Blind Alley (5 page)

Brady had asked Dan Ridgewell if he knew anyone who had a tattoo fetish to the extent of actually removing them. Dan had laughed, until he realised Brady was deadly serious. He reminded Brady that he was in the job of putting ink into someone’s skin, not removing it. But he did concede that ‘we get all kinds of dicks in here. It’s hard to know which ones really are nutters, like, compared to the ones who make out they are, if you get my drift.’

Brady had encountered some of Fusion’s clientele and at times found the hardcore misogynistic comments so easily thrown between the blokes shameful. But as Dan had pointed out when Brady raised this, it didn’t make them rapists.

Brady carefully replaced the gauze dressing over the ugly wound. He had seen enough. The serial rapist they were after had a breast fetish. However, this victim’s breasts had not been mutilated. Nor was the removal of the skin on her wrist as clean and professional as the damage suffered by the second and third rape victims. On Chloe Winters’ body, the assailant had shown the depths of his skill. What had surprised Brady and the team – one of the few details that hadn’t been disclosed in yesterday evening’s
Northern Echo
– was that her tattoo had been carefully cut out, leaving behind an odd, startling effect. It would have taken time for the rapist to do it. But from what Chloe Winters had told the police, she had spent forty-eight hours held hostage, chained to a concrete floor. She had no memory of being released. It was a taxi driver who had found the unconscious, naked girl lying in a back lane and called the ambulance and police. When Chloe came to, she had no idea how she’d ended up there, or, more crucially, where she had been raped and tortured.

Chapter Seven

A knock at the door startled Brady. It was swiftly followed by Conrad sticking his head from behind the door.

‘Sir? We’ve got to make a move.’

Brady nodded.

‘Yeah . . . I’m coming, Conrad.’

Just then something caught his eye. Something he had missed before. Brady bent down and gently swept her matted hair back out of the way. He could see it now. The two small, faded tear droplets that had been inked onto her neck below the left ear using good old-fashioned biro. Crude and lacking finesse, they had stood the test of time. She had ironically predicted her future – one filled with lousy decisions and painful repercussions.

Brady felt winded as he stared at her. He took time now to look at the horrific injuries she had sustained. Her face had been obliterated. Whether she would get some skilled plastic surgeon to put it back together again, Brady seriously doubted. After all, she was just some throwaway prostitute. Someone who had ended up with the wrong punter in the wrong alley, at the wrong time of night.

It all made sense now. The straw-like bleached blonde hair. The fake-tanned skin, the scrawny body covered in tracks – deep, permanent scarring from heavy needle usage.

‘Sir!’ Conrad hissed, his face strained with urgency.

Brady didn’t respond. He couldn’t look at Conrad until he got himself together. He needed to get a handle on the situation before he told Conrad and the SIO in charge of the investigation that he knew her. That he could formally identify her.

‘Sir? We’ve got to go!’ Conrad insisted, desperation creeping into his voice.

Brady gave her one last look, his dark, normally gentle eyes betraying him. They were filled with anger and a need for revenge.

Then it hit him. The wrist; the skin that had been cut out. He knew what had been there. It was a tattoo. But not any tattoo – this one meant something to him as much as it meant something to her. She had inked into her wrist four letters in large, black, gothic script – NICK.

Nick was Brady’s younger brother, and the woman lying fighting for her pathetic life had loved him once, and, Brady presumed, still did. Few people knew Nick in the North-East. After all, as a teenager he had relocated to London and assumed a new identity: rumoured to have killed a member of another rival street gang, he had disappeared, fast. Brady knew he hadn’t done it; that he had been framed. But it had given Nick no other alternative. He left two people behind that day: Brady and his girlfriend. She would go on to live a life pitted with misery, pain and disappointment. Never quite recovering from Nick’s decision to abandon her so easily, leaving her to rot in the very decay and futile existence that he had run from as hard as he could.

Shit . . . shit . . . shit.

Brady’s head was reeling. The facts sinking in.

