The Tattoo Thief

by Alison Belsham

  He glanced up at the carved figure of Jesus, suspended on his cross above the chancel. The Son of God was giving him a reproachful look, and Francis looked down again quickly. He muttered the bare bones of a prayer, crossed himself and rose to go back to his pew, feeling admonished for his distraction.

  He sang the final hymn on autopilot, taking no meaning from the words, then knelt to pray. He refocused for a couple of minutes on his reason for being here – a thought for his mother, an intercession for his sister. A benediction for their carers. Nothing for his father.

  The vibration in his trouser pocket didn’t give him enough time to get to his phone before the notification sounded. A bleeping that seemed longer and louder than usual in the silent church. Heads turned and a woman hissed her disapproval. He scrambled to mute his phone, glancing up at Father William.

  Francis bowed his head in regret, then surreptitiously read the text that had come in.

  It was from DS Mackay.

  Starting work a day early. Dead body called in. Pavilion Gardens.

  As soon as it was decently possible, Francis left his pew and headed towards the open doors at the back of the church. In the porch, Father William pursed his lips before speaking.

  ‘Francis.’

  ‘I can’t apologise enough, Father. I thought it was switched off.’

  ‘That’s not my worry. You looked troubled throughout the service. Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I would like to,’ said Francis. He meant it. ‘But I have to go. A body’s been found.’

  Father William crossed himself with a silent murmur, then put a hand on Francis’s forearm. ‘So much evil abounds. I worry for you doing this work, Francis. Always walking on the edge of despair.’

  ‘But on the side of justice.’

  ‘God is the final arbiter, remember that.’

  A middle-aged woman jostled Francis with her elbow. He was taking up more than his fair share of the vicar’s time.

  The final arbiter. Francis chewed the phrase over. In heaven, maybe. But down here on earth it fell to people like him to chase down the evil that men do. His job was to track killers and bring them to justice. The first had just come calling and he was determined to succeed, so help him God.

  And if there was no help coming from above, he’d damn well manage it on his own.

  3

  Francis

  Francis inched his car along New Road. Even with his blue light flashing, the bank holiday crowds weren’t accommodating. Shared bloody space – it meant nobody knew who owned which bit of the road and everybody assumed they had right of way. He gave a short blast of his siren to shift a slow-moving family out of his path, raising his eyebrows as they glared at him.

  He pulled up by a row of benches in front of the Pavilion Gardens. A woman feeding ice cream to her children scowled at him for driving where she was walking, but most of the small crowd of people that had gathered there were too busy craning their necks at the police activity on the other side of the fence to take any notice of his arrival. He was relieved to see that the whole area had been taped off and that several uniformed officers were maintaining the cordon.

  He showed his warrant card and was quickly waved in. Rory Mackay spotted him straight away and came towards him, his bulky figure swathed in a white paper SOCO suit.

  ‘Sergeant Mackay,’ said Francis, with a nod. ‘Give me a run-down on what we’ve got.’

  ‘You’ll need to cover up first, boss,’ said the DS, giving him a withering look. ‘I’ve got a spare suit in the boot of my car.’

  Francis followed Mackay to a silver Mitsubishi parked with several other cars just inside the North Gate, on the other side of the gardens. He was silently spitting that he hadn’t anticipated the need for a crime scene suit. And that he hadn’t thought to come to this side where he could have parked more easily.

  ‘Thought you’d be here a bit quicker, given it’s your first case.’

  Francis felt his shoulder muscles contract. ‘I was in church, Mackay. I shouldn’t have got the message at all. Or at least not until I got outside.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  Francis saw the smirk that drifted momentarily across the sergeant’s features.

  Mackay opened the boot of his car and tossed Francis a SOCO suit. Francis took an inventory of the boot’s contents as he pulled it on. Three boxes of Stella, bottles, and two boxes of Heineken, tins. Barbecue coal. It was easy to tell how Mackay had been planning to spend his Sunday.

  ‘Should be your size. Careful putting it on – they tear easily.’

  ‘I have worn them before,’ said Francis.

  The suit was a size too small, the trouser legs too short. Rory propped himself against the side of his car, sucking on an e-cig as he waited.

  ‘Let’s get on,’ said Francis, still adjusting the sleeves of the suit to his satisfaction.

  Mackay slammed the boot and they set off back towards the café.

  ‘Desk sergeant took a call at 11.47 a.m. reporting a dead body in a dumpster behind the Pavilion Gardens Café. No other details at that point.’

  ‘Any idea yet who made the call?’

  ‘Woman’s voice. She hung up before the sarge could ask her name.’

  ‘But we’ve got the number?’

  ‘It was a pay-as-you-go.’

  That was the first thing that would need to be followed up.

  ‘The body?’ continued Francis.

  ‘Male, naked. Very obvious bang on the head and a significant wound to the left shoulder and torso. No ID as yet but he’s got a number of tattoos which should help.’

  ‘Find anything else?’

  ‘We’ll be able to search the dumpster once the body’s been removed – we’re just waiting on Rose.’

  Rose Lewis, the forensic pathologist. A safe pair of hands – Francis had worked with her on a couple of cases during his stint as a DC.

