Where the Innocent Die
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Tuesday, August 20
Chapter 1
Day One
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Day Two
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Day Three
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Day Four
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Day Five
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Epilogue
Copyright
4.06 A.M
TUESDAY
AUGUST 20
Chapter 1
At four in the morning, Joe Cummings hated the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.
He’d tried wearing different shoes but still the squeak of sole on lino echoed in the dim stairwell.
He reached the second floor and stood next to the heavy door, underneath the welcoming light of the single bulb above it. The keys rattled on the end of the chain hanging from his belt as he brought the largest one up to unlock the door in front of him, checking through the reinforced glass before he did.
You could never be too sure these days. Hadn’t Ronnie from the day shift found a woman lurking behind one with a pot of hot water, waiting to throw it on him?
He stepped through, locking it behind him, hearing the click of the key turn in the mechanism. The large sign on the back of the door reminded him constantly of his job.
CHECK IT. LOCK IT.
He stopped for a few seconds to listen.
It was quiet tonight. But if he were honest, it was quiet every night.
In the room on the right, the Iraqi man was coughing continuously. He was claiming a Section 35, but it didn’t matter, he was on the list for tomorrow.
In a weird way, Joe would miss him. His continuous coughing always meant there was life behind the closed doors on the second-floor corridor.
He checked his watch.
4.06 a.m.
Just two hours left and he could go home. Back to the warm bed just vacated by the missus. But not before he made the kids their cornflakes and put on a pot of coffee for Andrea. His partner wasn’t human until she had her coffee in the morning. If she could, she would take it as a drip attached to the back of her hand. As it was, one pot wasn’t enough for her.
Joe looked up at the camera pointing down at him. He considered giving Tony a little wave but by this time in the morning he would be nodding off. They were short-handed again, with Dave calling in sick once more. Tony had volunteered to come in on his day off. When he could have been at home, he was here staring at a bank of cameras. Who could blame him if he dozed off for a second or two?
Absentmindedly, Joe reached up to press his card against the reader on the wall, but stopped just before he did.
These days with these machines, he had to do his rounds religiously. Before if he missed an inspection nobody was none the wiser, but now his boss, known unaffectionately as Tiny Tim, would call him at home demanding to know why the card reader was not displaying a readout and why he had not followed standard operating procedure as laid down in the manual.
Fuck the manual. He was a human not a machine.
He considered missing this one just to wind up Tiny Tim, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. He didn’t need any more demerit points on his record.
He tapped the card against the reader, hearing the electronic beep to show he had registered.
‘And bloody beep to you too, mate,’ he said out loud, walking down the corridor.
Eight doors on either side meant there were sixteen beds on this floor. He always thought of them as beds rather than as people sleeping on those beds. He wasn’t heartless but it was the only way to do the job when the day came for them to leave.
And the day always came.
This place had been called a detention centre until the government in 2014 decided to change the name to Immigration Removal Centre. As they said, to ‘give a true indication of the role and function.’
But Joe knew it was just bollocks. He had worked in Strangeways too, and they were the same.
They might call them rooms instead of cells. The inmates might be called detainees not cons. They might be deported instead of released.
But here and Strangeways were the same.
The whole point was to keep people locked up. The only difference as far he could see was this place was far more modern and Strangeways was the arsehole of the world.
Joe stopped.
What was that?
In the subdued lighting of the corridor, he stared hard at number 7.
Was the door open?
The door shouldn’t be open. The detainees were locked and secured with lights out at 9.15. Nothing was opened until the morning shift came on at six and went round to let them out after 7.30 a.m.
Why was the door open?
He glanced over his shoulder. A shiver stomped down his spine. It should be locked. Had one of the inmates got out?
He rattled his keys, finding the sound reassuring in the silence on the corridor.
Should he call Tony on his walkie talkie or check it out for himself?
The old bugger was probably sound asleep by now and he would spend the rest of the shift whining if Joe woke him for no reason. The man could moan for Britain at the Olympics. God, he went on and on and on.
Joe took two steps forward.
He was sure the door was open; a dark, black line stood out where there should have been nothing but the door meeting the eau-de-Nil paint of the wall.
He hesitated for
a moment and said, ‘Is anybody there?’ hearing his own voice croak in the middle of the sentence.
No answer.
He tried the light switch on the wall, expecting the neon lights in the room to flicker as they always did, and flash on.
