The Tattoo Thief

by Alison Belsham

  ‘What can you tell me about this?’ he said, holding out the picture towards her.

  It was a blow-up of the tattoo that had been cut from Evan Armstrong’s shoulder. Marni took the picture and scrutinised it.

  ‘This is the guy in the dumpster, yes?’

  Francis nodded.

  She looked back at the picture.

  ‘Polynesian tattoo, but that doesn’t mean it was done there. He could have got it anywhere. It’s good work. Do you know who did it?’

  She was calmer now that her attention was focused on the tattoo.

  ‘I was hoping you could help me with that. His parents gave us the photo, but they don’t know anything about his tattoos. Or his private life, for that matter.’

  Marni frowned. ‘I can’t just look at a tattoo and say who did it. You do know there are tens of thousands of tattoo artists in the world?’

  ‘I realise that, but . . .’

  ‘And it’s not like we sign our work.’

  ‘No initials even?’

  ‘There are one or two artists who do – the ones with their heads stuck up their own arses,’ she said. ‘But, no, most tattooists don’t feel the need to leave their name on a stranger’s skin. It’s enough of a privilege being able to ink people in the first place.’

  ‘But you knew the Saint Sebastian was by Thierry?’

  Marni levered herself up to sit on the massage bench. ‘I know Thierry’s style particularly well.’

  ‘But you don’t recognise the style of whoever did this? It’s not a local artist?’ He studied the picture again himself.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not really into tribal or indigenous work.’

  They fell silent for a moment.

  ‘Why does it matter?’ Marni asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who did the tattoo. Could it have some bearing on the case?’

  Could it? Francis honestly had no idea. He was chasing anything to find a lead.

  ‘I can’t rule it out at this stage.’

  ‘Is Thierry a suspect?’

  ‘I can’t discuss the details of the case.’

  Damn right he couldn’t, because there was nothing to discuss. And if she couldn’t help him, it was time to get going.

  He stood up to leave.

  ‘Give it to me and I’ll ask around for you.’ She hopped off the bench and took the picture from his hand. ‘Will the artist be a suspect?’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why someone would cut a tattoo from the victim’s body?’ he countered. ‘Is it a thing?’

  He needed to understand why it had happened.

  ‘‘‘Is it a thing?”’ Marni’s eyebrows shot up. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Retribution in the tattoo world, or some weird tattooing cult ritual? I don’t know what you people do.’

  ‘Us people?’ Marni shook her head. ‘You think we’re a cult? Fuck, no, cutting tattoos off people isn’t any kind of “a thing”.’

  Pepper’s ears pricked up as Marni raised her voice.

  ‘Listen to me. You might not want a tattoo or even like tattoos. Fair enough.’ She glared at him. ‘But, boy, do you have a problem with your attitude. People with tattoos are not members of a cult. They’re just people – who happen to have tattoos. That’s all they have in common. Twenty per cent of adults in this country, in fact.’

  Francis raised his hands in supplication. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m feeling my way here . . .’

  He’d touched a raw nerve. Something, or someone, had hurt Marni Mullins.

  ‘Yes, you meant something or you wouldn’t have said it.’

  The barrier had gone up. Francis looked around the room for inspiration, but there was nothing that he could relate to and use to form a bond.

  ‘Honestly, I’m sorry.’

  Marni rested back against the massage bench again. ‘So tell me, what’s your problem with tattoos?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem with tattoos,’ he said slowly. That wasn’t strictly true but he needed her help. ‘But I don’t get them, either. I mean, why would you let anyone permanently mark your body like that? It doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘Self-expression,’ she said simply.

  Francis didn’t really know what she meant by that.

  ‘My mother always said . . . tattoos are the outward sign of internal damage.’ It came out in a rush.

  Marni looked furious. Evidently it hadn’t been the right thing to say.

  ‘You can’t believe that.’

  ‘No . . . But then why do they have them?’

  ‘They can be a sign that someone’s been hurt – but it’s usually a positive thing . . . Empowerment, hope, a determination to be strong.’ She closed her eyes momentarily, then held his gaze with heightened intensity. ‘I lost a child. My back piece is a memorial to that child, my way of holding him with me forever.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Francis. He felt like he’d been prying where he had no right to.

  ‘But more often people are tattooed for simply aesthetic reasons,’ she continued, ‘or because all their friends have them, or as a gesture of love or respect. We’re not all the same sorts of people so we don’t all have them for the same reasons.’

  ‘No, I can see that. I realised that at the convention.’ He looked at her sheepishly. ‘So, will you help me?’

  Her look was cold. ‘I’ll do what I can, ask around a bit. But don’t hold your breath, Frank.’

  ‘Francis,’ he said through gritted teeth.

  She was obviously a woman who made assumptions too. However, she was his only pass into the world of tattoos. He needed her if anything about this murder hinged on the missing tattoo. Evan Armstrong’s flayed shoulder certainly suggested it did. And now they had a second body which was heavily tattooed as well.

  He needed her if he was going to solve this case before they had another victim on their hands.

  v

  I’m becoming famous! They wrote an article about me in the local paper. Of course, they don’t know my name or who I am. But my activities are causing some excitement – and not a little fear creeping through the community, or so I hope. I wonder if the Collector has been reading all about me. I wonder if he’s proud . . .

