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‘I don’t fucking care what you say. I’ll tell whoever I want to about what you’ve done to me. Then you’ll be sorry! You hear me? You’ll be the fucking sorry one, you bastard!’ she threatened, ignoring the tears as they continued to fall.
Exhausted, she attempted to get to her feet. Certain that she could stand she pulled out her mobile phone from the front pocket of her short black denim skirt. She tried to make out whether she had any new messages or calls.
‘Bastard!’ she muttered when she realised she didn’t.
She started to scroll through her phone book looking for his number.
Suddenly she heard footsteps coming up behind her. She smiled, relieved that he’d come back.
She froze as the smile faded from her lips.
‘I … I … didn’t mean the things I said … yeah? I was just really mad with you, that’s all …’ she stuttered as she shook her head.
It took her a second to register what was about to happen. Shocked, she dropped her phone as she numbly staggered backwards as she tried to get away.
In her panic she tripped over and fell to the ground. She grabbed her scarf which was lying beside her and rolled over onto her knees as she attempted to get up. But a hard kick to her back winded her, forcing her down again.
Suddenly the scarf was pulled from her hand.
‘Ahh!’ she cried out as her head was yanked back by her hair.
She felt something being slipped around her throat. She couldn’t understand what was happening. And by the time she did, it was too late. The scarf was already securely knotted around her neck. She screamed as she clawed at the material. But the harder she fought, the tighter the scarf was twisted, silencing her.
She frantically tore at the scarf, desperate to breathe but she couldn’t loosen its hold over her. Panicking, she scratched at her neck ferociously as the burning pain in her lungs intensified. Finally, she collapsed forward, un-conscious of what was about to follow.
Chapter Two (#ulink_36e80b28-f8a6-54d1-8773-c2c583c7069d)
Friday
The phone was ringing. It had to be bad. He could feel his heart pounding. He turned over and buried his head into the pillow but the ringing continued. He tried to ignore it but it was pointless. He opened his eyes and lay there for a moment drenched in sweat.
It was dark, still night. He looked down at the cluttered floor gingerly and squinted at the alarm clock, his head exploding with the effort. It took a few seconds before he could make out it was only 4.30 am. And another couple of seconds before he realised the phone was still ringing. He stretched out his trembling hand and groped around on the floor.
‘Yeah?’ he mumbled hoarsely.
‘Detective Inspector Brady?’
Without answering, he disconnected the call and dropped the phone to the floor. His head was thumping. He had the mother of all hangovers, which wasn’t surprising considering he’d been on a suicidal bender for the past couple of weeks. He had been downing a toxic mixture of whisky and beer to forget his wrecked life and block out the recurring nightmare he had had for as long as he could remember. But lately nothing seemed to work. Even when he sank into a drunken sleep he always woke up sweating, heart racing.
He tried to recall the previous night. All he could remember was drinking too much and then …
He felt sick at the thought. He winced as the knot in his stomach tightened. He turned his pounding head tentatively. A young woman lay asleep on her stomach beside him, naked from the waist up, the duvet discreetly covering the rest of her body. Her thick, dark, shoulder-length hair was spread out over the pillow. He watched as she gently breathed in and out. He couldn’t even recall her name let alone what she did for a living.
He swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the sour taste in his mouth. Never before had he plummeted to such a nadir. There hadn’t been anyone since Claudia, his wife, had left. And now here he was with some young woman who he didn’t even recognise lying naked beside him.
The drinking was supposed to distract him from who he was, not make him feel even worse about himself. He thought about getting some painkillers and decided that he couldn’t be bothered to get up and rummage around in the dark. The last thing he wanted to do was wake up Sleeping Beauty.
The phone started to ring again. He froze as she started in her sleep.
‘Fuck!’ he muttered.
He stretched his right hand out and blindly searched amongst the months of debris scattered on the floor.
‘What?’ he answered in a thick Geordie voice, silencing the shrill ring.
