The Case File Archive

Days after Jonathan Fairhurst, a wealthy Manchester merchant with warehouses in Spitalfields, strolled into Haslingden Police Station and confessed to two murders, he walked out again, protected by money, friends and a retraction. Detective Constable Mallory, sick with fury at his superiors, resolves to break the case open even at the cost of his career. Sergeant Edmund Cryer must decide whether to restrain him or stand beside him.

Jacob Poole, a mop maker, was found dead just inside the locked doors of the old coffin works he had bought eight months earlier. His face was twisted and his fist was clenched. Haslingden said he had died of fright at the hands of Jack Nazier's ghost, but Cryer and Mallory could find no intruder, no theft and no violence. The truth took three weeks, a chimney sweep and a dead jackdaw to come out.

In the autumn of 1879, eleven-year-old Emily Barnes left her mother's rooms in Spitalfields to buy a loaf of bread and was never seen again. Her friend Edmund Cryer, then thirteen, searched the streets and alleys where they had played, while the police and half the neighbourhood did the same. Years passed with no sign of her, and the case that made Cryer a detective was never closed.

For three nights running, the old weaving shed at Ogden Bank Mill was heard clattering after midnight, though the engine had been cold since the spring coal strike. Cryer finds a living hand behind the noise, but not behind the cloth that was found on the thirteenth loom.

The story that changed Edmund Cryer forever. As a young Police Constable in Whitechapel, Edmund is called to 29 Hanbury Street on the morning Annie Chapman is murdered. Confronted by death and the terrifying reality of what one human being can do to another, he finds himself changed forever. This is the moment the investigator inside Edmund Cryer first opened his eyes.

Three young women are dead, their deaths seemingly linked to the same woman and the same terrible secret. But when Detective Sergeant Edmund Cryer begins to look beyond the obvious explanation, he uncovers a truth buried beneath the grounds of St James’ churchyard - and a murderer whose name may never be known.

Arthur Bell, a quiet 32-year-old Haslingden mill worker, is found drowned in the dark waters of Slate Lodge Quarry. At first, his death appears to be a sad accident or possibly suicide, brought on by grief after the recent loss of his mother.

Shortly after dawn on October 12th, 1905, the body of an unidentified woman was discovered beside a dirt track near Prinny Hill Lane.

Initial reports suggested robbery, though investigators quickly noted unusual details at the scene, including a white rose carefully placed near the victim.

Detective Sergeant Edmund Cryer would later describe the scene as “disturbingly deliberate.”

When reports of a terrifying black hound began to spread around Helmshore, Detective Sergeant Edmund Cryer and Detective Constable Arthur Mallory were tasked with investigating the bizarre case.