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

laughing about ‘our virgin birth, verging on the ridiculous’. He didn’t know what it meant then and neither did the other kids, but they laughed anyway.

For the rest of his school life, he was pointed at, laughed at. Ridicule that descended into bullying; his money and pencils stolen. Abuse that continued at the next school and the next and the one after that.

Always alone, shunned.

He only tried once again asking his mother, ‘Who is my father?’

His mother was completing one of her quizzes in the magazine. This one was all about the correct clothes to wear at a dinner party. Mother didn’t like to be disturbed when she was doing her quizzes.

‘I’ve told you already, you don’t have a father.’

She went back to her quiz. He shouldn’t have persisted but for some reason he did.

‘But the teacher said everybody has a father, who is mine?’

She threw the magazine across the room, striding over to grab his hair and wrench him to his feet.

‘I’ll show you who your father is!’

She dragged him across the room to the door of the cellar.

He remembered screaming, ‘No, Mum, please, no, Mum.’

She opened the door and pushed him down the stone steps. ‘You’ll find your father down there.’

He was cold and hungry in the cellar, but he never found his father.

Instead, he found his friends.

Real friends.

Friends who hurt people, especially the teacher in his class and the other boys.

He liked it when they hurt the boys.

Chapter 23

He looked up from the case notes and checked the time.

Eleven thirty.

Immediately, a wave of guilt washed over him as he realised he hadn’t FaceTimed Eve that evening. Had she been waiting next to her computer for his call? He got up and checked his laptop. A message was waiting for him.

Hi Dad, I called you but there was no answer. Where are you? Call me when you get this message. Lots of love. Eve.

Should he call her now?

He shook his head. She would be sleeping – her grandmother insisted she went to bed at nine p.m. every night. He would have to call tomorrow morning.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Why hadn’t Polly reminded him?

He looked around, expecting to see her shaking her head in the corner, waiting to tell him off. But she wasn’t there.

And then he realised, where was she? She hadn’t spoken to him since he started the case. He hoped she wasn’t angry with him for working late again.

Gathering up his notes, he put them in order, ready to brief Emily and Chrissy tomorrow. As he did, the photos of the crime scenes slipped out from the case file. He picked them up and looked at them again.

A wide shot of the location in Chorlton Ees.

A body stretched out on the ground.

A close-up of David Carsley’s face, the noose around his neck just visible.

For a moment, an image of his own daughter flashed into his mind, replacing that of David Carsley in the photograph.

He closed his eyes tightly. There were some kinds of evil men in this world who had to be caught and sentenced. A child-killer was one of those.

In that moment, he vowed he would put this bastard away, whatever happened. Eve and thousands of other children deserved that from him.

He placed the photographs back carefully in the case file and picked up his own notes. On top was the page with the five main questions he needed to answer.

Who was the man Daniel Carsley had seen in the playground?

Who was the woman at Chorlton Ees?

Did the white car/dark van have anything to do with the kidnapping?

What happened in the day between David’s disappearance and the discovery of his body?

Was a couple or a single man involved?

Who had kidnapped and murdered David Carsley?

That was six questions, but he was too tired to care. He had written a series of action steps to be discussed with his two conspirators tomorrow morning. From there, they would plan their investigation. At least now he was up to speed.

He reached for his pen and scored through the second question. At least one issue had been removed, but so many others still remained. ‘There, now it’s five,’ he said out loud.

Would the killer strike again? According to the criminal profiler, it was more than likely.

One last time, he checked through all the questions and sighed. They were not so different from the ones he had seen written up on the whiteboard in the Situation Room at Police HQ.

He had less than three days left to report back to Claire Trent.

How was he going to make a difference? How was he going to stop this man?

On the Third Day

Thursday, August 6

Chapter 24

The following morning, Ridpath was up early. For once, he had slept well and couldn’t remember any of his dreams, nor had he awoken in the middle of the night with the sweats.

After a quick breakfast, he drove into the centre of Manchester, parking close to the mortuary. As he stood outside, looking up at the nondescript building, the desperate craving for a cigarette flooded his body.

He dismissed it immediately and pushed his way through the entrance doors. In the lobby, the usual smell lingered in every corner, a mixture of carbolic soap, disinfectant and cleanliness.

Dr Schofield was already waiting for him, kitted out in his protective gear: face mask, surgical overalls, bloodied apron and cap.

‘Ah, Ridpath, great, you’re on time. I’ve just finished a job.’ He held up his blue plastic gloves stained with dark blood and assorted gore. ‘Give me a second and I’ll clean up. My assistant has already moved the body from the fridge for us.’

The voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky, a consequence of the doctor suffering from hypogonadism. He had explained everything when they had first met two years ago – it was an explanation he was used to making.

Ridpath stood in the hallway, staring at the white tiled walls and desperately trying not to breathe in. He wished he had that cigarette now – at least his lungs would be full of