Vanishing Point

Brady looked at him. He was twenty-three, if that.

‘I’m here to see Simone Henderson.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve been instructed not to allow you in,’ the PC answered nervously.

‘Who by?’ demanded Brady as he edged towards PC Smith, forcing him to strategically place his six-foot-four, rugby-playing bulk between Brady and the door.

‘DI Adamson, sir,’ explained PC Smith, his cheeks reddening.

Brady noted that Smith was another Conrad in the making. Smart appearance, short, cropped blond hair, bright, boyish blue eyes and clean-shaven. But more importantly, Smith had that look of integrity about him.

‘Is he here?’

‘That’s not the point, sir.’

‘I only want a minute, Smith. That’s all. I just need to see that she’s OK.’

PC Smith uncomfortably stared straight ahead past Brady, refusing to make eye contact.

‘I can’t do that, sir. I have my orders.’

‘Fuck your orders!’

Smith fixed his stare on the wall ahead of him, clearly desperate for someone to intervene.

‘One minute is all I’m asking for, nothing more,’ attempted Brady, too aware that getting angry with Smith wouldn’t get him anywhere.

‘I wish I could, sir, but her father’s here. And he’ll be back shortly. He’s only gone to fetch a coffee from the cafeteria.’

‘One minute. You can leave the door open and warn me when he returns.’

PC Smith frowned, torn between doing his job and loyalty to Brady. He’d worked on an investigation headed by Brady nine months back and had seen what a dedicated copper Brady was at heart.

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.

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.’