Kitabı oku: «Broken Silence», sayfa 2
‘Honestly, I understand,’ he repeated.
Conrad nodded, grateful that they had finally cleared the air.
‘Jack? Jack? What’s going on?’ interrupted a soft voice from the top of the stairs.
Brady felt as if somebody had stuck a knife in his stomach and twisted it. He’d completely forgotten about her.
They both turned and looked up. Sleeping Beauty was standing shivering in what appeared to be just her T-shirt and skimpy knickers. She pushed her dark tousled hair out of her sleepy face as she stared in bewilderment at the two men below her.
‘It’s nothing. Go back to bed,’ Brady answered, embarrassed. His throat felt dry and tight. He didn’t want anyone knowing his private business; especially Conrad.
Looking at her standing there, vulnerable and still drunk, he felt disgusted with himself. He realised in that moment that Claudia was right about him. He was a bastard. He would never change, not really. And here in front of his and Conrad’s eyes was the evidence. He couldn’t believe how low he had stooped. He could now see what had eluded him last night: her age. If she were twenty-one it would have surprised him.
‘Come on,’ he said as he turned to Conrad.
Conrad didn’t say a word.
Brady knew what he would be thinking. And if he were in Conrad’s shoes right now, he’d be thinking exactly the same thing; that he deserved to lose Claudia.
‘Jack? Jack?’ she called out in a tremulous voice.
He turned and looked up at her still standing there, shivering.
‘I’ll … I’ll leave my number so you can call me about tonight … yeah?’
Brady nodded and then walked out into the black, empty night after Conrad. He knew for her sake the best thing to do was not call her back. Let it go and pretend it had never happened.
He could see nothing but blackness as he reached the path at the end of his long, front garden. But he could hear the thunderous crashing of the heavy waves as they beat against Brown’s Bay below. He lived on Southcliff, an imposing and exclusive row of Victorian houses that lined the cliff, facing out towards the North Sea. Nestled on a tight bend between Cullercoats and Whitley Bay, Brady had never been sure whether the row of houses fell in the sought-after fishing village of Cullercoats or whether it marked the very edge of the shabby seaside resort of Whitley Bay.
Claudia had fallen in love with the place as soon as she had seen the bending cliff with its dramatic plunge to the waiting rocks below. On a good day the view from the first-floor living room and second-floor study were breathtaking; dazzling azure waters lay perfectly still as far as the eye could see. White sailing boats and small, brightly coloured fishing boats would serenely blend in against the backdrop of stunning blue. But when the sea mirrored the grey, blackening skies overhead, the brooding waves would thrash against one another as they threw themselves against the cliff, violent and furious. At times the waves would be so high they would crash against the path lining the cliff, covering the large windows of the house in a thick, salty sea spray. If one of the local fishing boats was unfortunate enough to be out collecting lobster nets during a storm, Brady would watch through the murky windows mesmerised, while the tiny boat would be mercilessly tossed from one black wave to another.
‘Bugger me! It’s cold!’ he said as turned up his jacket collar against the cold, bitter air coming off the North Sea.
Conrad didn’t reply as he made his way along the walkway towards his car parked on the tight bending road at the edge of the jutting cliff.
Brady knew Conrad wasn’t impressed with what he’d seen. And Brady couldn’t help but agree with him.
Chapter Four
Conrad pulled the car over, joining the ominous line of police cars and vans parked along the edge of the road.
Brady inwardly steeled himself as he looked out at the twenty or so uniformed and plain-clothes officers. It felt as if he had been gone for a lifetime, not six months.
And given that it was only six-ten on a bitter November Friday morning, he had every reason to resist getting out of the car.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this, sir?’ Conrad asked as he turned to look at him.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘No reason, sir,’ answered Conrad uneasily.
‘Do you really think Gates would have called me in if I wasn’t?’ Brady asked him darkly.
