by M J Lee
‘We could do with some help. I’ve got Holloway breathing down my neck on costs and asking when are we going to get a result. At the same time, he takes away my DC for a day to work on a bloody burglary.’ He shook his head.
‘Nothing we can do yet, Dave. The real work will start once we get DNA and fingerprints back from the lab. At least we’ll know whose hands they were.’
‘They might not be on NDNAD.’
‘If they are not on the National DNA database, we try others, like the Vulnerable Persons or Missing Persons DNA database.’
‘What if they are foreigners?’
‘I don’t know, Dave. After Brexit we don’t have access to SIS or PRUM any more.’
‘What are they?’
‘Haven’t you been keeping up, Dave?’
‘I’m two years off retirement, Ridpath, give me a break. I need this case like I need a new arsehole.’
‘They are EU police reporting and DNA sharing schemes. We don’t have access any more.’
‘So if any of the hands used to belong to a foreigner, there’s nothing we can do?’
‘We have to go through “channels”.’ Ridpath made two marks with his fingers. What used to take a couple of days could now take a couple of months. ‘Let’s hope we don’t need to check.’
They were passing the Ducie Arms. The early drinkers were already sitting outside in the spring sunshine enjoying a pint.
Dave Connor licked his lips. ‘Fancy a quick one?’
‘And walk in to see the boss reeking of beer?’
‘It was an idea, Ridpath, no need to go all Salvation Army on me.’
‘Listen, Dave, unless I can get us more resource, we are going to be stuffed on this investigation. I gave a list of things for Oliver Davis to do. Any progress on checking with local hospitals, universities, funeral homes and labs? We need to know if any human hands have gone missing recently.’
‘I haven’t heard anything other than his report on the post-mortem. Do you want me to ring him? He’s somewhere in the dark heart of Urmston at the moment.’
‘What about finding reports of bodies without hands using HOLMES?’
The detective shook his head again. ‘I know nothing.’ Dave Connor did a passable impression of Manuel from Fawlty Towers.
‘Jesus, Dave, you’re supposed to know what’s going on in the investigation. You’re the SIO.’
‘Sorry.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘There’s too much to do and too little time to do it. Do you get there feeling everybody is watching, waiting for us to fail? Or is it just me being paranoid?’
‘No, it’s not you being paranoid, I feel we’re being set up, too.’
‘We need more help, Ridpath.’
Ridpath sighed. ‘I’ll see if I can get it when I meet Claire Trent. In the meantime, start ringing around the local hospitals, universities and funeral parlours. OK? The first thing we have to do is check this isn’t some enormous schoolboy prank.’
‘OK. Will do.’
‘I’ll ask Chrissy to check HOLMES for us. See if any bodies have been found without hands anywhere in England or if other hands have been discovered. It’s the best we can do until the DNA and fingerprints come through. I’ll follow up myself on the backpack. Oliver can check on hand operations in the last twenty years.’
Dave Connor didn’t answer, staring at a man sitting outside reading an early edition of the Manchester Evening News. ‘Shit,’ he said loudly, pointing to the newspaper headline.
Ridpath looked across. In big, black letters, the headline shouted:
THREE HUMAN HANDS FOUND IN MANCHESTER HOUSE
Chapter 28
‘The shit has truly hit the fan, Ridpath.’ She threw the newspaper down on the table in front of him. The large black headline stared out from the white paper.
He was sitting in front of Claire Trent. Turnbull was standing on his left, hands in his pockets.
‘I’ve already had the acting chief constable on the phone, plus Chief Inspector Holloway spent an hour last night bellowing in my ear about our lack of support. He’s not a fan of yours, Ridpath, how have you managed to piss him off so quickly?’
‘It’s what he’s good at…’ said Turnbull, smirking in Ridpath’s direction.
‘And this morning I’ve had Mrs Challinor on the phone telling me you are busy with an urgent job for her. Where were you this morning?’
‘Interviewing the family of a girl who disappeared eleven years ago.’
