The Tattoo Thief

by Alison Belsham

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This woman was murdered six months ago. Her arm was hacked off.’ She pointed to the tattoo in the picture. ‘It hasn’t been found.’

  Noa came over to take a look and even Thierry, despite himself, craned his neck to see the image. He let out a soft whistle. Marni watched him closely, gauging his reaction to the image, but his face told her very little.

  ‘Rad. I knew a guy who had a piece like that, but like the flesh was torn away at the edges,’ said Noa.

  ‘That’s a sick effect,’ said Thierry. ‘Wasn’t that by Seamus Byrne?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it was. He does a lot of stuff like that.’

  ‘But not this one?’ said Marni. ‘It doesn’t quite look like his work to me.’

  ‘Let me take a look.’ Intrigued, Charlie had put down his iron and stripped off his gloves to come over. The girl on his bench took the opportunity to stretch out and drink some water.

  As Charlie studied the picture, the apprentice stopped what she was doing and slinked up behind Thierry. She snaked her arms around his neck and nuzzled his shoulder. Thierry turned round to kiss her on the mouth. Marni looked away. No one wants to watch their ex playing tonsil hockey. It hurt, but then he always had been an insensitive bastard.

  ‘Hey, guys,’ said Noa, reading her discomfort.

  Thierry looked round at Marni, then back at the girl.

  ‘Later, babe.’

  Marni wondered if he even knew her name.

  ‘How old are you?’ she said pointedly.

  The girl looked like a deer caught in headlights.

  ‘Putain, Marni. Leave her alone.’

  Charlie and Noa exchanged looks, and Charlie picked up the image.

  ‘It’s good work,’ he said. ‘Really good.’

  ‘The killer has taste, no?’ said Thierry.

  Marni forced her attention back to the reason why she was here, and away from thoughts of the last time she’d kissed Thierry. When had that been? A year or two ago, after a drunken night out at one of the conventions?

  ‘That’s true. Evan Armstrong’s tattoo was by Jonah Mason. He’s one of the best at tribal black work.’

  ‘I knew Evan,’ said Charlie. ‘He was a good guy.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Thierry. ‘That’s why he skipped out without paying.’

  ‘But he was a laugh,’ said Noa. ‘And you could have got him to pay. You were just too lazy to follow up.’

  ‘I think he probably paid you in dope,’ said Marni. ‘Plenty did back then.’

  Thierry shook his head, but he was laughing.

  ‘You really think the police are onto something? Like there’s a killer going around taking people’s tattoos? I don’t buy it,’ said Noa.

  ‘You know you can cure human skin like leather?’ said Marni. ‘They do it in Japan with Yakuza tattoos.’

  ‘Gross,’ said the schoolgirl.

  ‘I’d better get on,’ said Charlie, going back to his client. ‘But actually, you know who that could be by?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘There’s a guy from Poland. Bartosz somebody. His work is a bit like that.’

  Thierry went back to his desk and opened his browser.

  ‘Bartosz? B-A-R-T-O-S-Z?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Charlie, pulling on a fresh pair of black latex gloves.

  ‘Bartosz Klem,’ Thierry confirmed a few seconds later. ‘Yeah, this looks pretty similar.’

  Marni stood behind his chair and stared at the screen. There was a scrolling column of tattoo images, most of them biomechanical in theme and very similar to the tattoo on the woman’s arm.

  ‘It’s a pretty safe bet, I’d say,’ she murmured.

  ‘So why do the police need to know who did the tattoos?’ asked Charlie. ‘Do they think the artists had something to do with the murders? Aren’t they all by different people?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Marni, with a shrug. ‘That doesn’t make much sense. I think they’re just grasping at straws.’

  ‘But they definitely think it’s something to do with the tattoos?’ asked Noa.

  Marni shrugged again. She rolled up the picture.

  ‘Thanks, guys. I’ll let DI Sullivan know. It’s up to him whether the information has any bearing on the case.’

