Where the Truth Lies

by M J Lee

  As if on cue, a squad car appeared around the corner and parked up behind Deborah.

  ‘That’s right. This morning. I thought about it all night, I wasn’t certain you see, it was dark and everything. Sometimes, you don’t want to interfere if it’s an argument between friends do you?’

  ‘Which one is Sarah’s car?’

  ‘The blue Audi over there.’

  Deborah strode over to the Audi, ignoring the arrival of the two coppers in the squad car.

  She knelt down in the middle of the road. A set of car keys was next to the driver-side door, just behind the front tyre.

  Strange. Had DS Castle dropped them?

  She stood up, took two steps back and checked the road. There, just two feet away, was a tiny pool of dark liquid. She knelt down and stared at it. And there were more splashes dappling the grey road surface. She knew exactly what they were, having witnessed the same or similar in Manchester city centre after the pubs closed and the fights began.

  Blood.

  She got on the radio back to the station. ‘Sarge, you know you sent me round to check up on DS Castle?’

  ‘Right. Knock her up, did you?’

  ‘No. I think we’ve got a problem, boss. A big problem.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The Cloud turned out to be a sharp-edged lump of rock sticking out almost vertically from the Cheshire Plain, just three miles south of Congleton. Ridpath parked in the village of Timbersbrook, next to one of the decommissioned red phone boxes that had been turned into a library. Inside were a few books and a note saying, ‘Please leave a book and take one for yourself.’

  It was one of those lovely village notices harking back to a bygone age when people didn’t lock their doors and kids played out on the street. Perhaps in this village they still did. He would check in the boot to see if Eve or Polly had left a book there and add it to the village’s little library.

  He strode across to Chettle’s house, one of a row of four classic cottages. Forget-me-nots, daffodils and hyacinths were in flower in the garden. Somebody obviously had a lot of time on their hands.

  He knocked on the door.

  It was immediately opened by a tall, broad-shouldered, military-looking man – grey-haired and distinguished, like an ageing Hollywood actor still desperate for leading man parts.

  ‘Anthony Chettle?’

  ‘Himself. You must be Tom Ridpath. Margaret told me about you. How’s the cancer?’

  Did everybody on earth know his medical history? ‘In remission, it’s why I’m back on the job.’

  ‘You may as well come in. The wife’s at the vets in Congleton. She’s having her nails clipped. The dog not the wife. Fancy a cup of tea?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  As Chettle made the tea, Ridpath made small talk. ‘Looks like a lovely place to live, this village.’

  ‘It is. Peace and quiet and a walk every day with the dog up the Cloud. Used to be a working village this, but not anymore. Only old people left here now and retirees, like me and the missus. How do you like your tea?’

  Ridpath was wandering around the living room, looking at the photos of a man and his wife, both dressed up to the nines, a medal pinned to the man’s chest. ‘Milk, no sugar, please,’ he finally answered.

  ‘That’s me and the missus at the Palace receiving the CBE in 2008 for services rendered to Coroner’s Court.’

  ‘You must have been proud.’

  ‘Me? Couldn’t give a toss, but the missus loved it; she’d only ever been to London once before.’

  He sat down on the couch, placing the tray with two mugs on the coffee table. ‘Now you didn’t come all the way from Manchester to talk about my bloody CBE.’

  Ridpath sat next to him. ‘No. Do you remember the Beast of Manchester case?’

  ‘Who could forget?’

  ‘The High Court has ordered us to reopen an inquest into the death of Alice Seagram.’

  Chettle nodded. ‘And you’ve lost the body.’

  ‘Can you tell me about it?’

  ‘No much to tell. Like you I was on secondment to the Coroner’s Office from Manchester Police. For me, the job lasted 20 years and I loved it. Hated being a copper and loved being a coroner’s officer. You see, in the Coroner’s Office we weren’t after chasing convictions; our job was to help bereaved families. I liked that. We wanted to understand what happened, not convict somebody.’

  ‘You worked with Margaret Challinor?’