  I know that some killers court publicity, writing to the press and sending messages to the police. But I don’t think I’ll do that. My mission is rewarding enough and it’s always the letters that get those idiots caught. I’m not going to make their job any easier for them. Instead, I’ll just enjoy reading about my exploits in the Argus.

  It’s annoying that they get so many details wrong, but then I’m the only one that really knows what’s happened to each of my victims. They can only guess, and fill in the blanks with their fear and prurience.

  I wonder if they’ll write a book about me one day.

  Of course, I’m the only one who can tell my story with any accuracy. How my brother, Marshall, stole my birthright. He should never have been born – my mother nearly miscarried him. He became the blue-eyed boy as soon as he could walk and talk. He was younger than me but he was sharp. He learned how to run rings around me and how to shift the blame for his petty misdemeanours onto me. I had taken the cake from the larder. I had spilled black ink on the cream carpet. I had cut the heads off all the alliums and the roses in my mother’s garden. His cherubic features made him easy to believe and, behind my parents’ backs, he taunted me and made my life a misery.

  He poisoned my father against me and then took control of the family company. Kirby Leathers. Set up by my great-great-grandfather a hundred years ago. The company should have come to me. I would have nurtured our family business and it would still be in the family. But, no. It went to my brother. Daddy’s favourite.

  But that’s just the start of m
y story.

  14

  Rory

  Rory could smell whisky on the man’s breath straight away. He clutched the takeaway coffee Rory offered with a wizened claw of a hand. The long nails were grey with dirt, the skin as yellow as the man’s eyeballs.

  ‘Thanks.’ It came out as little more than a croak.

  Rory dropped down next to him on the narrow bus shelter bench. It was past two a.m. and the night buses were few and far between. It was unlikely that anyone would join them at the bus stop.

  ‘How’ve you been, Pete?’

  ‘Comme ci, comme ça,’ said the man, with a reedy laugh. ‘You know ’ow it is.’

  Rory nodded. The story was always the same with guys like Pete. A scramble for work, a scramble for money, a scramble for booze.

  ‘Keeping an ear to the ground?’ Rory asked.

  Pete glanced around suspiciously, even though there wasn’t another living soul in sight.

  ‘Thing is . . .’

  ‘If you’ve got something for me, you know I’ll pay.’

  Pete remained silent but his eyes lit up at the mention of money.

  ‘Listen,’ said Rory, ‘you might be able to help. We got a body called in yesterday morning. A small guy, young-ish, prison tattoos. Heard anything on that?’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Down near the front.’ Rory didn’t want to give him too many details. Pete was as leaky as a sieve and would think nothing of selling information in the other direction if he could.

  ‘I heard a couple of deals were s’posed to go down over the weekend. Word’s out that one of ’em went wrong. Would that fit with your timing?’

  Rory shrugged.

  ‘Who were the deals between?’

  Pete rubbed a finger and thumb together, giving Rory a meaningful look.

  Rory knew this would be coming and fished a small roll of notes from his trouser pocket. He peeled off a twenty. Pete gave him an incredulous look – twenty wasn’t going to do.

  Rory shook his head, retaining the cash. ‘I need names, Pete.’

  Pete sighed theatrically. ‘Make it worth me while, then.’

  Forty pounds changed hands and Pete reeled off a litany of local dealers. Rory knew of all of them, and knew that a couple of those mentioned were serving time.

  ‘Come on, Pete. This is bullshit. Something better or I’ll have that money back.’

  Pete raised his claw-like hands defensively. ‘Okay, seriously. The Collins brothers. There’s been trouble brewing there for a time.’

  ‘Between them and who?’

  ‘There’s a Romanian gang tried to move in on their turf.’

  This was hardly news to Rory, but it could explain the body under the pier. On his way home, he became more convinced by the theory. Turf wars between the local drug gangs were nothing new and accounted for a large part of the violent crimes in the city. The information wasn’t worth forty quid, but it was worth keeping Pete on side. Very occasionally he did come up with the goods.

  When he presented the theory to Francis in the station the next morning, he could see that the boss was sceptical.

  ‘Is this just a guess by your informant, or did he give you anything solid?’

  ‘He doesn’t exactly follow rules of evidence,’ said Rory. ‘But it gives us something to look into. After all, the guy’s covered in prison tattoos – it’s reasonable to assume he’s in one or other of the gangs, and that this killing, or even both, might be gang-related.’

  ‘We’ll assume nothing.’ The boss’s tone was sharp. He didn’t like the fact that Rory had come up with a lead.

  ‘So let’s see if your tattoo woman can throw any light on where else he might have got those tattoos.’

  Rory’s moment of smug satisfaction at stealing a march on the boss was to be short-lived. The door to the incident room opened and Hollins escorted Marni Mullins into the room.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ said Francis, going over to greet her.

  ‘Did I have a choice?’ She looked nonplussed. ‘I really have told you everything I know.’

  ‘I know, and we’re grateful for that,’ said Francis. ‘I wonder, if I show you some pictures of tattoos, if you could tell me about them.’