It was her. But why? Why the fuck would someone do this to her?

Then Brady got it. He felt winded from the realisation.

Nick . . . This is connected to Nick.

Brady had seen assaults like this before. Henchmen hired to beat up someone close to the person they actually wanted, but for whatever reason could not track down. To prove that they were serious, the hired killer would take something identifiable from the victim. Such as a finger with a recognisable ring. Or an ear with an earring. But this assailant had taken the skin with Nick’s name on. What better way to show that you mean business than someone else’s skin.

One person came to mind and that was Johnny Slaughter. This was his style. An East End London gangster who had a score to settle with Nick.

There was one other person who would know what was going on and that was exactly where Brady was heading.

‘What’s wrong?’ Conrad asked as Brady walked past him.

Brady ignored him and carried on down the corridor. Conrad ran after him, shaken by the sudden change in his boss.

‘Did you recognise her?’ Conrad asked.

‘Look at the state she’s in, Conrad. Not even her own mother would be able to identify her. And before you ask, whoever tried to kill her is not our rapist.’

‘Why remove a piece of her skin then?’

‘Fuck knows! Maybe some crazy bastard read that article plastered all over the
Northern Echo
’s front page last night and decided to emulate the rapist. But it’s not him. It might have gone unnoticed by you, Conrad, but our serial rapist has a penchant for his victims’ breasts. That isn’t the case here. Also, the removal of the skin is too careless. Then there’s the fact she was attacked in a back alley behind the Ballarat.’

‘Just like the first two rape victims,’ argued Conrad.

Brady shook his head. Ordinarily he would have shot Conrad down for making such a glaring mistake. But he knew he wasn’t up to speed on the first two rape cases. This was his fifth day back on the job and to be fair he had walked straight into a major serial rape case. One where the latest victim had been abducted, raped and mutilated over a period of two days. She had been found on the same morning that Conrad had decided to come back off sick leave. If Conrad had returned hoping to gradually ease back into the job, he had been bitterly mistaken. The station had been thrown into pandemonium with the discovery of Chloe Winters and it had been Conrad’s misfortune to walk straight into it.

‘Not like this, Conrad. Think about it. Both places that the rape victims were attacked were deserted. He knew that there was very little chance that someone would interrupt him. The first victim, nineteen-year-old Sarah Jeffries was attacked eight weeks ago in the early hours of Saturday morning. He stalked her Conrad. Followed her as she made her way home alone. When she reached Whiskey Bends he came up from behind and dragged her into the back alley behind the boarded-up building. No one was around. The rapist guaranteed that by the timing and location.’ Brady paused for a moment.

‘Sir?’

‘Nothing,’ Brady replied, shaking his head. ‘The second victim, Anna Lewis, was also followed on her way home from a night out in Whitley. He waited five weeks before his second attack. She, like the first victim had taken a familiar short cut home. She had cut through another derelict eyesore – the High Point Hotel on the seafront. This time he had been waiting in the shadows of the empty car park for her. Again, no one was around, Conrad. No late night stragglers, no inquisitive residents. He forced her into the grounds at the back of the boarded-up hotel where he bound and gagged her. This time he took longer with her. Maybe he felt more confident? After all, he had already done it once before and had succeeded in not getting caught. Anna Lewis was subjected to his sexual assault for over an hour. He finished off by carefully removing her right nipple and the surrounding skin. Not the work of a man in a hurry is it, Conrad?’

‘I don’t follow, sir?’

‘Location, Conrad.’ Brady sighed as he looked at him. ‘Think about where the third victim, Chloe Winters, was found.’

‘You mean the alleyway next to that boarded-up building on the sea front?’

‘Yeah, the Avenue pub. Really popular in the eighties. But like Whiskey Bends, it’s been derelict for decades now. Just like the High Point Hotel. All three crime scenes are isolated areas. Deserted. No one goes there. In other words, the ideal location to rape and mutilate someone without getting caught – especially the first two locations. As for the third crime scene behind the Avenue pub, perfect place to dump a body and then disappear.’

