When the Evil Waits by M Lee (top fiction books of all time txt) 📕

At the moment, though, it wasn’t her health that was a worry, but her future.

The Carsley story was fading fast.

She’d done her best to keep it in the public eye, even paying a photographer to climb over the back fence to get pictures of the man and his son. The police had spotted him sharpish, and he’d been taken off and put in the cells for a few hours to cool down.

She still had to pay him, even though he hadn’t taken any pictures. It was one more expense in an investigation that was starting to cost more than it made. As a stringer, she wasn’t on expenses any more, only making money when she could sell a story.

At the beginning, it had been lucrative. She’d congratulated herself on making the link to the Moors Murderers. The tabloids had lapped it up, paying for a team to go up to Saddleworth Moor with a couple of spades and a gardening fork. The pictures even made it into the broadsheets.

Her fingers hovered over the keys of her MacBook Air. She was compiling a list of possible interviews to keep the story going and the nationals interested.

Unfortunately, Michael Carsley was no Kate McCann. For a start, he wasn’t middle class, photogenic or articulate. In fact, he was exactly the opposite – poor, fat and quiet to the point of being comatose. The police had been successful at keeping him bottled up in his home. Even her source in MIT gave her little new intel these days.

She typed MICHAEL CARSLEY? in block letters anyway.

What about the wife? The one who had run out on her kids. There must be a reason why she left, mustn’t there?

Molly searched for the standard tropes the newspapers used on such occasions. Battered housewife? Independent woman? Victim of a system that didn’t care?

She shook her head. It had all been done before. She had to find something different to get the nationals interested – that was where the money was. Something with a news element?

She typed IRENE CARSLEY NEWS? in her list.

Anything else?

She’d already approached David’s teachers, there was nothing left to mine there except more banalities.

Lovely boy.

A real charmer.

Worked hard.

Popular with all his classmates.

It all sounded like the stuff they’d write in a school report. The only one missing was ‘Must do better’ and that probably applied to her rather than the boy.

Next she wrote POLICE in capitals. She couldn’t interview her source, that would give the game away. Better stay clear of him.

What about the SIO? She’d met Turnbull at the police briefings and took an instant dislike to him. She typed in his name anyway. PAUL TURNBULL.

Maybe an attack piece along the lines of ‘Two weeks and still no suspect’. She added the idea next to his name. A definite possibility but maybe not yet. She’d save that for when there was nothing left.

What about the head of MIT, Claire Trent? One of the rising stars of GMP, perhaps she would give an interview. A woman talking to another woman about the loss of a child. Something emotional, making the investigation personal, even for a seasoned detective.

The Guardian or the Independent might take a punt on a trope like that. Not for the front page but for the inside or a supplement. Almost an opinion piece. What it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world as the subtext. She thought it funny that even for the more liberal papers she had to write in tropes, something instantly recognisable that she could pitch to a tired editor.

She typed in CLAIRE TRENT? adding the name to her list on the screen.

Not much left, unless they found or charged the killer. She’d give this case another week and then move onto something else.

For all reporters, there was the law of diminishing returns. When a story was no longer news only something big could revive it.

Unfortunately, the death of David Carsley was no longer news.

The world had moved on, as it always did.

Chapter 19

Ridpath pressed the bell and stepped back from the porch. The house was one of the classic semi-Ds, thousands of which had been built as the sprawl of Manchester had extended its brick-covered tentacles into the garden suburbs in the 1930s.

In those days, they had been the apotheosis of the middle-class dream; a front and back garden, three bedrooms, inside toilet, electricity and 2.4 kids. After decades of deprivation, decline and division, they were an oasis of security and safety in an insecure world. Later in the 1960s, they bred the young who rebelled against the stolid and stable hypocrisy that oozed from every window. Now, they were the home of the barely-managing, those who fought every month to pay the mortgage, the water rates and the credit card bills while still trying to enjoy life.

A woman answered the door. She was pretty in a school teacherly way.

‘Mrs Morgan?’

‘Yeessss,’ she said tentatively.

‘My name is Ridpath, I’m a detective inspector with GMP.’ He showed her his card. ‘Is your husband at home?’

‘He’s just got back. You want to talk to him again? He’s not going to be happy.’ She shouted over her shoulder, ‘Jon, it’s the police for you.’

‘Not again,’ the voice came from the back room. Two seconds later a head popped around the door. ‘I only spoke to your lot yesterday. They said it would be the last time.’

‘Just a few things we need to clear up. It won’t take long. Can I come in?’ Ridpath displayed his largest, most charming smile. It produced a grimace from Jon Morgan and a grunted, ‘You’d better come through here.’

‘A cup of tea, Inspector?’ asked the wife.

‘That would be lovely.’

‘And I think I have some digestives left over from the last time your lot came round.’

‘Perfect.’

Jon Morgan showed him into the front room. It was obviously the one they kept for visitors as it had that rarely used smell. A child’s ball lay forgotten in the corner.

As Ridpath stood there,