes. A large burly man wearing uniform opened the car door, stepped out and slowly walked to move the sign to one side.

  ‘Oi, you, leave that there,’ Ridpath shouted. He ran towards the policeman waving his arms. ‘Don’t move forward, this is a crime scene.’

  ‘Who do you think you’re shouting at?’

  ‘You can’t drive on the hard shoulder, it’s a crime scene.’

  ‘And who do you think you bloody are to give me orders?’

  Ridpath pulled out his warrant card.

  The policeman stared at the card and sniffed. ‘Well, I’m Chief Inspector Harold Todd, in charge of traffic for Greater Manchester. And we’re going to open this road, Sunny Jim.’

  Chapter Three

  Ridpath moved in front of the superior officer. ‘With all due respect, sir. You can’t do that.’

  ‘With all due respect, son, I can.’ He turned and waved to his officers arriving in their orange-striped BMWs.

  ‘Sir, there is an armed man in this area. I have called for support from an armed response team and an SOC unit.’

  The chief inspector turned slowly towards him, pointing back over his shoulder to the line of cars jamming the road.

  ‘See that son. It’s Wednesday, there’s a game on at Old Trafford and it’s the busiest traffic time of the week on the M60. The cars already tailback three miles to the Trafford Centre. Soon the jam will extend over Barton Bridge and start to block the exit roads from the M62, M61, M6 and every other bloody road in north Manchester.’ He smiled. ‘Do you really want to be responsible, lad?’

  Ridpath closed his eyes. Why did these things always happen to him? Should he just forget it, let this man take charge, keep the traffic flowing?

  ‘Well, son?’ Chief Inspector Harold Todd had a smug smile on his face.

  ‘I’m not your son. I am a serving officer with the Greater Manchester Police. This is a crime scene and the road will remain closed until I am told it is no longer needed by the senior investigating officer.’

  Harold Todd smiled again. ‘Listen…?’

  ‘Ridpath, Detective Inspector Thomas Ridpath.’

  ‘Listen…,’ the voice was emollient now, ‘nobody is going to thank you for this. Is your career worth risking for some druggie who’s so off his tree he’s decided to play chicken on the M60?’

  Ridpath flashed back to the moment when the young man was leaning with his hands on the bonnet of his car, the blue eyes pained with fear. Was his career worth it?

  ‘Well, is it?’

  Ridpath took a deep breath before answering. ‘This is a crime scene… sir.’

  ‘On your own head be it.’ He turned back to the traffic officers standing beside the open doors of their cars, shouting. ‘Implement Operation Trident. Block all entrances onto the M60 from Junctions 7 through to 15. Route southbound traffic from the M61 towards the eastern side of the ring road. Move it.’

  The traffic officers stared at each other, then leapt back in their cars, reversing to the next slip road.

  Chief Inspector Harold Todd walked slowly back to his car shaking his head, leaving Ridpath all alone on the hard shoulder. In the nearby cars families were staring at him, children watching through the glass of the rear windows. The man in the white van who had nearly rear-ended him tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

  As the sun began to set and the sidelights shined through the fog of car exhaust, a bleating of car horns echoed down the M60 like lost lambs in search of their mother.

  Ridpath ran back towards the body lying in the middle of the M60.

  ‘Oi, how long do I have to stand here like a bloody scarecrow?’

  It was the lorry driver, forehead dripping with sweat, arms still outstretched, a lion tamer holding a pack of beasts at bay.

  Ridpath shrugged his shoulders, putting his mobile phone to his mouth. He called the last number and was put through to the comms officer. ‘How long till the armed response team arrive, comms?’

  ‘ETA uncertain, heavy traffic.’

  ‘I know there’s heavy traffic, I’m the one who’s causing it,’ he shouted down the phone. Ridpath cursed himself for losing his temper.

  ‘Two minutes. You should be able to hear them now. MIT is on its way too. Over.’

  ‘Who’s in charge? Over.’

  ‘Just a minute. It’s a Detective Chief Inspector Charles Whitworth. Over.’

  Ridpath smiled to himself. Of all people on duty tonight, it had to be Charlie Whitworth. Above the cacophony of idling engines Ridpath could hear more sirens approaching at speed down the hard shoulder. ‘Thank you, comms,’ he said before switching off his mobile phone.

  The first responder was still standing over the crumpled body of the young man. ‘Ambulance will be here in two minutes.’

  ‘Too late for him.’