He watched as she stirred briefly before slipping back into a restless slumber.
‘Brady?’ questioned a low, deep voice.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘DCI Gates.’
‘Sir?’ questioned Brady, thrown.
‘You’re a hard man to get hold of, Jack,’ continued the dispassionate voice.
‘With all due respect, sir, I’m not expected back until Monday.’
He regretted the words as soon as he had spoken them. Gates wasn’t the kind of man that you wanted as an enemy.
‘You have half an hour to get it together.’
‘But …’ he objected.
‘I’ll have a car waiting for you. Make sure you’re ready,’ Gates ordered, leaving him no choice.
By the time he had thought of a response the line was dead.
He stared blankly at the phone trying to figure out what was going on.
Moments later he was roused from his musings by a dull, heavy pain in the pit of his stomach. He needed to piss. He pulled the duvet back and swung his legs onto the floor.
A searing pain shot through his left inner thigh. He instinctively pressed down hard with both hands onto the knotted wound and held them there as he waited for the pain to subside.
He didn’t know who he hated more; the bastard who had tried to blow his balls away or Claudia for leaving him while he lay fighting for his life. Admittedly he had given her a good enough reason, but even he hadn’t expected to come round from surgery to the unwelcome news that she’d had enough. Not only had she left him, she had left the area. It didn’t take him long to find out that she had gone to London and had no intention of coming back to the North East.
He hated his life, hated what he’d become without her. Not a single day had gone by since she’d left him when he hadn’t considered finishing what the bastard who had shot him had intended. But that was over six months ago, and here he was, still drunk, still bitterly alive.
He could feel a clammy sweat building up on his forehead and wasn’t sure whether it was because of the pain in his leg or alcohol poisoning.
He looked at the clock. 4.54 am, he thought, sighing heavily. He stood up shakily and waited a few moments, unsure of whether he was too drunk to stand. Finally certain that he could stay on his feet he slowly limped over to the bedroom door.
‘Where … where are you going?’ murmured a sleepy voice.
He paused.
What could he say? Sorry, I don’t even remember fucking you last night, let alone your name?
He shook his head.
‘Go back to sleep,’ he muttered.
He watched her mumble her consent and turn over. He stood for a moment wishing that his life were that simple.
Bleary-eyed he blinked back at his reflection and ran his fingers through his long dark hair pulling it back from his face. He’d been meaning to get it cut but hadn’t got around to doing it. He stared at his heavy hooded, dark brown bloodshot eyes.
He was six feet two and slender with some muscle. He was attractive; at least that’s what his soon to be ex-wife had told him. Not that he could see it. But he knew there was something about him that women liked. Sleeping Beauty lying in his bed was testimony to that.
But throughout the five years he had been married he had never fooled around. Not once, not until that fateful night. And even then it was over before it had even started. But it was enough for Claudia to bail. He knew it was a convenient out for her. After months of Claudia working long hours in a blatant attempt to avoid him, Brady drunkenly and pitifully fell into the arms of a seductive new colleague – Detective Constable Simone Henderson. Claudia had walked in on them without Brady knowing. It wasn’t until the following night when his balls were nearly blown away on an undercover drugs bust that he realised that Claudia knew about his indiscretion. She had rushed to the hospital as soon as she heard he had been shot, wanting the reassurance he was still breathing so she could have the satisfaction of handing him divorce papers.
Brady lifted a wet hand and tried to wipe clean the smeared blur that was his reflection. He looked rough, too rough to crawl into work. He ran his right hand over the dark stubble that covered his chin and crept up over his cheeks. In a last ditch attempt to straighten himself out he splashed icy cold water over his face. It made no difference; he still looked half-cut. There was only one thing that would sober him up and that was a hot shower followed by black, bitter coffee. He needed to at least appear sober if he was facing Gates. He knew that whatever had happened must have been serious enough for Gates to be calling.
