‘You won’t hear the last of this, Ms Trent. I can build you up and I can take you down.’
‘Come along, miss.’ The sergeant tugged on her arm.
‘You won’t hear the last of this,’ she shouted over her shoulder.
Ridpath ran back to join them.
‘Be careful, you two,’ were the last words he heard Claire Trent shout as he ran out of the lobby door and down the stairs, Emily Parkinson just a step behind.
Chapter 93
Molly Wright was fuming.
How dare that bloody jumped-up tart get rid of her? Who did she think she was? She would show her. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation but one article could destroy it.
You’d better watch your back from now on, Claire bloody Trent. One wrong step and it’s going to be posted in every newspaper from here to Timbuktoo.
The sergeant let go of her arm, shoving her behind the police tape. ‘Make sure she doesn’t come back in,’ he ordered a nearby constable.
She smoothed down her clothes and tidied her hair, imagining the vicious barbs she would write about the detective superintendent. Barbs to destroy the woman and her career.
As she did, Ridpath and the female police officer ran past her.
Where were they rushing to?
The detectives spoke to another sergeant and were immediately shown to a squad car, getting in the back. The car put on its siren and flashing lights, pushing itself slowly through the crowd lining the pavement, before zooming off down Kingsway. She saw her photographer still parked on the road where she had left him ten minutes earlier.
Thank God for stupidity, she thought.
She ran over to his car and wrenched open the passenger door. The photographer was still listening to his police scanner.
‘Follow that car,’ she ordered.
‘Which one?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘The one with the flashing lights and the bloody siren.’
He pulled out and sped away down Kingsway, seeing the police car in the distance.
Molly Wright shook her head. You can’t get the staff these days.
Chapter 94
He carried the semi-comatose boy to the bedroom.
The meal hadn’t gone according to plan – things started to go wrong when he had told him that his mother, the woman sitting in front of the television, was dead.
A slow realisation had dawned in the boy’s eyes. A realisation that perhaps he shouldn’t be there. That this wasn’t a good man sitting next to him. That dead people don’t sit in living rooms watching television.
‘I’d like to go home now.’
‘Finish your meal first.’
The boy threw his fork down on his plate, scattering bolognaise sauce all over the table. ‘I want to go home now. I want to see my mum.’
Why did they always have to spoil it? Here they were having a wonderful meal, cooked by him, enjoying a little chat and some good food. But still they were not satisfied.
He tried one more time.
‘You can go home after you’ve eaten your food. Doesn’t your mother always tell you to finish your food because there are starving babies in Africa who would love a bowl of spaghetti?’
‘No,’ the boy shouted, flipping his plate up, spilling the food all over the table and on the floor.
‘Look what you’ve done now,’ the man said gently. ‘Little boys need to be punished if they throw food. Didn’t your mother tell you that too?’
The boy’s eyes started to glaze over and defocus. The drugs were beginning to kick in.
‘Now, I’m going to have to clean up before I punish you.’
There was no answer from the boy. His head lolled to one side and his mouth opened slowly, the tongue creeping out from between his teeth.
‘You sit here while I tidy up. Please understand, you have been a naughty boy and you are not going to escape punishment. My mother,’ he pointed to the body sitting in front of the television, ‘punished me when I was naughty. I deserved it, I always deserved it. And so do you.’
Chapter 95
They cut the lights and siren when they were five minutes away from the shop, coasting to a stop a block away. The convenience store was at one end of a row of shops in a residential neighbourhood. Michael Carsley’s house was only a few minutes’ walk away and Wythenshawe Park was behind them.
‘What are we going to do, Ridpath?’ asked Emily.
‘If he’s just abducted somebody, he’s unlikely to be working in the shop, he’s probably at the other address. But we can’t take any chances. You two,’ he pointed to the two constables, ‘go round the back and check out the rear alley. If he is in the shop, that’s where he’s going to run.’
‘And us two?’
‘We’re going to walk straight in. You are doing some follow-up on your enquiries a couple of days ago.’
‘If he’s there?’
‘We take him down and break his balls until he tells us where the boy is. Ready? You two go first. We’ll give you a minute to get round the back and then we’ll go in.’
The two constables left the car and ran down the alley behind the row of shops.
Ridpath got out of the car first, pulling down his jacket. Followed by Emily, he strode past the hairdressers and the Chinese takeaway, past the bookies and the knitting shop. They stopped for a second in front of the ATM and its camera.
‘This is where you got the footage?’
She nodded.
‘Strange that none of the other shops saw the boy.’
‘It was lunchtime, many of them were closed.’
‘Are you ready?’
She nodded again.
‘You go in first and I’ll watch your back. Remember, if he’s there, you are just following up on the ATM footage.’
‘And if he’s not?’
‘We’ll play it by ear. The uniforms should be in position by now. Ready?’
She pushed open the door, hearing a bell ring above her head.
They didn’t notice Molly Wright and her photographer watching them from the car across the road.
Chapter 96
Sergeant Trevor Hall was the head of the Police Tactical Unit. Claire Trent had worked with him before and knew him to be an efficient, dedicated