  He stared off into the distance. ‘Great woman, Margaret – believes in what’s she’s doing. She was devastated by the Harold Shipman case.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the doctor had killed over 300 people in Tameside and nobody knew, least of all the Coroner’s Office. We only get involved if the cause of death is suspicious. So Shipman killed his victims and then signed the death notice himself as the doctor. The cause of death was always natural: heart attacks, old age, pneumonia and so on. No need for the coroner to get involved. It was only when Shipman became greedy that he was caught by one of the relatives. Tried to create a fake will, leaving all the money to himself. For a clever man, he was incredibly stupid.’

  He topped up his tea from the pot. The tea now had the colour of terracotta.

  ‘Margaret wanted to retire when Shipman was found guilty, but they wouldn’t let her.’

  ‘Retire?’

  ‘She felt guilty even though it wasn’t her district. Probably why she works so hard now. Can’t let another Shipman happen again, even though the government made a balls up of the reform of the coronial system with the 2009 Act. Didn’t want to spend money on it to make it really effective. That’s when I retired.’

  ‘You’d had enough?’

  ‘For me, it was never going to change, but Margaret was determined to fight within the system to make it better. I just got fed up of banging my head against a brick wall.’

  ‘Was the case against the Beast of Manchester a catalyst?’

  ‘Not really. Looked open and shut to me. He was caught in a lock-up with one of the victims, wasn’t he?’ John Gorman and Charlie Whitworth may have put pressure on the pathologist, but…’

  ‘Harold Lardner?’

  ‘He was a good pathologist, the best we had. They all made mistakes though, did the pathologists. They’re only human after all.’

  ‘This was when Alice Seagram’s body was released and not released?’

  ‘Luckily I hadn’t called the family when Charlie rang me back telling me there was going to be another autopsy. He said Lardner had asked him if he could do it again.’

  ‘Lardner asked? He never told me.’

  ‘That’s what Charlie said. But you never know with Charlie. The truth is extremely flexible with our Mr Whitworth.’

  ‘O’Shaughnessy was the undertaker?’

  ‘He was. He did a lot of the funerals. A meticulous man, but always looking to bend the rules. His own death was suspicious too…’

  ‘I thought he died in a fire?’

  ‘So did everybody, but I heard whispers he’d been seen on the Costa del Sol living it up. Nothing concrete, mind, just rumours.’

  Ridpath made a mental note to check up on the death of the funeral director. The coroner must have opened an inquest if the death was accidental. For now, though, he had to concentrate on Alice Seagram.

  ‘You arranged for the body to be picked up?’

  ‘Not really. After the pathologist had performed the second autopsy, I informed the family of Alice Seagram she could be collected for burial. I think it was the brother Tony Seagram who arranged everything.’

  ‘I’ve met him. Not a pleasant man.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t back then either. It was almost as if he was looking to blame everybody except the man who had committed the murder.’

  ‘He still is.’

  ‘You know I went to the funeral?’

  ‘Whose funeral?’

  ‘Alice Seagram’s. I’ve got the album here.’ He wal
ked over to the cupboard loaded with china and opened a drawer. ‘Kept an album of all the cuttings for the cases that interested me. Most of it is Shipman, of course – the bastard still lives on in here.’ He tapped the top of the scrapbook as he lifted it out of the drawer.

  He sat down again and flicked through the album. Ridpath could indeed see page after page on the Shipman case. Finally, he stopped.

  ‘Here it is. The paper is dated 22 March but the funeral took place the day before.’

  Ridpath leant in to read the faded cutting from the Manchester Evening News. ‘Funeral takes place of Beast Victim’ stated the headline in heavy type.

  Beneath was a grainy photograph of a coffin being carried by pall-bearers in a graveyard, behind them a long procession of mourners led by the Seagrams.

  Ridpath leant in closer.

  ‘Who’s that on the left?’

  ‘O’Shaughnessy, the undertaker.’

  ‘And beside him?’

  ‘I dunno, one of his assistants, I suppose.’

