Blood Reckoning: DI Jack Brady 4

by Danielle Ramsay

  Harvey didn’t say a word. He knew not to point out that he and Kodovesky couldn’t have foreseen that the receptionist, Chantelle Robertson, would decide to have an unscheduled holiday just before some poor bugger had been found at the hotel where she worked; dead, and with the added bonus of a gender realignment job.

  ‘And tell me again why it’s taken you—’ Brady paused as he checked the time on his laptop screen, ‘four bloody hours to get me this information?’ It was just after 7:30 p.m. Five and a half hours since he had first walked into the crime scene. Five and a half long, hard, gruelling hours and still he was nowhere close to understanding why the victim had been murdered. The problem was, the victim was too damned perfect. Or was he? Cracks were starting to show. His girlfriend was understandably distraught that he had been murdered. But it was the circumstances in which Alex had been murdered that were causing Molly Johansson so much angst. It was clear in her mind that he had been meeting someone – for sex. And Brady had a hunch that she was right. After all, she knew him better than anyone else.

  Or did she?

  What interested, or, to be more accurate, concerned Brady, was the fact that Molly didn’t know that Alex had moved out of his student house. Or have any idea where he had gone. Brady had called her on the torturous drive back down Coast Road with Conrad. Despite the fact that she was drunk, she still had enough wits about her to understand the magnitude of what Brady had told her. She had been left not with just the acrid aftertaste of Chardonnay in her mouth but the knowledge that her boyfriend had been lying to her. That, for whatever reason, he had decided not to share all aspects of his life with her. He had been duplicitous. And this duplicity worried Brady.

  What did the killer know about you, Alexander?

  Brady had to find out what Alexander de Bernier was hiding. The money, gold credit cards, the designer clothes and watch all pointed to something. He needed to find the victim’s new address. And when he did, Brady was certain that it would be in keeping with this new moneyed lifestyle. But who was paying for it? After all, Alexander De Bernier was a postgraduate student from an average middle-class background.

  Brady suddenly remembered Harvey. His silence was heavy on the other end of the phone.

  ‘I asked you a bloody question!’ Brady prompted.

  Harvey nearly made the mistake of sighing. ‘Because no one was home when we first called.’

  It didn’t appease Brady.

  ‘And why was that, Tom? Because one of them was already on a plane! I get that you waited around for the Robertsons to return home. What I don’t get is you two spending an hour having coffee and cake and a nice cosy chat. What did they do? Get the family photos out and show you incontinent Aunty Dora on her ninety-seventh birthday?’

  Brady tried to rein in his frustration. Taking it out on Harvey wasn’t the way forward – even if it did momentarily make him feel better.

  ‘The note. What else did it say?’

  ‘That she would call them when she landed,’ Harvey answered.

  ‘Has she called?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why’s that, Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she hasn’t landed?’

  ‘Precisely. Because we don’t know where the hell she’s flying to.’

  Harvey waited. He knew exactly what Brady was going to say next. Wished he didn’t. Or to be precise, he wished he could have said that he had already done it, that he had covered that angle. But he hadn’t. He and Kodovesky had had their hands full with Mr and Mrs Robertson. The couple had panicked when the police had turned up on their doorstep. Their initial fear was that something had happened to their only child. Relief had quickly evaporated to a fevered state of anxiety about their daughter’s whereabouts. More so when they realised that she was possibly the only witness in a murder investigation. Harvey believed them when they said they had no idea where she had gone. And that this was out of character.

  ‘Outbound flights from Newcastle after twelve p.m. Check every passenger list for her name.’

  ‘Will do, Jack,’ Harvey quickly replied, hoping that was the end of it.

  ‘Her parents said that she’s never done anything like this before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And she doesn’t have a boyfriend?’

  ‘That’s what they said. Not to their knowledge. And the note said she was going with “the girls”.’

  ‘And when did you stop being a copper?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harvey asked, confused.

