Anyone with a pulse in the Northumbrian force knew about Brady’s brief affair with DC Simone Henderson. She had been a junior copper stationed at Whitley Bay. Their regrettable one-night stand had resulted in her transferring to the London Met to get as far away from her commanding officer and the ensuing gossip as possible. But unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. She had ended up a casualty in an undercover investigation gone wrong. It had cost her more than Brady could bear to think about. She was still recuperating from her horrific injuries six months on. Brady was uncertain whether she would ever fully recover or accept the cruel hand that life had dealt her. She still refused to see him, in spite of his numerous attempts. He knew that she had remained in the North-East, despite hearing that the Met had offered her a post. However, the fact that she could no longer talk meant that she would never be a copper again. And from what Brady knew of Simone, behind-the-scenes admin work wasn’t for her. She had loved her job with a passion. But the case she had been working on had become more of an addiction – one she had paid a high price for.
Brady knew from the look of regret in Ainsworth’s small black eyes that he was really sorry about his reference to Simone Henderson.
‘Look . . . Jack . . . I didn’t mean anything when I—’
Brady stopped him. ‘Forget it. I have.’
Neither spoke for a moment.
Ainsworth was the first to talk. His way of making amends. ‘You know, I’ve clocked up more years on the force than I care to remember. And now I’m being replaced by young kids who don’t know shit about policing. Civilians who walk in as Crime Scene Officers with nothing more than a degree in forensic science. You know I was a copper first for twenty years? Specialised in photography, which is how I ended up being a Crime Scene Manager. But once a copper, always a copper. Big bloody difference between having experience behind you and coming in as a civilian with some fancy qualification.’
Brady simply nodded.
‘You know the two I’m training up just now?’
‘They seem to know what they’re doing,’ Brady said as he watched Fielding and her colleague.
Ainsworth shot him a sceptical look.
‘That’s because I’m breathing down their necks all the time. They even expect me to wipe their bloody noses for them! It’s all about budgets. They’re a damned sight cheaper to employ than the likes of me, but it comes at a price. At least when you’ve come through as a copper you’ve got a nose for when something isn’t quite right. Civilians wouldn’t know a hunch if it kicked them in the guts. Christ knows what crucial evidence they’re going to miss when I’m not around to tell them what to do.’
Brady couldn’t disagree. TV programmes like CSI had glorified forensic science, leading to huge interest in the profession. However, the reality of the job was far removed from the sexy image portrayed on TV.
‘You know this job involves a lot more than just photographing and bagging up evidence. A hell of a lot more!’ Ainsworth complained, the sadness in his eyes stronger than the anger in his voice.
Brady didn’t answer. He knew Ainsworth was right. Times were changing, and not for the better. The overall police budget had been drastically slashed by the government, which meant that the cheapest option had to come first. Instead of training up coppers to be forensic officers, as they had done in the past, it was cheaper to employ civilians. Even the police laboratory used for forensic analysis no longer existed. Instead, the work was outsourced to the cheapest company, and cheap didn’t necessarily mean good.
Worryingly, that was just the start of it. The public were completely unaware that highly qualified CID officers were now reduced to working in uniform because of the budget cuts. The choice was hard: take a demotion or lose your job. But some officers had lost their jobs anyway when the depleted funds demanded it. Brady had personally known quite a few officers who, when re-interviewed for their current posts, didn’t quite make the grade and were now unemployed.
‘You know something?’ Ainsworth said.
‘Maybe you’re getting out at the right time?’ Brady suggested.
Ainsworth laughed.
‘Yeah . . . maybe I am,’ he answered, shaking his head at the prospect of his looming retirement.
Brady watched Ainsworth contemplate what the future held for him. He had been there himself after he’d been shot. Not sure whether he’d be able to return to work. He’d realised that without the job, he had nothing. The sad fact was that his life was the job. It meant everything to him.
‘Anyway, at least I’ve still got a job, unlike some, eh?’