  ‘Look I got here as quickly as I could. See, eight minutes response time.’ He pointed to the time on his log sheet.

  ‘Still too late,’ said Ridpath turning away.

  The armed response team and an unmarked Ford were squeezing past the cars of the traffic police on the hard shoulder, pulling up short of the red triangle beyond the parked Mercedes. Armed men began to pile out of the rear doors, fanning out along the motorway.

  Ridpath ran to meet them, holding up his warrant card. ‘Police, DI Ridpath.’

  ‘You called it in? Where’s the perp?’ The officer in charge was dressed in black combat fatigues and carrying a Heckler and Koch sub-machine gun across his chest. The bottom part of his face was covered but the words came out clear and forceful.

  ‘He was standing somewhere along the hard shoulder…’

  ‘Somewhere?’ the officer interrupted.

  ‘I was driving past. I didn’t see exactly where.’

  ‘Shots fired?’

  Ridpath shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t see or hear any.’

  The officer pointed to the body. ‘He’s been wounded?’

  Again, Ridpath shook his head. ‘Run down by a lorry. Look, I think he was being chased by an armed man and that’s why he ran across the road.’

  ‘You think?’

  Ridpath frowned. ‘He was being chased by an armed man.’

  ‘What weapon?’

  ‘A handgun.’

  ‘Revolver or automatic?’

  Ridpath closed his eyes. The image of the man standing on the hard shoulder holding the gun in his right hand flashed into his mind.’

  ‘Automatic… I think.’

  ‘Which way did he run?’

  ‘I don’t know. By the time, I looked again, he had vanished.’

  The officer nodded once and then turned to his men. ‘Fan out. We’re going to search the Water Park. You two, start from Junction 7. Briggs and Miles you start at Rifle Road, walk through Sale Ees and meet up with Jackson and Wright. The rest of you with me. Hurry, lads, I want this place secure before it goes dark.’

  An unmarked Vauxhall was parking 150 yards away on the hard shoulder. Ridpath could see Charlie Whitworth jogging towards him slowly, followed by the usual suspects of DI Makepeace, DS Hardy, DS Butcher and a new man he’d never seen before.

  Whitworth was out of breath when he arrived. ‘Ridpath. I might have bloody guessed you’d be behind this shower of shit.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘Hello, Charlie, you don’t know how glad I am to see you.’

  Ridpath had once been one of Charlie’s blue-eyed boys but had collapsed during a major investigation when the cancer had taken hold. Nine months afterwards, in remission and cleared by occupational health, he had gone back to work to find he had been temporarily assigned to the Coroner�
��s Office rather than return to his old job. Unfortunately, during the recent Beast of Manchester case, Ridpath had been forced to re-investigate one of his boss’s old cases. Nobody liked to be proved wrong, especially not Charlie Whitworth.

  ‘Wish I could say the same to you. I’ve just had the Assistant Chief Constable on the blower to me. Apparently, you’ve managed to piss off the head of Traffic. Now, I know old Harold, he’s an officious old tosser but he’s a good copper. Old school, you know what I mean?’

  They began walking toward the body lying in the road.

  ‘Take me through what happened.’

  Ridpath told the story with all the detail he could remember.

  ‘You’re certain the man was armed?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘And the kid just ran across the road, straight in front of this bloody artic?’

  ‘No, he stopped in front of my car first. Resting his hands on my bonnet and then he ran off to be hit by the lorry.’

  ‘Was he off his face?’

  Ridpath thought back to the wild blue eyes. ‘Could have been, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Acid, E, Coke, PCP, Ket?’

  ‘Don’t know, boss.’

  They were standing over the body.

  ‘Any ID?’

  The first responder looked down at the naked body just clad in its blue boxers and shook his head. ‘Where’d he keep it?’

  The pool of blood around the head was larger now, the gash in the skull already covered in congealed lumps of blood and brain.

  ‘Poor sod. Not a nice way to go. Where’s the bloody pathologist?’

  ‘He’s on his way, boss,’ answered Dave Hardy, ‘stuck in traffic.’

  ‘And the SOC team?’

  ‘Same, boss.’

  Charlie Whitworth ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘Jesus. And it would have to be a bloody football night too.’

  Another detective, somebody Ridpath hadn’t seen before, ran up. ‘The natives are getting restless boss.’

  People had started getting out of their cars, congregating in groups and looking towards the jack-knifed lorry and the body lying in the middle of the road. Behind them, the sound of beeping horns was growing louder and louder.