Without waiting for an answer he got out of the car and slammed the door. He left Conrad to find somewhere to park and headed towards the blue and white police tape flapping miserably in the biting northern wind. The tape was sealing off a cumbersome iron gate. Brady presumed that the abandoned farmland beyond it was where the victim had been discovered.
He turned back and looked at the main road. It was deserted, blocked off by the police. A dismal, magnolia-painted Modernist building stood bleakly opposite. West Monkseaton Metro station; Brady knew it well enough. He could smell the stale piss drunkenly sprayed by passers-by against the badly-lit damp corners. He could hear the clinking of leftover bottles of cheap alcohol from the teenage kids who would travel from Shiremoor or North Shields and stand in huddled groups, shivering and laughing against the bitter night. Soon it would be swamped by early morning bleary eyed business-suited commuters clutching their latte or espresso from the local deli. They would dodge their way past the rolling, broken bottles and the pools of stinking piss trying not to breathe in the stench.
Brady shivered as he turned back to the farmland. He tried his best to walk without a limp, aiming for the two brutish officers guarding the entrance to the farmland.
‘Sir,’ PC Hamilton nodded. He quickly dropped his eyes and fixed them on his feet as he moved out of Brady’s way.
‘Inspector Brady?’ queried the other younger officer.
Brady looked at him. He knew that his black jeans, black polo shirt and black leather jacket didn’t adhere to the Superintendent’s dress code which was how he presumed the rookie had guessed right about him being the DI. Brady’s lack of suits was legendary at the station. It wasn’t to say that he didn’t look professional, but casual professional was how he liked to term it.
‘Sir, the DCI was expecting you—’ the young officer faltered, flustered.
‘And?’ prompted Brady irritably, aware that he was late.
‘The problem is you’ve missed him. He left a few minutes ago,’ the constable mumbled uneasily.
‘Shit!’
The last thing he wanted to do was piss Gates off. Not on his first day back. If Conrad had put his foot down like Brady had said then they would have gotten here over five minutes ago.
‘Do either of you have any mints?’
‘Sorry, sir?’ questioned the young officer, confused.
‘Bloody mints! Do you have any?’ replied Brady losing his patience. The knowledge that Gates had already gone had left him in a foul mood.
PC Hamilton hurriedly pulled out a packet of mints from his jacket pocket and handed them to Brady.
He would need them when he came face to face with Gates. The last thing Gates would tolerate was the smell of booze. A reformed alcoholic, Gates had led a Puritanical crusade against the vice, intolerant of any officer who came in to work oozing the telltale lingering perfume of a heavy night’s drinking.
Brady pocketed the mints and bent down under the tape and walked through the open gate.
Below in the distance he could see the cold glow of lights set up over the crime scene. The constant hum of the generator to power the spotlights muffled the low talk of the officers behind him.
He walked down the dirt track that had been ravaged by weeds and long, wild grass.
‘Never knew this existed,’ said Conrad catching him up.
Brady nodded as he looked around. It was a dark, lonely spot; an ideal location to murder someone or dump a body. All around him thick clumps of bushes loomed threateningly, wild and overgrown, hiding a multitude of sins.
‘Who do you think comes down here?’ asked Conrad.
‘Kids,’ answered Brady. He had already noticed a couple of empty, plastic cider bottles dumped in the overgrown bushes.
‘It’s the ideal place to come and get pissed or high. No one is going to bother you,’ continued Brady as he turned his head and looked back at the unlit track leading up to the main road.
He stopped abruptly and sighed.
‘Shine your torch down here, will you, Conrad?’
‘Crap!’ Brady cursed as he looked at the dog faeces stuck to the sole of his boot. ‘There’s your answer, Conrad.’
‘Sir?’
‘Kids and bloody dog walkers. That’s who come down here,’ he muttered as he tried his best to clean his boots.
‘What the bloody hell is this? Didn’t I make myself clear when I said that I don’t want any more bloody footprints messing up my crime scene? You lot have already buggered up enough! Now clear off!’ thundered an irate white-clad figure as he emerged fuming from the crumbling walls that would have once been a farmhouse. Behind the ruined walls spotlights coldly illuminated the crime scene.
