Broken Silence

by Danielle Ramsay

  ‘What the bloody hell is this? Didn’t I make myself clear when I said that I don’t want any more bloody footprints messing up my crime scene? You lot have already buggered up enough! Now clear off!’ thundered an irate white-clad figure as he emerged fuming from the crumbling walls that would have once been a farmhouse. Behind the ruined walls spotlights coldly illuminated the crime scene.

  Conrad stiffened his shoulders, his jaw rigid as he readied himself for battle with Ainsworth, the Scene of Crime Unit’s senior officer; infamous for his ill-temper and obstinacy.

  ‘Good to hear that you’re still the same sour-faced old bugger!’

  ‘Jack Brady?’ spluttered Ainsworth.

  ‘They couldn’t get rid of me that easily,’ answered Brady as he approached the senior SOCO. He was a short, portly man with a receding head of curly silver hair and a large, ravaged face that belied the fact that he was only in his mid-forties.

  ‘Bloody hell! So when did you start back?’ Ainsworth questioned as he shook his tired head in disbelief. ‘I didn’t think it would be for a while yet, not with what I heard had happened to you …’ He paused as his small, razor-sharp eyes quickly took in Conrad who stiffly waited behind Brady.

  ‘Yeah, well seems the boss thought I was ready to start back so here I am,’ Brady answered with a wry smile.

  ‘Well, Jack, I’ll say this, you’ve got your work cut out here. It’s a mess … a bloody mess …’ Ainsworth said, shaking his large head. ‘And you better tread carefully. I don’t want you being replaced like that other poor bugger,’ he warned.

  Brady felt himself flinch as Ainsworth’s words struck him. He turned to Conrad.

  ‘Do you know about this?’

  ‘No sir.’

  Brady already had a bad feeling about this investigation without hearing from Ainsworth that he’d been called in at the last minute to replace some other poor sod who had no doubt got on the wrong side of Gates. One thing he didn’t like was surprises. Not where Gates was concerned.

  ‘Now follow my exact footsteps, and I bloody mean mine not one of the other set of bloody footprints we have all over the place here,’ Ainsworth ordered. ‘Like I said, Jack, it’s a bloody mess.’

  ‘So it seems,’ answered Brady, feeling uneasy about what lay ahead.

  Chapter Five

  Brady slowly breathed out. From a distance the victim’s long blonde hair hid the extent of the trauma. It was only when you got up close did you realise that her features had been horrifically smashed beyond recognition. The skin hung in shards, exposing lumps of shapeless, raw flesh and bone. Something hard and jagged had ripped and torn at what had once been her face, leaving behind a gut-wrenching, unidentifiable, gory mess.

  Brady didn’t want to think about the fact that the body lying there was someone’s daughter. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets he looked up at the oppressive, dark sky.

  Conrad attempted to clear his throat.

  Brady turned to him. He stood rigid by Brady’s side, his face sickly pale.

  ‘At least she was dead before …’ Conrad’s confident, privately educated voice trailed off.

  Brady nodded, he didn’t feel much like talking.

  He forced himself to look back down at the body. He had seen enough murder victims to know that luckily for her she was already dead before her attacker had decided to remove her face, otherwise they would have been looking at a gruesome bloodbath. The purplish, bluish marks around her neck were indicative of death by asphyxiation. Brady presumed the black scarf loosely knotted around the victim’s discoloured neck had been used to strangle her first, before the frenzied attack on her face took place. He could make out desperate scratches on her neck where he presumed the victim had tried in vain to loosen the choking material.

  He couldn’t help but notice the short denim skirt that barely covered her mottled, greyish-blue naked thighs. Or the tight, short-cropped black T-shirt that was so low cut that her well-developed breasts and black lacy bra were on show. His eyes drifted to her navel, attracted by the sparkling gem pierced into her belly button. But something else caught his eye. He crouched down and took a closer look.

  ‘Sir?’ Conrad asked as Brady turned to him.

  ‘Gloves?’

  Conrad handed Brady a pair of latex gloves.

  ‘What is it?’ Conrad asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ muttered Brady, frowning.