Chapter Three (#ulink_09f8f850-e338-5bfa-97e6-df796558707b)
Brady heard the doorbell ring and looked at his watch: it was 5.25 am, bang on time. He dragged heavily on the cigarette in his hand before crushing it out. Already the third one of the day, he noted, acknowledging that he had failed to kick the habit before returning to work.
But at least he was starting to sober up. Add to that a shave and a change of clothes and he looked halfway decent.
Brady poured himself some hot black coffee and looked around at the chaos that had crept into the house after his wife had left. Row after row of empty Peroni bottles, half-eaten Chinese take-away cartons and empty pizza boxes pretty much summed up his life now. It stank.
He switched off the kitchen light and walked down the hallway, his heavy footsteps resonating on the wooden floor.
He looked around in disgust. A lamp was still on throwing a gloomy light over the mess his life had become. Overflowing ashtrays were scattered all over the room. Discarded whisky and beer bottles lay across the dusty wooden floor. Over six months’ worth of weekend news-papers were dumped on an old leather armchair. Books lay in piles around the room, while others haphazardly lined the handmade wooden bookcases that covered two of the walls.
His office at the station, with its high, rattling windows and bulky, rust-stained, leaking radiators, felt more comfortable to him than his own home. More so now that he couldn’t stomach living alone in a three-storey five-bed-roomed Victorian house. The fact that Claudia had not only moved out, but had taken every scrap of furniture that wasn’t nailed down didn’t help. He had volunteered to be the one to leave, but Claudia had declined his offer. The fact that she had walked in on Brady in their bed with a young colleague had been incentive enough for her to pack up and go. And to be fair, he couldn’t blame her. Between them there had always been one rule, never bring work home.
They had both worked for Northumbria Police. It was his job to lock the scum up who made decent people’s lives a misery and it had been Claudia’s job to support the same scum by offering them legal representation; regardless of the crime. She was a lawyer and also acted as the Duty Solicitor at his station. She was damned good at her job; so good that the law firm she worked for in Newcastle were preparing to offer her a partnership.
They had met through work and somehow had survived everything it had thrown at them until now. Brady knew that even his boss, the emotionally cold and unflappable DCI Gates, had a soft spot for Claudia. Who didn’t? She was strikingly beautiful with a mane of long curly reddish hair and a fiery personality to match. But Brady hadn’t married her for her good looks; it was her quick wit and stunning intelligence that had seduced him. And the fact that she was everything he wasn’t; middle-class, educated and compassionate. She fought injustice because she believed in civilisation. He, on the other hand, didn’t believe in a better society. Brady was a realist and to him, civilisation was just another false god that idealists liked to believe in. His job was to prevent the world from becoming the dark and dangerous place he knew it to be.
Brady looked at the two empty whisky tumblers sat side by side on the tiled hearth. He recalled bitterly how he and Claudia would often share a bottle of whisky in front of the fire while Tom Waits played in the background. In the early days they had passionately argued about anything and everything from politics to literature. He felt physically sick as he thought about what he had lost. She had meant everything to him. More than even she had realised.
Wincing, he bent down to retrieve his jacket from the floor. Pulling it on he turned to see who Gates had sent.
It was Harry Conrad. He looked half-frozen. As always, his blond hair was cropped short and neat. Clean-shaven, with the look of a man who took time over his appearance, Conrad wore a conservative charcoal-grey suit with a blue shirt and dark blue tie. Over this he wore a heavy dark grey woollen overcoat.
That was Conrad for you: always clean-cut, well-dressed, polite and ready to take orders, even at five in the morning. Conrad had the makings of a Detective Chief Superintendent. He was well-liked by his superiors because he was eager and always did as he was told. That guaranteed success, something Brady had found out the hard way.
‘Fuck it,’ Brady said under his breath.
Gates really was trying to mess with his head. It was cold, too cold and dark to be out of bed. And too early to be dealing with this.
‘Gates sent me, sir,’ Conrad eventually said. He looked uncomfortable; his five feet eleven body hunched over, head down.
