The Tattoo Thief

by Alison Belsham

  ‘Marni . . .?’

  ‘Mullins.’

  He looked down and Francis could see the rest of the spider’s web and the heavy outline of a word tattooed under his short blonde hair. He squinted at it, but couldn’t work out what it said.

  ‘Stand twenty-eight.’

  ‘Thanks,’ replied Francis.

  ‘No problem, mate.’ Then he disappeared back into the seething throng before Francis could ask to look at the diagram to work out exactly where stand twenty-eight was. No matter. Presumably they were arranged in numerical order. With a sigh, he launched himself back into the crush.

  Three girls in strapless 1950s dresses, with Marilyn Monroe hair, propelled him along in a cloud of cloying perfume. Their arms, shoulders and chests were spattered with brightly coloured tattoos of flowers, bluebirds and love hearts. He hung back to escape from their gaggle of noise, only to find himself in the middle of a different gang: goths with hair as black as their inkings. He checked the stand numbers and ducked across to the next row.

  Francis elbowed his way along, glancing from side to side. A girl lay virtually naked on a massage table as two heavily tattooed men worked simultaneously on a spectacular Chinese back piece. A man sat silently with his eyes shut, tears washing down his cheeks, as a girl made deft strokes on a geometric pattern on his forearm. Sharing the same booth, a man was tattooing the top of another man’s skull. God, but that had to hurt, didn’t it? The guy being tattooed wasn’t even wincing.

  Finally, he came to number twenty-eight. A female tattoo artist was busy working on a customer who looked far too young for a tattoo. Was this the woman whose phone they’d traced? She was small and wiry, perched on a stool and concentrating intently on a huge scarlet and pink chrysanthemum tattoo on the girl’s leg. Her unruly dark hair was pulled up into a crooked ponytail but more of it had escaped than was being held in place. She wore faded denim dungarees over a white vest, and both of her muscular arms carried full sleeve tattoos in swirling blues and greens.

  Francis stared at her for a moment. Would she help or did she have something to hide? There was a certain sector of the public that seemed to relish being able to associate themselves with a murder, but not this woman. She’d been determined to remain anonymous.

  He coughed loudly to catch her attention. ‘Are you Marni Mullins?’

  The woman was tattooing high up on the inside of her client’s thigh. The girl moved her other leg restlessly, and the small sighs escaping her lips sounded to Francis as if they were as much from pleasure as pain. Unperturbed, Marni Mullins continued shading flower petals in deep pink ink.

  He spoke again and this time she raised the needle from the downy skin before looking up to see who was addressing her.

  ‘That’s me.’

  He saw now that she was older than he’d expected – well into her thirties, with small crows’ feet just visible at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I’m fully booked for the rest of the afternoon,’ she said, dropping her gaze back to her work.

  ‘I’m not here for a tattoo.’

  Marni Mullins looked up at him again, this time giving him more of her attention. She shook her head, as if realising she’d made a mistake.

  ‘No, obviously not. What do you want?’

  ‘My name’s DI Francis Sullivan. I’m looking into an incident that occurred yesterday in the Pavilion Gardens. I’d appreciate it if you’d put down your tattoo gun and talk to me.’

  ‘Machine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a tattoo machine, or a tattoo iron. We don’t call it a tattoo gun.’

  ‘Tattoo machine, whatever. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Why would you want to talk to me?’ Her tone was hostile.

  ‘I have reason to believe that you found the body and made the anonymous call to Brighton police station yesterday. Is that the case?’

  The girl being tattooed was suddenly interested and looked round to see who Marni was talking to.

  ‘You know someone who’s been murdered?’ she said. She had a lisp, Francis noted.

  ‘No,’ said Marni. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’d rather discuss this in private,’ said Francis.

  Marni Mullins’ forehead creased into a frown. ‘Give me an hour then, if you want privacy. I can’t stop in the middle of this.’

  ‘You’re obstructing a police investigation.’

  ‘And you’re costing me money and my professional reputation. I’ll be done in an hour and if that’s not good enough for you, you’ll have to arrest me.’

  This wasn’t the way to keep his witness co-operative. He attempted a more placatory tone. ‘Okay. We’ll talk in an hour. Where?’

  ‘Meet me in the convention office on the ground floor. Bring coffee.’

  The girl grinned at him. ‘You’ll have time to get a tattoo.’

  Francis ignored her. ‘I’ll see you in an hour,’ he said to Marni.

  ‘Stiff,’ muttered the girl under her breath, settling herself back down on the bench.

  ‘Policemen,’ said Marni Mullins, obviously not caring that Francis was still within earshot. ‘They never get it. You try to help them with something and they think they can walk all over you. Bloody bastards.’

  7

  Marni

  Two hours later, Marni pushed open the door of the tiny convention office, wondering whether calling the police had been the right thing to do. The appearance of the gangly young police officer at the front of her booth had unnerved her and she wasn’t happy about the prospect of having to go through the whole thing again, face to face. Now, as she stepped inside, the room seemed smaller than ever with Francis Sullivan’s long limbs concertinaed onto the chair behind Thierry’s desk.