‘Yeah.’ Brady inwardly prepared himself. He needed to ask a favour. That was the reason he was there.
‘Look, Ainsworth . . .’
‘Exactly what is it you want?’ Ainsworth asked.
‘I need to know what you’ve found,’ Brady answered.
Ainsworth shook his head.
‘You know what you’re asking?’
Brady looked away uncomfortably. Disapproval lined Ainsworth’s face.
‘Shit, Jack! You know this is Bentley’s investigation. If you have a query, you should be going to him. Not turning up here asking me about the evidence.’
‘I know . . . but . . . I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. You know me better than that.’
‘All right, all right! Just keep my name out of it. Understand?’
Brady nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘Yeah . . . yeah. You owe me, Jack.’
Ainsworth sighed as he rubbed a hand over his face.
‘We’ve collected the evidence you’d expect at a crime scene of this nature. Blood, hair and skin samples. We haven’t found the victim’s bag or any other personal belongings – that is assuming she had some with her. But we did find a business card. It’s smeared in blood and there’s a thumb mark on it, but it’s not a print. Looks like whoever made it was wearing gloves.’
Brady nodded, feigning disinterest. But inside he could feel the adrenalin coursing through him. He needed to see that business card. Now.
‘Can I see it?’ Brady asked.
Ainsworth paused for a moment as he thought about it.
‘All right, but that’s it, Jack.’
Brady nodded. He watched in anticipation as Ainsworth went over to the Mobile Incident van. He returned a minute later carrying a sealed evidence bag.
‘Thanks,’ Brady said as Ainsworth handed it over to him.
Brady knew Ainsworth’s beady eyes were on him, scrutinising his reaction to the bag’s contents. He tried to keep the muscles in his face relaxed and casual. But it was difficult. More so when he recognised the business card. It was for a nightclub in Whitley Bay. He knew it and the owner very well. Too well.
He turned the card over. Just as he thought. On the back was a name scrawled in black ink – Trina McGuire. The name of the victim lying fighting for her life in Rake Lane hospital.
His mind was reeling. He had been praying this wouldn’t be the case. He looked at the words, wondering if someone was trying to set the owner of the nightclub up. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone had attempted to frame Martin Madley, and Brady was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
Ainsworth cleared his throat.
‘Is this what you were looking for?’
‘Not really . . .’ Brady answered. ‘But thanks anyway. I owe you.’ He handed the bag back, conscious that his hand was trembling. Not that Ainsworth had noticed – luckily. His eyes were fixed dangerously on one of his SOCOs.
‘What have I told you? The platforms are there for a bloody reason!’ he barked.
Brady watched as the poor sod nearly jumped out of his white forensic suit.
‘Bloody idiots! I’ll be wiping their arses next!’
‘You’re a cantankerous old bastard, you know that?’ he said with a slight smile.
‘Yeah . . . yeah . . . You’ve got what you wanted, now clear off and let some of us do some real work, eh?’
Br
ady didn’t need any persuading. He turned and headed back under the tape towards the car.
He had one thing on his mind. Or should that be one person? Martin Madley. He took his mobile out and scrolled through the numbers. He pressed dial. Then he waited. Finally Madley answered: ‘Yeah? This better be good.’
‘I need to see you.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Tough shit. I’m serious. I need to see you ASAP,’ Brady demanded.
The phone went dead.
‘Fucking bastard!’ Brady muttered.
Madley had left him no choice. He would have to pay him a visit. But something was wrong; felt wrong. That wasn’t like Madley. He’d never hung up on Brady before – they had too much history between them for him to blank Brady.
Unless . . . he really was involved. But why Nick?
That was the problem. Brady knew exactly why he would be after Nick.
He quickly discounted the thought as he went over to the car and jumped in.
‘Did you find what you wanted, sir?’ asked Conrad.
Brady didn’t answer. He was too busy lighting a cigarette.
‘Not exactly,’ he finally replied after inhaling deeply.
He switched on the engine and pulled off, his mind racing.