  Ridpath recognized the man in the picture immediately. Why hadn’t he said he worked for O’Shaughnessy?’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  ‘Chrissy, I want all the Highways CCTV at 11.30 last night from this area to be checked. We’re looking for a white BMW 320.’ Charlie Whitworth was on the phone to the MIT’s support officer back at headquarters.

  ‘Any reg number, boss?’

  ‘Not at the moment, but you’ll be able to find it on the CCTV. We need it yesterday.’

  The chief inspector switched the phone off and turned back to face the team. They were outside Sarah Castle’s house. Her car was surrounded by a phalanx of SOCOs all dressed in their Tyvek white suits and blue gloves. The road had been cordoned off 100 yards in either direction, with policemen from the local nick forming a barrier in front of the kids and housewives, all stretching their necks like giraffes to see what was going on.

  In the middle of the road, another group of SOCOs were collecting samples and photographing the blood pool and the blood splatters.

  ‘Charlie, what do you think we’ve got? A domestic or something more serious?’ Dave Hardy stood in front of his DCI.

  ‘Dunno, but I feel in my water it’s not a domestic. According to her friends, Sarah didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t in a relationship at the moment. It could have been someone she met on Tinder but I doubt it. The witness says it was a violent attack but over quickly. It’s the car that’s worrying me, Dave.

  ‘The BMW?’

  ‘One of the pimps reported a similar car was in the area when the girl with the swan tattoo went missing. Get on the blower to Chrissy again and get her to also check the CCTV around the canal on the night before the body was found.’ He ran his hand through his thinning hair. ‘No, scratch that, you go and check it, Dave. I want Chrissy to stay focused.’

  ‘I’m on it, boss.’

  The pathologist, Protheroe, was also lurking nearby.

  ‘You got anything yet?’

  ‘Nothing from the car so far except fingerprints which match those of Sarah Castle.’

  ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have told me the blood on the street is Type A, which just happens to be DS Castle’s blood type. We can match the DNA with hers if we find a hair from a brush or something on her clothes. But to do that, we have to get in there.’ He pointed to the house opposite.

  ‘For once, I can give you an answer, Protheroe.’

  The pathologist’s eyebrow rose to touch the Tyvek of the white hairnet.

  ‘The car key ring. There are some extra keys on it. I’ll bet you a bottle of scotch one of them fits the front door.’

  'Gambling is the work of the devil, DCI Whitworth, but I will try your suggestion nonetheless.

  Harry hovered next to Charlie.

  ‘Anything more from Mrs Finch?’

  ‘Not a lot, boss. Her timings are accurate though. Sarah was attacked at 11.30 p.m. The attack lasted less than a minute and the white BMW drove off towards Sale town hall.

  ‘Great, well done.’ He stroked his moustache and said softly, ‘Get a bloody move on, Chrissy.’

  ‘What’s that, boss?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. Make sure the plod keeps those people back – this is a crime scene.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Charlie Whitworth looked down at the ground. One of their own was missing and he was going to pull out all the stops to make sure she was found.

  Behind his back, his fingers were crossed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  She woke with a pain lashing through her right hand.

  ‘Sorry, been a while since I did this.’

  The woman was attaching something to her right hand. Again, a shot of pain up her arm.

  ‘There. Finally done.’

  The woman stopped back to admire her handiwork. Sarah tried to reach out to grab her, to stop her, but her movements were slow and ungainly. It was as if she no longer controlled her body.

  ‘The drugs will begin to wear off soon. He’s said you are not to receive any more. He wants to enjoy the pain in your eyes.’

  The woman’s words began to penetrate the fog in her mind. ‘Pain in my eyes?’ What the hell is she talking about?

  Slowly Sarah was taking in her surroundings. The woman had strolled to a box on a stand and was adjusting it. Was she being filmed? Was somebody watching her?

  A spotlight to the left shone directly into her eyes, putting everything behind it into shadow. All she could see was the woman, the camera and the desk to the left with a monitor sitting on it.

