the stomach for it. Either for the food or Wolfe’s autopsy reports and definitely not served together.
Brady looked out of the large window. Below him was the Simmons’ long back garden. And just beyond it, the crime scene. Trees and overgrown bushes hid most of the farmhouse ruins but Brady could still make out the white-clad SOCOs. He sighed heavily and turned round. He was stood in one of the two double back bedrooms. But this wasn’t just any room, Brady suddenly realised. This was Sophie’s room. The room’s heady aroma was claustrophobic; a sickly combination of perfume and deodorant, it was all that was left of Sophie Washington.
Brady had excused himself a few minutes earlier, stating that he needed to take a call. He wanted to be out of earshot of the Simmons and the other officers as soon as he realised it was Wolfe calling and had found his way upstairs into Sophie’s room.
He looked around at the teenage chaos. Posters of bands and other crap covered the walls, reminding Brady that he was getting old. The double bed and the large chest of wooden drawers and bedside cabinets were covered in make-up, perfume, nail varnish, clothes, CDs; the sprawling paraphernalia was endless. The door to the walk-in closet had been left wide open and Brady could see from where he was standing that clothes and shoes lay scattered in much the same disarray as in her room. A large mirror stood in the corner, lost in a disarray of clothes, some of which were tossed over the mirror or dumped on the polished wooden floor. Wherever she was going last night, the last thing she had on her mind was homework.
He wasn’t surprised that Sophie had a state-of-the-art forty-inch flat-screen HD television mounted on her wall or that she had every electronic gadget you could imagine scattered around. She was an only child after all, and one whose father had committed suicide and whose mother had remarried a man who Brady’s gut feeling was telling him, she didn’t actually like. The room smacked of guilt. Everywhere around him, from the fancy flat-screen TV to the expensive clothes, jewellery and make-up carelessly thrown about, suggested that Sophie’s affections were being bought.
His eyes were soon drawn to the crammed notice board above the empty computer desk. He limped over to it. It was a colourful mosaic of different sized photographs. It took Brady a minute to realise that the girl staring back at him from most of the shots was the victim. But the girl he was looking at definitely didn’t match the innocent girl her parents had just described. Nor the school photo they had first shown him.
In many of the photographs she was wearing heavy make-up and skimpy clothes; too skimpy in his opinion for an eighteen-year-old, never mind a fifteen-year-old girl. One group shot looked as if the victim and her friends were downing shots before heading out clubbing. What threw Brady was the fact that they all looked old enough to be knocking back spirits.
‘Fuck me,’ he muttered.
Brady swallowed hard. One photograph grabbed his attention. The victim was stood next to a man in his early twenties. Brady couldn’t help but notice the way she was looking at him. That and the fact she had an arm wrapped around him while one hand playfully attempted to pull his face towards hers. Brady had had enough life experience to know that this looked far from innocent.
Without a second thought, he pulled it off the notice board and placed it in his pocket. As he did something fluttered to the floor. Wincing, he gingerly bent down and picked it up. It was flyer for a local band; The Clashed. He looked at the list of dates and the venues. They were due to play at The Fat Ox in Whitley Bay tonight. Why, Brady questioned, would a fifteen-year-old have a flyer advertising gigs held in pubs? And more importantly, why was tonight’s gig circled in red?
Brady discreetly put the flyer in his pocket along with the photo.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Brady turned. It was Simmons.
‘Just wanted to have a look at the view of the farmland from the back of the house,’ Brady answered casually. He wondered just how long Simmons had been standing by the door.
‘You might find it helpful if you actually looked out the window, Detective Inspector,’ Simmons stated coldly.
‘Sophie seemed like a popular girl,’ Brady stated, as he jerked his head at the montage of photos.
‘I thought I’d asked you to leave,’ challenged Simmons, ignoring Brady’s comment.
‘Those photos of Sophie and her friends, didn’t they bother you and your wife?’
‘Get out! You hear me? Get out of her bedroom!’
‘If I wasn’t mistaken, I’d say you were obstructing this investigation. You do want Sophie’s murderer caught?’ Brady questioned as he stared at Simmons’ flushed face.
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘The kind that tells you I’m suspicious,’ replied Brady evenly.
He then headed towards the panelled wooden door.
‘Be warned, sir, sooner or later I’ll find out whatever it is that you’re not telling me.’
‘Get out!’ hissed Simmons.
Brady turned and left.
What he had seen was enough to worry him. The photographs of the victim and her murdered body blurred the fact that Sophie Washington was still only a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Even Brady would have found it difficult as a hardened copper to single her and her friends out as underage drinkers in any one of Whitley Bay’s nightclubs. Something didn’t add up.
Conrad started up the engine.
Brady waited until he had lit a cigarette before he said anything.
‘I want you to see what you can dig up on Simmons,’ instructed Brady.
‘Yes sir,’ answered Conrad.
The more he thought about it, the more the Simmons’ statement about the victim didn’t ring true. The evidence he’d taken from her notice board was testimony to that. Coupled with the tattoo, it wasn’t looking good.
He slowly smoked his cigarette as he thought about Simmons’ motive. Brady had a gut feeling about Simmons, one he couldn’t shake. But he needed Wolfe’s autopsy report to confirm if his hunch was right. Until then, he had no choice but to keep it to himself.
‘What about the victim’s mother?’ Conrad asked.
Brady shook his head.
‘No, we don’t have to bother with her,’ answered Brady.
He massaged his forehead as he thought over what she had said.
‘She went to bed at 10 pm, the next thing she knew was Paul Simmons waking her to say Sophie was missing,’ Brady stated.
Conrad looked at him, surprised.
‘Didn’t you notice how many gins she knocked back while we were there?’
‘Surely that’s simply the ordeal of formally identifying her murdered daughter?’ Conrad suggested.
‘I take it you didn’t see the amount of wine and gin bottles she had stacked in their recycling box then?’ Brady stated.
Conrad shook his head as he concentrated on the traffic.
‘If Sophie had come home after she had gone to bed she wouldn’t have heard a thing. It seems that Louise Simmons had checked out of her daughter’s life. The question is, why?’ Brady asked.
Conrad shrugged.
‘Louise Simmons knew something was going wrong in her daughter’s life but she chose to hide behind a fog of alcohol,’ Brady concluded.
‘You think, sir?’ Conrad asked, frowning.
‘I guarantee it.’
Conrad drove along in silence for a minute before turning to Brady.
‘Could Sophie have heard something when she got home? From her bedroom?’
‘Like what? Kids messing about?’
Conrad nodded.
‘It’s possible. I checked out her bedroom and from the window you can make out the crime scene.’
