by M J Lee
Why was he thinking about his past? Was he avoiding thinking about what had happened with Claire Trent?
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Emily Parkinson striding towards him. He tried to walk away, but she was onto him too quickly.
‘I presume you heard, Ridpath?’
‘Yeah, Turnbull was quick.’
‘Apparently, he’s been planning it for the last few days.’
‘What?’
‘The information from Police Scotland came in before Claire Trent briefed you. They kept it hidden from everyone. Too many leaks…’
‘Until they decided to leak it themselves.’ She had set him up. She didn’t want him to investigate properly, just check whether there had been any cock-ups in Turnbull’s investigation, covering her own arse.
Ridpath bit his bottom lip, keeping his thoughts to himself.
‘I rang the FLO who replaced me, DC Diana West, asking what happened to Daniel.’
In the nightmare of the case, Ridpath had forgotten about the boy.
‘She told me he was taken into care by social services. There was enough concern about his well-being to warrant a care order.’
‘No kid deserves that, to be separated from his mum and dad after he’s lost his brother. Has anybody told Mrs Carsley?’
Emily shrugged her shoulders. ‘Social services should do it.’
‘Collateral damage.’
‘What?’
‘It’s something Charlie Whitworth used to say. “In any investigation, there is always collateral damage. Our job is to limit it, so only the guilty are punished, not innocent victims.”’
‘I wish I’d worked with him more. Sounds like he thought about the job.’
‘Charlie was a thug, but a damn good copper.’
They both were silent for a moment, Ridpath inhaling the secondary smoke from the cigarettes.
‘If it’s any consolation, I managed to get some CCTV from the day of David Carsley’s abduction. The techies are looking at it now. There was nothing at the pub but I checked with Greater Manchester Transport. You know they have over 2000 CCTV cameras in the trams and on stations?’
Ridpath raised his eyebrows at the figure.
‘The guy was helpful. He’s sending me the footage from Sale Water Park station concourse for 23 July, plus he’s digging up footage from inside the cab of the first tram that morning. It stopped at the station at 6.23.’
It was time to tell her.
‘We’re off the case, Emily.’
‘What?’
‘Chrissy’s off the case too.’
There was a long pause. Emily Parkinson stepped closer to Ridpath and dropped her voice. ‘I think Michael Carsley is innocent. He shouldn’t be charged.’
‘So do I.’
‘Can’t we keep going? I mean, without the bosses knowing? Chrissy’s keen.’
Ridpath shook his head. ‘We’re off the case.’
‘So you’re going to give up?’ She raised her voice.
‘I’m tired, Emily. I can’t keep banging my head against a brick wall.’
‘So, Ridpath’s tired and an innocent man is going to jail, convicted of something he didn’t do. Murder his own son.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t do it? The evidence is damning.’
‘I’m sure. Remember I spent twelve days in that house with those people. I would have known if Michael Carsley had murdered his son.’
Ridpath checked his watch. ‘I’m tired and I’m going back to my flat, Emily. I want to call my daughter.’
He walked away.
‘Enjoy your time off, Ridpath. Some of us care about the truth a bit more.’
He stopped for a second and then carried on walking.
There was no point in answering because she was right.
Chapter 46
Emily Parkinson was left alone when Ridpath walked away.
Inside she was seething. How dare he give up just like that? Hadn’t he been the one lecturing her about responsibility and duty?
Gritting her teeth, she made a fist. Well, she wasn’t going to give up. She knew Michael Carsley was innocent despite what Turnbull, Ridpath or anybody else said.
She pulled her jacket closer around her body, suddenly feeling cold.
But where to start?
She thought for a long time before working out what she needed to do. It was the only option available to her.
Going back to the MIT floor, she tried to avoid people. Luckily Turnbull and most of his new detectives were still at Wythenshawe nick. The floor was quiet, with only Harry Makepeace tapping away in the corner and Chrissy in her section.
She sat down at the desk and logged onto her computer. The message from Greater Manchester Transport was already there with links to the footage.
On seeing her, the civilian researcher came over.
‘Where’s Ridpath? I’ve been told we’re off the case and I’m back helping Turnbull. He’s got me checking with Child Services in Scotland.’
Emily looked over her shoulder to make sure Harry Makepeace wasn’t listening. ‘I just spoke to Ridpath, he’s gone home.’
‘How’s he handling it?’
‘Not well, he wants to give up.’
Chrissy frowned. ‘But you don’t?’
Emily leant forward and whispered. ‘Michael Carsley is innocent. I know it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Carry on. With or without Ridpath, for as long as I can.’
‘But how? What do we have to work on?’
‘I managed to get some CCTV footage from an ATM in Wythenshawe on the date of the abduction and a hard drive from a shop. There was a tram station close to where we parked at Jackson’s Boat…’
‘I know it well, lovely place for a quiet pint.’
‘Anyway, Ridpath had the idea to check the footage from the day when the body was found. It’s the only thing I can do right now. Have you heard from Turnbull?’