  He gently undid the button and zip on her hipster denim skirt revealing black see-through pants. She had no pubic hair which didn’t surprise Brady. He was savvy enough to know that fashion, or more precisely the ever-expanding porn world, pressurised young women to sport Brazilian waxes, coupled with ludicrous fake boob jobs.

  But what did surprise him was the striking tattoo of a fire breathing jade dragon discreetly curled below her left hip. Brady turned and looked at Conrad.

  ‘See how red and raised the skin is?’

  Conrad nodded.

  ‘This is recent. The scab has gone but the skin’s still inflamed,’ Brady stated. ‘I reckon she got this done about four or five weeks ago.’

  He didn’t know much about tattoos, but even he recognised that this was a work of art.

  He carefully buttoned up her skirt, covering her modesty. Not that it mattered to her now, he thought, but she was still someone’s daughter.

  ‘How did you know it was there, sir?’ asked Conrad, surprised.

  ‘Part of it caught my eye,’ answered Brady as he carefully took in the rest of her body.

  She was also wearing an open black jacket and tan suede Ugg boots that reached halfway up her slender, bluish calves. But the boots had nothing to do with the weather. Ugg boots were just a fashion statement; a very expensive fashion statement at that. She could have been any one of a hundred young women who would have been out drinking last night in Whitley Bay. Brady was suddenly filled with revulsion at what was going through his head; she looked no older than the girl he had taken home. He felt a deep twist of regret as he realised he knew as little about Sleeping Beauty as he did about the body lying before him. Behind him he could hear the hushed voices of the forensic officers, waiting for him to finish.

  Let them wait, he thought. The SOCOs already had all the photographs they needed of the victim and the crime scene, so a few more minutes would make no difference when it came to bagging up evidence. Brady needed time to think, to breathe in the bitter reality of what had happened to this girl. He needed to understand why she had been brought here of all places. And crucially, why the murderer had chosen to kill her.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he mused.

  ‘It never does,’ answered Conrad with quiet reverence.

  Brady shook his head but couldn’t bring himself to explain what he had meant.

  He let his eyes drift over her outstretched small, fragile open hands. He could make out that her finger nails were neatly manicured but couldn’t see anything else. Forensics would find something, he was sure of that. Whoever had done this to her would have left some trace behind. It was the law of averages, thought Brady.

  He paused for a moment, catching his breath as his eyes were drawn back to her mutilated face; the harsh lights set up by the SOCOs sparing nothing.

  ‘Poor bloody girl,’ Brady quietly stated.

  ‘Yes sir,’ answered Conrad.

  ‘What do you think?’ Brady asked.

  Conrad shrugged.

  Brady wasn’t offended; Conrad rarely committed himself.

  ‘Does anything strike you as odd?’ Brady continued.

  ‘Yes, her face or what’s left of it,’ Conrad offered.

  ‘No, I’m more interested in what her attacker didn’t do as opposed to what he did,’ answered Brady.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have been sexually assaulted,’ answered Conrad. ‘If she had her clothes would either have been fully or partially removed, but there doesn’t appear to have been any attempt made here, sir.’

  ‘And, she doesn’t
appear to have struggled,’ Brady added. ‘Apart from these scratches on her throat here, Conrad,’ he said pointing. ‘Which suggests she fought to loosen the scarf from her neck. But that seems to be the extent of it.’

  If she had struggled with her attacker he would have expected some visible hair or tissue from the assailant to have been left in the victim’s hands or under her nails. A last attempt at desperately holding on to life. He was sure her own skin tissue would be evident under her nails, but as to her attacker’s, he wasn’t so certain.

  ‘Maybe she was knocked unconscious from behind first?’ Conrad offered.

  ‘But then why strangle her?’

  ‘Perhaps she started to come round, sir? So her attacker then strangled her with her scarf?’

  ‘Maybe … Let’s see,'Brady said as he carefully knelt down beside the girl’s body, wincing as a burst of white pain exploded in his thigh.

