When the Past Kills

by M J Lee

  This was going to be fun.

  He continued watching until Ridpath and his woman had finished walking around the shed and the surrounding area. Then Ridpath left, leaving the woman on her own.

  Should he give her a little surprise?

  Slit her throat? Knock her over the head with a hammer?

  No. Keep to the plan. Always keep to the plan.

  He couldn’t resist getting closer though. He walked down the path near the Mersey and around the back of the allotment, occasionally stopping to check on the woman.

  She was going around to the few allotment owners who were working on their vegetable patches and talking to them.

  He couldn’t resist it.

  He walked into the allotment and right past her.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  He pretended not to hear.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said in a louder voice, running after him. ‘Could I ask you a few questions?’

  He turned to face her. She was quite pretty in a dowdy sort of way, but not his type. Not that he had a type any more. He’d lost all interest in the opposite sex a long time ago. They only mattered when they were useful to him. When they helped the plan.

  ‘I’m off to my allotment, love.’ He waved vaguely towards the far corner.

  ‘It won’t take long.’ She took out her notebook. ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Parkinson, we’re looking into an incident that happened this morning. Were you here?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Around 8.10 am.’

  He smiled. ‘No, too early, love, I was still making zeds.’

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Still asleep love, in the land of nod. Don’t wake up till well past nine. Morning’s don’t agree with me.’

  She laughed. ‘I know how you feel. So you didn’t see anything at that time.’

  ‘Just you in my dreams, love.’

  She started to blush. She really was quite innocent. Coppers were getting younger and younger.

  ‘Thank you for your time, sir.’

  ‘No worries.’

  He turned to walk away, he had been reckless coming here. He should have stayed on the golf course, watching from a distance.

  ‘Before you go, sir,’ she called after him.

  His hand went to the knife he kept in his jacket pocket. What had she spotted? What mistake had he made?

  ‘Could I get your name and address for our records?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s George, George Charlton. I live at 7 Aylesbury Street.’ He quickly invented a name and address. She might checkup later but if she did he would be long gone.

  ‘How do you spell that sir? Charlton as in Sir Bobby?’

  ‘That’s right, but he’s a bit before your time, love.’

  ‘Nah, United’s the best team with him in it. 1968 European Cup.’

  ‘Stepney, Brennan, Dunne, Foulkes, Nobby Stiles, Paddy Crerand, Best, Sadler, Aston and, of course, Bobby Charlton.’

  She laughed. ‘You know them well, sir, but do you know who was the man of the match?’

  He thought for a moment, then held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘You got me.’

  ‘John Aston. Not many people know that.’

  ‘I didn’t. You know United.’

  ‘Been a fan since I was seven.’

  ‘But you’re not from round here?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The accent, love, there’s something about Manchester that puts a whine into the voice.’

  ‘You’re right, Preston originally.’

  ‘Still from the North though.’ He moved slightly closer and lowered his voice. ‘What happened here?’

  She smiled, stepping back. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m unable to disclose information concerning an ongoing investigation. Have a nice day.’ She turned and walked away.

  She really was quite sweet. He would hate killing her.

  But he would do it anyway.

  They all had to die some time.

  Chapter 13

  When Ridpath returned to the Coroner’s Office, Sophia was hovering over his desk like a kestrel waiting to pounce. ‘Mrs Challinor has finished her inquest for the day and wants to see you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me. Beneath my pay grade, but…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But I worked it out.’

  Ridpath stood there, jacket still on, waiting for her to continue. Of course she didn’t. She was too well versed in the idea that knowledge equals power to ever let an opportunity like this slip from her grasp.

  Finally, Ridpath gave in. ‘What did you find out?’ With Sophia’s ability to use silence, she would make a great interrogator one day. God forbid if she ever joined the secret police.

  ‘She’s got a job for you. An interesting job.’ She leant in closer to whisper something.