Conrad stiffened his shoulders, his jaw rigid as he readied himself for battle with Ainsworth, the Scene of Crime Unit’s senior officer; infamous for his ill-temper and obstinacy.
‘Good to hear that you’re still the same sour-faced old bugger!’
‘Jack Brady?’ spluttered Ainsworth.
‘They couldn’t get rid of me that easily,’ answered Brady as he approached the senior SOCO. He was a short, portly man with a receding head of curly silver hair and a large, ravaged face that belied the fact that he was only in his mid-forties.
‘Bloody hell! So when did you start back?’ Ainsworth questioned as he shook his tired head in disbelief. ‘I didn’t think it would be for a while yet, not with what I heard had happened to you …’ He paused as his small, razor-sharp eyes quickly took in Conrad who stiffly waited behind Brady.
‘Yeah, well seems the boss thought I was ready to start back so here I am,’ Brady answered with a wry smile.
‘Well, Jack, I’ll say this, you’ve got your work cut out here. It’s a mess … a bloody mess …’ Ainsworth said, shaking his large head. ‘And you better tread carefully. I don’t want you being replaced like that other poor bugger,’ he warned.
Brady felt himself flinch as Ainsworth’s words struck him. He turned to Conrad.
‘Do you know about this?’
‘No sir.’
Brady already had a bad feeling about this investigation without hearing from Ainsworth that he’d been called in at the last minute to replace some other poor sod who had no doubt got on the wrong side of Gates. One thing he didn’t like was surprises. Not where Gates was concerned.
‘Now follow my exact footsteps, and I bloody mean mine not one of the other set of bloody footprints we have all over the place here,’ Ainsworth ordered. ‘Like I said, Jack, it’s a bloody mess.’
‘So it seems,’ answered Brady, feeling uneasy about what lay ahead.
Chapter Five
Brady slowly breathed out. From a distance the victim’s long blonde hair hid the extent of the trauma. It was only when you got up close did you realise that her features had been horrifically smashed beyond recognition. The skin hung in shards, exposing lumps of shapeless, raw flesh and bone. Something hard and jagged had ripped and torn at what had once been her face, leaving behind a gut-wrenching, unidentifiable, gory mess.
Brady didn’t want to think about the fact that the body lying there was someone’s daughter. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets he looked up at the oppressive, dark sky.
Conrad attempted to clear his throat.
Brady turned to him. He stood rigid by Brady’s side, his face sickly pale.
‘At least she was dead before …’ Conrad’s confident, privately educated voice trailed off.
Brady nodded, he didn’t feel much like talking.
He forced himself to look back down at the body. He had seen enough murder victims to know that luckily for her she was already dead before her attacker had decided to remove her face, otherwise they would have been looking at a gruesome bloodbath. The purplish, bluish marks around her neck were indicative of death by asphyxiation. Brady presumed the black scarf loosely knotted around the victim’s discoloured neck had been used to strangle her first, before the frenzied attack on her face took place. He could make out desperate scratches on her neck where he presumed the victim had tried in vain to loosen the choking material.
He couldn’t help but notice the short denim skirt that barely covered her mottled, greyish-blue naked thighs. Or the tight, short-cropped black T-shirt that was so low cut that her well-developed breasts and black lacy bra were on show. His eyes drifted to her navel, attracted by the sparkling gem pierced into her belly button. But something else caught his eye. He crouched down and took a closer look.
‘Sir?’ Conrad asked as Brady turned to him.
‘Gloves?’
Conrad handed Brady a pair of latex gloves.
‘What is it?’ Conrad asked.
‘I don’t know,’ muttered Brady, frowning.
He gently undid the button and zip on her hipster denim skirt revealing black see-through pants. She had no pubic hair which didn’t surprise Brady. He was savvy enough to know that fashion, or more precisely the ever-expanding porn world, pressurised young women to sport Brazilian waxes, coupled with ludicrous fake boob jobs.