  ‘She’s a twenty-two-year-old girl with a full-time job, living at home with her parents and she just decided to take an unplanned flight hours before a body was discovered in the hotel where she works. And she’s the only potential witness, to boot. Of course she’s not gone on holiday with the girls! This stinks as bad as the victim’s body. If you can’t engage your brain then use your bloody nose, Tom!’

  Harvey remained silent. It was the safest option.

  ‘I want her flight and destination on my desk ASAP. If we’re lucky, and I’m not holding out much hope here given the hours it’s taken us to establish that she’s left the country, then she might not have landed. Which means that we can request to have her detained as soon as the plane touches down. I also want a list of all her friends. Check out if anyone knew about this and if she has a boyfriend. We don’t know if she booked a seat or someone else did it for her.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Harvey replied.

  ‘Yeah. Here’s hoping for our sakes that she’s still on the plane. Because I for one don’t want to be telling Gates that we’ve fucked up here.’

  Harvey kept his mouth shut. Brady was in no mood for excuses. It was his first day back after five months and it showed. Not that Harvey could fault him. First day back on the job and Brady had been thrown into the deep end. Harvey was just relieved that he wasn’t the one reporting back to Gates.

  Brady disconnected the line.

  Shit . . . shit . . . shit!

  It didn’t look good and it didn’t feel good.

  Where have you gone – and why?

  The one thought racing through Brady’s mind was whether or not Chantelle knew something – or someone.

  All he could do was wait. And hope that what his gut was telling him was wrong. That Chantelle Robertson’s sudden disappearance was nothing more than coincidence. Brady’s problem? He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  He had already tried Madley. Repeatedly. Every time, it had cut to voicemail. Too convenient. Too bloody convenient for his liking. Madley was the owner of the hotel, which meant that Brady needed to speak with him. Not that he suspected Madley of anything necessarily; it was just another line of inquiry, but one that he had to follow. After all, Brady had to report every decision he made back to DCI Gates. Every breath he took had to be accounted for – Gates had made that clear as hell when Brady had called him after he’d got back to the station. He wished he hadn’t. The upshot was that Gates and DI Adamson would be back on duty tomorrow. Gates had made it clear to Brady not to release anything to the press. That he, with his blue-eyed boy Adamson, would deal with the onslaught from the media. In the meantime he had to keep Gates updated until his return. Brady wondered what the hell the shrink had put in her report. She had signed him off as fit to return to work – so why was Gates acting as if he didn’t know his arse from his elbow? Or had the details of this murder affected Gates as much as they had Brady? Because he was certain that Gates would be asking himself the same question.

  How? How can it be possible that De Bernier was murdered in an identical way to those killed thirty-seven years ago?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sunday: 8:11 p.m.

  Brady walked into the Incident Room and stopped. He took stock of the large conference room, capable of holding up to thirty officers comfortably if required. He had been here only hours earlier but now it looked, and felt, radically different, having been transformed from a soulless conference room into the hub of a m
ajor murder investigation. He was hit first by the noise. The incessant chatter. Small explosions of it throughout the large room as officers and detectives worked at the desks that were dotted around. Some on computers, others on phones. Two detectives were yelling, trading information across the room at one another. Others were caught up in small bursts of conversation; hushed and private. Despite the fact it was Sunday, and early evening at that, the energy in the room was palpable. Everyone was focused on the job assigned them, all working towards garnering as much information as possible about the crime scene and victim. Brady was already thinking ahead to potential suspects, but until he had discussed it with Amelia, he was holding back. He was also waiting for the results of the autopsy. There was one detail that he needed confirmed before he talked to her.

  A press release had been issued. Details had been sketchy – intentionally so. Brady had followed Gates’ orders to the letter. They still did not know enough about the victim to understand who could have killed him and why. Aside from the possibility that it was the Seventies killer, ‘The Joker’. But then, why would he have started again now?

