The Tattoo Thief

by Alison Belsham

  Finally allowed to unburden, Francis spoke for nearly an hour in the half-darkness of the empty church. Father William listened and nodded as he outlined his failings, first in the case and then with regards to his mother and his sister.

  ‘I want to catch this killer more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, Father. Is that so wrong? But there are no leads and I’m off the case with even less chance of catching him now.’

  ‘It’s not wrong to want to succeed at what you do,’ said the priest. ‘And in succeeding here, you’ll surely be saving further lives. The motives that rule our hearts are never singular. Most altruism is tied up with images of self-worth and we’ve all felt pride, which is a sin, for doing something good and righteous.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Francis. ‘And I believe that if I can succeed at my job, I’ll be making our community a safer place. But right now, I can’t even do that. We’re at a dead end and the killer’s sure to strike again.’

  ‘Never give up, my boy. If you know in your heart that what you’re doing is right, then just do it and don’t hold back because of what the world might think of you. God is the only one whose opinion matters.’

  ‘You mean carry on regardless?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’ There was determination in Father William’s voice and Francis took strength from it. ‘Now, give my love to your sister, and I’ll tell your mother you’re on your way when I see her tomorrow.’

  The priest dropped to his knees in the choir stall, his hands still resting on Francis’s.

  ‘Domine Iesu, dimitte nobis debita nostra, salva nos ab igne inferiori . . .’

  Save us from the fires of hell.

  He wouldn’t give up now.

  31

  Rory

  He was in charge. Sullivan was off the case. And there’d been another attack.

  This time, however, they’d cut a break. The victim was still alive – just – and Rory was waiting outside his hospital room for the chance of an interview. The doctors were insisting that the man would be in no fit state to talk, but Rory had heard that before. He decided to wait, but now, pacing the dimly lit corridor, he was feeling a little unsure of himself.

  This was the lead they’d been waiting for. An attack survivor, a fresh crime scene as the killer had been disturbed in his work, and a drunk couple in an interview room at John Street, who hopefully weren’t too far gone to remember what they’d stumbled into. He’d called all the team from their beds to capitalise on this stroke of luck. And much as he hated to admit it to himself, the boss’s take on things wouldn’t go amiss, either.

  But one thing was certain. It blew the Iwao theory out of the water. He’d had two PCs sitting outside his house all night and they’d reported that he hadn’t left the premises.

  He texted Francis and caught him coming out of church. Did he bloody live there?

  Fifteen minutes later, Francis joined him in a side room at the County Hospital. Rory fed some coins into a drinks machine and handed his former boss a cardboard cup of coffee.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here, Rory. If Bradshaw finds out . . .’ Francis’s tone was grim, with a clear implication.

  ‘He won’t. But two heads are better than one.’

  Rory’s actions had got Francis thrown off the case. It made him wonder how helpful he’d be if their roles were reversed. He’d half expected the boss to tell him where to go when he got back in touch. Instead, Francis dropped wearily onto an uncomfortable-looking chair upholstered in red plastic and listened as Rory filled him in.

  ‘I can give you opinions, that’s all. You’ll have to make all the decisions. What did the doctor tell you?’

  ‘It’s serious,’ said Rory. ‘The man – his name’s Dan Carter, apparently – has a severe concussion and the bastard had made a series of deep cuts, resulting in substantial blood loss. Apparently, Carter’s got a full body suit tattoo, so if our drunk lovers hadn’t arrived when they did, it could have been really nasty.’

  ‘Is any of the tattoo missing?’

  ‘The doctor said the cuts were all around the edge . . .’

  ‘Just like we saw around Armstrong’s tattoo site.’

  ‘. . . and the killer had started peeling away the skin from the top of the shoulder. The doc said they had to cut away part of the tattoo and replace it with a skin graft from Carter’s thigh.’

  Francis winced in exactly the same way as Rory had when the surgeon explained the grisly details to him.

  ‘When will we be able to talk to him?’

  ‘The doctors would rather we didn’t.’