‘Not working our case?’ Turnbull’s smirk turned into a glare.
‘Afterwards, I went to the see the crime scene manager with Dave Connor. Our case is complicated.’
‘Why?’ asked Claire Trent.
‘The hands were embalmed—’
‘Embalmed? Like at an undertakers? Who would do that?’
‘Whoever removed the hands with a hacksaw in the first place.’ Ridpath took a deep breath. ‘Look, boss, we need more resource if we are going to get anywhere near cracking this.’
‘We’re already too stretched as it is, Ridpath. We have nobody extra to spare.’
Ridpath ignored Turnbull, speaking directly to Claire Trent. ‘You know what distresses me most, boss?’
‘Tell us, Ridpath,’ said Turnbull.
The detective ignored him again. ‘We keep referring to these objects as “hands”. The truth is they are people. Three people who have been murdered and their limbs amputated. Possibly by a serial killer, or killers.’
‘We don’t know they were murdered.’
‘The hands were removed about twenty-four hours after death and placed in a jar of embalming liquid. They once belonged to people, fathers or sons, mothers or daughters. We have a duty to investigate and find out who these people were and who removed their hands.’
Claire Trent stared into mid-air, past Ridpath’s head.
‘You have a right nerve coming in here and telling us about “duty”.’ Turnbull’s face was turning bright red. ‘It’s your duty to solve this case.’
Ridpath ignored him. ‘Boss, we need to find out who these people were.’
She nodded. ‘Right, who do you want, Ridpath?’
‘What?’ shouted Turnbull.
‘I only need Emily Parkinson and Chrissy Wright, boss, we work well together and with Dave Connor, I think we can crack it.’
Turnbull slammed the flat of his hand down on the desk. ‘You can’t have them, Ridpath, I need them for MIT’s work.’
‘Last time I looked I was in charge of MIT, Paul, and I will decide the allocation of resources. Emily and Chrissy are yours, Ridpath, for this case and this case only. You have them until Monday. If you haven’t made any progress, we’ll put this on the back burner and transfer it to the Cold Case Unit.’
‘What? You’re giving him resource we don’t have?’
‘I’m re-allocating resource working for me on my projects, Paul, it shouldn’t affect your workload in any way.’
‘But—’
She leant forward. ‘Ridpath, I’d get working straight away, if I were you. You only have until Monday.’
Chapter 29
‘Emily and Chrissy, could you join me in the situation room?’
Both women rose from their workstations and hurried over to join Ridpath.
‘What is it?’ asked Emily Parkinson.
He closed the door. ‘We’re on again, ladies.’
Emily rubbed her hands. ‘Brilliant. What’s the case?’
‘The three hands found in a backpack in Daisy House Children’s Home.’
‘No more stats?’
‘No more stats, Chrissy.’
She brought her hands together as if in prayer, looking up to the ceiling.
‘But there is a problem.’
‘I knew there was a catch.’
‘We only have till Monday.’
‘Well, we’d better get started.’ Emily opened her pad. ‘Brief away.’
Ridpath took them through the details of the case so
far, including the evidence from the pathologist and the crime scene manager. ‘So what do you think?’
Emily spoke first. ‘Not a lot to go on, is there? Three hands found in an old house. We’ve no idea how long they’ve been there, or if they were all placed in the backpack at the same time.’
‘Are we sure this isn’t a publicity stunt by the film people? The Evening News has gone big on the story. Interviewing the producer and the announcer. They could have purchased the hands from a bent undertaker or from an anatomy lab.’
‘That’s Turnbull’s theory. It would certainly fit with the hands being embalmed. But Dave Connor has interviewed the film crew and has cleared them. All their stories match and he felt they were genuinely surprised at the discovery.’
‘So we’re treating this as real? The murder of at least three people?’
‘Until we find evidence to the contrary.’
They both nodded.
