‘I didn’t expect to find her clothes there either. I take it that you told her to get rid of them?’
Matthews didn’t answer. But Brady could see from his reaction that that was exactly what he had done. Brady expected no less; Matthews was a copper after all.
‘She’s just a kid, Jimmy. She was no doubt still in shock and just stuck them in the washing machine. And like I said, blood stains don’t wash out that easily. They’re being forensically examined to see if they match with Sophie’s DNA. But we both know the results will be positive, don’t we?’
Matthews raised his head and looked disconsolately at Brady.
‘Then you waited for the call to come in from the station that a girl’s body had been found.’
Matthews stared at Brady. His eyes were cold and empty.
‘Evie wasn’t really ill on Friday morning, was she? You told her to pretend that she felt ill because you didn’t want her to suddenly crack. You wanted her to wait it out at home until the news about Sophie’s death became public.’
‘Why, Jack?’ muttered Matthews. ‘Why couldn’t you have just left it? She’s just a kid …’
‘So was Sophie. That’s what you’re forgetting here. Sophie was just a kid too. A kid that everybody used. Including you, Jimmy.’
Chapter Sixty-One
‘Let him go,’ Brady told Conrad.
Conrad did as he was told.
Matthews collapsed into his chair and sank his head into his large trembling hands.
‘You don’t understand what you’ve done,’ he rasped.
‘I’m not letting you go down for murder when you’re not responsible.’
‘Don’t you realise this is all my fault? Don’t you?’
Brady didn’t reply.
‘Maybe if I’d been around more, then this would never have happened …’
Brady looked away. He didn’t have the stomach to look Matthews in the eye because he knew that at some level he was right. If Matthews had only taken more of an interest at home, then maybe none of this would ever have happened.
‘When I’d dropped Sophie home after Madley’s nightclub Tania rang me. Evie must have overheard the conversation but it wasn’t until later that she made the assumption that I’d been talking to Sophie. Soon after my call Sophie rang Evie to fetch her house keys from my car saying that I’d taken her to a nightclub and had dropped her home afterwards. And you were right, Evie found Sophie’s keys on the floor next to the empty condom wrapper,’ Matthews disconsolately conceded. ‘I hadn’t even realised it had been there.’
He despairingly shook his head as he thought it over.
‘Evie presumed the worst. That’s the kind of shit dad I’ve been. My own daughter thinks I’m so immoral that I’d have sex with her fifteen-year-old friend.
‘But then, what else did she have to go on?’ Matthews rhetorically questioned.
Brady shrugged.
‘She’d started drinking … fifteen and drinking. I had no idea … What bloody kind of father does that make me?’
Brady could have added that drinking wasn’t all she was doing but knew that Matthews was suffering enough. And what did it matter now? he mused.
‘If only I hadn’t gone to The Blue Lagoon … if only…’ Matthews’ voice trailed off.
‘But I was so close to getting on the inside of Madley’s sex business in underage Eastern European girls. That’s why I went,’ Matthews explained as he despairingly looked at Brady.
‘You’ve lost me,’ he muttered.
But Matthews didn’t hear him. Or if he did, he acted as if he hadn’t.
‘Honestly Jack, it made me sick when I realised what he was doing … I… I couldn’t continue working for him. Not when I knew where the money was coming from … So I thought I could redeem myself somehow. Have Madley sent down and then he’d have no hold over me. You believe me, don’t you?’
Brady numbly shook his head.
‘Punters are paying big money to get into Madley’s nightclubs,’ Matthews explained.
He stopped for a moment, suddenly registering Brady’s incredulous expression.
‘You don’t know about this? Come on, you two are like brothers! Surely you were aware of what he’s up to?’
Brady didn’t answer him. He couldn’t. He had no idea what Matthews was talking about.