Nothing.
He toggled the switch two or three times, hearing it click, click, click in the silence.
Still nothing.
‘Please come out if you are inside.’ He heard his voice, firmer now, more commanding.
No answer.
Had someone managed to get out? But the door at the end of the corridor had been locked. He gazed back at it. Yeah, definitely, he had just unlocked it himself.
He pushed the door open slightly, saying out loud, ‘Please come out or I will have to come in and get you and you don’t want me to do that.’
He took the rubber cosh out of his pocket. They weren’t supposed to have these, against standard operating procedure, but all the DCOs carried them. I mean, if you had to face a violent detainee all on your own you had to have some sort of protection, didn’t you?
He pushed the door open wider. The dim light from the corridor crept slowly into the room. ‘Anybody there?’ he asked again, raising the cosh over his head, ready to strike down if anybody rushed him.
There was a strange metallic smell coming from the room. What was it?
He took one step inside the door and stopped.
The light haloed the bloodstained body lying on the bed against the far wall, a deep gash on her throat, red and dripping with blood.
Joe Cummings took one look and turned to retch onto the grey lino of the corridor.
27 DAYS LATER
MONDAY
SEPTEMBER 16
Chapter 2
Detective Inspector Thomas Ridpath was feeling nervous.
He’d just dropped his 10-year-old daughter, or nearly 11 as she never ceased to remind him, outside Altrincham Grammar and watched as she had been swallowed up into the bowels of the school, clutching her BTS pencil case in one hand and her email confirmation in the other.
Before she left, she had waved, saying, ‘Bye Dad, take care of yourself,’ and then turned and strode away, her ponytail swinging in the early morning light.
There were other parents in the car park too, all equally nervous. After all, it was the day of the entrance exams. The day when the school judged his young daughter to see if she had the right qualities to enter their esteemed establishment.
For the next two hours she would take the verbal, non-verbal and numerical reasoning tests to decide on her admission. They would get the results to see if she was accepted in October.
A test for her, but torture for him.
They had completed all the forms, been to the open day, practised the previous exams at home and now it was all down to Eve and her trusty pencil case.
If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have taken it all so seriously, but Eve had insisted. She wanted to go to this school and no other.
Seeing her confidently stride into the building with all the other candidates, he flashed back to her as a baby, giggling happily as she shoved her big toe in her mouth, sucking on it with a smile plastered across her round face.
Where had the time gone? And what had happened to that young child?
He started the engine of the car and gripped the steering wheel. He mustn’t get too emotional about these things. Children grow up as they had always done and always would do. He just wished he could have the time back again, just for a moment, when she enjoyed the pleasure of sucking her big toe.
He reversed out of the parking space and headed for the M60 to take him back to the Coroner’s Office in East Manchester.
Polly’s mum would pick up Eve later and take her back to her primary school where she would be grilled on every question by his wife. He always thought his daughter handled having a mother who was a teacher at her school well. He would have hated it. Not that he was a particularly good pupil. He barely passed his 11+ exam and spent the rest of his time at school playing football, hanging around with the deadbeats and working just hard enough to avoid finishing bottom in the class. His mother exhorted him constantly to do better. ‘Don’t be like your sister, ending up in jail. She’s a bad ‘un and you could turn out the same, young man.’
But he hadn’t. Instead, after a short time in an insurance office, he had joined the police, working his way through the ranks until he was promoted to be a probationary Detective Inspector and member of the Major Investigation Team of Greater Manchester Police.
And then the cancer had struck.
Bastard myeloma.
A year of worry, drugs, chemo, more drugs, more worry and sitting and watching Alan fucking Titchmarsh day after day, until he was finally pronounced free of cancer just over a year ago.
‘But you are never totally free,’ a little man in his head would always be whispering. ‘It’s going to come back. Do you feel tired now? Is your body throbbing? Are your bones aching?’
Always there, always whispering.
He still went every month to have his blood checked and, if he caught a cold or flu in winter, he was supposed to be rushed into Christie’s Hospital to spend a few days under observation.
It had nearly cost him his job at Greater Manchester Police. When he was finally in remission, instead of accepting him back into the Major Investigation Team, they had offered him a job as a coroner’s officer; same rank, same salary but less stress, they explained. Just temporary, until they could be sure of his recovery.
Why did people always pretend they were doing things for his good and not their own?