  ‘Right, I’d better take a look,’ said Francis.

  As they walked back down towards the café, Rory took a call. ‘Yes, sir, he’s here now, sir . . . I’ve secured the area and put SOCO to work. Liaised with pathology, yes . . .’

  Rory fell silent for moment, nodding. ‘Yes, I think his phone’s switched on now. He was in church.’

  Francis could hear by Rory’s tone what he thought of that. He sped up his pace – this wasn’t exactly the start he’d envisaged for his first case.

  Rory led him across the grass and around the side of the café. There was a green plastic bin towards the rear of the building. Francis picked up the stench of the contents as they drew nearer, and began breathing through his mouth. He felt his gag reflex tighten and saliva flooded his tongue but he fought against it. White-suited SOCOs swarmed the area, scouring the ground, measuring distances and taking photos.

  ‘Open it up,’ said Rory.

  DC Tony Hitchins was standing guard over the dumpster. As Francis and Rory approached, he used the foot pedal to raise the lid, trying to avoid looking inside as he did so. Francis pulled on a pair of latex gloves and stepped forward.

  Hitchins was looking distinctly off-colour, and as Francis came level with him, he saw the constable’s stomach and chest start to contract. His lips were clamped together in a thin line.

  ‘If you’re going to puke, Hitchins, get out of my crime scene.’

  Francis caught the lid of the dumpster as Hitchins made a dash across the lawn. He only just managed to scrabble under the blue-and-white tape before bending double and depositing what was left of his Sunday breakfast in the grass.

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ said Francis, and Rory shook his head. But their eyes didn’t meet. There wasn’t a policeman on the force who hadn’t thrown up after seeing a body at one time or another, and probably more recently than any of them would care to admit.

  Francis
turned back to the dumpster and steeled himself to look inside, hoping desperately he wouldn’t repeat Hitchins’ faux pas. Not today.

  And there it was. His body. His first victim as senior investigating officer. This initial encounter was something akin to a blind date, with an individual he would come to know extremely well over the coming weeks and months. He’d learn more about the victim than he knew about members of his own family – and he’d likely discover secrets that would shake the victim’s family to its core. For now, the man was a stranger – grey, slick-skinned and decomposing, rotting like the garbage which surrounded him. But with his team, Francis would burrow under his skin to see what made him tick and who might want him dead.

  Francis mentally logged the shocking image. Limbs twisted, skin like putty, and red-black flesh where his face and torso had become rat fodder. Even the man’s own mother wouldn’t recognise him. This image would fuel Francis’s outrage and keep his focus sharp.

  ‘Sergeant Mackay? Sergeant Mackay?’

  A voice from behind made Francis turn round. Rory was already walking towards the tape perimeter where a man with a camera slung round his neck was standing. Press.

  ‘Tom,’ said Rory with a nod. ‘Thought you’d pitch up sooner or later.’

  ‘Your bad penny,’ said the man, grinning. ‘What you got, Mackay?’

  ‘Nothing for you,’ said Rory. ‘We’ll release information to the press when it’s appropriate, not before. Now fuck off.’

  He turned and walked back over to Francis. ‘Watch out for that one. Tom Fitz of the Argus. All over bloody crime scenes like a rash.’

  ‘How does he get here so fast?’ said Francis.

  Rory shrugged. ‘Monitors the radio, buys the desk sergeants drinks.’ He was clearly unimpressed.

  ‘Well, keep him sweet,’ said Francis. ‘You never know when the press can be useful.’

  ‘Rose is here,’ Rory said abruptly. He obviously had no interest in pandering to reporters.

  ‘Detective Inspector Sullivan,’ came a friendly voice.

  Francis turned to face Rose Lewis, who was directing a partially recovered Hitchins to set her various equipment bags down nearby. She was so petite that even the smallest crime scene suit swamped her and she had to stand on tiptoes to see over the edge of the dumpster.

  ‘Ooh, nasty,’ she said. She turned to Hitchins. ‘Can you find me a step ladder so I can take photos?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Congratulations are in order, I believe?’ said Rose, as Hitchins went off on his mission.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said Francis. ‘Enjoying your bank holiday weekend?’

  ‘I am now. Your first body in charge?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then you’d better bloody solve it, hadn’t you?’

  He knew that better than anyone.

  And the consequences of failure.

  4

  Marni

  It had taken all of Marni’s courage to make the call. Knowing that she was talking to a cop on the other end of the line had left her almost as shaken as discovering the body in the first place. She’d kept it short and refused to give a name. Anything to do with the police was still a trigger for her, carrying her back to a time she’d rather forget. She’d sworn that she’d never, for the rest of her life, get involved with them again.

  By the time she returned to the convention, Steve had been waiting half an hour for her and it was another half hour until her hands had stopped shaking enough for her to carry on tattooing him. But he hadn’t seemed put out once she’d reluctantly admitted what had happened. Not surprisingly, he’d shown a prurient interest in her discovery.

  ‘I’ve never seen a dead body. Did it really smell as bad as they say? Did the police come straight away?’

