Desperate to prove it wrong he pushed Trish back so that she stumbled into the bench seating facing him and slumped down. Before she could open her mouth to protest, he opened her legs, pushed his face into the gap he had created and performed an act unknown to him for two decades. Nevertheless, the taste and her moans of pleasure, steadily increasing in both frequency and volume, convinced him it was a skill well remembered.
He became sure that when the inevitable orgasm came, he would gain the confidence to accept that whether it took a long time, or indeed transpired to be far quicker than he would have ideally have liked, he would feel worthy of being intimate with her. But just as he started to feel himself relax into the situation, she grabbed his head and pulled him away from her. ‘I want to come with you inside me,’ she panted, sitting up. Her cheeks were flushed but the glassy look in her eyes cleared as she glanced down at his still flaccid penis. She was unable to hide her disappointment.
The shame that Brandt had expected to feel didn’t wash over him. Instead he was angry. It was symptomatic of the arrogance of this woman that she would expect his pleasuring of her to provide the impetus her attention on him had failed to achieve. Her earlier words of there being no rush were clearly a lie. She wanted him to get on with it, so they could finish, and she could kick him out of her caravan and out of her life before the ice in her gin and tonic had melted.
‘Is this the first time since…’
‘Since?’ he asked, his voice low and menacing.
‘Since your wife…’
He failed to notice the concern and compassion in her voice, such was the rage that overwhelmed him at the mere mention of that bitch in this context. His arms thrust out before him and immediately grabbed her throat. This time he didn’t need to wonder whether he was exerting enough pressure to change the colour of his knuckles; he could see them himself. But that was nothing compared to the alarming shade of Trish’s face. With her supply of air choked off, and her arms flailing in a futile attempt to force him to release his grip, she was turning purple and her eyes were bulging in their sockets. But rather than become horrified at his destruction of her natural beauty, Brandt could finally feel himself stiffen.
Chapter Twenty-two
Johnson made it to Calais in time for her own booking. If anything, the revelation made staying in Ghent more pointless. If, as she suspected, the email was from Brandt, it was part of his effort to conceal his real destination. She had no idea where it was, but one thing was for certain – it wasn’t Belgium.
But Johnson had a bigger problem: even if she could work out where he had gone after faking Franklin’s suicide, the question remained what she would do with that knowledge. Without the resources she enjoyed as a police officer, even if she was lucky enough to establish which town he was in, it would leave her far from actually catching him. The logical solution would be to pass that information on to the authorities but doing that wouldn’t be as simple as it sounded. First would be the question as to how she had come to know this. Even if she could convince Potter that she had done nothing improper, there was also the issue of whether they would actually believe her. She could imagine the conversation where she tried to explain that an email sent in French in the Flanders region of Belgium indicated someone covering their tracks. They were sure to laugh her out of the station. Nevertheless, chief among her concerns was that the police would mess it up and Brandt would escape again. It was hard for her to admit such a thing, having devoted much of her adult life to the force, and making many sacrifices along the way but, much as she despised Brandt, she knew he was a strong adversary. He was more aware of their investigative methods than they were, and even gaining a sniff of a police presence might see him disappear altogether. The fact remained that it was only when Johnson acted outside of police protocol with her unsolicited discussion with the columnist, Gail Trevelly, that he had surfaced. Moreover, he had done a good job of convincing everyone not only that he’d remained in the country but also that, despite being the one to attack her and kill McNeil, he was somehow just a pawn in someone else’s game.
Johnson could feel the anger rising inside and calmed herself by thinking that all this was academic unless she could figure out where Brandt had gone. As she made her way around the M25, which she found surprisingly busy given how late at night it now was, she tried to focus on what she did know. The purpose of the email was obvious: he was ready for Franklin’s body to be found. He had initially concealed it to enable a successful getaway and, a week later, people’s memory of anything out of the ordinary would have faded to the extent of making it useless. He wanted Franklin’s body to be found so that it corroborated the impression they had parted as soon as things went wrong in Nottingham. This would also explain why he’d gone to such efforts to conceal his identity. The disguising of IP addresses was no small feat, and certainly something Johnson didn’t know how to do, and she made a mental note of him either being proficient in computing or having the wherewithal to successfully research his IT needs.
But Johnson couldn’t help thinking this all had the whiff of overkill. If Franklin’s suicide note was as carefully scripted as she believed it to be, then she wondered as to the true purpose of it. Brandt would know that the manhunt would continue even if it was felt his role was lesser than had first appeared. Therefore, it made no sense for its primary objective to be to absolve himself of some of the responsibility. Given he had actively sought to provide the police the links between the initial attacks, it seemed counter-intuitive. Johnson knew this was something she would need to think on further, but it certainly suggested to her an element of ego. Even if it hadn’t been for her successful goading of him regarding his sexuality, his efforts to cover up whatever he had seen as going wrong in St. Albans with the attack on Lily James, suggested he wanted his actions to be viewed in a very specific way.
