Vanishing Point (22 page)

‘Highly commendable, I’m sure, Jack,’ she said after some deliberation. ‘As for our informant …’ Claudia turned back to the whiteboard and brought up a new image.

A slender, tall, bleached-blonde-haired girl was unceremoniously laid out on an autopsy slab.

Brady looked at her. Her spiky, short punkish hair was discoloured a dirty rust colour: blood. The damage was as brutal as Melissa Ryecroft’s, if not worse. Apart from not having a hole through her head. Her body was covered in what appeared to be cigarette burns. But he wasn’t sure. He then caught sight of the autopsy photographs of the victim’s genitalia; damning evidence that she had been brutally gang-raped.

Brady turned away, sickened to his core.

‘Katya is her name. That’s the only detail we have. That and she said she was Russian. We tried tracing her with what few details we had, but nothing …’ She pointed at the murder victim. ‘Unless you’re psychic it would be difficult to talk to her,’ Claudia said, as she looked at Brady.

‘She was a nineteen-year-old Russian girl. Beautiful, model material. Brought over to London by a sex trafficker and bought by two men in the Brotherhood. She lived long enough to tell the Met officers who got there what we now know … The hotel she’d been taken to was in the West End of London. Old school money. A fellow guest had heard screams coming from the hotel room and had thought that she was some high-class hooker. He’d evidently seen her being led in by two well-dressed men. Heard her accent and knew that she was Russian. Room got raided and there she was tortured and bleeding to death on the bed. The two men torturing her had received a warning from someone that there had been a complaint made to the hotel staff and that the police were being called. They left before they had the opportunity to put the captive bolt pistol to her head. You see, Katya told us that one of the men had pulled out what looked like a black pistol and had put it to her head saying, and I quote: “This will be the best and last fuck of your life.”’

Claudia paused for a moment. ‘From her description the weapon put to her head matches a captive bolt pistol.’

She brought up a photograph.

To Brady’s eye it looked like a black hand pistol, but the end of the barrel was thicker, chunkier.

‘Forensics found DNA evidence on her body and in the room. Hair samples, fingerprints … but they don’t match with anything we have on the database. We’ve cross-referenced the DNA evidence with agencies in Europe and America. Nothing …’ Claudia’s voice trailed off. ‘But the victim did say that the man who pulled out the pistol was right-handed and on his hand he was wearing a platinum signet ring on the third finger.’

This jarred with Brady.

‘What about security camera footage?’ asked Brady, keen to see what these men looked like.

‘The hotel doesn’t have surveillance cameras. Guests don’t like it. Their attitude is they pay too much money to be spied on. And no one remembers the men coming in with the Russian girl. And, all transactions were paid in advance online by a stolen credit card. So no trail. The only eyewitness we had was the guest next door who reported the screams.’

She looked Brady straight in the eye, anticipating his next question. ‘He was found dead the following morning. Two weeks ago to be precise. Gunshot wound to the head. Armed robbery, held up at gunpoint a street away from the hotel, coincidentally before the police got a statement from him. Too coincidental if you ask me.’

Brady absorbed the enormity of what had just been said. They were just an under-funded, under-staffed murder team in a small seaside resort. This wasn’t a major European capital and yet here they were, dealing with what effectively could be an international criminal organisation.

‘Have you shared the details of Melissa Ryecroft’s murder with SOCA?’

Claudia shook her head.

‘Not yet.’

Brady breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing he wanted was them coming here to take over his investigation. He needed time to figure this out. More so for Nick’s sake.

‘Thanks, you’ve given us some invaluable information there,’ replied Brady.

Claudia looked at him, not quite able to gauge his comment.

Brady looked around the room. The atmosphere serious, the faces grim.

They were all thinking what Brady was thinking.

Had Simone Henderson been targeted by this group? It seemed likely given the mark left on her left breast.

And was Brady their next target?

Brady thought back to Frank Henderson’s words when he attacked him in the ICU. That Simone had come back up to the North East because of Brady. What if they thought that she had talked to Brady before they got to her? And crucially, what exactly did Simone know about the Nietzschean Brotherhood?

