Vanishing Point Read online

  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.

  To Simone.

  Brady desperately needed to talk to Madley. Whatever was going on had to have something to do with him.

  A gutted and mutilated copper being dumped in Madley’s toilets wasn’t an everyday occurrence. This was a warning to Madley. The question was why?

  He leaned over the sink and splashed his face one more time. He needed to clean himself up. He looked bad enough with the purple and black bruising and cuts, without the blood.

  His phone suddenly vibrated in his pocket.

  He took it out: Conrad. A sudden reminder that he had a case of his own to work on.

  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the two cases were connected.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brady shivered involuntarily.

  Unlike Wolfe, he didn’t have the stomach for this. He was grateful that he’d left the bacon stottie that Conrad had brought him earlier, certain he wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

  Brady glanced at Conrad who was stood next to him, grim-faced, lips tightly sealed in nothing less than a grimace.

  Not that Brady could blame him. It wasn’t just being witness to the autopsy that was clearly disturbing Conrad. That in itself was bad enough. It was having to be in the same room as Wolfe. For some reason he and Wolfe didn’t quite see eye to eye. And Brady knew for a fact that Wolfe didn’t appreciate Conrad watching him work.

  Brady had suggested that Conrad wait in the cafeteria, which unbeknown to the public was located right next to the morgue. But Conrad had refused. He didn’t have to say it, but Brady knew he didn’t trust leaving him on his own while Simone Henderson’s father was still on the premises. Rake Lane might have been a huge, sprawling maze of a hospital but Conrad clearly believed that it wasn’t large enough to keep Brady away from trouble.

  Brady looked down at the dissected body, wishing he was anywhere rather than in front of a mortuary slab looking at a body that resembled a Damien Hirst piece of art. His face hurt like hell and his ribs burnt every time he breathed. But he didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself.

  ‘You don’t look so grand. You want Harold to fetch you the bucket, laddie?’ Wolfe said mockingly, as he looked across at Brady.

  Despite having lived in the North East for the past thirty years, Wolfe’s Edinburgh roots had never left him. His soft, well-educated Scottish lilt was a constant reminder that he was originally from north of the border.

  Brady swallowed hard and shook his head, avoiding Conrad’s concerned look.

  The ‘sick bucket’ was always on stand-by for new coppers or for the particularly gruesome autopsies, where the bodies had been left to fester for weeks, allowing insidious, eye-watering bodily gases to build.

  ‘No … I’m fine.’

  ‘Aye, I can see that!’ Wolfe said with a wheezy laugh.

  Wolfe suddenly went from a wheezy gurgle of laughter to struggling to breathe. Brady watched as the pathologist bent over as he tried to free up some air in his lungs. Despite suffering from asthma, and having carried out countless autopsies on lung and throat cancer patients, Wolfe was still a hardened smoker. His twenty a day was seen by him as moderate. As was his daily couple of lunchtime pints.

  ‘You want to cut back,’ Brady advised, concerned by his old friend’s sudden loss of colour from his face and his bluing lips.

  ‘I have cut back … I used to smoke forty a day … didn’t I?’ panted Wolfe, still bent over. ‘Aye, and it’s no doing me any harm!’ wheezed Wolfe, still managing a wry smile.

  Brady watched as he pulled out his blue Becotide inhaler and breathed in four long puffs to open up his airways.

  Finally, he straightened up. He frowned at Brady’s look of concern.

  ‘It’s not me you should be worried about, Jack. Take a look in the mirror. You look worse than half the stiffs we get in here.’

  Brady unconsciously touched the open wound above his eye.

  ‘I can put a couple of stitches in that for you?’ Wolfe offered.

  Brady shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Brady replied. ‘You’ve got your work cut out as it is.’

  ‘Well, laddie, it’s your funeral when DCI Gates clocks you,’ Wolfe replied, disgruntled. The look of disapproval on his face was aimed directly at Conrad. As if for some reason Conrad was responsible for the condition of his boss’s face.

  Wolfe dropped his gaze back to the work at hand. He was dressed in a white surgeon’s gown and skull hat with white rubber boots which had a yellow stripe down the back with his name, Dr A. Wolfe, written in black ink. On his small, but long-fingered, delicate hands he wore white latex gloves.

  To anyone’s eye he looked like a surgeon. The difference was, his patients couldn’t be saved.

  Brady winced as he looked at the gutted insides of the victim. Her ribs had been forced apart and her organs had been removed leaving behind a scene of bloody carnage. A pool of black blood swilled around in what was left of the empty carcass.