  She was on the monitor: her blonde hair hanging bedraggled over her face, her white shirt dirty with blood and sweat, her arms hanging from manacles attached to a brick wall. She was sitting on the floor, her legs tucked under her.

  ‘Is that better?’

  The woman wasn’t talking to her but to somebody else not in the room.

  ‘A bit closer?’

  Sarah could see her picture on the monitor becoming larger as the woman zoomed in, until her face filled the frame.

  A haggard, worn face – the face of a criminal. That wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.

  ‘Too close?’

  The framing zoomed out until just her body filled the frame.

  ‘Perfect? Thank you. I’ve attached the drip to her hand.’

  Sarah turned her head slowly to her left. Her arms was stretched out, slightly higher than her head, like Jesus on the cross. The chain had been shortened on the manacle so she could only move a couple of inches. Attached to her hand a thin tube snaked upwards to a saline drip.

  She remembered the time when she had broken her leg wakeboarding at 18. Trying to do a bigger jump and realizing as soon as she landed something was wrong. The trip in the ambulance was shocking, each bump in the road causing a searing stab of pain to shoot up her right leg. The doctor in A&E, young and inexperienced, telling her it was just a sprain until the X-rays came back showing a fracture. The operation: going under the anaesthetic, waking up in the middle of it to hear the doctors talking about her, and then afterwards, in bed, the drip with its wonderful supply of morphine and saline attached to her left hand.

  Just like now.

  Except now she was lying on the sticky floor of some warehouse with a madwoman filming her.

  Sarah shook her left arm. It moved just three inches, the tube leading into the saline drip not moving at all.

  ‘She’s a feisty one, this one.’

  The woman wasn’t talking to her, but seemed to be listening to an earpiece, tilting her head slightly, her mouth open as she listened to the words.

  She reached over and flicked a switch on the monitor. Instantly the room was flooded with the sound of a man’s voice.

  ‘Good morning, Sarah. I hope you slept well. Lorezapam usually gives you a quiet night.’

  The voice was soothing, emollient. Did she recognize it? Had she heard it before?

&n
bsp; ‘You have probably noticed the drip Lesley has attached to your hand. The saline should help to rehydrate you. Unfortunately thirst is one of the side effects of your sedation. A shame, but it can’t be helped.’

  Sarah tried to speak but her mouth was dry; nothing but a croak emerged from her lips.

  ‘Give it time to work, Sarah. Don’t be so impatient.’

  Sarah tried to speak again. ‘Let…me…go.’

  ‘What was that? You want to leave? But we’re only just getting started. You wouldn’t want to miss the fun, would you? Unfortunately I can’t be there, but Lesley has thoughtfully rigged up the camera so I can watch everything that transpires. If you look over to your left, you will also see a reel-to-reel tape recorder. We wouldn’t want to miss any of your screams, would we?’

  Sarah tried to stretch her legs out from under her body. Immediately, she felt a rope tighten around her throat. She tucked her legs back to where they were before and the pain around her neck stopped.

  ‘I think you’ve just discovered one of Lesley’s little inventions. You created it when you were a psychiatric nurse, didn’t you, Lesley?’

  ‘The rope binding the legs is looped around the neck. The patients soon learnt that in trying to kick me, they would only strangle themselves.’

  ‘Totally illegal, of course. But we won’t bother ourselves with legal niceties at the moment.’

  Sarah was panting, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Sweat dripped from her face onto the sticky carpet beneath her body. The white piece of bone had been removed. ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘That’s better, Sarah. See, Lesley, I told you Sarah would be better when the drugs wore off. What do we want from you? A little experiment, that’s all. If you look above the saline drip, you will see another bottle feeding into it. This bottle contains formalin, a 37 per cent solution of formaldehyde. You may know it better as embalming fluid. Undertakers use it to preserve bodies to prevent decomposition. Now, most undertakers inject at least 11.3 litres of the fluid into the cadaver’s arterial system and body cavity to slow decay for burial ceremonies.’

  He stopped talking for a moment and Sarah heard a rasping sound, like a file being scraped against metal. The voice continued.