  ‘Francis.’ Thierry’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Marni. She wasn’t going to rise to the bait. It would gain her nothing and just give him the satisfaction of knowing he could still press her buttons.

  ‘Come to the pub, chérie,’ said Noa.

  ‘Not today, darling.’

  Marni let the door swing shut behind her. A drink with Charlie and Noa would have been good, but she was damned if she was going to watch Thierry canoodle in a corner with his apprentice. She sometimes wondered if she shouldn’t move away to stop the endless pull and push between them, but it always came down to one thing. It wouldn’t be fair on Alex. Thierry had already been a part-time father since Alex was six and he was reaching an age now when a father’s influence – even one as flaky as Thierry’s – was most important.

  It wasn’t quite dark but there was a sharp edge to the wind now that the sun had dropped away. She hugged her jacket round her shoulders, wondering if there really was someone stalking the town for great tattoos. And that was the thing. They were all good pieces. She knew of the two they’d identified, Jonah Mason and Bartosz Klem. And Francis had shown her another picture, of a spider tattoo on the head of the most recent victim. The lettering was familiar-looking work too.

  She passed a tattoo shop she knew on St James’s Street and peered in. It was all shut up, no sign of Mandy or Pepe, the tattooists who worked there. There was a scuffed and torn poster stuck to the inside of the window advertising the recent convention. That needs to come down now, she thought to herself as she hurried on towards home.

  For the rest of the way, a single thought bugged her.

  What joined the dots? Apart from being tattooed, what did these three victims have in common that would make them targets?

  But she didn’t want to get drawn into things any further, so there was no reason to concern herself with it. Except for the creeping doubt. Could there be more linking her to this case than simply having discovered the body?

  20

  Rory

  ‘We’ve made some progress,’ said the boss. ‘And there’s no reason why we can’t build on it.’

  Seemed like the boss’s definition of progress and his own were slightly different.

  It was Thursday morning and the whole team were gathered in the incident room for the DI’s daily briefing.

  He pointed at the incident board.

  ‘We’ve now got three murders on the board, one of them a cold case from six months ago. Giselle Connelly. The link between all three is tentative but if it holds out – and that’s a big “if” – we’ve probably got a serial killer on our hands.’

  There was a palpable frisson of excitement at the words ‘serial killer’, especially among the younger officers. After all, it was why most of them became detectives. It made Rory remember the first time he’d been involved on a serial killer case. He’d been a plain DC then, but with plenty of cases under his belt, and the DI on the case had been nearing retirement, had seen it all before. But even with a highly experienced team, it had taken months to solve the case. Francis Sullivan might be able to pass exams with his eyes shut, but he wouldn’t solve these murders.

  The thought depressed him, so he turned his attention back to what Francis was saying.

  ‘We’ve got to either prove or rule out a link between these three murders. So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything to tie the three victims together. Evan Armstrong worked in IT, no criminal record, no known enemies, straight but no steady girlfriend. Giselle Connelly, traine
e lawyer, boyfriend out of the country when she was killed, and Jem Walsh, apprentice tattooist. I doubt their paths ever crossed.’

  ‘But even if it’s a serial killer,’ said Hollins, ‘he might be choosing his victims randomly.’ He looked pleased with himself at this observation. Rory had noticed before that Hollins was nurturing an ambition to move up the ranks.

  ‘Of course. Most serial killers do. But what I mean is a link between the crimes. Rose Lewis and her team are cross-checking all the forensics. You lot are going to cross-reference every known fact about the victims, how they died, where they died, what they were doing before they were attacked . . . Everything. If we can find any sort of link, it moves us forward. If there are no links, then no serial killer. And if we’ve got three separate killers, we’ll have to work three times as hard.’

  In other words, we know nothing.

  Rory’s phone rang. It was Bradshaw.

  ‘Give me a minute, Sergeant,’ he barked and hung up.

  Rory’s chest felt tight as he climbed the stairs to the top floor. Bloody cigarettes. Bradshaw’s door was ajar and he slipped in as the chief finished a phone call.