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Alright,’ said Brady clearing his throat.

He poured himself a glass of water and took a much-needed gulp.

This was the last place he wanted to be right now. He needed to have a word with Claudia; in his office. He needed whatever the other information was that Claudia couldn’t share with the team.

The investigation had changed. It was much bigger than a murdered girl. This was connected to Simone Henderson and …

Brady couldn’t think straight.

He realised he had to wind up the briefing as quickly as possible. There was too much at stake. He didn’t even know if he was still going to be in charge of the Ryecroft investigation given the fact it could now be connected to Adamson’s case. Add to that, it now seemed that Brady was being targeted.

He looked around the room.

‘This is what we know. The victim, Melissa Ryecroft was a sixteen-year-old student who attended King’s School, a private school in Tynemouth. She was in the lower sixth, studying four A Levels …’ Brady’s voice momentarily trailed off.

He realised that what she had been studying was pointless now.

He took a deep breath before continuing. ‘We know that last November she went to Budapest on holiday with her friends for her sixteenth birthday. There, we are led to believe, she met a twenty-eight-year-old man known only as “Marijuis” to us. Her parents asked her to stop communicating with the man but it seems that she continued, without their knowledge. She returned to Budapest to a clinic to have a breast augmentation operation accompanied by her father, Brian Ryecroft, who signed the consent form and paid for the plastic surgery.’

After re-reading the Ryecrofts’ earlier statements he had a clearer understanding of Brian Ryecroft’s guilt. After all, the man had taken her back to Budapest for a breast enhancement operation and, by his own admission, he spent most of the time in the hotel bar, believing that in the days before the scheduled operation his daughter was in her hotel room watching TV and on her laptop. But Brady was sure that she wouldn’t have been alone in her room. He was certain that her boyfriend Marijuis would have been keeping her company.

Brady had read the logged calls and it was clear that on her second visit to Budapest she had been receiving calls from another unregistered mobile also located in Budapest.

‘We’ve got the call log details through from her mobile phone network and she has received calls and made calls to eight unregistered mobile numbers. None of them traceable. There seems to be a pattern. Every month, sometimes less, that mobile number changes. Some are made from Eastern Europe. Mainly Romania and Lithuania and then …’ Brady said.

The word ‘Lithuania’ had jolted Brady when he had first seen it on the list of logged calls. It had immediately made him think of the two Eastern European men caught on the surveillance tape at Rake Lane Hospital. And the black Mercedes with the Lithuanian licence plate. If he hadn’t noticed the small “LT” in the corner of the licence plate he would have never made the connection. But the image he still couldn’t shake from his head was that of his brother Nick, the driver of the black Merc.

‘… the UK. The calls are predominately located in the London region but in the past month they’ve been traced to the North East,’ Brady explained. ‘It seems that this Marijuis character travels backwards and forwards between the UK and Eastern Europe. Maybe they’ve found a new business partner in the North East, which would explain why they’ve branched out up here.’

Brady noticed the interest in Claudia’s face and had already second-guessed what she was thinking: Marijuis was a sex trafficker. Someone who picked up pretty young girls, promising them the world.

The question was, if the gang did have a North East connection, who was it?

Claudia would be wondering exactly what he was wondering: did Marijuis have a brother? And if so, were they working together? And what was the link to the North East?

‘Harvey and Kodovesky, I want you to interview all of Melissa Ryecroft’s friends and classmates to see if she mentioned Marijuis to any of them. What we crucially need is some information on this character. And on the guy who left a message on her Facebook wall offering to take her to London for a meeting with the Models 1 agency. His Facebook account was fake, as we expected, much as the appointment with the model agency was too.’ Brady paused as he took another drink.

The way the day was going he needed more than just lukewarm water to get rid of the bad taste in his mouth.

‘Melissa Ryecroft got handpicked by this Marijuis character in Budapest. He chose her because she was sixteen and stunning looking. Model material … like your Russian girl,’ Brady said. His eyes rested briefly on the bloodsoaked bed where the Russian had lain while she had been sexually assaulted and butchered.