But what did surprise him was the striking tattoo of a fire breathing jade dragon discreetly curled below her left hip. Brady turned and looked at Conrad.
‘See how red and raised the skin is?’
Conrad nodded.
‘This is recent. The scab has gone but the skin’s still inflamed,’ Brady stated. ‘I reckon she got this done about four or five weeks ago.’
He didn’t know much about tattoos, but even he recognised that this was a work of art.
He carefully buttoned up her skirt, covering her modesty. Not that it mattered to her now, he thought, but she was still someone’s daughter.
‘How did you know it was there, sir?’ asked Conrad, surprised.
‘Part of it caught my eye,’ answered Brady as he carefully took in the rest of her body.
She was also wearing an open black jacket and tan suede Ugg boots that reached halfway up her slender, bluish calves. But the boots had nothing to do with the weather. Ugg boots were just a fashion statement; a very expensive fashion statement at that. She could have been any one of a hundred young women who would have been out drinking last night in Whitley Bay. Brady was suddenly filled with revulsion at what was going through his head; she looked no older than the girl he had taken home. He felt a deep twist of regret as he realised he knew as little about Sleeping Beauty as he did about the body lying before him. Behind him he could hear the hushed voices of the forensic officers, waiting for him to finish.
Let them wait, he thought. The SOCOs already had all the photographs they needed of the victim and the crime scene, so a few more minutes would make no difference when it came to bagging up evidence. Brady needed time to think, to breathe in the bitter reality of what had happened to this girl. He needed to understand why she had been brought here of all places. And crucially, why the murderer had chosen to kill her.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he mused.
‘It never does,’ answered Conrad with quiet reverence.
Brady shook his head but couldn’t bring himself to explain what he had meant.
He let his eyes drift over her outstretched small, fragile open hands. He could make out that her finger nails were neatly manicured but couldn’t see anything else. Forensics would find something, he was sure of that. Whoever had done this to her would have left some trace behind. It was the law of averages, thought Brady.
He paused for a moment, catching his breath as his eyes were drawn back to her mutilated face; the harsh lights set up by the SOCOs sparing nothing.
‘Poor bloody girl,’ Brady quietly stated.
‘Yes sir,’ answered Conrad.
‘What do you think?’ Brady asked.
Conrad shrugged.
Brady wasn’t offended; Conrad rarely committed himself.
‘Does anything strike you as odd?’ Brady continued.
‘Yes, her face or what’s left of it,’ Conrad offered.
‘No, I’m more interested in what her attacker didn’t do as opposed to what he did,’ answered Brady.
‘She doesn’t seem to have been sexually assaulted,’ answered Conrad. ‘If she had her clothes would either have been fully or partially removed, but there doesn’t appear to have been any attempt made here, sir.’
‘And, she doesn’t appear to have struggled,’ Brady added. ‘Apart from these scratches on her throat here, Conrad,’ he said pointing. ‘Which suggests she fought to loosen the scarf from her neck. But that seems to be the extent of it.’
If she had struggled with her attacker he would have expected some visible hair or tissue from the assailant to have been left in the victim’s hands or under her nails. A last attempt at desperately holding on to life. He was sure her own skin tissue would be evident under her nails, but as to her attacker’s, he wasn’t so certain.
‘Maybe she was knocked unconscious from behind first?’ Conrad offered.
‘But then why strangle her?’
‘Perhaps she started to come round, sir? So her attacker then strangled her with her scarf?’
‘Maybe … Let’s see,’ Brady said as he carefully knelt down beside the girl’s body, wincing as a burst of white pain exploded in his thigh.
He breathed in shallowly for a few moments, waiting for it to pass.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ Conrad asked with genuine concern noticing that Brady’s olive-skinned complexion had paled.
‘It’s nothing,’ Brady lied.
The last thing he wanted was Conrad questioning his ability to work.
