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

‘Chrissy messaged. She’s going to be late, trying to find somewhere close to park.’

‘I know the problem.’

‘Should get a bike, it’s easier. Just lock it against railings.’

He saw a helmet on the seat next to her and realised she wasn’t joking. ‘You bike in every day?’

‘When I’m working in HQ. Keeps me fit… sort of.’

Ridpath sipped his latte and brought out his notes from last night. ‘How did you get on with the responses to the photofit appeal?’

‘Still going through them. I’ve done about half but 3000 is not something you read in a day. Most were followed up and checked. A couple of things cropped up.’ She checked her notebook. ‘A man, Mr Peter Davies, rang through saying he was in the park that day walking his Alsatian. He gave a number but didn’t want to leave an address. Either it was false or the operator took it down incorrectly, but he couldn’t be contacted. He’s sort of dropped through the net for follow-up.’

‘Could be worth checking out. The Alsatian cropped up before.’

‘OK, I’ll try but Davies is such a common name, might be hard to find him. There’s one other thing I’ve found interesting. One of the new boys was supposed to check it, but he seems to have been busy on something else. A woman walking in Chorlton Ees in the mornings before David Carsley was discovered reported a couple walking together with dogs. I checked the description against that of the man who found the body and it matches.’

‘Jon Morgan?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I interviewed him yesterday. He didn’t discover the body alone. He was with another woman.’

Emily raised an eyebrow.

‘Hence the reluctance to come forward. He’s going to ring Turnbull and make a fresh statement this morning.’

‘Turnbull will go apeshit.’

‘But at least it clears up the mystery woman.’ He looked across at Emily. ‘You never bought into this Myra Hindley and Ian Brady story, did you?’

She frowned. ‘That’s newspaper bullshit, but you asked me to look for anomalies and that was one. But it looks like it isn’t any more.’

As she finished speaking, Chrissy Wright bustled through the door, using her walking stick to open it, spotted them and waved. ‘Hiya, sorry I’m late, not the quickest on my feet at the moment.’

‘A coffee, Chrissy?’

‘No thanks, never touch the stuff. If I have coffee in the morning, I’m wired for the rest of the day. Not a pretty sight. Like a hamster on speed.’

Emily took the time to explain what she had discovered as Chrissy settled herself down. ‘Sounds interesting, you want me to find Mr Davies?’

‘Can you?’

‘Should be possible. Despite the surname being common, if he was walking his dog in Wythenshawe Park my bet is he lives close to there. I’ll start with the area around the park, ringing anybody with the surname Davies, widening the search till I find him. Any other details from the contact report?’

Emily checked her notes. ‘A male aged thirty-two, that’s all.’

‘Perfect. Narrows it down considerably. You can find anybody these days, if you know where to look.’

‘Remind me never to get on your wrong side, Chrissy,’ said Ridpath.

‘I thought you already knew that. Anyway, I went through the HOLMES 2 result again, checked the police database for crimes against children in the last ten years and went over the Sexual Offenders Register, cross-checking it with recent contact reports.’

‘And?’

Chrissy frowned. ‘It’s a nightmare. In the last five years there has been a 75 per cent increase in the number of child sex offences in Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire.’

‘What about Greater Manchester?’

‘We didn’t report any figures for the period. The only data I have is for 761 online child sexual abuse offences in 2019–20.’

‘Jesus, so many…’

‘Why didn’t we report any figures?’

Chrissy shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps because we were investigating the closure of Operation Augusta?’

Emily coughed. ‘I have a friend who worked on that investigation. For some obscure reason, in 2005 senior police prematurely shut down Operation Augusta, an investigation into sexual abuse in children’s homes. The report into why this happened was finally published in January 2020, nearly fifteen years later. It wasn’t pretty reading. Many of the same men involved in Augusta were charged in the Rochdale grooming scandal in 2013. God only knows how many children could have been spared years of anguish if we had investigated properly earlier.’

‘I tried to find the figures for child sexual exploitation for the UK. The only place I found anything was the NSPCC. According to them, last year there were, on average, more than two hundred child sex offences every day. In all, there were 73,518 recorded offences including online grooming, rape, and sexual assault against children in the UK in 2019–20. And those are just the ones that are reported. The tip of the iceberg, I think. Most crimes are not reported either because the family is ashamed or the child themselves keeps it quiet.’

‘Jesus,’ said Emily.

‘I didn’t realise it was so many,’ added Ridpath.

‘According to the latest figures, there were 62,435 people on the Sexual Offenders Register, but it’s not up to date, people move and the police have problems keeping track of new addresses. The changes to the probation service by that idiot Grayling didn’t help. There were 3,411 of them living in Greater Manchester.’

‘So you’re saying?’

‘All the literature tells us that killers progress. They start young, torturing animals, bullying other children. Most come from broken homes or abusive backgrounds. They move on from minor offences, becoming more and more aggressive as their psychopathy takes hold.’

‘So it could be one of the people in the Sexual Offenders Register?’ asked Ridpath.

Emily answered him directly. ‘But Turnbull checked everyone. It was the first place he looked.’

Ridpath thought of what the doctor had told him that morning. ‘We still need to follow up. Can you go over Turnbull’s checks, Chrissy?’

‘OK, will do. But our perp might not be on the Register.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it could be someone who was let off with a caution, given a fine or who