There was no doubt in her mind that, even if she had retained the resources available to her as a detective, he remained by far the most complex character she had investigated. Given what he had done to her personally, anyone would forgive Johnson for having such a narrow-minded view of Brandt, but she would not allow herself to fail to appreciate the qualities she would need to overcome if she was to catch him. That he knew the intimate workings of the police force was now a given, but acceptance of that would also be to disregard his general high level of intelligence. Take his use of French, for instance. Whilst Johnson was able to read what he had written, she would have no hope of constructing such perfect sentences herself.
She swerved violently in the road, causing the car in the middle lane to have to take evasive action to avoid her hitting him. The blast of his horn served to restore her senses and she eased back on the throttle, pulled into the left-hand lane and set the Audi’s cruise control at a sedate 70mph. Johnson had realised her mistake. In her effort to not allow her personal emotions to cloud her analysis of the evidence presented to her, she had gone too far the other way and was giving Brandt more credit than he deserved. She had been right; his French was perfect. Too perfect. Someone with the ability to divert their IP address to another country would have no problems with something as simple as Google Translate. She knew from her time studying French that, a bit like in the game of Chinese whispers, when you converted text into another language and translated it back into its original form, it changed slightly. Not by a huge amount, but every dialect had its own idiosyncrasies. If one machine literally translated them, it altered the language to the extent that to change it back would see you with a different sentence to the original.
Johnson knew that she required more confirmation of Brandt’s linguistic skills than feeding it back through Google Translate. He had been careful to keep his phrases short to avoid making any obvious mistakes, and she was sure she wouldn’t be wise to it now had it not been for her accidental discovery of him using the wrong language for the particular region he was claiming to be from. But none of this meant he didn’t know any French, or
in fact any other languages that he could rely on when trying to settle in a different country. She would need to find out the level of his ability because, if it transpired he had none, then that could massively narrow down her search area for him. She was convinced that his fleeing abroad had never been part of the plan, and she would put money on it being an opportunistic decision to use Franklin in that way. Therefore, if he found himself in continental Europe on a hastily conceived escape, unable to speak any of the native languages, it would see him seek out places where he could rely on speaking English without arousing suspicion.
As Johnson exited the M1 at Junction 25 and followed the A52 towards Nottingham, she did not turn off onto the road that would lead to her flat. Instead she continued on towards the police station where she hoped to God none of the team had decided to work deep into the night.
The car park was pleasingly quiet as she pulled in. Johnson knew that Sergeant Andrews tended to work the day shift but, all the same, was relieved to find a different person stood at the duty desk. She didn’t even recognise her, let alone know her name, but the nod she gave Johnson suggested she knew exactly who she was, and Johnson would just have to hope that she either wasn’t aware of her supposed holiday leave or didn’t view her arrival at the station as sufficiently strange to want to comment on it to someone in the morning.
The CID floor appeared to be empty but the lights still being on caused Johnson to enter with caution. With no one in the main area, she believed herself to be alone and wandered in the direction of her office. The sight of Potter’s door opening caused a yelp of fright to escape, and her mind immediately began thinking of possible excuses for her being there; all of which she immediately dismissed as preposterous.
‘I’m sorry to frighten you, miss,’ replied the middle-aged woman pulling a vacuum cleaner behind her.
Johnson’s barely concealed relief was such that she had to resist hugging her. ‘That’s not a problem,’ she mumbled uncomfortably, before striding to her office. Certain that her nerves could not take any further surprises, she wasted no time in logging on and retrieving the details she required. Having noted down the phone number and address of Mrs Susan Brandt, she also added the same for Franklin’s wife just in case she needed that information in the future.
Offering the cleaner an unreciprocated wave of farewell, she went back down the stairs and was pleased to find the duty sergeant busy dealing with a drunk and disorderly trying to talk his way out of whatever charges she was reading to him.
Johnson’s apprehension at having to introduce herself to the wife of the man who had attacked her, was outweighed by her desire to get the information she craved. However, stood in the car park and observing the stars in the clear night sky, she knew that she was far more likely to find the woman cooperative if she wasn’t waking her in the early hours of the morning. Instead she drove slowly back to her flat listening to some late-night music on the radio she didn’t recognise but found herself tapping along to on the steering wheel. With the weariness of her travels finally catching up with her, she forewent the shower she had promised herself on the long journey back from Folkestone, but did have one final job to do before she would allow herself to collapse into her, still unfamiliar, bed.
Chapter Twenty-three
Brandt woke up late with the oppression of a heavy hangover clouding his immediate thoughts. This was the first time he had drank to such excess since arriving in Benidorm, and it took him a few moments to establish the root cause of his over-indulgence the day before. If the heat that had steadily built up in the room over the course of the morning hadn’t been enough to see him already sweating, remembering what he had done would have provoked the same physical reaction. It wasn’t so much the fact that he had been compelled to kill again, nor even the circumstances that had led to his actions, but the manner in which it had been done that caused him alarm. He had let his guard down in so many ways yesterday and there was every chance that poor decision would come back to haunt him.