‘For me, we have four questions to answer.’ He took up a pen and began writing on the whiteboard. ‘How did the hands get in the backpack? What are the identities of the victims? Where are the rest of the bodies? Why place them in Daisy House Children’s Home? And finally, who killed these people? Before you say anything, I know it’s five questions. Next steps? Chrissy?’
The civilian researcher adjusted her City scarf. ‘Well, the obvious place to start is with HOLMES. The programme should tell us if any bodies with hands missing or a similar MO have been found in England.’
‘I asked Dave Connor to do that, but you would be far quicker. Can you go back to at least 2000 on the first pass?’
‘Why 2000?’
‘Wouldn’t 2006 be better? Surely somebody would have noticed the backpack as they closed and emptied the home?’ Emily Parkinson prodded the air with her pencil.
‘The forensic anthropologist thought one of the hands had been operated on after 2000, so let’s use it as our starting point. We can refine it later when we get more information.’
‘No problem. It seems logical.’
‘I’ll let Dave Connor know Chrissy is working on this. He’ll be relieved to know he has one less job to do.’
‘What about the backpack? Who’s checking up on it?’ asked Emily.
‘It’s supposed to be me, but I haven’t had time. Can you do the job? Get the details from Hannah Palmer.’
Emily scribbled a note to herself. ‘Also, I’d like to relook at the film crew. See if any of them have a record.’
‘Dave Connor has their statements. He seems to think they were kosher.’
‘Doesn’t hurt to check. I’ll also look at the door-to-door responses. It’s a quiet area, people could have seen somebody strange loitering around.’
‘Dave has the sheets too.’
She paused for a moment. ‘Is there a possible link to Daisy House?’
‘I’ve checked the Operation Pharaoh investigation. The place was a hellhole for kids in the eighties and nineties.’ Ridpath wrote the words ‘Daisy House’ followed by a question mark on the board.
‘I could find the staff roster, it’s sure to be in the operational files of the investigation,’ said Chrissy.
‘What about the kids who went there?’ asked Emily.
‘The information is with Manchester Social Services. We’ll need a court order to get it, data protection laws are a bastard.’
Ridpath held his hands up. ‘Let’s not go there yet, I don’t want us to be swamped with information at this stage. Thousands of kids attended Daisy House, finding and contacting them all will be a nightmare.’
‘You’re right, Ridpath.’
‘We have more than enough to keep us going until we get the DNA and fingerprint results back.’
‘When are they coming in?’
‘Hannah says two days, but I’ll push for them earlier.’
‘We need them, Ridpath.’
‘Don’t I know it. Until then, I’ll get Dave Connor to set up a situation room in Stretford nick—’
‘We don’t have to come here?’
‘Nah, for the next few days, we’re on secondment to Stretford.’
‘Brilliant, shame it’s so close to Old Trafford though.’
‘Don’t worry, Chrissy, you won’t catch anything… much,’ laughed Emily.
‘Right, let’s get going. We have until Monday to sort it all out. Chrissy, can I have a word – did you find the files on my misper, Jane Ryder?’
Chrissy patted a sheaf of printouts in front of her. ‘Got them here, Ridpath, what there is.’
Emily stood up. ‘I’ll get on with this stuff. I hope this isn’t a hoax with the hands stolen from some university or lab.’
‘Dave Connor is checking if there are any reports of break-ins or losses of human tissue anywhere. We should know soon.’
‘Right. Next meeting?’
‘Tomorrow at eight.’ Ridpath remembered he had to drive Eve to school. ‘No, make it nine a.m. at Stretford.’
‘Right.’ She turned to go and stopped. ‘Monday – it’s not a lot of time, Ridpath.’
Ridpath ran his fingers through his rapidly thinning hair. ‘Don’t I know it, but it’s all we have.’
Chapter 30
‘Tell me what you have, Chrissy.’
‘Sorry it took so long, Ridpath, I kept being pulled away by Turnbull. There’s not as much as there should be. This is the original missing person report with the Form 737, compiled by the investigating officer…’ She opened the file and checked the name at the bottom. ‘A Colin Dowell. I don’t know him, but he was based in Sale at the time. His inspector was Ron Roper. I knew him, loved his forms did Ronnie, bit of a stickler for stuff in triplicate.’