  They were still looking for Sidney Foster, the suspect from the original case. The seventy-one-year-old had seemingly disappeared from his two-bedroomed house in the village of Porthtowan on the west coast of Cornwall. The local police had interviewed his neighbours, who were equally baffled by his disappearance. They said the retired engineer lived alone – always had done – and kept himself pretty much to himself. So much so that they had no idea when they had last seen him. The police knew that he had no living relatives in the North East, or anywhere else in the UK. They needed to find him. He was, as Gates had reminded Brady when he updated him, a key suspect in the Seventies, and consequently now too. But Brady was certain that Sidney Foster’s disappearance was just a coincidence. He still had the same instinct which was telling him that Foster had nothing to do with the original murders or the recent one.

  The phones were now ringing incessantly as a result of the press release. An appeal had been made for information regarding the missing suspect, Sidney Foster, and Alexander De Bernier’s murder. However, that came at a price. An appeal to the public cost time and labour. Most of the information reported amounted to nothing. But it still had to be verified on the off-chance that it led to something of importance to the case.

  Brady didn’t know whether it was the pulsating glare of the overhead fluorescent light or the buzzing noise it made that had upped the level of the pounding in his head. All he knew was that the Incident Room felt chaotic and claustrophobic. There was nowhere to hide in here. It was bustling with activity. There were at least fifteen people working on various tasks. Four of them consisted of Brady’s team – his old team. But the dynamics weren’t the same anymore. Not one of them had looked at him when he had walked in. Intentional or otherwise, their attitude towards him had changed. Whether he could attribute that to the five months they had been reassigned to DI Adamson while he had been on sick leave, he couldn’t say for sure.

  He could feel a knot in his stomach at the thought of DI Adamson. He wasn’t entirely sure whether the return of Adamson tomorrow would see him unceremoniously kicked off the case. Brady walked over towards the two sash windows, aware that eyes were on him. He could feel them burning into him. Then the whispers. Low and questioning, and damned obvious. After all, he had just returned after being held hostage and tortured by ex-militia types. Brady was certain that was what interested them. Speculation about whether he would actually return to active duty would have done the rounds. Wagers would have been placed. Who won, who lost, Brady had no idea. But he knew this station well enough to know that his colleagues would have gambled on the likelihood of him returning in one piece. And now that he had quelled that conjecture, natural curiosity would take over as to whether he really was fit enough, physically and psychologically, to be back at work. Let alone to be acting as Senior Investigating Officer of a murder inquiry of this magnitude.

  Brady exhaled slowly as he stared out of the large window at the residential street below. It was quiet. Unusual for a Sunday evening. The burning ochre sun had faded hours ago and been replaced by a crisp, cloudless dark night. The day had been glorious; unusually hot, with dazzling skies and a sea reminiscent of warmer climes. As if to balance the ledger, the night would be bitter and biting; a reminder that it was still March.

  Brady suddenly felt cold. The chilled darkness taking hold of him. He had a job to do. One that he didn’t relish. But it went with the territory.

  ‘Ready, sir?’

  Brady nodded without turning.

  ‘You up to this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Conrad replied, ‘over the worst, I reckon.’

  ‘Good. Because you’ll need a strong stomach.’

  Brady tried not to gag. The smell was noxious. And it was everywhere, burning his eyes and his nose. A sickening combination of overpowering antiseptic cleaner and the gaseous smell coming from the victim’s body.

  ‘You all right there, Jack?’ Wolfe wheezed as he looked over at him.

  Brady nodded.

  ‘What about him?’ Wolfe puffed, his voice raspier than usual, his eyes now on Conrad.

  Brady turned to Conrad. He was typically pale and thin-lipped. Not an unusual look for the morgue.

  ‘Yeah, he’s good.’

  ‘In my medical opinion he doesn’t look so good,’ Wolfe disagreed.

  ‘Your medical opinion, my arse! Your patients are bloody lucky they’re already dead!’

  ‘Why the hell do I put up with you, laddie?’ Wolfe asked with a wry look. His soft, well-educated Scottish lilt betrayed his affection for Brady. Despite having lived in the North East for the past thirty years, Wolfe’s Edinburgh roots had never left him, his accent a constant reminder he was from north of the border.

  ‘Because I’m the only person with a pulse that can stand being around you.’

  Wolfe shook his head at him. ‘See what I have to put up with, Harold?’