  ‘You sure you don’t need the bucket?’ queried Wolfe.

  He had an
uncanny knack of knowing when someone was going to puke.

  ‘No, just aching a bit. That’s all,’ Brady said.

  ‘This isn’t like you, Jack. Normally you’d take someone down before they even had a chance to look at you,’ Wolfe wheezed.

  Brady held his breath as he tried not to react. Wolfe had performed most of the autopsy, which accounted for the disconcerting smell emanating from the systematically butchered body. The internal organs still had to be replaced back into the chest before the deep Y-shaped incision which worked from the shoulders down to the groin could be stitched up and the body could be stitched back together. But first the internal organs would have to be individually weighed and documented. The slightest detail noted.

  Brady looked across at Harold, the anatomical pathology technician. Not that Wolfe ever used him. Harold’s job was mainly to stand around and watch as Wolfe cut up and investigated every unusual detail on whatever stiff Harold had removed from one of the thirty body refrigerators in the hospital. Harold was a tall, gaunt-looking young man with long reddish-blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and a long red goatee beard plaited in two strips.

  ‘What have you found?’ asked Brady as he walked round to Wolfe.

  He was busy examining the victim’s internal reproductive organs which were still in situ.

  ‘The victim wasn’t pregnant at the time of death but she had had an abortion within the last month I’d say,’ replied Wolfe.

  ‘Both her fallopian tubes and ovaries are scarred by severe endometriosis. As is the uterus which also shows evidence of extreme trauma. So I’m surprised she was able to get pregnant given the scar tissue. But you see here?’ Wolfe said, pointing. ‘There is an area of haemorrhage on the anterior surface of the cervix where it joins the body of the uterus. This haemorrhagic area measures approximately two centimetres and there is also a tear in the cervix measuring three centimetres in length.’

  Brady stared at the mutilated body, wondering what kind of short life she had lived.

  ‘See this scarring on the cervix here?’ questioned Wolfe as he looked up at Brady.

  Brady nodded.

  ‘Caused by an abortion – a bad one at that. She would have had extensive bleeding afterwards. Still evidence of haemorrhaging pooling by the cervix, as I already pointed out. In all honesty I’m surprised she survived. I’ve had autopsies where women have died from botched abortion jobs like this one. She would never have been able to have children after that.’

  Brady looked closely at the scarring from the botched abortion. It was bad. Even to his untrained eye.

  ‘And you see this trauma here?’ Wolfe pointed out.

  ‘These internal and external wounds were carried out when she was alive and are indicative of her being raped. Gang-raped and violently might I add to cause that kind of damage.’

  Brady looked across and caught Conrad’s eye. He looked equally as uncomfortable with the finding.

  ‘When you get the autopsy report you’ll see that I’ve established numerous finger marks on her lower and upper legs and her hips and back from where she has been forcibly held down. I’ve checked them and there is a consistency which shows that three different people held her down.’

  ‘What about any traces of DNA evidence? Sperm? Pubic hair?’ Brady asked.

  ‘Bleach has been inserted into her vagina and rectum, no doubt to cover the DNA evidence. But it appears that they wore protection as I’ve found nothing. And then we have to add in that she’s been in the sea for approximately two hours.’

  Brady sighed. He had been hoping that Wolfe would have been able to find some trace of forensic evidence left behind.

  ‘What about the victim’s age?’

  ‘Approximately 16 to 18 years of age; body length 65 inches and weight 90 pounds which suggests she’s malnourished.’

  Wolfe paused.

  Brady followed his gaze to the sagging flaps of skin that had once been her breasts.

  ‘As you can see the victim had breast implants which I have removed. The serial number on the implants might be of some use to you,’ Wolfe said. ‘Harold will give you a copy of it.’

  ‘At least that’s something,’ Brady conceded as he caught Conrad’s eye.

  Brady didn’t know whether Conrad’s silence was because he was fighting the urge to puke, or whether he was keeping quiet to avoid Wolfe’s acerbic tongue.

  But he looked as hopeful as Brady felt at the possibility of being able to identify the victim from the serial number.

  ‘Cause of death?’ asked Brady.

  ‘Well … this is the interesting part. You would think asphyxiation because of the damage to her neck externally and internally,’ Wolfe explained as he pointed to the mottled bruising around what was left of her neck. ‘But that wasn’t the cause of death. She was strangled but whoever did this stopped before she actually asphyxiated. The hyoid bone, the thyroid and the cricoid cartilages are fractured, and there is pulmonary edema, with froth in the trachea and bronchi. The lungs are bulky, crepitant and over-distended and there is right ventricular dilatation. But …’ Wolfe paused, ‘the damage isn’t significant enough for her to have suffocated.’