  There were footsteps in the corridor outside, and a nurse pushed open the door.

  ‘They’re in here,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ said a woman’s voice.

  Marni Mullins walked into the room, hair tousled, with her dark eye makeup conspicuously smudged.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ said Francis.

  ‘Charming,’ said Marni. ‘Do you think I wanted to be dragged out of my bed at four in the morning to help you? Hospitals are not exactly my favourite places.’

  She looked rattled.

  ‘I called her,’ said Rory. ‘I want Marni to look at the victim’s tattoo. The killer seems to be speeding up and we need to work out who his next victims might be.’

  ‘Well, then thank you for coming,’ said Francis, making Rory acutely aware of his own lack of manners.

  The DI had stood up when Marni came into the room, and now he stepped forwards and placed a hand briefly on her upper arm. There was a slight change in the atmosphere that got Rory wondering. Quickly he brought Marni up to speed on what had happened.

  ‘How many tattooists were featured in the exhibition?’ said Francis, sitting down again.

  Marni thought for a couple of seconds. ‘Ten.’

  Rory pulled a notebook out of his pocket.

  ‘Give me their names,’ he said.

  Marni counted them off on her fingers. ‘Iwao, Bartosz Klem, Rick Glover, Gigi Leon, Brewster Bones, Jason Leicester, Polina Jankowski, Jonah Mason, Vince Priest and . . .’ She struggled to remember the last one and rubbed her forehead. ‘I’ve got the catalogue at home . . . Wait, it was another girl.’ She sat down opposite Francis. ‘Got it. Petra Danielli. Italian, working out of Milan.’

  ‘And whose work has the killer taken so far?’

  ‘Evan Armstrong was tattooed by Jonah Mason,’ said Francis. ‘And Bartosz Klem did Giselle Connelly’s arm.’

  ‘Jem Walsh’s tattoo was by Rick Glover,’ added Marni.

  ‘Which basically means, if our theory holds true, Dan Carter’s tattoo must have been by one of these others,’ said Rory, tapping his pencil on the list he’d just written.

  ‘And if it’s not by any of them?’ said Marni.

  Rory shrugged. ‘Your theory crumbles.’

  ‘We’ve now got two witnesses and a survivor,’ said Francis. ‘They’ll have information, and with any luck it’ll help us find the bastard.’

  The door opened and a tall man in shirtsleeves, with a stethoscope round his neck, came in. As he glanced between the three of them, he looked almost as tired as Rory felt.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ he asked.

  Francis nodded his head in Rory’s direction.

  ‘Right, Mr Carter is awake, if not entirely lucid. I can give you five minutes with him but then he has to rest.’

  ‘Will he be okay?’ said Marni.

  ‘A brain scan later will answer that question – he appears to have sustained a slight head injury, probably from falling,’ said the surgeon. ‘However, the cuts were only flesh wounds. They’ll heal, but the skin graft will leave scars.’

  ‘Mentally as well as physically,’ muttered Rory.

  ‘Well, that’s not my department,’ said the surgeon. ‘Follow
me.’

  Dan Carter was in a private room a little way down the corridor where they’d been waiting. Everything in the room looked dull grey in the scant light of dawn, even the white sheets and bandages in which the latest victim was swaddled. Of his tattoo, there was no sign whatsoever – the only flesh on show belonged to his face, neck and hands. One arm was strapped in a sling across his chest. His face was grey, gleaming with an unnatural sheen of sweat.

  As the surgeon left them alone with him, Marni stepped forward.

  ‘Hi, Dan.’

  ‘Hi, Marni,’ the man said. He spoke slowly, still drugged. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping these guys,’ she said with a nod over her shoulder at Rory and Francis.

  She knew him? How incestuous was the tattooing community?

  ‘Police?’ said Dan.

  Marni nodded. ‘Can you show me part of your tattoo, Dan?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, nodding down at the arm that wasn’t in the sling.

  Marni gently pushed up his hospital gown to reveal a brightly coloured Japanese sleeve tattoo. She studied it for a while.