Selecting an auction house rather than a market was his first mistake. He had gone out of town which meant there was a more captive audience than the casual footfall of a rastro. He hadn’t seen any CCTV cameras there but, then again, he hadn’t been specifically looking. Trish had even said to him that she visited there every week so it wouldn’t take very long at all for them to be able to retrace her steps. Anyone who had seen her talking to Brandt at the auction would be able to narrow down the possible suspects to the new guy, even in the unlikely situation they couldn’t provide much of a description. A quick ring around the taxi companies would soon reveal his approximate location.
But there was one simple fact that made all the other mistakes pale into insignificance. His identity would be all over the crime scene. As soon as she died, and was lying in the puddle of her own urine, he had wiped his glass and anywhere else he believed he may have come into contact with. But even at the time he had known it was an effort in futility. Having not worn his gloves, there would be many places he couldn’t remember touching, not least on Trish’s actual body. Even in the unlikely event that he had removed all his prints, there was his DNA. There shouldn’t be any of his blood but almost certainly there would be some of his hairs and there would definitely be his saliva on her. It wasn’t standard practice for the police to run their tests against databases in other countries but given the victim was an ex-pat, and the murder took place in a caravan site full of Brits, they would be stupid not to share the DNA with the UK police force. Brandt would be immediately identified and, given his history, a manhunt on a massive scale would be undertaken.
The only sensible thing to do was to escape now, for he had already wasted many precious hours. But it wasn’t just the debilitating effects of his hangover that was causing him to be reluctant. He resented the fact that some old slag was driving him from the place he was trying his best to make home. He didn’t regret killing her; she thoroughly deserved it for her deceptive and predatory ways. Naturally he knew that he would be in a far better position now if she were not dead, but sometimes people had to reap what they had sown. His hesitation was fear of rushing his escape and making a mistake. He had managed to improvise successfully after the events in Nottingham but careful, well thought out planning beat blind panic every time. The fact of the matter was he didn’t know where he should flee. The notion of going somewhere with plenty of English-speaking people was a sound one and, with it being the summer months, there would be many such places to choose from. But the police would be expecting him to do this because his original selection of Benidorm more than hinted at a desire to be among his own people. As a consequence, the obvious places that sprung to mind along the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol would also occur to them. No longer having the advantage of his new look and them believing he was still in Britain, would mean the likelihood of him remaining undetected would be slim at best.
Therefore, the worst thing he could do was unnecessarily rush his departure. He needed to allow himself time to find somewhere suitable to go to and the means to get there. Maybe even create a diversion by leaving a false trail. Perhaps he could go to the bus station and buy himself a ticket somewhere. He knew from experience how to tread the fine line between making it too subtle that he wouldn’t be picked up on CCTV, and too obvious where a decent detective would smell a rat. To help he would need to make his villa look like he’d left in a hurry. Leaving his laptop would certainly give that impression and there was nothing on it which, by that stage, they wouldn’t already know about. Moreover, he could add to his search history destinations that corroborated the false ticket he bought.
Already Brandt could feel his mood lift. He wouldn’t let that whore from yesterday pull him down; he was determined to turn a negative into a positive. The key thing in all this was how much time he had. The only way he could get a suitable indication was to find out whether her body had been discovered. Given that he would use his time online to also research his next true de
stination, he knew that heading to the internet café just as soon as he’d taken a shower and put on some clean clothes was the best idea.
Whereas there had been times in Britain where he had been paranoid of having been discovered, to the extent where he had sat at home one night ready to slash his own throat, he felt remarkably calm as he took the walk into the centre of Benidorm. That the owner of the internet café recognised Brandt from his previous visit wasn’t a worry because, again, he found something to busy himself with at the other end of the room, leaving him in peace. Nevertheless, Brandt did feel nervous as he accessed the local newsfeed; his fears realised by a story from yesterday evening about the discovery of a woman strangled in her home. The urge to just run, there and then, was strong but he found himself clicking onto the article itself. The surge of relief that swept through him was palpable when he read that it was referring to the woman from the market. With more recent events at the forefront of his mind he had almost forgotten about his encounter with Julie, and he allowed himself the pleasure of reading about his exploits before switching back to the news feed. There was nothing about Trish. Having read how a friend of Julie’s had become suspicious when she had failed to meet with him that evening, Brandt had been sure that one of Trish’s many fuck buddies would have gone around to her sordid den of iniquity last night and discovered her. It would seem even serial sex perverts like her sometimes took the night off.
Brandt relaxed in his seat. He figured there would be six hours as an absolute minimum between the body’s discovery and it being traced back to his villa. And for that to happen, everything would have to work out seamlessly. The forensics would have to do their job quickly and efficiently. The local police would have to make the call to share the findings with the UK as soon as the results came back. They would then have to retrace her steps to the auction and establish that she had been talking to a stranger, before focusing on the taxi companies. Having figured out where Brandt had hailed his cab, they would need to work door to door to find where he had been staying. Six hours as an absolute minimum and likely much, much longer. He also knew he would be aware when the timer started. In these days of social media, it didn’t pay for the police to delay breaking the news of an incident. People instantly posting pictures of the cordoned off areas and speculating as to what had happened needed to be addressed before sensationalism and panic set in.
Hide and Seek Page 14