Brady suddenly felt old as he stood looking at his thirty-year-old deputy. Brady may have only had eight years on Conrad, but for the first time he could really feel the age difference.
‘Why?’ Brady asked as he narrowed his dark brown eyes.
Conrad shoved his hands in his coat pockets uneasily while Brady continued to stare at him.
‘I was just ordered to pick you up, sir.’
Brady didn’t reply.
Conrad uncomfortably filled in the silence.
‘We’ve got a murder victim, sir. A young woman.’
Brady didn’t know what he had expected when he started back on Monday, but it definitely didn’t involve any highprofile cases. He felt uneasy, something about this didn’t feel quite right.
‘What details do you have?’
‘I’ve just been called in myself, sir. All I know is that the body was found in West Monkseaton, on some abandoned farmland near the Metro line.’
‘Do we have an ID?’
Conrad shook his head.
If Conrad had said North Shields or even Shiremoor Brady would have understood but not West Monkseaton. It was classed as the upmarket part of Whitley Bay. Then again any place was better than Whitley Bay; to say the small seaside resort had seen better days was an understatement. The town was a testimony to the credit crunch, most of the retailers having closed up leaving behind a trail of depressing, musty-smelling charity shops and seedy pubs.
The only thing the rundown coastal town had going for it was that it was within commuter distance of Newcastle upon Tyne; a University city with a thriving student population and Goth culture. Newcastle was also known for the Bigg Market where punters would binge drink into the early hours, women staggering in their four-inch heels, and short, strapless dresses leered at by packs of thuggish men in sleeveless shirts – regardless of the North East’s all-year sub-zero temperatures.
But Brady knew from first-hand experience as a copper that the seaside resort of Whitley Bay could also hold its own when it came to binge drinking and lewd behaviour. So much so, it came as no surprise to Brady that the small, shabby, seaside town had been rated as a weekend stag party destination equal to Amsterdam.
‘Gates is waiting for you at the crime scene sir,’ Conrad emphasised. He was under strict orders to collect Brady and get him to Gates ASAP.
‘Let me grab my keys,’ answered Brady as he rummaged through the unopened mail and other objects dumped on the ornate marble mantelpiece.
Conrad looked around uncomfortably at what had become of his boss over the past two months. He had known the place when Claudia had been around and found it difficult to accept that it had degenerated into this soulless squalor. The smell of decaying food and stale alcohol clung nauseatingly in the air, as did the overwhelming feeling of despair and loneliness.
The last time Conrad had seen his boss was when he had visited Brady in hospital, shortly after surgery. Unfortunately, he had witnessed Brady losing it after Claudia had served him with divorce papers. That was over six months ago. Brady had refused to see him after what had happened. Wouldn’t allow him in to visit and when he discharged himself, refused to answer his door or any of the phone or email messages Conrad had left. Conrad had been worried, but not surprised that Brady had gone to ground given his state of mind after Claudia had left him.
Clutching his keys Brady limped out to the hall. Conrad followed.
‘Haven’t seen you since the incident, sir,’ Conrad offered, unsure whether he should mention it.
‘Yeah, well I’ve been busy,’ answered Brady.
They both knew he was a lousy liar.
Brady felt awkward. He had avoided Conrad for the past six months, deleting any messages Conrad had left without listening to them. So what? Brady thought. Conrad should be the one feeling guilty, not him. He had had word from an old colleague that Conrad was rumoured to have requested a transfer. Admittedly, it was only a rumour, but it still felt like a betrayal given everything they had been through. To make the situation worse, he had also heard that Conrad was scared that Brady would have some kind of breakdown. Even Brady had to admit that if he was in Conrad’s place, the last person he’d want to be teamed up with was himself. Not after what Conrad had witnessed.
‘So, put in for a transfer yet?’ As soon as the words had slipped out Brady hated himself.
Conrad was thrown.
‘No, sir. Why, should I have?’
