by M J Lee
It didn’t move.
The key, they needed the key.
Charlie glanced at the computer screen again.
0.35.
0.34.
0.33.
The woman’s eyes stared up at him. Where did you hide the key? He looked down at her body, past the long hair and the white shirt to her tweed pencil skirt.
Was there something there?
He dropped to his knees and began searching through her skirt pockets, his fingers thick and clumsy, the body unyielding and unhelpful.
There was something there.
0.29.
0.28.
0.27.
He forced his hand into the other pocket, feeling the coldness of the woman’s hip. His fingers touched metal: two keys on a ring. He pulled them out of her tight skirt and ran towards Harry Makepeace.
He stepped over Sarah’s prone body and grabbed her arm, holding up the manacle.
Where did the key go?
A small hole on the metal around her wrist. He inserted one of the keys. It wouldn’t turn. He glanced back over his shoulder.
0.23.
0.22.
0.21.
‘Get out, Harry.’
‘What about you?’
‘Get out!’ he shouted, his fingers fumbling with the other key.
Harry hesitated.
‘Get out!’
He could hear the blood rushing through his head, feel the sweat on his temple dribble past his ear. The key wouldn’t go in.
Calm. Keep calm. Think.
His fingers felt like sausages on the end of his hands – clumsy, flabby sausages.
Finally he inserted the key in the small black hole.
Nothing.
It wouldn’t turn.
Harry was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.
0.18.
0.17.
0.16.
He twisted the key as hard as he could, hearing a slight click as the teeth slotted into the barrel of the lock.
The manacles fell apart and Sarah’s arm fell to the floor. He picked up her body and slung it over his shoulder. She didn’t weigh much, as light as air.
He ran towards the stairs, towards where Harry was waiting.
0.13.
0.12.
0.11.
He tripped over the body of the woman lying on the floor, stumbled forward but just managed to keep his feet. Harry was waiting for him, helping him up the stairs. Out of the basement, into the light of the workshop.
Dave Hardy stood at the door with two paramedics. They rushed to help him with Sarah.
‘Get out,’ Charlie shouted. ‘Get out!’
He ran past them, still carrying Sarah across his shoulder.
Out through the door and out into the sunlight. The wind was rustling through the trees. The sun was fighting its way through the clouds covering Manchester. The air smelt wonderful, just a tinge of diesel adding a hint of industry.
Two hands came forward and lifted Sarah from Charlie’s shoulder. At first, he resisted, then realizing they belonged to the emergency medical responders, he let her go, feeling the weight lift from him.
He carried on running to the far end of the car park where the armed response team and the rest of the squad were crouched down behind their cars. Up above, the helicopter whirred noisily.
Harry Makepeace and Dave Hardy were running alongside him as he reached the safety of the cars. The two medics carried Sarah Castle past him and into a waiting ambulance.
He turned back for a second to look at the workshop, standing quiet and lonely against its backdrop of trees.
His chest rose and fell as he gulped in air, fighting to recover his breath.
Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it was just the computer switching itself off.
On the left a bird sang from its perch in a tree. The quiet buzz of traffic from the A6 added a drone of accompaniment to the bird’s song. The helicopter still whirred noisily overhead, drifting forwards and backwards.
Then the workshop dissolved in an explosion of light, followed a moment later by a loud boom and the wooden roof rising up into the air for a moment before settling back on the stone walls.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
‘We got her. We nailed the bitch.’
Charlie Whitworth threw his arm around Ridpath’s shoulder. He could smell the beer on the man’s breath and see it flecked on the end of his moustache.
He put on a brave face and smiled broadly. ‘Great news, Charlie. Well done.’
The rest of the team were jubilant, standing in a corner of the pub, pints in their hands and smiles on their faces.
‘It’s a great result. John Gorman is over the moon. What you having? A pint of Holts?’
Charlie Whitworth had called him earlier to say they were all going to be in the pub. ‘Come on down, have a few pints on me.’
‘I’ve got some good news too.’
‘You’ve worked out what happened to Alice Seagram’s body…’
‘How did you know?’
Ridpath could hear Charlie laughing on the end of the phone. ‘I’m a detective, remember. And besides, the booking sergeant at the local nick rang me to get my OK. You’re charging Don Brown?’
‘Just a holding charge at the moment. There are some loose ends I need to tidy up.’
‘It’s a good collar. Come down the pub for a few – I’m buying, and you know how rare that is.’
So here he was, surrounded by the whole Major Incident Team.
‘What are you having?’
‘Just a half for me, I’m driving.’
‘Bugger off, you’ll have a pint like the rest of us.’ He turned to the barman. ‘Another pint for the girl on my right. Dave, you ready for another?’
‘Of course, Charlie, great to see your wallet has finally left the old folks’ home,’ Dave shouted across the bar.
Ridpath signalled to the barman to make it a half and turned back to speak to his boss. ‘Who was she?’ he shouted over the raucous laughter.
Charlie covered his ear with his hand. ‘What?’
‘Who was the killer?’
‘A psychiatric nurse, Lesley Taylor. Used to work at HMP Styal, but lost her job six months ago. Lived at home with her mother.’
