by M J Lee
Not much left, unless they found or charged the killer. She’d give this case another week and then move onto something else.
For all reporters, there was the law of diminishing returns. When a story was no longer news only something big could revive it.
Unfortunately, the death of David Carsley was no longer news.
The world had moved on, as it always did.
Chapter 19
Ridpath pressed the bell and stepped back from the porch. The house was one of the classic semi-Ds, thousands of which had been built as the sprawl of Manchester had extended its brick-covered tentacles into the garden suburbs in the 1930s.
In those days, they had been the apotheosis of the middle-class dream; a front and back garden, three bedrooms, inside toilet, electricity and 2.4 kids. After decades of deprivation, decline and division, they were an oasis of security and safety in an insecure world. Later in the 1960s, they bred the young who rebelled against the stolid and stable hypocrisy that oozed from every window. Now, they were the home of the barely-managing, those who fought every month to pay the mortgage, the water rates and the credit card bills while still trying to enjoy life.
A woman answered the door. She was pretty in a school teacherly way.
‘Mrs Morgan?’
‘Yeessss,’ she said tentatively.
‘My name is Ridpath, I’m a detective inspector with GMP.’ He showed her his card. ‘Is your husband at home?’
‘He’s just got back. You want to talk to him again? He’s not going to be happy.’ She shouted over her shoulder, ‘Jon, it’s the police for you.’
‘Not again,’ the voice came from the back room. Two seconds later a head popped around the door. ‘I only spoke to your lot yesterday. They said it would be the last time.’
‘Just a few things we need to clear up. It won’t take long. Can I come in?’ Ridpath displayed his largest, most charming smile. It produced a grimace from Jon Morgan and a grunted, ‘You’d better come through here.’
‘A cup of tea, Inspector?’ asked the wife.
‘That would be lovely.’
‘And I think I have some digestives left over from the last time your lot came round.’
‘Perfect.’
Jon Morgan showed him into the front room. It was obviously the one they kept for visitors as it had that rarely used smell. A child’s ball lay forgotten in the corner.
As Ridpath stood there, a big lolloping Labrador pushed the door open and bounded in, all dangling tongue and wagging tail. The dog immediately rushed up to sniff Ridpath’s leg.
‘I presume this was the dog you were walking in Chorlton Ees?’
Jon Morgan tried to pull the dog away by grabbing his collar. ‘Yeah, sorry, he’s a bit of a handful.’
The dog was reluctantly ushered out of the room and the door closed. A few plaintive whines and scratches followed before Mrs Morgan called him away.
Ridpath sat on the chair with Jon Morgan facing him, pulling out his files as Morgan started talking.
‘I wish I’d never found the body now. Such a palaver and my face plastered all over the papers. One of my customers even asked me about it.’
Ridpath took out his pen and notebook. ‘What do you do, Mr Morgan?’
‘I’m a sales manager for an IT company, I cover the North West.’
‘So your region is…?’
‘Manchester, Liverpool, Cheshire, Lancashire, all the way down to Shrewsbury and up to Carlisle.’
‘A big area. You must do a lot of driving.’
‘Used to, not anymore.’
‘In lockdown, you worked from home?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘What a pain that was! The kids were off school too. Trying to get anything done was a nightmare.’
Ridpath listened; the house was pretty quiet for one with kids.
Jon Morgan watched him and smiled. ‘They’re away with Margery’s parents in the country. You obviously have kids yourself…’
‘Only the one, but she makes enough noise to wake the dead.’ Ridpath coughed and quickly moved on. ‘Can you tell me again what happened on 23 July?’
‘I’ve told the story so many times. I can see you have my witness statement.’
Ridpath held up the photocopy. ‘We’re going over everything to see if we missed something – a detail, an incident that people might remember now.’
‘So you haven’t found the killer yet?’
Ridpath ignored the question and its implied rebuke. ‘You left the house at eight a.m.?’
‘Yeah, around then, and I drove to Chorlton Ees.’
‘You walked the dog there every morning?’
‘During lockdown it became a habit, getting me out of the house even if it was only for a short while. We walked the dogs, letting them off the leash.’
‘You said “we”?’
Jon Morgan seemed confused. ‘Did I? I meant I walked the dog.’
There was a knock at the door, and Mrs Morgan came in with a tray of tea things and a plate of digestive biscuits, placing them on the coffee table.
‘Thank you, that’s great.’
‘Shall I be mother?’ She picked up the teapot and poured the tea, straining it through a small metal strainer. It was a rich, dark colour. ‘I always use loose tea, I can’t stand teabags, can you, Inspector?’
Ridpath only ever used teabags. He wouldn’t know where to start with loose tea.
‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Milk but no sugar, please.’
‘Sweet enough, are you?’ She added the milk and stood up.
Ridpath didn’t answer her. He continued the interview with her husband. ‘You said you were walking the dog?’
‘I let him off the lead. He went off as usual into the undergrowth as I stayed on the path. I must have been walking for about ten minutes when he began to whine.’
‘He?’
‘The dog, Major.’
All through this speech, Jon Morgan had been glancing at his wife, seeking her approval.