  ‘Ah, Mackay. I won’t take up much of your time.’

  ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

  ‘Just between me and you,’ said Bradshaw, in a lowered tone.

  Rory closed the office door and Bradshaw nodded at him approvingly.

  ‘I want you to be my eyes and ears in the incident room, Mackay.’

  Rory digested what he said. ‘How do you mean, sir? We give you daily updates.’

  Bradshaw gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘What I need is the inside track. You know, how things are going, how Sullivan’s getting on. He’s relatively inexperienced and could do with a friendly eye on him.’

  The chief was asking him to spy on Sullivan.

  ‘Of course, sir. I’ll keep you in the know with whatever he’s doing.’

  Bradshaw nodded sagely, as if they’d made an important joint decision. ‘Thank you, Mackay. Now, off you go – I’m sure there’s plenty waiting to be done.’

  An hour later, Rory and Tony Hitchins were wearing out their shoe leather visiting a list of pubs that Jem Walsh’s brother had told them he frequented.

  ‘Yeah, he’s a regular,’ said the landlord of the Mucky Duck, resting his elbows on the heavy wooden bar. ‘Couple of times a week, usually. You after him for something?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Rory.

  They showed him the pictures of Evan Armstrong and Giselle Connelly.

  The landlord shook his head. ‘Can’t recall either of them, but we get a lot of tourists and one-off visitors. Don’t remember all of the faces that come in here.’

  It was the same in all the other pubs they tried. No one that knew Jem Walsh knew either of the other two, and when they went round Evan’s local haunts later, the story was the same. Only in one city centre hostelry did a member of the bar staff recognise both Jem and Evan, and he’d never seen them together.

  ‘And Giselle didn’t even live in Brighton, did she?’ said Hitchins, as they made their way wearily back to the station.

  ‘No. Littlehampton.’ Rory scowled. ‘Never been in so many pubs without having a drink.’

  They met Hollins coming out as they were going in.

  ‘Come across anything useful?’ said Rory.

  Hollins shook his head. ‘Not a bean. No work overlap, no school overlap, no friends overlap, different activities the nights they were attacked. Evan Armstrong was on his way home from a nightclub, Jem Walsh had been hanging out at a friend’s house, and Giselle Connelly had been working late. I’m just heading out to talk to the owner of the place where Walsh worked, then I’ll visit his old headmaster.’

  Rory didn’t miss the slightly sneering look on Hitchins’ face at Hollins’ dedication to the job.

  ‘Looks like no serial killer after all,’ said Hitchins, as they climbed the stairs.

  ‘Not necessarily. If he’s picking victims at random, there’s no reason why they would be linked. Or they could just have a link to the killer but not to each other.’

  Hitchins gave him a sceptical look.

  ‘I know,’ said Rory. ‘This case needs a bloody break. And not in the form of another dead body.’

  ‘There’s plenty of speculation going down on Twitter,’ said Hitchins. ‘Maybe we should take a look through it all.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Twitter?’ said Rory. ‘Bloody waste of space designed for conspiracy theorists to sound off on.’

  ‘But what if the killer was on it?’

  ‘Fine. Check it out and see if anyone seems to have inside knowledge that’s not public yet. But you can take a bet that if someone does, it’ll be an indiscreet PC rather than the killer.’

  Rory headed into Sullivan’s office to report their complete failure to make any headway.

  ‘Sorry, boss, but there’s no link between the victims.’

  ‘Or the crimes, according to Rose,’ said Francis. ‘She hasn’t found a single scrap of matching forensic evidence across any of the cases. Nothing to suggest the same weapons, no DNA or hair or fibres. No fingerprints. Nada.’

  ‘So, no to the serial killer theory?’

  ‘Indeed. I think we’re looking at different killers with different motives. This whole business with the tattoos is nothing but a red herring.’

  21

  Marni

  How the hell had that happened? One minute he’d been a baby, now he was sprawled out drunk and snoring across the sofa. Marni fetched a plastic bowl from under the sink and a pint glass of water. Then she shifted Alex’s feet to make room to sit down. She tapped on one of his shins through his jeans to wake him up.