More laughter erupted from the group as Harry Makepeace told a joke.
Charlie turned to join in.
‘Why did she start killing?’ Ridpath shouted over the crowd.
‘Who knows? Perhaps she enjoyed it. Got her rocks off hurting people.’
‘Why prostitutes?’
Charlie put his arm around Ridpath’s shoulder. ‘Enough with the questions. She’s dead, and good riddance to bad rubbish. Take it easy, for God’s sake. Tonight we’re celebrating,’ he shouted. Then he turned and raised his glass to the rest of the team. ‘Here’s to the best team of bloody coppers in England.’
‘And Salford,’ shouted Harry Makepeace.
The rest of the team cheered and raised their glasses. Charlie buried his face in his glass, sucking in a large mouthful of the warm beer through his moustache.
Over in the corner, Dave Hardy’s phone rang. ‘What? What? I can’t hear you.’
He moved through the crowd and out onto the street.
Ridpath shouted to Charlie again. ‘But why Sarah? Why take a copper?’
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Wrong place, wrong time. The woman was cruising the streets looking for a victim and she found Sarah. Can’t have known she was a copper.’
Dave Hardy came back into the pub, his face ashen, as if all the blood had drained out of it.
‘Quiet,’ he said loudly, before shouting the word again and raising his hands.
The room looked across at him, but people continued laughing and talking. Harry Makepeace was in the middle of a story: ‘…and the barman said to the horse…’
Charlie Whitworth took one look at Dave and, despite the four pints of beer he’d
drunk, raised his hands and shouted. ‘Shut up.’
This time the room went quiet.
Dave Hardy stood there for a moment, his arms down by his side. ‘Sarah’s dead.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
A million thoughts raced through Ridpath’s mind in a jumble of images, memories and questions… What happened? How? Her smile. Her reddening face at the briefing. Touching her hand as she gave him the thumb drive. Her voice mail. ‘What?’ was the only word that escaped his lips.
Dave Hardy stared at him. ‘Sarah Castle died in intensive care five minutes ago. The hospital just rang me.’ He held up his mobile phone as if showing them proved the truth of his words.
‘But…but we saved her. She was alive. The ambulance got there in six minutes…’ Charlie stammered.
Dave shook his head. ‘She’s dead.’
It was like a shroud had been thrown over everybody.
Her shroud.
The party ended pretty quickly. People gradually drifted away to go home, go to eat or simply go to sleep.
They found out more details. Her body had suffered multiple organ failure at Stepping Hill hospital. The doctors had attached her to a life support system and tried to put her into a coma, but it was all too late. She had died at 8.23, just two hours after she had been rescued.
Half an hour later there were only two tables still occupied. Ridpath, Charlie Whitworth and Harry Makepeace sat at one of them, a few others from the team including Dave Hardy, silent as a morgue, at another. Charlie had spent 15 minutes telling Ridpath how they had found the killer.
‘You know, we work our balls off but it’s always the stupid mistakes that give them away.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ muttered Harry Makepeace.
‘A nosy neighbour who thought she’d watch two dykes having a snog. Would you believe it? And using the same car on all the murders. Stupid.’
Then Charlie had fallen silent, working his way through the pints littering the table with the determination of an alcoholic who had been teetotal for a year.
Ridpath nursed the half pint he had been given, not knowing what to say, but with a thousand questions buzzing around his head.
‘She was a good copper.’ Charlie finally broke the silence.
‘The best,’ said Harry Makepeace, swallowing the last of his pint.
Ridpath shook his head, ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘What doesn’t make sense?’ Charlie looked over his pint glass.
‘The profiler said the perp was male, he’d done it before, and the crimes were always carefully planned and executed.’
‘Don’t they all say the same thing?’ Charlie raised his glass to his mouth and took a long swallow of the dark beer, finishing it in one. ‘He was wrong,’ he said finally. ‘They usually are.’
‘It doesn’t make sense. Why would it be a woman? Women are rarely serial killers.’
Charlie looked across at him. ‘Well it was. When we broke in, she was there on the floor, a needle sticking out of her.’
Harry Makepeace continued. ‘She must have heard us breaking in and took her own life. She deserved to die. Saves the courts the hassle of trying her, and they won’t be using my bloody taxes to keep her banged up for the next 40 years.’ He took a long swallow of his beer. ‘Anyway, nowt left of her now. Explosion took everything.’
‘And the car. Why make such an obvious mistake?’
Charlie lifted his head from his pint. ‘They’re criminals, murderers, not infallible. They make mistakes like the rest of us.’
‘But—’
‘Enough, Ridpath.’ Charlie’s voice was tinged with anger. ‘Forget it. She’s dead.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. ‘I can’t get the picture out of my head. Sarah manacled to the wall, barely alive. We should have got there earlier, should have been quicker. Sarah would—’
Harry patted his boss’s arm. ‘You can’t think like that, guv’nor. We did the best we could. We couldn’t have done any more. We didn’t kill Sarah, that bitch did. She was the one who tortured her to death, not us.’
‘You’re right, Harry. It doesn’t help, but you’re right.’ He stood up. ‘What are you havin’? It’s my shout.’