‘He doesn’t whine normally,’ added Mrs Morgan, ‘unlike my husband.’ She paused, waiting for Ridpath to register the joke before continuing. ‘He’s a good dog, a quiet dog. I can fetch him if you like?’
As if hearing his name, the Labrador bounded into the room again, sniffing Ridpath’s leg.
The detective scratched the dog’s head between the ears. ‘He’s a lovely lad, but I don’t think he’s going to add anything to Mr Morgan’s statement.’ He paused, waiting for a laugh but received nothing but silence. ‘So you followed the dog into the undergrowth…’
‘And that’s when I saw the body and called the police.’
Mrs Morgan knelt down and put her arm around her husband. ‘How awful for you, dear. He’s been having nightmares about it, terrible nightmares.’
The husband now had a hangdog look that reminded Ridpath of a bloodhound. He wasn’t going to get anything useful here.
He closed his notebook and put his pen back in his inside pocket. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Morgan, I think I have enough.’ Ridpath stood up.
‘You haven’t finished your tea, Inspector.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Morgan, but I’ve drunk so much today, I could float the Titanic.’ He suddenly remembered one question. ‘Oh, before I forget, did you see anybody else that morning?’
Jon Morgan shook his head emphatically. ‘No, didn’t see anybody.’
His wife frowned. ‘But that’s not what you told me when you came home that day. You said you’d seen the woman with her stupid Jack Russell. The dog that Major stole a toy from? Remember?’
Her husband shook his head again and laughed. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong day, Margery.’
She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t think so. I remember it clearly. Major came home with another dog’s toy that day.’
‘He must have found it in the bushes?’
‘But you said he took it off a woman’s dog. What was the name you said – a Mrs Burgess? I remem
ber you had her number on your phone so you could contact her to give it back.’
Jon Morgan reddened visibly.
‘Do you have Mrs Burgess’s number, Mr Morgan? It would help us to eliminate her from our enquiries?’
‘Is that necessary, Inspector? My dog only took a toy from her Jack Russell.’
‘It would help, sir. Perhaps she had walked her dog on the day the body was discovered, as your wife remembers?’
‘It was definitely another day,’ Jon Morgan said firmly.
Ridpath persisted. ‘If I could have her number, perhaps she saw something?’
Reluctantly, Jon Morgan handed over his phone. Ridpath copied the number into his notebook.
‘One last question, Mr Morgan, is there anything else you remember about that day? Anything unusual that has occurred to you?’
Morgan glanced at his wife and shook his head slowly.
Ridpath stood up. ‘Thank you for your time. If you do remember anything, here’s my card.’
‘If I do, Inspector, I will call you.’
Ridpath rubbed the Labrador’s ears. ‘You shouldn’t steal other dog’s toys. It’s a criminal offence.’ He looked up at Jon Morgan. ‘Almost as bad as giving the police false information.’
Ridpath made his goodbyes, closing the front door behind him. On the path, he stopped to check the house. Jon Morgan and his wife were arguing in the living room. He was pretty sure he knew what the argument was about.
Jon Morgan was lying.
Not about discovering the body or being involved in the killing, but about who was with him at the time.
He’d give the man until tomorrow morning to come clean. He had no desire to wreck two marriages – they were perfectly capable of doing that on their own. In the meantime, though, he would stir the pot.
He opened his car door and sat behind the steering wheel. Taking out his mobile, he rang the number for Mrs Burgess that Morgan had given him. As he expected, the call went straight to voicemail.
‘Hello, you’ve reached Shirley Burgess. After the beep, well, you know the drill.’
Ridpath waited for the irritating noise to end. ‘Hello, Mrs Burgess, this is Detective Inspector Ridpath of Greater Manchester Police. I’d like to discuss your presence on the morning of 23 July 2020 in Chorlton Ees. Please ring me back on this number.’
He switched off the call and held out his phone over the passenger seat, letting it fall.
‘Boom,’ he said, mimicking the dropping of a bomb.
He started the car engine, working out in his head how he was going to drive into the city centre.
Time to face his psychiatrist again for the twice-weekly struggle to avoid revealing himself.
The only person he allowed inside his head was him.
And Polly, of course. She was always there.
Chapter 20
‘Good afternoon, Thomas, how are you feeling?’
Dr Underwood was sat in her usual upright chair, her legs crossed and a writing pad on her knee. Today, she was wearing a Primark two-piece suit that looked far too warm for the weather and her hair was tied in a rather severe bun. With her square glasses, she looked like Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.
The office was on the third floor of a nondescript building in Central Manchester which she shared with about ten other practitioners of various forms of therapy, from Reiki to Massage to Bereavement Counselling.
She specialised in EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. A psychotherapy that supposedly enabled people suffering from PTSD to deal with the symptoms and emotional distress of a disturbing experience. The Occupational Health Unit of Greater Manchester Police employed Dr Underwood in a consultant’s role, particularly for its officers suffering from severe PTSD.
Sometimes, it was witnessing the horrific aftermath of a car crash. Or being involved in a murder or fire investigation. At other times, there was no single cause, but the gradual build-up of dealing with daily traumas that was the life of a copper.