  ‘How was the last exam?’ she asked, as he started to stir.

  ‘What?’ He rubbed his eyes and saw the glass of water.

  She waited while he downed it in one.

  ‘The last exam, Alex? Remember, this morning, business studies?’

  As he put the glass down, a wide grin lifted the corners of his mouth.

  He looked so like Thierry when he smiled it made her heart ache.

  ‘Aced it.’

  ‘Really?’ He didn’t sound too drunk, she noted thankfully.

  ‘All the right questions came up, everything good.’

  ‘God knows you don’t get that from your father or me. Not an A level between us.’

  ‘Dad got his baccalauréat, didn’t he?’

  Thierry was the last thing she wanted to talk about. She’d seen too much of him over the last few days and it was stirring up all the conflicting feelings she’d been trying to leave behind.

  ‘How did it go for Martin and the others?’

  ‘Good too, I think. Liv was moaning a bit, but she always does and then she comes top.’

  Liv was Marni’s niece, who went to the same school as Alex.

  He hiccoughed. ‘What time is it? I need to meet them.’

  ‘It’s just gone four. But wait, you’re not going out again, are you? You’re already drunk.’

  ‘Mum!’ He screwed up his face. ‘I’m not drunk. We had a bottle of champagne to celebrate, instead of lunch. But lots of the others still had an exam this afternoon, so the main party’s tonight.’

  Marni sighed. Single parenting. She had to be good cop and bad cop rolled into one.

  ‘Well, I’m making you pasta before you go. Come and talk to me in the kitchen.’

  The phone rang as she was filling the kettle.

  ‘Marni Mullins?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘My name’s Tom Fitz from the Argus. I understand you found a body . . .’

  Marni hung up. If there was one breed she distrusted even more than the police, it was journalists. Damn – how had the man found ou
t that it was her who had discovered the body? And how had he got her number?

  By the time the pasta was cooked, the friction between mother and son had evaporated. To be fair, Alex had never been the difficult teenager that some of her friends had to deal with.

  ‘Tell me about your day,’ said Alex, once he was ensconced on a stool at the breakfast bar, wolfing down spaghetti. ‘Who did you permanently disfigure with your needle?’

  Marni laughed. There was no way Alex was going to join the family business. He had nothing but disdain for all things tattoo, which was fine by Marni because she knew it rankled with Thierry.

  ‘Just one poor woman who didn’t have the sense to see that getting a tattoo would ruin her life,’ she teased.

  ‘Mum, you’re the worst. You should have warned her. And now she might fall victim to that tattoo killer. You’ve just expanded his victim pool.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘Everyone at school’s talking about it. Each time you tattoo someone, you’re giving him fresh prey.’

  ‘I can’t see why he’d want to murder someone with one of my tattoos.’ So how and why was he picking his victims?

  ‘Why not? They’re as good as anyone’s. If I was going around killing people and collecting tattoos, I’d want one by you.’

  ‘That’s sweet of you, but you’re warped. Anyway, I don’t suppose he cares who they’re by.’

  ‘But you said your policeman thought they might be trophies. So it stands to reason you want something decent. Not a piece of shit from a drunk night out in Magaluf.’

  Marni cleared his plate into the dishwasher. She knew she shouldn’t, that she should make Alex do it. But then it would never get done.

  ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t taken any bad ones yet. They’ve all been good.’

  Alex fell on a bowl of ice cream like he hadn’t eaten in a week, his attention lost.

  On the kitchen wall behind Alex there was a poster for a tattoo exhibition. It showed a naked woman from behind, her entire back covered by the most spectacular Japanese back piece. It was for a show held the previous year in the Saatchi Gallery, The Alchemy of Blood and Ink. She and Alex had gone up to London together to see it. It was of no real interest to him, but he’d taken her for a birthday treat. To one side of the naked woman on the poster ran a list of ten names. These were the ten tattoo artists whose work had been featured in the exhibition.