Vanishing Point (8 page)

After a beat, Smith shook his head resignedly.

‘One minute, sir,’ he said. ‘But if anyone finds out …’

‘No one will,’ assured Brady. ‘Thanks, Smith.’

PC Smith turned and opened the door to allow Brady in.

Nothing could have prepared Brady for what greeted him.

DC Simone Henderson lay unconscious. From what he could tell she had been heavily sedated. Various other wires were attached below her paper-thin hospital gown, recording her heartbeat with irritable regularity. Intravenous tubes wormed their way into her lifeless arms.

Brady stood, unable to move towards her. Her face was unrecognisable from that of the woman he had seen the night before. Brady clenched his fists as he played the ‘what if’ game. What if he had gone over to her? Maybe she wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life.

Brady didn’t need a doctor to tell him that she was in a bad way. The ghostly, sickly greyish pallor that clung resiliently to her skin scared the hell out of him. He didn’t know whether to go over to her and try his damnedest to shake her out of the shadowy underworld she now inhabited. He wanted to shout her name out loud enough to bring her back. To remind her that she didn’t belong where she was, that she needed to return to the living. He needed her to regain consciousness so he could find out who had done this to her. So he could hunt them down and make them suffer the way she had been made to suffer.

He struggled to hold her name at the back of his throat, knowing that if he uttered it out loud it would only be heard as a painful, primeval, anguished sob.

He forced himself to walk towards the bed. Each step feeling as if he was walking barefoot on broken glass.

He reached her side and waited. Willing her to feel his presence.

She didn’t move.

He bent over her waxen, taut face, gently brushing her long, damp hair away from her cold, translucent skin.

‘I’ll get them, Simone … whoever did this to you … I’ll get them … .’

He couldn’t help but notice how young and fragile she looked. And yet, there was something about her which suggested she was too old for this world. She had seen too much and was done with this life.

Brady breathed in and tried to get his head together.

He didn’t have time to reflect. He had work to do.

Hand trembling, knowing that what he was doing was breaking every rule in the book, he pulled back the tape holding the gauze padding covering her left breast. He knew he shouldn’t be interfering with the dressing but he needed to see for himself the four-inch letter ‘N’ burnt into her flesh.

He forced himself to look. He willed himself not to react as he took in the gnarled, weeping, open wound. He took out his phone, the reason he was there, and photographed the letter ‘N’.

Satisfied with the image, he carefully replaced the dressing and turned away, feeling disgusted with himself. He fought back the overwhelming tumult of emotions coursing through his body.

He pulled himself together. Now wasn’t the time to get emotional. He owed Simone more than that. It was simple: he had a job to do and that had to be his main focus. Breathing slowly he gave her one last look before turning and walking out.

‘Sir,’ greeted PC Smith, relieved when Brady joined him in the hall.

‘Thanks, I owe you one,’ Brady said.

But he couldn’t bring himself to look at him. He didn’t want the junior copper to see the pain etched across his face. Or the shame he felt at what he had just done.

He turned and walked away, head bent down as he sent Claudia the photograph accompanied by an explanatory text.

He watched as the signal ebbed and then surged, until the photo finally disappeared, along with the message.

‘DI Brady? Jack Brady? You bastard!’

Brady turned and before he had a chance to react he felt a hard blow to his face knocking him against the wall. Another landed and before he knew it he was down on the floor.

‘I’ll kill you!’ threatened the assailant.

Brady scrambled to his feet while trying to get away from the punches and kicks that his attacker was relentlessly delivering.

The last thing Brady could do was retaliate, despite the blows and kicks being delivered in his direction.

After all, this was Simone Henderson’s father.

And at five foot eight with a stocky, pit-bull build and thick, brutish arms that kept coming, he was a serious contender. His bald, shaven head glistened with sweat as he did everything he could to kill Brady.

Suddenly PC Smith was there trying to pull Frank Henderson back.