‘Shine your torch over the back of her head for me, will you?’
Trying to ignore the searing pain he felt, Brady carefully lifted what was left of the victim’s head and examined the back of it for trauma.
‘Nothing, we’ll just have to wait and see if any fractures are found during the post-mortem.’ He had seen enough blows to the head to recognise the trademark and there didn’t appear to be one there. But he could still be wrong.
‘Why did he do that to her face?’ Brady questioned as he shook his head.
‘To make it difficult for us to ID? Or maybe it’s not that straightforward. Maybe the murderer is playing with us psychologically?’ Conrad suggested.
‘Could be,’ Brady said, swallowing hard as he looked at the victim.
He had to agree, the murderer had made their job difficult, whether it was intentional, he couldn’t say.
‘But crucially, why spend time after she was dead doing that to her face? That says something, don’t you think?’ Brady said as he looked at what was left of the victim.
‘You definitely think she was strangled to death rather than a blow to the head?’ questioned Conrad.
Brady nodded.
Conrad stared at the telltale smudged bruising around the victim’s neck. He had worked with Brady long enough to know that when he had a hunch he was rarely proved wrong.
‘Her death makes no bloody sense though,’ muttered Brady irritably to himself as he staggered to his feet, wincing slightly.
‘No sir,’ agreed Conrad.
‘Come on then, let’s leave this to Forensics,’ he concluded.
They’d find out what he couldn’t see; always did. If he was lucky Forensics would find some traces of the murderer’s DNA on the victim’s body, if not hopefully under her fingernails. But from where he was standing, it didn’t look as if she had resisted her attacker. Which led Brady to the assumption that she had known her murderer. But before he could put together a list of potential suspects known to the victim, he needed a positive ID on the body. Only when they knew who the victim was, could they start to piece together exactly what had happened to her.
Brady took in the crime scene. Trees circled the building adding to the dense, suffocating blackness. He dropped his gaze back to the surrounding bushes and wild bracken growing in thick clumps in between the fallen rubble and the crumbling walls of the farmhouse. The abandoned Belfast sink lying in the corner gave Brady the impression that they were standing in what would have once been the kitchen. The size of the room was at least ten feet by twelve feet, but the crumbling stone walls and old wooden rafters that lay rotting amongst the rubble and wild vegetation made the space cramped; so much so that the victim lay on a mound of grass and weeds in the centre. Brady was certain about one thing; it was the ideal location to bring someone in secret. Conrad shifted uneasily. It was clear he had had enough; the greyish hue to his face gave him away.
He’d get over it, thought Brady. Something worse would happen; it always did. It was human nature. Imagine the worst and someone’s already done it; at least ten times over.
Brady hated civilisation; it gave people a false sense of security. In reality they were just animals in clothes. Animals that raped, sodomised, tortured and murdered whoever and whatever, even their own; regardless of society. He had seen it, tasted it and breathed it every day of his working life. The world was dark; the problem was people chose to ignore it and believe in a false god: civilisation.
Unfortunately for Conrad, he was still one of those poor, deluded bastards. The job would soon beat that idealism out of him, thought Brady. It had happened to him. It happened to everyone, sooner or later.
‘Come on, let’s get back to the station. This bloody place is depressing me,’ Brady muttered.
They had their work cut out and the sooner they started the closer they would be to apprehending whoever had done this. The early hours of any murder investigation were crucial and the last thing he wanted was to give the murderer time to disappear.
‘Who was called in to pronounce her dead?’ Brady suddenly asked.
‘I believe it was Wolfe, sir,’ answered Conrad.
Thank fuck, thought Brady. At last, something was going his way. He trusted Wolfe. He was a cantankerous old bugger who drank too much, but he knew his job. He was the best Home Office pathologist the force had ever had and hopefully it would stay that way, as long as he didn’t drink himself into an early retirement. Brady turned round and gave the girl a last cursory once over. He was grateful for her sake; she’d be in good hands with Wolfe, even if it was too late.
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