  ‘That’s gorgeous. Petra Danielli?’

  ‘Yes. One hundred and seventy hours with her. But now . . .’ He broke off his speech with a grimace.

  Francis stepped forward at the other side of the bed. ‘Dan, can you tell us exactly what happened?’

  Dan Carter frowned as he let the sleeve of the hospital gown drop back down to his wrist.

  ‘I’ll try. I was in the Victory with a couple of mates.’

  ‘Their names?’ said Rory.

  ‘Pete. Pete was there, I think. No, no, not Pete . . .’ His eyelids drooped heavily.

  ‘No worries,’ said Francis. ‘Can you remember what time you left?’

  ‘Can’t remember leaving. We were all outside . . . The bar had closed. I remember smoking a cigarette.’

  ‘Were you walking with anybody else?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did you see any other people out on the streets?’

  Dan shrugged helplessly.

  ‘What happened?’ prompted Francis again.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a total blank. There’s nothing after standing outside the Victory.’

  ‘The doctor said he thought you’d been knocked out, probably with ether, and then hit your head on the ground. What do you remember from when you came round?’ said Rory, at the end of the bed.

  ‘There was a woman screaming and a man bent over me, looking at me. He asked if I was okay. My shirt was gone and I was in pain. It was freezing cold and I was bleeding. I could feel the warm blood running down my arm.’

  ‘You don’t remember anything of your attacker?’

  ‘He was gone. The man told the woman to shut up a few times. They called an ambulance and I passed out again.’

  ‘And that’s all you remember?’

  Dan Carter closed his eyes. The door opened and a nurse came into the room.

  ‘That’s enough now, folks. Mr Carter needs his rest.’

  ‘Thank you, Dan,’ said Rory. ‘We’ll come and talk to you again tomorrow. You might have remembered more by then.’

  Dan opened his eyes. ‘There was just one thing. I don’t know if I’m remembering this or imagining it.’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Francis. Rory heard the tension in his voice.

  ‘It’s just this image . . . A pair of hands in white latex gloves, moving in front of my face. I could see something through the gloves, like tattoos on the back of his hands. Dark red, large tattoos. Kind of like roses . . .’ He shrugged, forgetting his shoulder wound, then winced in pain.

  ‘Out,’ said the nurse. ‘Come back tomorrow.’

  32

  Marni

  Roses. One of the most common subjects to be tattooed on any part of the body. Marni had long ago lost count of how many she’d done herself and, unless an artist specialised in tribal or black work, every tattooist would have done their share. But tattoos on the backs of hands were probably a little less common. She didn’t know anyone personally with roses like that and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  So, was there any chance of her finding a man with roses tattooed on the backs of his hands by searching the internet? She had to give it a shot. Dan Carter had been lucky but the next person the killer targeted probably wouldn’t get such a break. If the killer had failed to acquire Dan’s Petra Danielli tattoo, would he target another one of her designs or move on to the next artist he had yet to harvest tattoos by? She shivered and goose bumps broke out on her arms.

  After being called out to the County Hospital at four in the morning, Marni had lain awake until gone seven, fighting off the growing dread that usually stalked her in the small hours. Institutions always unnerved her, and as she dozed off she’d imagined herself back in the darkness of a prison cell, walls closing in, ceiling like a weight suspended above her. She sat up with a jolt. She closed her eyes again, but the same thing happened. When she finally slept, it had been deep without being restful and she woke at midday feeling jittery and tired. Thankfully it was Sunday, so she wasn’t working. But the images in her mind of rose-tattooed hands wielding a knife propelled her to her studio anyway. This man was hurting people she knew. Something had to be done to stop him.

  Sullivan and Mackay seemed to be getting nowhere. There was scant forensic evidence and they had no one in their sights. But this new information could make all the difference. She couldn’t recall anyone locally with roses on their hands, so perhaps the killer came into town from somewhere else. He’d killed Evan Armstrong during the convention, and Jem Walsh a couple of days later. She settled Pepper under her desk with a dog biscuit and flipped open her laptop. Once it had booted up, she typed ‘Brighton Tattoo Convention 2017’ into Google Images. Might the killer have attended? It seemed plausible. And if he had, the chances of him having been photographed were reasonably good – there were literally thousands of images online and if someone, her, took the time to trawl through them, just maybe they could track the bastard down.