  Bulging files, piles of papers, precarious towers made from boxes of convention programmes, half-drunk cups of coffee and an overflowing bin – it was all far too familiar. Marni lifted a stack of documents off the chair opposite Francis before sitting down. She watched him warily as she did so. He looked young for a detective inspector – and completely out of place. No one wore a suit to a tattoo convention. Ever. In her world, men who wore suits were generally not good news.

  However, even she couldn’t miss a certain boyish charm about him. He was interesting looking – spiky red-blonde hair, with a slightly crooked mouth and hawkish nose. His mood didn’t seem to have improved by being kept waiting. He glared at her from across the desk.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you,’ she said. She doubted that it sounded convincing.

  He replied with the smallest of nods, then pointed to one of two takeout coffee cups.

  ‘You found the body, didn’t you?’ His tone made it clear that it wasn’t really a question.

  Marni took a sip of coffee. It was cold.

  ‘I called it in.’

  ‘You didn’t leave your name.’

  ‘That hardly seems to have mattered. You know who I am, evidently. How does that work?’

  DI Sullivan frowned at her.

  ‘I could charge you with wasting police time and money. I’ve spent half a day tracking you down from your mobile phone number.’

  This was typical. Of course, he hadn’t come here to thank her for doing her civic duty. It was just the usual shit – she had done something wrong and it was his job to reprimand her for it. She was wasting her time and there were clients waiting.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, pushing back her chair as she stood up to leave.

  Sullivan stood up faster and blocked the door.

  ‘I haven’t finished with you yet,’ he said. ‘I need to go through exactly what happened when you found the body. We can do it here or I can take you down to the station.’

  Marni sat down again. Dammit! She couldn’t handle a police station. Why had she gone out to the park the previous da
y?

  ‘What do you need to know?’

  Sullivan sat down again too.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.’ He took a smartphone from his breast pocket and detached a stylus from it, ready to write.

  Marni took a sip of her coffee, grimaced at the lack of sugar, and then ran through the details of how she found the body. It only took three minutes – getting the coffee, smoking the cigarette, opening the dumpster – but he wrote down every word. She didn’t tell him that she had been lurking there to avoid Thierry.

  ‘Did you notice any tattoos on the body?’ he said.

  ‘Yes . . . a vague impression. But I can’t remember what they were.’

  The policeman put his hand, palm down, on a brown envelope that was lying on the desk.

  ‘He had quite a number of tattoos and I need to know who did them.’

  ‘Why?’ Her heart began pounding.

  Sullivan picked up the envelope. He spread a sheaf of eight-by-ten photos across a space on the desk’s cluttered surface. They were all black-and-white close-ups of tattoos – a Saint Sebastian, a pair of praying hands, an eagle perched on a skull, a coil of barbed wire around an upper arm. Marni bent forward to inspect them.

  ‘Looks like the guy was quite a collector,’ she said.

  ‘A collector?’

  ‘A tattoo collector,’ she explained. ‘Look, these are all by different artists.’

  ‘You can tell?’

  It was her turn to give him a withering look. ‘They’re all completely different styles. Mostly good work, but it’s quite a mixture.’

  She looked at each one closely. The praying hands were good, really good. He must have paid a fair amount for them. She put the image down and picked up the next in the pile. It hit her like a sledgehammer between the eyes. She dropped the photo in the sharp realisation that she was almost certainly looking at a tattoo by her ex-husband. The Saint Sebastian tattoo in the picture had all the hallmarks of Thierry’s work – just as she’d suspected.

  ‘You recognise it?’

  She shook her head quickly. Too violently.

  ‘Please, Ms Mullins. It could have some bearing on the case.’

  Marni felt anxiety building in her chest. She didn’t want to get mixed up with the police again and that could happen only too easily if Thierry was somehow involved. She wanted no part in it. She shook her head and said nothing, willing Sullivan to leave her alone.

  ‘If you don’t tell me something that you know, that’s relevant to my case, I’ll have to arrest you for obstruction. So, if you know who did that tattoo, it would be in your interests to tell me.’

  Marni closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Could it really be linked to the man’s death?

  ‘It looks like the work of my ex-husband.’ Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Marni paused and swallowed. Her mouth was dry.

  ‘My ex-husband.’ Loud enough this time.

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Thierry Mullins. But you can’t really think that means he has something to do with it? The man had lots of tattoos from different designers.’

  He ignored her question.

  ‘Can you tell me where I’m likely to find Thierry? I need to have a word with him – he might be able to help identify the man.’

  ‘We’re sitting in his office.’ She answered him on autopilot.

  A few minutes later, there was the sound of a foot hitting the bottom of the door and Thierry Mullins appeared, clearly unhappy at having been summoned to his own office. He glared from Marni to DI Sullivan and folded his arms defensively across his chest.

  ‘Whatever it is, I don’t have time for it.’

