When the Evil Waits M Lee (e book reader .txt) 📖

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