Eventually, these traumas revealed themselves in the classic symptoms of PTSD: intrusive memories and flashbacks, hopelessness about the future, feeling detached, emotional numbness, anxiety, and for Ridpath, a total inability to sleep followed by a feeling he was getting up every morning to fight the same demons that had exhausted him the day before.
Shortly after Polly’s death, he had been referred by his GP to a mental health practitioner, receiving a full psychological report and a diagnosis of PTSD. Following the bureaucracy of GMP, he completed an Individual Stress Risk Assessment questionnaire, and was finally referred to Dr Underwood as part of his Wellness Action Plan.
But then lockdown began and his treatment was postponed and then postponed again until finally, in late April, it had begun on Zoom.
It felt strange at first, talking to a stranger about Polly over a computer link. But Dr Underwood soon set him at ease.
In June, after the lockdown restrictions had eased, they met for the first time in her office.
Despite being the one undergoing therapy, Ridpath couldn’t stop being a detective. He looked for clues to her personality but found very few. A porcelain elephant on her desk was perhaps a souvenir from a trip to Thailand. A pen marked with the name of a hotel in Glasgow suggested she may have been to a conference in that city. There was little else to help him; no pictures, no personal items. Nothing that indicated a life outside this office.
When he had gently probed her to discover more, she had quickly shut him down, returning to his life and his relationship with himself.
It was here that their battle began, with Ridpath desperate to reveal as little about himself as possible yet aware that he needed Dr Underwood’s approval in order to return to work.
‘I’m feeling fine, glad to be back at work.’
‘How’s it going, work, I mean?’
‘Good, I’m busy, there’s lots to catch up on.’
‘Do you feel you were missed?’
Ridpath thought back to his conversations with the coroner and Claire Trent. ‘I think so. Don’t get me wrong, nobody is indispensable, the world carried on without me, but I think people are glad that I’m back.’
‘No struggles or difficulties at work?’
‘No, just the usual problems with workload. Everybody seems to be aware of what I went through and are making allowances.’
‘Does that worry you?’
‘No, I’m quite grateful.’ Ridpath crossed his fingers. He actually hated it when people made allowances. He only wanted to be treated like any other copper.
Dr Underwood seemed satisfied with his answer, making a note in the little pink book she kept on her lap.
‘Good,’ she drew out the word, ‘now as I have explained before, disturbing experiences, such as the death of your wife, can overwhelm an individual’s ability to process the event, preventing the information processing system from making the internal connections needed to resolve the issue…’
Ridpath often felt she talked about him as if he were a computer rather than a human being, something to be examined and reprogrammed rather than truly understood. For some strange reason, he actually enjoyed her approach. It felt less personal, because the last thing he wanted, with a therapist appointed by his employers, was to reveal his true feelings. She didn’t have to know he still talked to Polly.
‘…instead the memories become stored in the brain. What you saw, what you felt, the rawness of the experience in its original unprocessed form, these memories rise to the surface and are labelled as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When memories like this in the present refuse to go away, it is because they are often linked to memories in the past.’
Ridpath gripped his chair. She was going to ask him about his childhood again. All he really wanted was the coping strategies she gave him, ways of handling anxiety and stress. He didn’t need to dig up his father again, not his slow death from cancer or his mother’s reaction to it. He just wanted to cope with the present.
With Polly.
With the fact she was dead.
With the knowledge he caused it.
‘…this is one of the symptoms of PTSD; the past seems always present. Particularly, the feelings and emotions of a particular event appear heightened, almost visceral, leading to anxiety and tension. EMDR gives us the ability to control those memories and strategies for coping if they re-occur. Shall we begin today’s session?’
‘I thought we had.’
She blushed. ‘You’re right, of course, but I’d like you to dig deeper and search for your touchstone memories, if you can? Are you ready?’
Ridpath nodded.
‘Now, you remember the safe place technique you learnt?’
Ridpath immediately went back to the top of the hill in the Peak District, the wind flowing through his hair, the sun shining, him looking down at the valley below. His breathing slowed and a gentle warmth flowed over his body.
‘Good, now you can return to this safe place any time you want both during and after our session. Shall we begin?’
Ridpath nodded again.
‘I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine the incident. What image or memory represents the worst part of what happened?’
Immediately Ridpath flashed to Polly lying on the ground, blood oozing from her wounds.
‘When you hold the memory in your mind, what comes up for you?’
‘Helplessness.’
‘And where do you feel it?’
‘Across my chest like a heavy weight, I’m unable to breathe.’
‘Focus on those feelings and let your mind wander back to childhood and notice the earliest memory that comes up eliciting the same feelings. Anything?’
Involuntarily, Ridpath went back. Approaching his father’s bed. The man he knew and loved lying there, unable to breathe, his eyes red, bloodshot, staring at him. Reaching out his small hand and touching the paper-thin skin on the back of his father’s arm. His father weakly signing for him to come close, closer. ‘Help me,’ his father had whispered in his ear.
Ridpath could do nothing even though he’d tried.
Back in the clinic, the same person, now grown up, shook his head. ‘Nothing. I don’t remember anything from my childhood, the only memory is of Polly’s death.’