  It was the first time Marni had seen him to talk to in several months. Despite co-parenting a teenager and all the joint history that brought, she usually tried to avoid direct encounters with him as far as possible – apart from Sunday night. But now he was here, she drank him in. She could smell the scent of his sweat mingled with his cologne. He looked tired, and there was more grey in his hair than when they’d been together. Her eyes roamed over the dark tattoos on his muscular arms until she had the sense to look away.

  He had been, for a short spell at least, an excellent husband. Through all the turmoil of their early years together, he had stood by her, marrying her when they discovered she was pregnant, helping her get over the trauma of what happened, caring for Alex when she couldn’t . . . But that was a long time ago. Their marriage had lasted a scant seven years before his eyes had begun to wander.

  Of course, he was still a great father to Alex – she would never deny that. And he had a lot of good qualities besides. A bon viveur who was the life and soul of the party, humorous, kind-hearted, generous with his praise, if sometimes quick to anger. He was a brilliant tattooist of religious iconography and he made a more than decent job of putting on a great tattoo convention. But she hated him. At least, she told herself she hated him – and this was for her own protection. There was too much darkness in their shared past. Even if hearing his French accent could make her think of doing things that would have seemed indecent even when they were still married.

  ‘Marni?’ Thierry was looking down at her with concern.

  Francis Sullivan stepped in and took over. He held out the picture to Thierry.

  ‘Did you do this tattoo?’

  Thierry glanced down at the picture and then back at Marni.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ The question was clearly directed at her.

  ‘Mr Mullins . . .’

  ‘You’re police, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned to leave the room. ‘If you’re here to harass my wife, I would think about it very carefully.’

  ‘Thierry.’ Marni reached out a hand to touch his arm. ‘Wait.’

  ‘Come on, Marni, let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Mr Mullins, if you do that, I’ll come after you with a warrant. Now, please, just answer the question. Did you do this tattoo?’ The DI was still holding out the photograph.

  Thierry stepped forward. He was several inches taller than the policeman and bulked out with muscles.

  ‘What if I did?’ His voice was practically a growl.

  ‘We’re trying to identify a body. Can you help?’ Francis’s voice had taken on a new tone of weariness.

  Thierry looked at Marni.

  ‘Someone, somewhere has to know what’s happened to this man,’ she answered, struck anew by the horror of what she had seen. She nodded at Thierry to take the picture.

  He studied it carefully.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said.

  Marni put out a hand towards Thierry’s laptop, which was lying at one end of the desk.

  ‘Why not check? If you did it, there’ll be a picture in your archives.’

  Thierry bent over the desk and fired up his computer. The three of them huddled in silence as he searched. Finally, he clicked on a folder headed ‘Tattoos by subject’. It opened to show a list of files with headings such as ‘Virgin M’, ‘Vengeful angels’, ‘Lucifer’. He chose a file labelled ‘St S’. A succession of images of Saint Sebastian tattoos spread across the screen. He flicked past several but each one had significant differences to the one in the photo – a different placing of the arrows in his torso, his head bent to the other side.

  ‘Wait,’ said Marni. ‘That’s it. Go back.’

  Thierry scrolled back up.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘They’re the same.’

  ‘Who was the client?’ said Sullivan.

  ‘I don’t remember the name of every person I’ve ever tattooed. There have been hundreds.’

  ‘What about the date?’ said Marni. ‘The photo file will have a date – then you can ch
eck your appointment book for that day.’

  Thierry clicked through the file directory.

  ‘May the fourth, twenty-ten.’

  Marni and Francis waited in silence as he loaded his calendar. The only sound was the clicking of his fingers on the keyboard.

  ‘Evan Armstrong. I remember him now. A big guy. Bastard ran out on me without paying.’

  ‘Yes, he was about six two,’ confirmed Francis.

  ‘He already had a few pieces when I worked on him,’ said Thierry.

  Francis took the opportunity to thrust the rest of the pictures at him. ‘These are his other tattoos. Did you do any of them?’

  Marni shook her head but Thierry took his time leafing through them.

  ‘No. He already had that barbed wire. What a crap piece.’ He moved on to the praying hands. ‘This is much better . . .’

  He carried on flipping through the photos. Marni peered at them over his shoulder.

  At the last picture, she gasped. Thierry swore softly in French. They were gazing at a colour picture of a torso. The whole of the left shoulder was a bloody mess. The wound extended down the man’s back and around his chest. Francis snatched the picture back.

  ‘Sorry. You weren’t meant to see that.’

  ‘Rats?’ said Thierry.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Francis took a deep breath. ‘We think someone cut away a piece of flesh from that area as well.’

  Marni’s head snapped up to look at him. ‘Let me see it again.’

  He handed her the still and she studied it more carefully this time, the colour draining from her face. She traced the outline of the wound with a finger and then passed her hand across her face as if to try to erase the image from her eyes.

  ‘I know what this is,’ she said slowly, pointing to the wound with her finger. ‘Look at the shape – it’s symmetrical. Someone’s taken a tattoo from his body.’

  ii

  I enjoy working with living flesh.

  The soft rasping sound of a blade tugging against the skin. The copper smell of deep scarlet. The warmth of fresh blood cascading between my fingers.