  Brady nodded.

  ‘Cause of death was definitely cardio-respiratory arrest due to shock,’ added Wolfe.

  ‘Was she alive when they started to decapitate her?’ asked Brady, hoping that for her sake that wasn’t the case.

  He saw Conrad shift uncomfortably at the question.

  Wolfe shook his head.

  ‘No. There’s no defensive knife wounds which is what you’d expect if she had been conscious. And if she had been alive when they decapitated her, the blood loss would have been extreme. The carotid arteries on either side of the neck are the major arteries that pump blood to the head and then there are the jugular veins which return the blood back to the heart. If she was alive when these were cut, she would have died within seventeen seconds from blood loss. And believe me that would be one gruesome crime scene. But as you can see from the pool of blood that’s still left in the body’s cavity this wasn’t the case. She was definitely deceased before she was decapitated. Whether she was shot in the head or received a blow to the head which caused cardio-respiratory arrest, I can’t say.’

  Brady nodded, relieved.

  ‘The knife that was used?’ Brady asked.

  ‘Ten-inch stainless steel hunting-survival knife with a five-and-a-half-inch large serrated spine capable of easily cutting through bone. I’d say the handle was also steel with a knurled handgrip as there’s no traces of fabric or any other material on the neck wound.’

  Brady nodded as he wondered what kind of person carried such a knife.

  ‘Finally,’ Wolfe began. ‘The burn mark of the scorpion and the letters “MD” are intriguing. Reminiscent of cattle branding. And from the condition of the wound, I’d say it’s only two days old.’

  ‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ Brady questioned, not wanting to think about the implications of a branded victim.

  ‘I’d say she’d been dead for about three hours before she was found on the beach,’ Wolfe answered. ‘Time of death was approximately 1am, or thereabouts.’

  ‘She looks in a bad way for just three hours,’ Brady suggested as he looked at the swollen and discoloured body in front of him.

  He caught Conrad’s puzzled expression, which told him he was equally surprised.

  Wolfe gave Brady a withering look.

  Brady remembered that there was one thing with Wolfe that you couldn’t do and that was question his skill.

  ‘I’m certain. From the body’s rate of cooling and the degree of rigor mortis and the partially undigested food in her stomach, she had been dead for three hours before she was discovered.’

  ‘The tide was coming in at 1am. So, whoever dumped her in the water must have known that she would be washed up onto the beach.’ Brady shook his head as he considered the implications.

  ‘Which means that they w
anted her to be found, laddie,’ Wolfe noted.

  Brady looked at the body, wondering why she had been gang-raped then murdered. And crucially why her murderers wanted the body found.

  ‘The head …’ began Brady. ‘Makes identification damned difficult without it or her fingers. Why would someone go to those lengths to make sure she can’t be identified and then want her body found?’

  ‘Mortui vivos docent,’ Wolfe simply replied.

  He nodded at Brady’s puzzled expression.

  ‘Latin for,’ he paused for effect, ‘the dead teach the living.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brady checked his watch. It was nearly 12pm. He was running late.

  He had someone to see connected to Simone’s attack. Whether he would glean anything was another matter, but he felt compelled to follow it through. But first, he needed to get a hold of Amelia back at the station. He needed her to do him a favour. Whether she would was questionable, but he had no option but to ask.

  ‘As fast as you can, Conrad,’ instructed Brady.

  He was on edge at the thought of what lay ahead of him. And the prospect of walking back into the station wearing the brunt of Frank Henderson’s fists wasn’t helping.

  Conrad simply nodded as he reversed his new dark silver sports Saab Phoenix out of the hospital parking space, all too aware that Brady was holding a take-out black coffee from the hospital cafeteria. He didn’t want coffee spilt all over the new interior, or his highly-strung boss.

  Brady took a slug of lukewarm, weak black coffee. He forced it down, despite its bitter, burnt taste.

  ‘Would you believe this is worse than the station cafeteria’s coffee?’

  ‘I did warn you, sir. Which was the reason I didn’t want one,’ replied Conrad as he slowly pulled his car out of the hospital grounds.

  The muscles in Conrad’s jaw were knotted as he concentrated on the busy traffic ahead. That and the call he had received while he had waited in the car when Brady had gone off to get some coffee.