  Before she could speak, a commanding voice stopped her. ‘Ah, Ridpath, you’re back.’

  The coroner appeared in front of them as quietly as a cat in slippers.

  ‘I am indeed, Mrs Challinor.’

  ‘Good, can you come into my office for a moment, I need a chat.’

  The coroner turned and went back to her office. Ridpath raised his eyebrows at Sophia and was rewarded with a mouthed, ‘Told you.’

  He put the flyer in its plastic bag on the table. ‘Ok, clever clogs, ask the others about this. See if anybody recognises it.’

  ‘Will do,’ he heard her say as he followed the coroner, closing the door behind him.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ She passed a piece of paper folded in half across the table. ‘I received this in the post this morning.’

  Ridpath opened the letter. ‘Dear Coroner,’ he read aloud. ‘He’s out and he’s ready to kill.’ Ridpath frowned, turning over the paper to see if anything was written on the back. ‘Who’s it from? It isn’t signed.’

  ‘I’m not certain but the postmark says Ashworth Hospital.’

  ‘The high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool?’

  ‘The one and only. It has two claims to fame. Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer, was kept there for thirty years until he died in 2017.’

  ‘And our ex-pathologist, Harold Lardner, otherwise known as the Beast of Manchester, is still there. You think this is from him?’

  The coroner shrugged her elegant shoulders and handed him the envelope.

  He examined it carefully. ‘All letters from a prison should be given to the wing office unsealed and the envelope should have the name, wing and cell number, along with the prison number of the sender.’

  ‘There’s nothing on this one, only the postmark.’

  ‘Since year zero, prisoners have worked out ways to beat the system.’ He put the envelope back on her desk and picked up the letter again. ‘Who’s the “he” in this? Could be anybody.’

  ‘Actually, it couldn’t be a woman.’

  Ridpath smiled. Mrs Challinor was a member of the self-help organisation Women in Law, along with his boss Detective Superintendent Claire Trent. A group known as ‘The Muffia’ by some of the detectives.

  ‘Probably just a crank trying to wind you up,’ he finally said handing the letter back, ‘Ashworth Hospital is full of nutters.’

  ‘The psychiatric profession would love your classification of mental illness, Ridpath.’ She glanced over it once more. ‘It’s the “ready to kill” sentence I don’t like. For some reason, it sends shivers down my spine.’

  ‘Somebody dancing on your grave, my mum used to say, when she got that feeling.’

  ‘Well, it feels like somebody is doing the Charleston and I don’t like it.’

  Ridpath shuffled his feet. ‘Do you want me to look into it? See if I can find out who was the sender?’

  ‘If you would, Ridpath. The idea of Lardner communicating with me directly…’

  There was a gentle knock at the door before she could finish.

  ‘Come i
n,’ shouted Mrs Challinor.

  The door opened to reveal Sophia standing in the entrance. ‘There was a phone call from a DS Parkinson. She wants you to call her back. Apparently some sports club has CCTV footage of something.’ Sophia’s forehead creased in a frown. ‘Something about dogs.’

  Chapter 14

  Emily Parkinson was standing directly behind DC Phil Reynolds when Ridpath arrived back at MIT. Reynolds was the team’s dedicated CCTV officer, one of the new posts instituted by Claire Trent since she had been in charge.

  Ridpath was glad this time he didn’t have to rely on Sophia and her trusty laptop.

  ‘The footage is pretty murky, but I’m cleaning it up, won’t be a minute,’ said Reynolds twiddling some knobs on his console. It all looked far too hi-tech for Ridpath. He had only just learnt how to programme the timer on his VHS before they became obsolete. Now he didn’t bother to learn any of these new skills, reasoning there was always going to be somebody better at them than him.

  ‘This was taken from the sports club next to the allotment. Lucky for us, they were having problems with people nicking stuff from cars so they installed the CCTV. It’s a bit far away, but it gives us a view of the allotment’s car park and the plots,’ explained Parkinson.