Who would be after Nick? And why was Madley’s business card left at the crime scene? Coincidence?
Brady’s problem was that he didn’t believe in coincidences. He had no choice but to ask some questions – whether Madley liked it or not. And he needed to get to Madley before DI Bentley and his team started making their own enquiries.
Chapter Nine
Brady had dropped Conrad back off at the station with a list of orders that would keep him too preoccupied to worry about Brady’s whereabouts. He was now parked up on Brook Street trying to ring Nick. He had already called the landline only to find it had been disconnected. Brady’s second attempt at calling him on his mobile had also failed. But at least it had cut to voicemail.
‘Nick . . . Look, something’s happened to Trina McGuire and I’m not sure what it’s connected to or who, but you need to call me . . .’ Brady paused. He then hung up, deciding it would be better to tell Nick in person what had happened to Trina than leaving the gruesome details in a message.
Brady lit another cigarette and wound down the window. The car was parked facing the promenade and the North Sea. It was a miserable, bleak late October morning, which reflected Brady’s mood perfectly. He was angry and disappointed with himself for smoking. He had gone through hell for the past four days, or ninety-three hours and thirty-four minutes – not that he was counting. And for what? To give it all up as soon as something came along and threw him off course? But this wasn’t just any something. Very soon DI Bentley would join the dots and realise that the woman lying critically ill in Rake Lane hospital was Trina McGuire: former lap dancer, full-time prostitute, mother of teenage offender Shane, and ex-wife of well-known low-life thug, Tony McGuire.
Not that Bentley could connect anything to Brady. He was a copper and Trina McGuire was a prostitute. There were no links between them. No one on the force, apart from Chief Superintendent O’Donnell, was fully aware of Brady’s troubled background, or the fact he had a brother. Or that his brother had once had a relationship with the victim. Brady’s ex-wife, Claudia, was the only other person who knew that he had a brother. And Claudia had never seen a photograph of him, let alone met him. She only knew Brady had a brother from accessing court documents about his mother’s murder at the hands of his father. She had mentioned it in passing, hoping Brady would talk about him. It had had the opposite effect.
Brady drew heavily on his smouldering cigarette as he watched two scavenging seagulls fighting over last night’s leftovers; a pool of lumpy vomit and half a portion of curried chips dumped on the pavement by some considerate lout staggering home with a belly full of beer and greasy food. Brady wished his life was as simple as fighting over last night’s slops.
Disgusted, he threw his cigarette out and wound the window up. He had no option but to pay Madley a visit and ask him what the fuck was going on. Whether he would be accommodating was another matter entirely. Since the sex-trafficking investigation six months ago, Madley had been remote with him. Brady didn’t know whether it was because he had put away the notorious North-East gangster and businessman Ronnie Macmillan, or if it was because his brother, Nick, had dangerously overstepped the mark with Madley. But something had caused the rift between them.
If Brady was brutally honest, he knew the reason – Nick. That was why he was here. Nick had successfully infiltrated a dangerous, international, elitist group known as the ‘Nietzschean Brotherhood’. But in the process he had double-crossed Madley.
They were a covert organisation virtually impossible to penetrate. Even SOCA (the Serious Organised Crime Agency) were still struggling to ascertain information on them, let alone break into their ranks. This powerful organisation communicated through encrypted chat rooms and websites. They were untraceable for a very good reason. Somehow Nick had managed it. But at what cost?
The members of this group were wealthy men who could afford to buy whatever they wanted; including a girl’s life. Membership was merely 100 grand a year. Any extra perks came in at figures that would astound the average person. But the organisation offered a unique service; an exquisite catalogue of girls ranging from as young as the client wanted to twenty-five years old. Whatever creed or nationality a client desired, they provided it – at a price.