‘One of those?’
‘A classic jobsworth. He retired and died not long after. Happens to a lot of coppers. Heart attack, I think it was. The original form is here but there’s none of the search materials that should be enclosed.’
‘Like?’
‘Like diaries, notes or any follow-up. And the toothbrush is missing, even though according to the form Dowell took it for DNA.’
‘Missing?’
‘Not here. It should be with the file.’
‘Why’s it not there?’
‘Lots of reasons. Separated and thrown away. Lost, or simply never put back together with the original file after testing. The case was in 2009.’
‘But you said Roper was a stickler for bureaucracy.’
‘That’s what’s so surprising. I’ll carry on looking, though, and see what I can find. Also, there are no follow-up documents.’
‘Please explain.’
‘Normally, there would be meetings with the missing person’s manager, contacts with social workers, visits to the family to update them, interviews with witnesses, all the usual stuff in an investigation. But there’s nothing here. Zilch. Nada. Not a sausage.’
‘Is that strange?’
‘There should be something, she was only sixteen.’
‘But we have the names of all the police involved?’
She patted the file. ‘They are in the original form, plus the name of the missing person’s manager, Doreen Hawkins.’
‘You sound like you know her?’
‘A person I avoid like the plague, as does everybody else who ever worked with her. Did well for herself though. Now running a kids’ charity in Salford, appears regularly on Granada Reports pontificating on the issues of the day. Made a career out of missing kids, has our Doreen.’
He took the file. ‘Right, I’ll go through this when I get a second.’
‘And I’ll follow up on those missing files.’
Ridpath started to leave but turned back. ‘Weren’t there some other websites she could have appeared on?’
‘Yeah, I checked those too, and that’s where it gets weirder. Even though she was only sixteen, she wasn’t on the Vulnerable Persons database or the Missing Persons DNA database or the Missing Kids website. No mention of a Jane Ryder on any of them.�
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‘Is that unusual?’
Chrissy nodded. ‘At her age, the information should have been flagged on one of them. I’ll check again, as I may have missed it, but I don’t think so. It’s like she vanished into thin air.’
‘It’s getting stranger and stranger, Chrissy.’
Chapter 31
‘Hi Sophia, is the coroner in?’
Ridpath had driven back to the coroner’s office after briefing Emily and Chrissy, picking up a Gregg’s sausage roll on the way. The flakes still stuck to his jacket like pastry dandruff.
‘Afternoon, Ridpath. She’s in her office, preparing for the inquest, I think.’
‘Let me update her, then we need to have chat regarding the Ryder case. I need you to do some follow-up.’
‘Great, I’m sick of doing Covid forms for the chief coroner in London. I spend more time sending stuff to him than I do actually doing work.’
Ridpath knocked on the coroner’s door. The meat of the sausage roll was nestling uneasily somewhere between his sternum and his belly button, lying there like a dyspeptic octogenarian.
‘Come.’
He walked in to find the coroner hunched over her casework. She looked up slowly and took off her glasses. ‘Ridpath, just the man I wanted to see. How did the meeting with the Ryders go this morning?’
‘Fine, Mrs Challinor. Understandably, they are still hurting over the disappearance of their daughter, but seem to have come to terms with the fact she is no longer alive. Chrissy has obtained the old Missing Persons files from 2009. I’ll go through them later. There seem to be some anomalies, but at least we know who the investigating officer and the missing person’s manager were.’
‘Great, and you’ll follow up with both of them?’
‘Of course. You’re still planning to hold the inquest asap?’
‘I am, Ridpath. After waiting nearly twelve years, I don’t want them to wait any longer. Given Mrs Ryder’s illness, the sooner we hold the inquest the better.’
‘I agree, but there may be a problem getting the witnesses to the court.’
‘Problem?’
‘Availability, enough notice. I know at least one of the policemen involved has since died.’