He could have just sat back and done nothing, taking the money and getting away with the bare minimum, but that wasn’t him. There were still cases to investigate, people to protect, challenges to be faced. And they didn’t know about Mrs Challinor, a coroner who believed in what was she was doing and more importantly, believed in him.
He signalled left and accelerated around the roundabout, turning immediately left to park next to the Coroner’s Court.
He checked his watch.
He was late for the work-in-progress meeting yet again.
Chapter 3
‘Ah, you’ve decided to join us, Ridpath.’ Mrs Challinor sat at the head of the table, a pile of case files in front of her.
The office manager, Jenny Oldfield, sat next to her wearing a bright red gingham dress with matching lipstick and eye shadow. On the opposite side of the table sat the senior coroner, Carol Oates, and a locum coroner from Derbyshire, David Smail. Closest to Ridpath was his assistant, Sophia Rahman, who handed him the case list and a latte.
‘Sorry, Coroner, it’s Eve’s school entrance exam this morning. I left you a note about it.’
‘I remember those,’ Sophia piped up. ‘Mum forced me to take four in Manchester before they found a school stupid enough to take me.’
Carol Oates sniffed. ‘Can we start, Mrs Challinor? I have to prepare for an inquest tomorrow.’
‘Good idea. Let’s talk about the Williams inquest, shall we?’
‘Eighty-seven-year old man, died in a nursing home in Reddish. No doctor was present so we’ve decided to hold an inquest.’ A slight pause as Carol Oates turned the page in her file. ‘The family has accepted the death was from natural causes. The man was suffering from Alzheimer’s and prone to outbursts of violence.’
‘He wasn’t in a secure unit?’
‘The family didn’t want him there.’
‘What do you think, Ridpath?’
‘I’ve not been involved, Mrs Challinor.’
‘I didn’t believe it warranted an investigation from Ridpath, Coroner. There have been no other deaths in this nursing home. It has a good reputation and there’s a long waiting list to get in. A doctor has certified the death as old age exacerbated by the effects of senile dementia.’
‘It’s your call, Carol, but I’d re-check the data on the deaths. You’re ready for the inquest?’
‘I will be just as soon as I can review my notes.’
‘Good. David, you’re handling the Connor case.’
‘I am. Not going so well I’m afraid. The family feels the hospital was negligent in their duty of care towards their three-year-old daughter…’
‘This is the sepsis case?’
‘Yes, Coroner. It was the weekend, and the doctors in A & E missed it and sent her home with some aspirin. She became worse and on Monday the parents took her to their local GP who immediately rushed her to emergency again. Unfortunately, she died two hours after being admitted.’
‘The jury is empanelled, Jenny?’
‘It is, Coroner. The inquest will take place in court no. 2 tomorrow.’
‘Be careful on this one, David, the press is all over it like a cheap suit. I’m certain there will be civil litigation after the inquest. Remember our job is to find why, how and when she died, not to apportion blame. But if you feel the hospital was negligent in any way, we must act to prevent any similar cases occurring again.’
‘Yes, Margaret.’
They studied the other extant cases. In any one given week, there were over 150 deaths in the coroner’s district of East Manchester. She had to decide which would be further investigated, which would have post-mortems and which necessitated full inquests. It was a non-stop circle of work which the coroner seemed to revel in.
‘And finally, there is one of my inquests. I believe I am in court no. 1 on Thursday morning, is that correct, Jenny?’
‘You are, Coroner.’
‘The jury is ready?’
‘It is.’
‘Good. I’ve been reviewing this case and it troubles me. It concerns the death at Wilmslow Immigration Removal Centre of a detainee, Wendy Tang.’
‘Immigration Removal Centre?’ asked David Smail.
‘It’s a jail where they house people who have committed no crime other than being in this country,’ Sophia spoke before the coroner could reply.
‘I hate to tell you, Sophia, but overstaying a visa or being here illegally is a crime in this country,’ snapped Carol Oates.
‘Like the Windrush Generation? What crime did they commit?’
The coroner held up her hands. ‘Ladies, we will not argue these points here. Our only concern is to examine the facts in the case and, as the death occurred while the inmate was in the government’s jurisdiction, an inquest is mandated.’ She pointed to the file. ‘However, the report from the Removal Centre and the subsequent investigation into the death of this woman leaves a lot to be desired. It’s as if nobody could be bothered or cared.’
Where the Innocent Die Page 1