‘You son of a bitch! How dare you show your face here!’ panted the fifty-something man as he flailed around against PC Smith, trying to land as many blows and kicks as possible on Brady. ‘Do you know what those bastards have done to her? To my little girl? Do you? It’s all your fault!’

Brady backed away from him, trying to avoid the frenzied punches.

Suddenly the security doors buzzed.

Conrad walked through. It took him a moment to take stock of the situation. He’d expected to find Brady here. Which was why he had come to the ICU first before going as instructed to the morgue. But what he hadn’t expected was to find Brady on the floor with Simone Henderson’s father’s boots violently kicking his face and body while PC Smith did his best to hold him back.

Without a second’s hesitation Conrad ran over and forcibly restrained Simone’s father. Between them, PC Smith and Conrad somehow managed to hold him long enough for Brady to get some distance and get to his feet.

Brady looked at Conrad’s face, which was flushed as he fought to control Simone Henderson’s father. He was relieved that his deputy hadn’t followed his orders and was too aware that this wasn’t the first time he had stepped in and saved Brady’s neck.

Bent over, gasping for breath as he held his ribs, Brady backed away from his struggling assailant who was still intent on finishing the job. Catching his breath in deep shallow gasps he raised his head to meet Henderson’s hate-filled eyes. From that one look of absolute fury and disgust Brady realised that this man held him responsible for the fact that his only child was lying in intensive care, heavily sedated after too many hours on an operating table, not knowing whether she would even pull through.

‘If you’ve been in her room, I’ll kill you! You hear?’ shouted Frank Henderson as Conrad pinned his arms behind his back.

‘I wanted to but Smith there wouldn’t let me in,’ hoarsely panted Brady, still winded from the blows he’d taken.

‘You stay away from her!’

‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry …’

‘You think I believe that? It was you, you bastard, that made her transfer to the Met. Left me and her mother because of you. Her mother was dying of cancer, did you know that? Did you? That’s what you did to us. Forced our only child to run as far away as possible from the North East,’ yelled Henderson as he continued to struggle like a man possessed against Smith and Conrad.

Conrad’s face was now burning red with the exertion of holding him back. Even Smith was clearly struggling to restrain him.

Still clutching his right side, Brady turned to leave before Henderson’s sheer hatred of him overpowered both men holding him back.

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Brady. ‘You’ll never know how much.’

‘And so you should be. If it hadn’t been for you she wouldn’t have come back here. I want to know what happened. I want to know how you could let her get hurt.’

Brady stopped. He turned round, confused.

‘I don’t understand. I haven’t seen Simone since she transferred from Northumbria a year ago.’

Henderson stared hard at Brady. It was evident that he didn’t believe him.

‘Then why did she tell her flatmate that she had to talk to you? That she had some unfinished business?’

Brady looked at Conrad who looked equally puzzled.

‘She never contacted me,’ Brady replied, shaking his head.

‘So you tell me why her flatmate said that she was coming up here on leave to see you.’

Brady stared at Henderson, not understanding what he was saying.

‘Maybe you got it wrong,’ suggested Brady carefully.

‘I got it wrong, did I? I didn’t find out that she was in the North East until your lot showed up on my door. You tell me why she didn’t want me to know she was here?’

Brady couldn’t answer him.

‘I’ll tell you, shall I? Because she knew how I felt about you. If I’d known she was coming up to see you I would have done everything in my power to stop her!’

‘She didn’t arrange to meet me,’ Brady answered quietly but firmly.

It was the wrong answer. Henderson lunged forward, fighting Conrad and Smith with renewed vigour.

Conrad, breathless and scarlet-faced, shot Brady a look which told him to disappear, and fast, before he lost control of Henderson.

Dejectedly Brady turned and limped out of the ICU, feeling as if he had just had the worst kicking of his life. And the worst part was, he knew he deserved it.

Chapter Twelve

Brady held onto the washbasin.

He was still shaking from the attack.

But it wasn’t the blows that had got to him.