Claudia followed Brady’s eyes as he turned to the images of Melissa Ryecroft’s decapitated head and body.

‘How and why Melissa Ryecroft ended up in this condition is what we’re here to find out, people,’ Brady said as he looked back around the table. ‘As of yet, nothing’s come back from the lab. Wolfe said that he didn’t find traces of sperm in the victim’s vagina and rectum as condoms were used. And industrial bleach was used after the victim’s death in an attempt to destroy any DNA evidence. I’m not holding out much hope, and neither is Wolfe, but we’ll see what comes back from the lab.’

Brady turned his eyes on Daniels and Kenny.

‘I need you two to check Newcastle Airport security cameras for Thursday. Both inside the airport and any footage by the pick-up point outside. Also, look at the Metro surveillance footage. If she did go to the airport I imagine she would have taken the Metro there.’

Kenny and Daniels nodded.

‘Right, any questions?’ Brady asked, keen to get moving.

No one said anything.

‘Alright, you know what you’ve got to do,’ Brady said.

He watched as they pushed their chairs back and stood up.

Brady looked at Claudia who had remained seated. ‘My office?’ he said.

‘Alright, but I haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘There are some details on Melissa Ryecroft that I want to cross-reference and to do that, I need to be at Pilgrim Street to access it.’

‘Why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re cross-referencing?’ Brady asked.

Claudia looked at Brady. ‘Perhaps we should continue this in your office.’

Chapter Thirty

Brady sat down at his desk and watched as Claudia closed the office door and then took a seat opposite him.

He was worried that Claudia had found out about Nick somehow. That she and her team had been watching him. That they had made the connection that he had come up from London with the two Lithuanian brothers and was working for them. But even worse than that was the thought that she had somehow figured out that he was Brady’s brother.

‘Jack? I need to tell you something about Simone …’ Claudia delicately began as she met his eyes.

‘What about Simone?’ Brady interrupted, surprised.

‘She was one of the detectives involved in investigating the murder of the Russian girl, Katya. The one that took place a few weeks back in the London hotel.’

‘Go on,’ ordered Brady, aware of the adrenalin beginning to course through his body.

‘She was the one who got the information out of the Russian victim before she died …’ Claudia paused, as she tried to gauge his reaction.

Something in her voice made him uneasy. Then it hit him.

‘Simone’s father thought it was
me
…’ Brady began, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Jack? Look …’ Claudia attempted to explain.

‘No. Let me think!’ snapped Brady. ‘Frank Henderson said that Simone had come back up to the North East to talk to me. She had told her flatmate that she had a meeting up here with someone who worked in the Northumbrian force, named Brady.’

Claudia didn’t say anything.

‘It was
you
… wasn’t it? You’re the Brady she was meeting. Of course, Claudia Brady. You’re the head of a major sex trafficking unit. The biggest in the country. So who else would she share the information she had with, if it wasn’t you?’ demanded Brady, raising his voice.

Claudia remained silent.

‘Did you meet with her?’ he shouted, angry at her refusal to answer him.

He stared at her. His dark brown eyes cold.

‘Of course you did, otherwise you wouldn’t know what you know,’ he muttered quietly. He frowned. ‘Don’t you think it’s crossing a line? The woman you caught me in bed with contacting you?’

Distressed by the suggestion, Claudia looked away.

‘So … what happened?’ demanded Brady. He wasn’t going to let her off that easy. ‘Did you send her into Madley’s, is that it? Did you know they were going to be in there that night and so you sent her in as bait? Is that it? See if they bite and take her to wherever they’re holding the other trafficked girls? Was that it?’

‘Jack! Please … you’ve got it all wrong,’ Claudia desperately insisted.

‘Have I? Have I really?’ questioned Brady harshly, unable to disguise the contempt he felt. ‘If it had all worked out, imagine where you’d be now. Not sat in my office with a mutilated copper fighting for her life.’

She shook her head, her eyes now looking at him. They were filled with tears.