Brady’s first introduction to this nefarious organisation was six months ago when a headless female torso washed up on the beaches of Whitley Bay. The victim had been branded with the letters ‘MD’ and a symbol of a scorpion. Brady later found out that the letters ‘MD’ were in fact initials and stood for the brothers Marijuis and Mykolas Dabkunas – her owners. The victim had been decapitated, but first she had been raped by a group of unknown men. One of whom had placed a captive bolt pistol to her temple and pulled the trigger. Allegedly, it was the ultimate sexual high for some of these men: raping a girl while her body convulsed as she died.
Brady and his team had never found the men responsible for her brutal murder. But he had managed to break up the international trafficking ring run by the Dabkunas brothers and their new business associate, local gangster-cum-businessman and estranged brother to North Tyneside’s Mayor Macmillan, Ronnie Macmillan. And against the odds they had uncovered the decapitated victim’s identity; Edita Aginatas, a young Eastern European woman trafficked into the UK by the Dabkunas brothers. Brady had even succeeded, with the help of Trina McGuire, in securing the release of Nicoletta, another sex-trafficked victim who had been given as a goodwill gesture by the Dabkunas brothers to Ronnie Macmillan.
But it had all begun with his own brother, Nick; an ex-SAS bodyguard who hired himself out to people with problems that they couldn’t take to the police. Nick had been hired by the Lithuanian Ambassador to secure the release of his kidnapped daughter. Nick delivered, but in the process he had risked his friendship with Madley and his relationship with Brady. Worse still, as a means of gaining the trust of the kidnappers – the Dabkunas brothers – Nick had had to carry out an appalling crime. One that Brady still found hard to accept. Nick had followed orders and dumped the savagely mutilated body of Simone Henderson in the Gents in Madley’s nightclub. He had then made an anonymous call to the police. In other words, he had acted on behalf of Ronnie Macmillan and the Dabkunas brothers in their attempt to silence an undercover copper and stitch Madley up as punishment for not going into business with them, or at least having the courtesy to sell up to them.
During the investigation it had taken Brady all of his inner strength to hold on to the belief that his brother wasn’t corrupt. It wasn’t until the end of the case that Brady was informed of the facts by Nick – off the record. Nick had delivered as promised. The Lithuanian Ambassador’s daughter was safely returned to him. The sex-trafficked victim and a missing
local sixteen-year-old girl who had also been lured in by the Dabkunas brothers had been freed. Brady had been highly commended by his superiors for the outcome.
The only people who knew about Nick’s covert involvement were Brady, Madley and the Dabkunas brothers. Both Madley and the Dabkunas brothers had a score to settle with Nick. Madley for the fact that Nick had betrayed him – undercover or not, he had brought the police to his door. Then there were the Dabkunas brothers, whose whereabouts were still unknown. Brady was no fool. He knew that no matter how long it took them, they would hunt Nick down for his betrayal. Whether they would employ the likes of Johnny Slaughter to do their bidding, Brady wasn’t sure. After all, the Dabkunas brothers were still in hiding and, Brady presumed, would be for a long time to come.
But Brady needed answers. And there was only one person who would know what was going on. Madley.
Brady banged loudly on the locked doors of Madley’s nightclub, the Blue Lagoon. He knew Madley was inside. He had seen Gibbs’s imposing figure standing at the first floor window looking down at him as he had walked up to the club. Gibbs was Madley’s right-hand man. He did anything and everything that Madley ordered him to do and he did it with pleasure. The Afro-Caribbean was a forty-six-year-old retired professional boxer, who still had the impressive physique of a brick shithouse. His thick, knotted black and silver dreads and the large diamond drilled into his front tooth were as legendary as his fists.
Brady looked up and caught Gibbs’s eye. It was as cold and impassive as ever. Brady gestured for him to come down and open the door. Gibbs didn’t move. Furious, Brady proceeded to bang on the glass door as loud as he could. Before he actually smashed his way through, someone came and opened it.
It was another of Madley’s men. Tall, wide and ugly, with the charm of a testosterone-fuelled gorilla on steroids. He was dressed in the same uniform as all Madley’s men; a black suit and tie with a white shirt. Nothing fancy or in your face – that was Madley’s domain – but just enough to give the required effect of meaning business.
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