  It made Marni’s head ache and she cancelled her final appointment of the day. When the convention closed for the night, she felt wrung out and emotional. The image of the dead body kept springing into her mind and the stench still seemed to hang in her nostrils. If only she hadn’t gone to the Pavilion Gardens. Talking to the police had raised her anxiety levels still further as the memories she’d worked so hard to suppress reared back into view.

  Once her kit was stashed for the next day, Marni walked alone along the seafront in an effort to clear her head. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen. The way the man’s wet skin had glistened as the light fell on it. And those dark patches. At first, she’d taken them to be bruises but then she realised they were tattoos. The image was like a freeze-frame glued behind her eyelids – and each time she saw it, the details became clearer. The tattoo on the right-hand side of his torso – a pair of praying hands. And on one of his calves, a study of Saint Sebastian in black and grey, the arrow wounds picked out in red.

  She tried to push thoughts of the body out of her mind to concentrate on where she was going. The front was busy with people and traffic. A high-pitched whine grew louder behind her, and she turned to see twenty to thirty mopeds streaming along the road, each vehicle decked out with mirrors, raccoon tails, pendants and flags. The mods were in town for the bank holiday and the riders were just as distinctive as the bikes, in their parkas, striped blazers, Hush Puppies and The Who memorabilia. The noise of the mopeds jangled her nerves as they passed by.

  It was getting dark now. The sodium glare of the street lamps tinged everything a soothing deep amber, but Marni longed for somewhere darker and quieter. Relishing the cool air that bit the back of her throat, she dropped on silent feet down a flight of stone steps to the beach.

  The tide was out and she walked over the crunching shingle to the water’s edge. It was cold and dark here, the cacophony of the pier obliterated by the roar and hiss of the waves. The sound was as mesmerising as the grating buzz of the tattoo irons. She inhaled deep breaths of salt-laden air, massaging the over-worked muscles of her right arm as she walked. Tomorrow would be another long day of tattooing.

  She scanned the deserted beach, her gaze coming to rest on a decrepit hulk standing a couple of hundred feet from the shore. This was all that was left of the West Pier. Silhouetted against the dark sea, it had been left to rot after being gutted by fire. No longer umbilically attached to the shore, it was now an island haunted by the ghosts of long-forgotten holiday-makers and small-time local gangsters.

  Her thoughts returned to the discovery of the body. What would have happened to the man in the dumpster if she hadn’t found him? Would he have ended up in a landfill site somewhere, slowly dissolving until there was no trace left of him apart from his bones and his fillings, his tattoos vanishing as his corpse was devoured? Did inked flesh taste different to the rats that nibbled on the body? Or to the squirming maggots, fat and white, burrowing into the exposed red flesh? She shuddered to think about it.

  Whoever had put him in there was almost certainly responsible for his death. She hoped to God the police would be able to find out and track down who did it. It was an unsettling thought that this sort of stuff went on so close to home.

  Marni shivered. She’d come out here to clear and calm her mind for sleep. Fat chance. She tugged her light cardigan around her shoulders and turned back towards the lights of the Palace Pier, as alive and buzzing as the West Pier was dead. The wind dropped and for a few short moments she could hear her own footsteps crunching on the shingle slope. The beach that swarmed with people during the day was a lonely place at this hour.

  Then a woman screamed.

  Goose bumps skittered across Marni’s skin like wind across the surface of a pond. Her chest tightened and she whirled around, staring into the darkness.

  A second later there was a shriek of laughter, the same woman’s voice, joined by a man. Marni took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down but her heart was pounding. The beach was deserted as she cut an angle towards the stone steps back up to the promenade.
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br />   She glanced ahead towards the Palace Pier. Shadowy figures were moving between the sturdy metal pillars that anchored it to the shore. Male voices rang out towards her through the spume-laden air.

  ‘You alone, love?’

  Marni turned away. He could rot in hell for all she cared.

  ‘Come on, come and join us for a bit of fun.’ A different voice, closer this time.

  Marni ignored it, climbing up to the promenade as fast as she could.

  As she walked back home through the night-time quiet of Kemptown, her thoughts kept coming back to the same thing. The Saint Sebastian tattoo on the man’s leg. She knew why. It reminded her of Thierry’s work, particularly the way the arrow wounds were picked out in red. Thierry. Why had Thierry been out in the Pavilion Gardens when he was supposed to be at the convention?

  Please God, don’t let this turn into something.

  Could the tattoo on the man’s body really be one of Thierry’s? It was unlikely, and if it was, it probably meant nothing. Of course it meant nothing. She was making connections with the past that weren’t rational. But when it came to Thierry, she never was rational. He had an emotional hold on her that only seemed to grow stronger, try as she might to deny it. Of course there was no connection between Thierry and the body in the dumpster. It was just her obsession with the man that dragged him into everything that happened to her.

  As she turned into Great College Street, she could see a light on in the front room of her house. Alex was home. An eighteen-year-old boy didn’t need to see his mother in this kind of state. She took a deep breath to compose herself and pulled her phone from her pocket. Even though she spent most of her time avoiding him and trying to suppress her feelings for him, it always seemed to be Thierry she needed at a moment of crisis. She dialled, waiting for an answer, hoping for reassurance.