  ‘Any eye witnesses this morning?’

  ‘Nobody saw nothing – as usual.’

  Ridpath did a double take for a moment before realising his DS was joking.

  ‘Nobody was around that early in the morning,’ she clarified, ‘but I’ve put a note on the gate in case I missed somebody.’

  ‘Good, well done.’

  She returned back to staring at the screen without acknowledging the compliment.

  ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’

  ‘Both,’ said Ridpath.

  ‘Well, it’s a dome camera using a digital system not the old VHS tape, and quite modern. This model was manufactured in 2015.’

  ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘It’s a pretty cheap camera, using a CMOS sensor rather than CCD. They’ve compressed the footage before saving it. It looks like they haven’t cleaned the lens since it was installed and, of course, it’s actually focussed on their car park not the allotment.’

  ‘Can we see anything?’

  ‘It’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. You need to watch the top left of the picture.’

  Phil Reynolds rolled the picture and a time code in the corner ticked over to 8:08:13. A white van appeared and parked in the allotment’s car park and just sat there for a few moments. A man dressed in what looked like a boiler suit wearing something dark over his head stepped out from the car and unlocked the rear doors. He reached inside and two dogs, one small and one large, jumped out from the back as he held their leads.

  ‘The dogs weren’t drugged,’ whispered Emily Parkinson.

  ‘Can we zoom in closer to catch the man’s face?’

  ‘I’ll have a try but the image is too far away for this lens and it looks like he’s wearing some sort of balaclava.’

  Phil Reynolds tapped a few keys and the camera zoomed in, the image starting to break up before freeze framing. ‘Sorry, I may be able to clean it up a bit more but this is close to the best you’ll get.’

  On the freeze frame, Ridpath saw the image of a man in a blue boiler suit.

  ‘We’re looking at a Caucasian male, probably aged over forty,’ guessed Emily Parkinson. ‘But we can’t see his face.’

  ‘Roll it forward, Phil.’

  The freeze frame began to move. The man walked away from the camera with the dogs towards the allotments, before vanishing out of frame.

  ‘Can we watch it again without the zoom.’

  ‘No problem.’

  The image reversed back to the arrival of the van and the dogs being removed from the back.

  ‘There. Did you see it?’ said Ridpath.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Movement in the front seat. There’s somebody else there. They just put something on the dashboard.’

  Phil Reynolds reversed the footage again, this time playing it back in slow motion.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Parkinson, ‘there is somebody there, see how the light changes? But they don’t get out of the car.’

  ‘So we’re looking for two people. Also the dogs look like they know him. They don’t seem to be struggling or fighting.’

  ‘Dogs like that are easy to make friends with. A few meaty treats and they’d walk off with anybody,’ said Reynolds.

  They both looked at him.

  ‘I used to be a dog handler before I retrained in CCTV.’

  ‘Ok, can you print me off the copy of the picture of the man. We’ll show it to Gorman and see if he recognises him.’

  ‘It’ll be more of a blur than an image.’

  ‘Print it anyway. Any chance of getting a shot of the number plate of the van?’

  Reynolds shook his head. ‘I doubt it, but I’ll have a try. It’s too far away and the definition on this camera is shite.’

  ‘Is that the technical term?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have a go anyway. Can you find out the make and maker of the van?’

  ‘Now, that I can do. Give me a second.’

  Reynolds pulled up some pictures of white vans taken from a variety of angles and compared them with the model used by the man who had killed the dogs. ‘Looks like a Ford Transit Custom, built before 2018. Also happens to be the most popular van in the UK.’

  ‘Thanks, Phil.’ He turned to his detective sergeant. ‘Was there any more CCTV in the area?’

  ‘That’s it. We could check the local traffic cams but without a registration number, it’s going to be like looking for a City fan in the Stretford end.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  Emily Parkinson shook her head. ‘I also checked with the local nick. There have been no reports of kidnapping or killing dogs or any other animals in the area. HOLMES has nothing either.’