  He breathed in shallowly for a few moments, waiting for it to pass.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Conrad asked with genuine concern noticing that Brady’s olive-skinned complexion had paled.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Brady lied.

  The last thing he wanted was Conrad questioning his ability to work.

  ‘Shine your torch over the back of her head for me, will you?’

  Trying to ignore the searing pain he felt, Brady carefully lifted what was left of the victim’s head and examined the back of it for trauma.

  ‘Nothing, we’ll just have to wait and see if any fractures are found during the post-mortem.’ He had seen enough blows to the head to recognise the trademark and there didn’t appear to be one there. But he could still be wrong.

  ‘Why did he do that to her face?’ Brady questioned as he shook his head.

  ‘To make it difficult for us to ID? Or maybe it’s not that straightforward. Maybe the murderer is playing with us psychologically?’ Conrad suggested.

  ‘Could be,’ Brady said, swallowing hard as he looked at the victim.

  He had to agree, the murderer had made their job difficult, whether it was intentional, he couldn’t say.

  ‘But crucially, why spend time after she was dead doing that to her face? That says something, don’t you think?’ Brady said as he looked at what was left of the victim.

  ‘You definitely think she was strangled to death rather than a blow to the head?’ questioned Conrad.

  Brady nodded.

  Conrad stared at the telltale smudged bruising around the victim’s neck. He had worked with Brady long enough to know that when he had a hunch he was rarely proved wrong.

  ‘Her death makes no bloody sense though,’ muttered Brady irritably to himself as he staggered to his feet, wincing slightly.

  ‘No sir,’ agreed Conrad.

  ‘Come on then, let’s leave this to Forensics,’ he concluded.

  They’d find out what he couldn’t see; always did. If he was lucky Forensics would find some traces of the murderer’s DNA on the victim’s body, if not hopefully under her fingernails. But from where he was standing, it didn’t look as if she had resisted her attacker. Which led Brady to the assumption that she had known her murderer. But before he could put together a list of potential suspects known to the victim, he needed a positive ID on the body. Only when they knew who the victim was, could they start to piece together exactly what had happened to her.

  Brady took in the crime scene. Trees circled the building adding to the dense, suffocating blackness. He dropped his gaze back to the surrounding bushes and wild bracken growing in thick clumps in between the fallen rubble and the crumbling walls of the farmhouse. The abandoned Belfast sink lying in the corner gave Brady the impression that they were standing in what would have once been the kitchen. The size of the room was at least ten feet by twelve feet, but the crumbling stone walls and old wooden rafters that lay rotting amongst the rubble and wild vegetation made the space cramped; so much so that the victim lay on a mound of grass and weeds in the centre. Brady was certain about one thing; it was the ideal location to bring someone in secret. Conrad shifted uneasily. It was clear he had had enough; the greyish hue to his face gave him away.

  He’d get over it, thought Brady. Something worse would happen; it always did. It was human nature. Imagine the worst and someone’s already done it; at least ten times over.

  Brady hated civilisation; it gave people a false sense of security. In reality they were just animals in clothes. Animals that raped, sodomised, tortured and murdered whoever and whatever, even their own; regardless of society. He had seen it, tasted it and breathed it every day of his working life. The world was dark; the problem was people chose to ignore it and believe in a false god: civilisation.

  Unfortunately for Conrad, he was still one of those poor, deluded bastards. The job would soon beat that idealism out of him, thought Brady. It had happened to him. It happened to everyone, sooner or later.

  ‘Come on, let’s get back to the station. This bloody place is depressing me,’ Brady muttered.

  They had their work cut out and the sooner they started the closer they would be to apprehending whoever had done this. The early hours of any murder investigation were crucial and the last thing he wanted was to give the murderer time to disappear.

  ‘Who was called in to pronounce her dead?’ Brady suddenly asked.

  ‘I believe it was Wolfe, sir,’ answered Conrad.

  Thank fuck, thought Brady. At last, something was going his way. He trusted Wolfe. He was a cantankerous old bugger who drank too much, but he knew his job. He was the best Home Office pathologist the force had ever had and hopefully it would stay that way, as long as he didn’t drink himself into an early retirement. Brady turned round and gave the girl a last cursory once over. He was grateful for her sake; she’d be in good hands with Wolfe, even if it was too late.