  Brady automatically looked across at Harold; a tall, gaunt-looking young man with long reddish-blond hair tied back in a ponytail and a red goatee beard plaited into two strips. He was the anatomical pathology technician. In other words, Wolfe’s assistant. Not that Wolfe ever used him. Harold’s job comprised of standing silently while Wolfe carried out the autopsy. His other job would be to move whichever cadaver was requested from one of the thirty body refrigerators in the hospital onto the mortuary slab. Wolfe, being the compulsive obsessive type, would not allow Harold, or anyone else for that matter, near his work. He would be the one who would weigh stomach contents, organs and the like. Harold was a glorified hospital porter.

  Harold didn’t flinch at Wolfe’s remark. Nor did he look at Brady. Instead, his acne-marked, permanently flushed face remained focused on the deceased’s body. If he had heard Wolfe, he didn’t show it. Brady turned back to Wolfe. The pathologist had already forgotten Harold and was now focused on the victim’s body. Wolfe was a short, bald, overweight man in his late fifties. His large, jowly face spoke of a man who liked his vices a little too much. A heavy smoker and a drinker with a rather robust appetite, who had no intention of letting the gruesome nature of the job get in the way of his pleasures. Despite his short stature and expanding waistline, Wolfe was always impeccably dressed. He wore tailored suits, silk shirts and matching ties. And he never failed to be seen without a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. However, in the morgue he was suitably attired in a white surgeon’s gown and skull hat with white rubber boots. His delicate, chubby hands were covered in white latex gloves. To anyone’s eye he looked like a surgeon. But Wolfe’s job as the Home Office pathologist was to find evidence that could help the police prevent another murder. To prevent another dead body ending up on a morgue slab waiting to be cut open.

  Wolfe was the best Home Office pathologist in the force, but it came at a price; a high one. He had a drink problem. One that would begin at lunchtime and follow through to
the next day. He wasn’t a raging alcoholic. Instead, he was a functioning one. He turned up at work on time; showered, dressed and breathing a combination of Listerine and stale booze. It wasn’t a secret. Even Chief Superintendent O’Donnell was aware of Wolfe’s indiscretions, but chose to ignore it. Wolfe was too valuable to let go. He had an unerring nose for finding crucial evidence on a body. Evidence that ultimately led to convictions.

  But Wolfe was not as infallible as everyone believed – himself included. Eleven months ago, he had scared himself, and Brady. The deceased had been a sex-trafficked victim. Not that they knew it at the time. But the body had the tell-tale signs. She had been branded – her skin burned with initials and a scorpion symbol – and brutally raped. Wolfe had slipped up. For once his liquid lunch had proven too much and he had missed some key evidence. At the time, Brady had thought it would have shaken Wolfe enough to make him consider quitting. Not the booze – the job. But he hadn’t. Nor had he quit the booze. Somehow he had managed to keep hold of his position – because until that one fuck-up, Wolfe had been faultless. As far as Brady’s superiors were concerned, the pathologist walked on water. He delivered where others failed. But his time was numbered. He was part of the old school. The old guard that were being driven out, slowly but surely. Soon, there would be no place for Wolfe. He had the tolerance of a rhinoceros when it came to drinking. But it was starting to show. It had been five months since Brady had seen Wolfe and in that time the booze had significantly affected him. That, and the twenty a day. Ironic for a man who dealt with the deadly effects of cirrhosis of the liver and lung cancer. Even more ironic given the fact he had asthma and was at least five stone overweight.

  Brady stood up straight and clasped his hands behind his back. He was trying his best not to react to the carnage lying in front of him. Unlike Wolfe, he didn’t have the stomach for this. He turned and glanced at Conrad. Still grim-faced. Brady didn’t know whether it was the sight of the victim’s mutilated body that made him look like he wanted to puke or if it was being in the same room as Wolfe. For some reason, Conrad and Wolfe didn’t quite see eye to eye. But Brady knew that the enmity was more on Wolfe’s part than Conrad’s. And Wolfe had a knack of letting you know if he didn’t like you. Needless to say, Wolfe didn’t have a lot of friends.