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.
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 famous 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