  Chapter Six

  It was cold, still dark and had just started drizzling. Typical, thought Brady as he slammed the passenger door of Conrad’s metallic silver Saab. In the distance he could hear the bleated moan of a foghorn. The air was thick with a salty dampness. Brady dragged heavily on the fading glow of his cigarette butt before throwing it into the gutter. Sixth one of the day, he thought; so much for giving up. He turned up his jacket collar as he looked up and down the hazily lit street. Cars were tightly jammed into any available space. It looked as if Gates had called in every officer, regardless of holidays or shifts. Brady limped slowly towards the heavily worn stone steps that led up to the station, kicking an empty beer can out of his path. What a dive, he thought as he watched the can crash into a smashed vodka bottle. The telltale leftovers of a Thursday night in Whitley Bay. Behind him the Saab skulked off as Conrad left in search of a parking space.

  He limped over to the steps that led up to the closed wooden doors and decided to take the easy route and walk up the ramp that had recently been built as a PC suck-up to accessibility. The only time he had ever known it to be used was when a drunk in a wheelchair had been arrested for lewd and threatening behaviour. The crap that arrest had earned Gates with the press was still a standing joke at the station. Gates still hadn’t found out that Brady was the one who had leaked the arrest to the press as part of a bet with a couple of other coppers from CID. Gates was ever vigilant when it came to adhering to political correctness so to be accused of being the most un-PC PC in the North East by the local press was a hard blow. If Gates had known Brady was responsible his career would have been over long ago.

  He steeled himself before pushing open the heavy wooden doors that led into the station’s Victorian tiled entrance. He looked at the public notice board on the wall. It was filled with the usual crap. The station was as gloomy and depressing as ever, just like the job. Brady breathed in the same acrid damp that had greeted him for too many years.

  The station was housed in a dank Victorian building located in a side street leading off from Whitley Bay’s small town centre. These days the town was known for one thing: binge drinking. Once fa
mous as a seaside resort it had sunk to an all-time low. A nirvana of pubs and guesthouses lined up together, catering for every stag and hen party’s wildest and crassest desires; from topless bar staff to lewd threesome live acts. Anything went now that the credit crunch had kicked in. Disposable cash was at an all-time low, so pubs and clubs were doing whatever it took to pull hard-pushed clientele in.

  Brady shivered in disgust. He hated Whitley Bay; it was a shabby rundown ghost town during the day where empty, dilapidated Victorian buildings bleakly lined the sea front. But at night it became prey to the lowest of scum. Bouncers in dinner jackets and bow ties tried to maintain order as they threatened drunken punters with their small eyes and overweight, thuggish bodies. Bank holiday weekends were the worst. Scum travelled in from miles around in order to drink themselves into oblivion before ending the night by trying to get into someone’s knickers. He had seen it for himself; the gorging, the vomiting and the senseless shags in the back lanes as they drunkenly waited for a taxi to take them home to their other halves. In the morning the promenade would be strewn with half-eaten kebabs and chips covered in curry sauce fought over by scavenging seagulls. Occasionally the odd, shrivelled condom would be left discarded down a side street or on the beach, as readily forgotten as the drunken, fumbling act itself.

  Brady pushed open the door that led into the reception area.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jack!’ exclaimed the desk sergeant as he looked up.

  Brady gave a grimace of a smile. He was more than relieved to see Turner on desk duty. He’d had quite a few drinks with the desk sergeant over the years.

  ‘I heard you weren’t due back until Monday?’ Turner questioned.

  ‘Yeah, well Gates decided that today was a better day than any,’ Brady replied warmly.

  Turner, a short, rotund, balding man in his early fifties, leaned towards Brady.

  ‘I better warn you, Jack, all hell’s breaking loose here,’ Turner said in a conspiratorial tone.

  Brady searched Charlie Turner’s tiny, dark eyes hidden beneath sagging, crumpled eyelids and realised he was being serious.