The team had already assessed all CCTV footage but were no further forward. Brady assumed from the first two witness statements that the rapist had followed them on foot. Neither of them had reported hearing a car approaching them or driving off after they had been attacked. As for Chloe Winters, Brady was certain he had used a vehicle. How else would he have taken her to wherever he had held her captive for forty-eight hours? And, how could he have dumped her unconscious, naked body on the Monday morning?

Brady turned to Conrad.

‘But the attack last night? No, the Ballarat pub was still open with a few regulars inside, which meant that whoever did this to her didn’t have a lot of time. It’s rushed. Heavy-handed. Exactly like the removal of the skin. Our rapist savours what he does, Conrad. The sick bastard enjoys every inch of their skin in a way unimaginable to me. One thing he does not do is rush. That’s why he chooses derelict and abandoned locations. It gives him time to do what he wants without the fear of being caught. The attack on this woman couldn’t be more different. The alleyway in which she was raped and left for dead was behind the Ballarat pub – a working pub. Christ! The landlord even lives above the premises with two Rottweilers. If I didn’t think it was such a crazy idea I’d suggest he wanted to get caught. No, Conrad. It’s not the same man.’

Conrad didn’t bother arguing with Brady. He’d worked with his boss long enough now to know that when he had a hunch about something he was usually proven right.

Brady reached the ICU’s double doors. He pressed the buzzer to open them. He needed to get out. He felt sick. He hadn’t felt like this since he had feared that Nick was working for the unscrupulous Dabkunas brothers. At the time he had struggled with the belief that his own brother was prepared to jeopardise their relationship, not to mention Brady’s career. That had been six months ago. But the same feeling of dread and foreboding had come back – tenfold. It felt as if a bomb was going to detonate. The question was when?

‘Come on, Conrad, I need a cigarette.’

Conrad dutifully followed Brady through the maze-like, sterile white corridors to the revolving glass doors that led out of Rake Lane.

‘I still want copies of all the reports connected to this attack on my desk ASAP. I don’t care whose bollocks you trample over to get them. For all we know there might be something in there that could be of some help.’

Brady paused as he lit a cigarette. He realised his hands were trembling.

‘Shit!’ he swore after inhaling. It felt good. Too good.

He was trying to give up smoking. Had been for the past five days. It was all part of the reformed Brady. If he was honest he had made a pact with God. Not that he really believed in God, but his Catholic upbringing came in handy on rare occasions. While Conrad had been in surgery, Brady had made a pact that if he managed to pull through and returned to work, he would quit.

Brady had even given up rolling his own cigarettes. He had duped himself into believing it was healthier, when in fact he ended up smoking more. Unlike a pack of cigarettes, you could easily smoke twenty roll-ups in a day without even realising it. And if it had been a particularly stressful day, that number doubled. At least with a pack, Brady knew exactly how much he was smoking. Until now, he hadn’t opened the pack that he had bought on Monday. Admittedly, both his arms were covered in nicotine patches. And his mood had been so dark that most of his team had done their utmost to avoid him.

Conrad was about to tell him that he wasn’t allowed to smoke on hospital grounds, let alone at the entrance, but Brady was already walking away.

Conrad watched his boss. Six foot two, lean with muscle; long dark hair with swarthy skin and a permanent five o’clock shadow, Brady couldn’t have been more different from Conrad if he’d tried. Clean-shaven, short blond hair, an impeccable wardrobe – this summed Conrad up. Dark tailored suits and expensive, handmade English brogues, accompanied with a crisp white shirt, cufflinks and a carefully selected silk tie. Conrad’s appearance counted for something. He was very much the new face of CID. Whereas Brady was still the old school of policing in a beat-up jacket that had seen better days, skinny black jeans, black T-shirt and black leather boots. Conrad admired that about his boss. The fact that he refused to be compromised; whether in the way he looked or how he carried out an investigation, he had conviction.