He didn’t ask Ridpath what he was drinking.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Ridpath didn’t stay long in the pub. He could sense the atmosphere had changed; he was an outsider, no longer part of the team. When he said he was going, neither Charlie nor Harry tried to stop him.
Outside, he took three deep breaths, started up the car and raced home through the quiet streets of Manchester.
Polly was waiting up for him. ‘I heard,’ was all she said. ‘Did you know her well?’
Ridpath shook his head. ‘We were working together on Alice Seagram’s case. She helped me at the graveyard and with a few other things.’ He sat down next to his wife. ‘But I knew nothing about her. Who she was? Where she came from? What she liked? Didn’t have a clue. We just worked together.’
‘You’ve only been back on the job for a few days, Ridpath, don’t blame yourself. It was just one of those things. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
So that was the story, was it? The wrong place? It all seemed too pat, too coincidental, for him. It wasn’t the MO of the killer. He picked up prostitutes in red-light districts, not women on suburban streets.
She leant over and kissed him on the forehead. ‘I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late.’
‘I won’t.’ She knew him so well, understanding he needed to be alone right now with only a glass of Laphroaig for company.
At the door, she turned back, ‘Don’t forget the hospital appointment tomorrow, Ridpath. It’s the most important thing for you to do. You can’t bring Sarah Castle back, but you can make sure you look after yourself. Eve and I are counting on you.’ A slight nod of her head and she was off.
God, he loved that woman. He went over to the bar in the corner and poured himself a large Laphroaig.
His mind turned to Sarah. Her youth, the way she reddened so easily, wearing her heart on her sleeve. Her brightness, the sharpness of her mind. Why had she rung him the day he saw James Dalbey? What did she have to tell him? He supposed he would never know now. A secret that would forever remain a secret.
He took another sip of the whisky. Despite Charlie’s belief, the case didn’t feel right – there were too many unanswered questions. Why Sarah? Why pick her up in the middle of suburbia? She wasn’t like the killer’s other victims. Not a streetwalker, no history of drug use. Not from out of town.
The profiler had said the killer was a man who had murdered before and who was meticulous in his planning.
But the kidnapping of Sarah didn’t fit in with the pattern of the others. It was easy to follow on CCTV, Lesley Taylor’s white BMW a clear target.
Was it just chance the woman had seen Sarah being taken?
Probably. Arrests of serial killers often happened by chance rather than through police work. Look at the Yorkshire Ripper, arrested by two coppers in a routine traffic stop because he had false number plates on his lorry. Or Denis Nilsen, caught when the bodies of the young men he dismembered blocked the drains.
He took another sip of Laphroaig.
But this case, it didn’t make any sense. He could feel something was wrong; he just couldn’t put his finger on why.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
The following morning Ridpath had a slight headache. He had sat up until two in the morning drinking Laphroaig and thinking about the case. He had looked at it every way but still didn’t understand.
Polly had already gone to school with Eve, but not before having a word with him.
‘I’ve put your clean underwear out. The appointment is at 9 am, Ridpath – make sure you’re there early. I’ve been thinking.’
Ridpath looked at her over the rim of his coffee mug. ‘It’s bad for you.’
‘I’ve been mothering you too much, stif
ling you. I’ll stop, Ridpath, I’ve decided you have to take responsibility for your own health from now on. I can’t keep being this woman who spends her life nagging you to do something. So I’m going to trust you more. You’re a grown-up, you can take responsibility for yourself.
‘Like me,’ said Eve putting on her shoes and tying the laces.’
‘Just like you, sweetheart.’
She kissed him on the head. ‘Tell me what the doctor says tonight.’ She checked her watch. ‘Shit, is that the time? The old witch, Mrs Hardacre, will be telling me off for being late again.
‘I didn’t know Mrs Hardacre was a witch, Mummy.’
His wife ushered her daughter out of the kitchen ‘Don’t say a word to any of your schoolmates, Eve – that’s not for public consumption.’
‘So Mrs Hardacre being a witch is a secret. Does she have a broomstick?’
Ridpath heard the door closing with a bang.
He sipped his coffee. Today was going to be busy. After the doctor’s, he would follow up on Don Brown’s case, take a formal statement and make sure all the paperwork was up to date. He’d have to hand over the actual preparation of the case to another police team, but he would make sure they had all the evidence they needed plus a watertight statement admitting guilt. Whether or not they went to trial would depend on the Crown Prosecution Service.
His phone rang and he picked it up absent-mindedly. ‘Ridpath.’
‘I’m glad you answered, I need you to do something.’ It was the rich tones of Margaret Challinor.
‘I’m just going out to—’
Before he could finish she carried on speaking. ‘We have a problem. The inquest into the Alice Seagram case is set for Monday…’
‘We know what happened now. The inquest should be a formality, shouldn’t it?’
‘There’s a problem. We still haven’t discovered her body.’
‘But we know where it is. TRACE, near Preston. That’s where Don Brown took it.’
‘But we still have to find it.’
Ridpath thought for a moment. ‘I can go up on Monday with a forensics team. It should be fairly straightforward to find out what happened to it.’
‘That’s the problem.’