‘Only to give me the new work. I don’t know what’s happening at Wythenshawe. It’s being kept hush-hush.’
‘What are you two ladies whispering about?’ Harry Makepeace had crept up on them soundlessly.
Emily leant back in her chair. ‘We were wondering if you’d heard anything from Paul Turnbull?’
He shook his head. ‘Not a lot.’
She decided to be more direct. ‘What have you heard?’
Makepeace smiled. ‘Not a lot. It’s on a need-to-know basis and Turnbull has specified that you two, and me, don’t need to know.’
‘Thanks for the heads-up before.’
‘We have to stick together against the idiots. We’re being frozen out, Emily. I’d start packing your boxes if I were you.’
He smiled once again at both of them and sauntered back to his desk.
‘Can you find out, Chrissy?’ said Emily under her breath.
‘I’ll try – a few of them owe me favours. What are you going to do?’
‘Spend the rest of my evening sitting next to somebody who sweats and is desperate to get into my knickers.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘I wish.’
Twenty minutes later she went up to the techies’ floor while Makepeace was away from his desk – Nerd Central, as it was called by the less enlightened members of the force, but in modern policing, it had become a vital resource. It was here that data on mobile phones was extracted, computer codes cracked, and most importantly for her, CCTV images analysed.
Phil Reynolds was the techie head of CCTV, sitting in his own private edit suite built from taxpayers’ money. She knew he fancied her and wasn’t above using that fact to ensure her work received priority. Now she had to face spending a whole evening together without even a glass of wine for solace.
‘Have we got anything, Phil?’ She sat down, feeling him tense up beside her.
‘Hiya, Emily, the data from Daniel Carsley’s phone hasn’t come in yet. The lads are stuffed working on a county lines
drug case, trying to break encrypted messages. Rather them than me.’
‘When can we get the times off the mobile towers?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘Not very useful, Phil.’
The techie blushed. ‘I have more bad news. The hard drive you gave me from the shop is totally fried. I don’t know what they’ve done with it but it looks like it’s spent the last six months at the bottom of the Mersey.’
‘Nothing you can do?’
‘We could sell it for scrap and make a couple of bob, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t be too keen.’
She smiled briefly. ‘Right. How about the footage from the ATM and from the trams?’
‘Both look good. Which do you want first?’
‘Let’s do the trams, starting with the first one on the morning of the 23rd that stopped at Sale Water Park.’
‘Righto – gone with the wind, coming right up.’
‘Gone with the Wind?’
‘A tram? Moving? Gone with the wind?’
She laughed dutifully. Techie jokes were always the worst. ‘Let’s start with the platform footage.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
Chapter 47
‘Hiya, Dad.’
Eve was bright and bouncy on his screen. Exactly the opposite of how he felt.
He stopped off in Greggs to grab a couple of Cornish pasties for dinner, eating them sitting alone at the kitchen table of the service apartment with a cup of tea. Next to him was his laptop. He had finished the report for Claire Trent earlier and was checking it for typos.
Of course, Polly was there by his side.
‘Don’t take it so hard, Ridpath. It’s just a job like any other. You win some, you lose some.’
He stared straight at the face of his dead wife. ‘I seem to be losing a lot, recently.’
She laughed out loud. ‘Oh dear, we are enjoying a pity party today.’ She pretended to cry, rubbing her eyes like a baby. It was the same way she used to tease him when he came home from work with a grumpy face. ‘Boo hoo, poor Ridpath, he’s been taken off the case. What is he going to do? Roll over and give up?’
‘I don’t ever roll over and I ever don’t give up.’
‘So why are you doing it this time?’
He looked away and when he looked back, she had vanished.
He threw the half-eaten pasty in the bin and called up his daughter. He always missed her voice, missed her brightness.
‘Sorry about ringing so late last night, I was on a case.’
‘Which one?’
‘You know I’m not supposed to talk about it.’
‘I know, but I won’t tell anyone. Anyway, there’s only Paw Paw and Ah Kung here and they spend their lives watching Hong Kong television.’
‘Sorry, still can’t tell you and anyway, I’m off it now.’
‘That does sound good.’
‘It doesn’t feel good either. I’m sorry, thinking about myself all the time. Living with Grandpa and Grandma, it’s not great for you, is it?’
‘It’s not so bad. They mean well, but they’re from a different generation. Their idea of fun is to watch the news in Cantonese.’
‘You know they love you, don’t you?’
‘I know.’ A long pause. ‘When are we going to get back together, Dad?’
‘Soon, when I’m more settled, more in control.’
‘But when will that be? Give me a date, a time?’
‘I don’t know, Eve.’
‘You said it would be when the case finished. Well, it’s finished now, you said you were off it. So can I come home?’
‘Not yet, but soon, I promise.’
She pursed her mouth but finally nodded. ‘Promise me something else.’
‘Anything, Eve.’
‘We’re going to put flowers on Mum’s grave on Sunday. Promise me you’ll come too.’
‘I’ll try…’
‘Trying isn’t doing, Dad.’