‘Madley’s running a sex trafficking racket from his nightclubs. He brings them in from Eastern Europe. He then hires them out as sex slaves in those private rooms of his above the clubs, girls as young as fourteen. Or, if the price is right he’ll sell them. But it’s not just Madley. Macmillan’s behind this. He’s the one pulling the strings.’
Brady sat back, stunned. If he was honest, he found it hard to believe Madley would get his hands that dirty. He could readily accept Macmillan being involved in something as depraved as that, but not Madley. Dealing drugs was one thing, but trafficking and selling underage girls as sex slaves was an entirely different level of corruption.
‘All right, convince me. What have you got to substantiate this?’
Matthews looked at him and dejectedly shook his head.
‘That’s my problem, it was all rumours and hearsay. Jack, I have nothing …’
Brady didn’t react. But inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief. This was Madley Matthews was talking about. Brady shared too much history with Madley not to know what he was involved in. And sex trafficking and sex slavery definitely wasn’t Madley’s style.
‘Then I see Sophie stagger into the club on some sick bastard’s arm,’ continued Matthews. ‘I did what any father would have done and prised her away from him and tried to persuade her to let me take her home,’ Matthews explained.
‘But when she wouldn’t leave I was stupid enough to think of it as the perfect opportunity to see Madley’s setup for myself. I’d seen the businessmen coming and going upstairs for the sex trade he had going on. So I pretended I wanted to use one of Madley’s private rooms I’d heard about on the third and fourth floor for sex with her. I … I used her. I used Sophie as a cover …’
He shook his head as he looked at Brady.
‘But Madley didn’t trust me. He’d cleared my debts. All of them, and more,’ Matthews mused bitterly.
‘He obviously realised that I had a lot to gain if I could get something over him. And I was still a copper at the end of the day … one who would be indebted to him for years unless …’ Matthews faltered. ‘And then, there I am in his office, begging him for a private room upstairs so I could have something over him for a change. And he knew it. He knew he had me just where he wanted. I realised in that moment that I couldn’t do it any more. I hated myself for what I’d become and I knew then that I had to get out from under Madley. I had already noticed that the safe had been left open. So when someone came to the office door saying there was a problem downstairs I took my chance at getting my life back. I waited until he’d gone and stuffed as much money as I could down my shirt. I then fastened my suit jacket and put on my overcoat. I went back down into the nightclub and grabbed Sophie and disappeared before Madley realised what I’d done.’
‘You’ve lost me again,’ Brady said.
Matthews looked at him.
‘How were you indebted to Madley?’ Brady asked, confused.
‘Shit, Jack! You must have known. You saw the way I played poker. Didn’t you notice my losing streak?’
Brady nodded.
‘Yeah, but it wasn’t my business to ask where you were getting the money from to continue playing. You’re a grown man, Jimmy,’ Brady defensively answered.
Brady had seen enough men lose everything they owned in the name of poker; himself included. He wasn’t a fool. He’d noticed Matthews’ losing streak; even a blind man would have noticed. But Brady had chosen to ignore the fact that no matter how badly Matthews lost, he always had money for the next game.
‘Yeah? Well, Madley was more compassionate than you. He loaned me money to cover my debts. M
ore than I could ever pay back,’ said Matthews.
‘How much?’
‘Six hundred thousand,’ answered Matthews as he looked Brady in the eye.
‘How the fuck were you going to pay that back?’ asked Brady, stunned.
‘Exactly. Madley had me by the balls!’
‘Oh fuck, Jimmy! Why didn’t you come to me?’
‘And what would you have done?’ asked Matthews bitterly. ‘That’s why I stole that money from him. I wanted to start a new life abroad. I already had my plane ticket bought. I was going to start a new life. As far away from Madley as possible.’
‘Exactly how much did you take?’ Brady asked, not sure if he wanted the answer.
‘Nearly a million. Would you believe it was just sat there in his safe?’ replied Matthews coolly. ‘And there was more. A lot more. I just didn’t want to be greedy.’
He laughed at Brady’s reaction.