  She shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  Francis led her over to an unused desk at the far end of the room and spread out an array of photographs, close-ups of tattoos on pale, bloodless skin. Rory could see from the backgrounds that they’d been taken in the morgue.

  ‘This man was found dead early on Tuesday morning. We suspect some of these tattoos are gang-related.’

  Marni bent over the pictures. After looking for a minute, she rearranged them into the semblance of a body shape. A torso, arms and legs that were a mess of badly executed, blurry black tattoos – symbols, numbers and skulls.

  ‘Was he murdered?’ said Marni.

  Francis nodded. ‘Decapitated.’

  Marni Mullins studied the tattoos again and then pointed to one of the pictures.

  ‘Some of these are very interesting.’ She no longer sounded nervous.

  ‘It’s fairly obvious he’s in a gang,’ said Rory. ‘We suspect it was a drugs deal gone wrong. His fingerprints should tell us a whole lot more than these scratchings.’

  The boss glared at him before directing his next question to Marni.

  ‘Ms Mullins, do any of these have special meanings we should be aware of?’

  Marni pointed at the picture she’d picked out a moment before.

  ‘This,’ she said. ‘It’s a classic gang symbol.’

  The tattoo she indicated was a five-pointed crown.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Rory.

  Marni’s head snapped round at him. ‘You know it?’

  ‘A gang’s a gang – there aren’t that many to choose from in Brighton.’

  Marni sighed. ‘This isn’t a local prison tattoo. The crown signifies the Latin Kings. They’re a gang operating out of Chicago. The five points show affiliation to the People Nation gang. As far as I’m aware, neither of these gangs has branches in Brighton. Another thing, this has been done using an electric tattoo iron. Prison tattoos are made with sharpened ballpoints and boot polish.’

  Francis Sullivan was trying to hide a smirk. Smug bastard, thought Rory.

  ‘Some of these are home-made tattoos,’ said Marni, pointing at a couple that were cruder in execution, ‘but that doesn’t mean they were done in prison. The dots and the number fourteen – it’s all American gang stuff. Three dots mean mi vida loca or “my crazy life”. Five dots mean time in prison, symbolising the four corners of the cell with the prisoner inside. And the number fourteen claims membership of the Nuestra Familia gang in northern California.’ She turned around to face Francis. ‘I think what you have here is a very confused wannabe. He’s probably no closer to being a member of a gang than I am.’ She directed her gaze at Rory. ‘In other words, if you think this is a gangland killing, Sergeant, you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  What makes her the bloody expert? thought Rory irritably.

  ‘And what about this?’ Sullivan was pointing to a tattoo of a snarling wolf on the outside of the victim’s right calf.

  Marni looked at it for a couple of minutes, tracing the outline with her finger.

  ‘Ah, that’s a beautiful piece of work. He would have paid good money for that and it’s nothing to do with prisons or gangs. It’s also fresh. His taste in tattoos is maturing. Was maturing.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Francis, ‘how do you know if a tattoo has been done by hand or done by a machine?’

  ‘Amateur tattoos done in prison or at home are easy to spot,’ said Marni. ‘The lines are thicker and the work’s crude. They also tend to be blurred at the edges. See, look at the difference between these two.’ She pointed to the crown
on the man’s torso and the word ‘HATE’ which was emblazoned across the knuckles of his left hand. ‘Prison tattoos are always black as there’s no access to coloured ink inside.’

  Rory feigned disinterest, earning a filthy look from the boss.

  ‘It’s worth knowing, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Tattoos are featuring in more and more cases.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied through gritted teeth.

  ‘Thanks for coming in,’ said Sullivan. ‘I’m sure this information will prove to be useful.’

  Rory doubted it. It had told them precisely nothing, while shooting down what was a perfectly reasonable theory.

  Marni watched as Francis gathered up the pictures.

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Mullins,’ he said, leading her across to the door.

  ‘Marni,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been Mrs for fifteen years.’

  ‘Right, Marni it is from now on,’ he said.

  Sickening. But what a pretty shade of pink the boss’s cheeks turned when he blushed, thought Rory, as he pinned the pictures to the incident board.

  15

  Francis

  Francis watched Marni weaving her way along the crowded pavement just ahead of him. There were too many people moving to get out of the downpour for them to walk side by side. She was taking him to see another tattooist, Ishikawa Iwao, her mentor and a tattoo historian, in the hope that he could tell them something more about Evan Armstrong’s shoulder tattoo. God knows if he could help, but Francis was running out of ideas. Bradshaw had spent the lunch hour breathing down his neck and he needed to find an escape from the Chief’s rancid tobacco breath. As soon as he was back in his office, he’d called Marni and asked for help once again.

  ‘This is it,’ said Marni, over her shoulder.

  She ducked out of the rain into a doorway, which opened directly onto a flight of stairs. Inside, the walls and ceiling were painted black and the carpet was so old and worn that Francis couldn’t have hazarded a guess at its original colour. He followed Marni up the stairs, which took an abrupt turn after half a rise. A skinny girl in a black mini-dress pressed herself into the corner to give them space.