  Ridpath nodded. She had been thorough, even checking the national police data base. ‘What about the neighbours? Did they see anything?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘Not a sausage. It’s a quiet area, everybody keeps themselves to themselves.’

  ‘Looks like we’ve run out of leads,’ said Reynolds smirking.

  ‘Ha, bloody, ha, everybody is a joker these days.’

  Chapter 15

  After briefing Claire Trent and Paul Turnbull on the progress of the case, Ridpath decided to go home. Turnbull had been scowling throughout the briefing as if he’d eaten something rotten for lunch, while Trent had been silent, merely asking one question at the end. A killer question.

  ‘What are your next steps?’

  The truth was Ridpath had exhausted most of the obvious lines of enquiry already, but he wasn’t going to let them know.

  ‘We know he used a white Ford Transit Custom. I’m going to get the data for sales in the North West since it was launched in 2012.’

  ‘How many vans are we talking about?’ asked Turnbull.

  ‘Possibly a thousand.’

  ‘You’re going to check up on a thousand vans? Do you know how long that’s going to take you?’

  ‘We can probably narrow it down pretty quickly but it’s still a lot of work. The other option is to go through the ANPR footage from the area. The van must have been caught on one of the traffic cameras.’

  ‘Without knowing the number plate or the direction it came from, it would be like looking for a stem of straw in a haystack. Whoever did it could have taken back roads to avoid the traffic cameras.’

  ‘That’s true, boss.’ Ridpath continued. ‘Emily is looking at the angle that it might be somebody Gorman arrested who held a grudge against him, but there have been no threats issued.’

  Turnbull sighed. ‘The man was a copper for over thirty years. Do you know how many convictions he was involved in?’

  ‘A lot, but it’s the most plausible explanation for the killing of the
dogs.’

  ‘A revenge attack?’

  ‘It’s the likeliest explanation. I want to go back and talk to the neighbours. Somebody must have seen something that morning or on previous mornings.’

  Claire Trent lifted her eyebrow. ‘Previous mornings?’

  ‘The dogs didn’t struggle or make a fuss. My feeling is they already knew their killer or had at least met him before.’

  ‘You’re clutching at straws, Ridpath, from your bloody haystack.’ Paul Turnbull sat forward. ‘Are we going to waste resources on this, Claire? Investigating the death of a couple of dogs when we’ve got a county lines case with South Yorkshire, a series of post office robberies to look into and, just a minute ago, I had to send a team out to a stabbing in Longsight?’

  ‘The chief constable is on my case. John Gorman is demanding action. He’s already rung to complain.’

  ‘But we can’t justify it, guvnor. It’s two dogs, for God’s sake,’ pleaded Turnbull.

  Claire Trent looked down and touched the file in front of her. Her bottom lip came up and her mouth formed a tight line. ‘Give it one more day, Ridpath. After that I’ll go to the chief constable.’

  ‘But boss—’

  ‘That’s my decision, Paul,’ she said curtly. ‘Make it happen, Ridpath. I want to show John Gorman we’ve done due diligence.’

  ‘He won’t be happy if we halt the investigation, boss.’

  ‘We won’t halt the investigation, we just won’t put any more resource behind it.’

  So Ridpath had left the room and briefed Emily Parkinson on what to do. He would go back himself tomorrow morning to talk to the neighbours. Perhaps she had missed something or asked the wrong questions. Either way, it would be useful to quiz John Gorman again. This was a targeted attack not some random nutter killing dogs because he felt like it.

  Ridpath had a strange feeling about this case. Why did he keep thinking it was going to bite him on the arse? Was it just a bit of nervousness about returning to MIT full time? After all, he had been away for nearly two years now and the place had changed from before. Was he as good as he used to be? Claire Trent seemed to think so, but he wasn’t sure. Two years was a long time in anybody’s career.