  She quickly sent an email to Thierry, Charlie and Noa, asking them to do the same, but it was Sunday lunchtime. They’d either be in bed, nursing hangovers, or in the pub creating them. No matter. She started scrolling down the screen, scanning each image for hands and for roses. All the tattooists were wearing black latex gloves while they worked, but their customers’ hands were often on view, and when the artists weren’t working, the gloves were off. She wondered if the killer was actually a tattoo artist, or just a collector.

  ‘Jesus, Pepper, look who I’ve found here!’

  The dog grunted on hearing his name. Marni was momentarily distracted by an image of a tattooist she’d been on a couple of dates with the previous year. It had come to nothing, but he’d been a nice guy and she still counted him as a friend.

  ‘And here I am, working on Steve.’

  Pepper wasn’t interested but Marni dwelled on the picture for a minute. There was a row of punters at the front of the stand, watching as she layered colour along the tiger’s back. Could one of them be the man she was looking for? Had the killer stopped in front of her booth and watched her at work? A chill ran up her spine. She checked the hands visible in the image and found no roses. Even so, she felt unsettled. She kicked off a shoe and rested her foot on Pepper’s shoulder for comfort.

  The afternoon wore on and her eyes grew tired from staring at the screen. She stopped a couple of times to make coffee, and had a ten-minute break to take Pepper out and smoke a cigarette. She’d seen plenty of tattooed hands, but no roses yet. Possibly this was just a wild goose chase. Perhaps the Tattoo Thief hadn’t even come to the convention. And if he had, she’d be sifting through a crowd of more than seven thousand attendees on the off chance that he’d been photographed, or more specifically that hi
s hands had been caught on camera.

  She’d never seen so many tattooed hands. But most of them were continuations of sleeve tattoos that stretched up the whole arm, or calligraphy flowing across knuckles – LOVE, HATE or GOOD, EVIL; LONE WOLF or WHAT IF, IF ONLY.

  It had been cloudy all day and dusk drew in early. Marni flicked on the Anglepoise lamp on her desk, still intent on scouring every single picture taken at the convention. Pepper sighed in his sleep, a sound sweet and reassuring to Marni’s ears. She was working more slowly now as fatigue set in, sometimes having to check the same image twice as her concentration lapsed. Perhaps just another hour and then she would resume her search in the morning . . .

  Pepper bolted out from under the desk, a low growl rumbling in his chest. He ran to the front of the shop, barking, and by the time Marni caught him up by the door, he was trembling all over. Panic washed through her, shortening her breath.

  ‘Hey, Pepper, what is it? Did you hear something?’

  Through the window, the street outside looked deserted. It was raining now and water flecked the glass, forming rivulets that raced each other down the pane. She peered around, looking for an explanation for the dog’s behaviour. There! A movement in a doorway, three buildings along on the opposite side. A dark figure sinking back into the shadows. She stared at the place until black spots swam in front of her eyes, but she saw nothing else. It was a shop door and the shop was shut. There was no light on in the building, no movement in the doorway.

  Had she really seen something or had she imagined it? She was so jittery these days – the whole business had put her on edge.

  ‘It’s nothing, babe,’ she said, turning her attention back to Pepper. ‘Probably just a seagull diving for rubbish.’

  Marni turned and went back to her desk, but Pepper stayed where he was, trembling as he guarded the entrance to the shop. She could still hear him muttering and growling as she sat down. Pepper wasn’t the brightest spark and she should take no notice of his stupid imaginings, but she was unsettled now and her hands were shaky on the keyboard. Since finding the body, she’d become drawn deeper and deeper into the case. How clever was that? Her watch read close to half past seven. She’d give it another half hour and then go home.