Vanishing Point

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.’