‘When did you become the little philosopher?’
‘Since Mum died, one of us has to. And don’t change the subject…’
Ridpath closed his eyes for a second. Polly’s face appeared in his mind as he remembered her when they first met on St Patrick’s Day, with her bright green hair, like an Irish leprechaun dancing to a wild reel. Except she wasn’t Irish but Chinese and the music was by Maroon 5 and Destiny’s Child.
‘Dad?’
He heard Eve’s voice as if it were coming from the end of a long tunnel. ‘I’ll try,’ he finally whispered.
Chapter 48
It was close to ten p.m. when she finally discovered something.
The footage from the platforms had been worse than useless. Sale Water Park wasn’t a busy stop. Hardly anybody got on or off before nine a.m. There were only three or four people, all of whom worked in the park’s cafe and restaurants.
The footage from inside the trams had been just as bad. The early images had a few travellers looking like zombies going to a wake and then, after seven, the carriages began to fill up, and despite the necessity for social distancing, becoming as packed as cattle cars when the suburban herds began their daily trek to the feeding grounds of the city. She stopped viewing after ten a.m., reasoning the boy’s body had been found by then.
The footage from the front of the tram mostly showed the track stretching in two parallel iron lines into the distance. As the first tram moved away from Sale Water Park station, however, she caught a glimpse of a white car going the other way, from Jackson’s Boat to the M60.
‘Can you get any tighter on that car, Phil?’
She leant across him to prod the screen on the left.
‘I’ll have a try but these cameras are for road traffic accident use, not anything else.’
She heard him click the keys of a keyboard. The image of the car appeared bigger on the screen. ‘I’ll try and enhance it.’
More clicks and the car became slightly sharper.
Emily stood up and leant closer to the screen, staring at it. As if moving her body closer would make it bigger. Instead, all she saw was the lines on the screen becoming clearer.
‘It’s actually better to step back and look from further back.’
She did as she was told. Phil Reynolds was right. The car was clearer.
‘Can you discover the make of the car?’
‘You remember my little box of tricks?’ On a third screen, he brought up side views of a range of cars, each one rapidly changing as the computer scanned them against the image it had.
Finally it stopped.
‘We don’t have a lot to work with, I’m afraid. But the computer says it’s either a Hyundai i20 or a Vauxhall Corsa.’
‘How correct is that?’
‘With the image we’ve got? My guess is 80 per cent correct.’
Was it a white Hyundai or a white Vauxhall? Or something else? She stared intently at the screen. There was a distinct shadow on the image. A single man behind the steering wheel?
‘I suppose there’s no chance of making it even clearer.’
‘I could have a go, but it’ll take a while. Is that what you’re looking for. A white car?’
‘It might be. Before you clean up this footage, could we take a look at the images from the ATM on 21 July?’
‘Your wish is my command. Abracadabra…’
Emily realised that Reynolds was probably a big movie buff – even worse, he was possibly a Disney movie buff. She could imagine him singing along to the music from Frozen. Let it go, she thought, laughing to herself.
The footage from the cash machine appeared on the screen.
‘It’s not great. I think the last time they cleaned the lens was the Ice Age, but we’ll be able to see the images at least.’
‘Can you fast forward to between one p.m. and two p.m.’
‘Will do, milady.’
The time clock on the footage accel
erated for a minute, then slowed.
13.00.01.
13.00.02.
13.00.03.
The street in front of the ATM showed cars going down the road and the occasional pedestrian walking in front of it.
‘Can you go at double speed? We should still be able to see everything.’
The pictures began to move faster but no little boys walked in front of the ATM. They stopped three times for white cars, but it was easy enough to see they were different makes.
They carried until the counter reached two p.m., then stopped.
‘Nothing so far, what do you want to do?’
‘Let’s start much earlier, around eleven a.m.’
Reynolds glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘It’s already eleven thirty on a Friday night.’
She put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. ‘You wouldn’t leave me here on my own, would you?’
He checked his watch. ‘I can give you one more hour. I have to go home and feed the goldfish.’
There was no answer to that so she didn’t bother.
Phil ran the footage at double speed. She watched as bodies crossed in front of the camera, and the tyres and bottom of cars raced along the street.
Her eyes were closing and she was about to give up and go home herself when he said, ‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘See, a boy in front of the camera on the pavement.’
He stopped and rewound the footage, playing it at normal speed. A young boy stopped in front of the shop. He stood there looking around, walked one way and then another. A white car drove past, reversed back, the door opened and the boy said something, shaking his head. Then the boy got into the car, the door closed and the white car drove away.
‘Is that David?’ shouted Emily. ‘Play it again.’
He rewound the ATM footage and they both watched it closely. ‘It must be David Carsley, the description of the clothes matches.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘See, the boy is wearing a United shirt. Play it again.’
On the third viewing, she noticed something new, her hand going to her mouth.
‘It can’t be,’ she whispered.
Chapter 49
Molly Wright stared at the empty bottle of Rioja in front of her and thought about opening another.