He turned the cold tap on and splashed himself with water. Face drenched, he looked up at his reflection in the mirror.

He looked like shit.

Wincing, he straightened up and lifted his t-shirt. His light olive-coloured skin was starting to discolour into mottled purple patches spreading across the side of his right ribcage. He gently ran his fingers over the bruising which led down to his abdomen.

He let go of his t-shirt. Bending over the washbasin again, he drenched his face, groaning with the exertion.

But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get rid of the image of what they had done to Simone.

He was very aware that word would get back to Gates. Brady could deny having seen Simone. He knew that Smith wouldn’t say a word. But there was no way he could deny the run-in with the victim’s father. Nor could he explain why Frank Henderson believed his daughter had returned to the North East because of Brady. It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t talked to her in over a year. Nothing. And then suddenly, she’s back up here lying critically wounded in the ICU.

He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the damage. Nothing was broken. His left cheek was split open. Frank Henderson had also landed a lucky blow above his left eyebrow, resulting in another open gash. Blood trickled down into his eye.

He bent down and doused himself in more cold water in a bid to get rid of the blood. He didn’t have time to go and get the cuts stitched. Not that he would have done. He’d had a lot worse than this and had lived to tell the tale.

He raised his head up and slowly breathed out. His head was throbbing. He ran his hand over his scalp for any tell-tale damage. Nothing. Apart from the raised four-inch scar at the back of his head where his father had taken a baseball bat to him when he was eight years old. All he remembered was hearing the swoosh of air as the baseball bat had swung towards him. He’d felt it connect with his skull before everything went black.

When he had come round, it wasn’t to concerned medics. He had found himself lying on grime-encrusted bare floorboards, in a pool of his own blood. He had awoken to the terrified eyes of his younger brother Nick, four years old, huddled in a foetal position on the piss-stained mattress dumped on the floor in the corner of the room they slept in.

The room was empty of furniture, apart from the old, torn, flea-infested mattress. There was no wardrobe or drawers in the bedroom; there was no need. The only clothes Brady and his brother owned were the ones on their backs. Everything went on his father buying his next pint and pack of tabs. Resulting in them living in squalor with little or no comforts, despite his mother’s best intentions.

Their father being imprisoned was the best thing that had ever happened to Brady and Nick. Being dumped around the North East in countless foster homes was luxury compared to their brutal start to life.

Brady stared at his reflection, fingers touching the gnarled scar at the back of his head as he remembered the price he had had to pay to get away from his father.

The same night that his father had taken a baseball bat to him, breaking not only three ribs and his right arm, but also splitting open his skull, he had then turned on his mother.

Brady was acutely aware that if she hadn’t intervened when she had, he would have been the one that was later found dead.

That was why, when he came to, the first thing he saw was Nick’s wide, petrified eyes watching, huddled in the corner like a wild animal. The second thing he registered was his mother’s screams as his father ‘taught her some respect’.

Brady blinked back. His eyes stinging with fresh, salty pain.

He reminded himself that it might have taken years, but his father had finally been made to pay.

Yet, it still didn’t ease the pain of witnessing your own mother being beaten and raped in front of you.

When his father had momentarily stopped, leaving the room, his mother had whispered to him to get up and run.

‘Take Nick, Jacky, and run. Don’t stop. Understand? No matter what, don’t you stop, Jacky. Now go!
GO!
’ she had urged, knowing that her husband was coming back to finish what he had started.

Brady did exactly what he was told. He knew, as she did, what would happen if he didn’t.

He never saw his mother again. Well, he never saw her alive again.

Brady had pulled out the court case records and autopsy report a few years back, thinking it would give him some kind of resolution. It hadn’t. The crime scene photographs brought to life his worst nightmares.

When he had taken his mother at her word and run, his father had returned to stab her over twenty times. Her face was so mutilated from the frenzied knife attack that the only way she could be identified was through her dental records.

Brady let go of the old wound and gripped the sides of the washbasin, steadying himself as he forced himself to come back to the present.