‘Now do you believe me about the sex trafficking? Drugs money is nothing compared to what people will pay for illicit sex.’
Brady swallowed hard. He still couldn’t get his head around what Matthews was telling him.
‘Where were you going to go?’ Brady finally asked.
‘Where else? Spain,’ answered Matthews. ‘Tania was going to come with me. She knew exactly what was going on with Madley and she’d suggested that I should steal enough money to get us out of the country, so we could start a new life together.’
‘Did she hide you?’ Brady asked.
Matthews nodded.
‘She has a caravan up by Rothbury. She held on to the money. She exchanged as much as she could into Euros and traveller’s cheques and sorted out the plane tickets while I lay low. We were going to take the rest of the cash and buy a place over in Spain and start again. But the one thing she couldn’t get me was my passport which was in my house.’
Brady looked at him.
‘Initially I panicked. Sophie’s murder threw me. So, I had to do what I could to protect Evie first. Then, when things had calmed down I was going to return to get my passport and get rid of the evidence in my car.’
‘Why didn’t you get rid of the evidence and take it with you when Tania picked you up? I presume she picked you up because you knew at some point we’d be looking for your car?’
‘I just didn’t think straight. I honestly believed I’d be ableto get back in the house. I didn’t realise Madley’s men would be watching it. And I definitely didn’t think I’d find you there.’
Brady sat back and absorbed what Matthews had just told him. He couldn’t figure out how he could just up and leave his family for a new start.
‘What about Kate?’
‘What about her?’ Matthews asked. ‘It’s over with, has been for a long time. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?’
Brady didn’t answer.
‘If I had only taken Sophie straight home when she had first come into the nightclub, then maybe none of this would have happened.’
Matthews looked at Brady.
‘Oh God, Jack. What have I done?’ he muttered as he held his head in his hands.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Brady stood in the damp drizzling early evening air, too numb to feel the cold. He put a cigarette to his lips as he thought about his next move. Soon, very soon the scavenging rats would be crawling all over the place, wanting photographs, interviews, sordid details. The Press Office at headquarters had already been alerted and damage control was rapidly being set up. Whether it would be enough, Brady wasn’t sure; there was a lot he wasn’t sure about any more.
Brady knew that the press would crucify Louise Simmons. Britain was a blame culture, one very much facilitated by the media. Once Sophie’s pitiful, squalid life had been picked over, fingers would sure enough start pointing at the mother. Brady had seen it before on other child murder cases, where they would find reasons to blame the parents, ignoring the murderer’s part in all of it. But this was different, Paul Simmons had played a big part in Sophie’s demise, as had Louise Simmons. A step-father, who from the moment he had entered her life at the age of eleven had started sexually abusing her, and a mother who had chosen to look the other way. It was easier to knock back a gin and tonic than accept your husband was sexually abusing your eleven-year-old daughter. But it was worse than that, he was sharing his abuse with the world. Years of photographs and films of his sexual exploits had been posted on endless encrypted paedophilic websites, egotistical evidence that had led to his downfall.
Footsteps approached from behind him. Brady didn’t turn round, there was no need; he knew who would be there.
He slowly breathed out. Now all he had to do was wait.
Conrad’s silver Saab slowly turned into the street. Brady threw away his cigarette and resisted the urge to walk back inside.
Instead he watched as Conrad opened the passenger door and gently helped Evie out. She looked a mess; hair uncombed, clothes dishevelled. But it was her face that got to Brady. It was a child’s face. Gone were the smudged telltale signs of make-up and the petulant, defiant hardness of the teenager he’d interviewed, replaced by red, swollen, vulnerable eyes and unnaturally pale cheeks. Brady held his breath; she could have been that skinny kid again with long, dangling pig tails and bleeding, scuffed knees. She was crying, hot, salty tears of remorse. They flowed down her pale face as, trembling, she looked up at the police station. He resisted the urge to go to her and put his arm around her petrified body and tell her it was all going to be all right. But he couldn’t, because he knew it wouldn’t be the truth.
He swallowed hard. Where had it all gone wrong for her? he thought, as he questioned the enormity of what he had just done.
He had been playing the ‘what if’ game from the moment Conrad had gone to bring her in. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut and let Matthews go down for it? Worse still, should he have let Ellison take the blame? As Matthews had pointedly said, Ellison deserved a hell of a lot morethan the courts would mete out; a sexual relationship with his fifteen-year-old student didn’t warrant much punishment. Not in today’s world. So maybe he should have let him take the bullet? These were questions that he couldn’t get out of his head. If he had had his way, he would have let Simmons go down for it. Brady had seen the sick material he had filmed of his step-daughter, disturbing evidence that would have turned most people’s stomachs. But Brady was a realist. he knew the judicial system well enough to know that Simmons would go down for a good few years, given the horrific nature of his sexual abuse.
But it was all a moot point now. Whether he had made the right choice, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that he had done his job.
Ashamed, Brady turned away as Conrad and Claudia accompanied Evie, now crying uncontrollably, up the ramp. Distraught, Kate followed behind.
‘I … I … didn’t mean it to happen …’ sobbed Evie as she stopped in front of Brady.
Her pale face was filled with regret; genuine, raw regret.
‘I know,’ he quietly acknowledged, wishing there was more he could say.
‘I … I … don’t know why I did it … I honestly didn’t want to hurt her … not Sophie …’ she faltered as tears choked her words. ‘But… but she just got to me. Made me so mad that I … I just saw red and then … I didn’t realise what I’d done until it was too late.’
‘I know you didn’t,’ gently replied Brady.
She looked up at him with surprise as tears streamed down her face, realising that he believed her.
‘We were both drunk and we started arguing and then … she said some horrible things about… about me… and about her and Mr Ellison and and then my dad and her so I … I …’ she faltered as her words were replaced by choking sobs.
Brady watched as Conrad took Evie firmly by her convulsing shoulders and walked her through the double, wooden doors of the station.
Brady looked at Claudia.
‘Thanks for doing this.’
‘I’m not doing
this for you, Jack. I’m doing this for Evie,’ Claudia replied.
‘I know …’ muttered Brady looking away.
‘Jack?’
He looked at her.
They were both hurting. They had known Evie from when she had been a little girl. Neither one could believe life had turned out like this for her, or for them come to that.
He suddenly took hold of her hands.
‘Claudia …’ he gently said. He didn’t know what more to say to keep her there.
She looked up at him, not resisting his hold over her.
‘Maybe I should take that job offer?’ she said.
He searched her face, surprised.
He didn’t need to ask what had changed her mind. He knew that what had happened with Evie Matthews had somehow forced them back together. Whether it meant that she would consider being a part of his life again didn’t matter, not yet. What counted was that she was going to be back in the North East. It was a start.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘Later, OK?’
Brady nodded and let her hands go. He watched, impotent, as she disappeared.
A few seconds later he realised that Kate was stood beside him.
‘What’s going to happen to her?’ she asked.
Brady numbly shook his head, unable to look her in the eye. It was a closed case. The evidence was conclusive; more so after Matthews’ statement.
‘I can’t say. At least Claudia is representing Evie … she’s really good. She’ll … she’ll figure something out. She knows people,’ Brady replied unconvincingly.
Brady forced himself to look at Kate. He apologetically shrugged. He was at a loss himself.
Dazed, she mutely accepted this and walked on.
‘Kate?’ he called out after her.
Whether she heard him or not, he would never know.
Brady closed his eyes and shakily leaned back against the station’s red brick wall and shallowly breathed out as the wooden doors slammed shut behind her.
‘I can’t do this … Conrad will have to take my place.’
‘You have no choice in the matter. This is your investigation. You finish it.’
Broken Silence Page 30
