Brady couldn’t disagree. He had seen the body at the crime scene and had, as they all had, mistaken her for a young woman in her late teens to early twenties.
‘Yeah, but I still think they should be shaken up a bit. There’s a reason that you’re meant to be over eighteen.’
Brady rested his eye on DSs Daniels and Kenny.
‘Tomorrow you two check out all the tattoo shops in thearea. But right now your job is to find our missing lad, McGuire. Check out the local haunts in Whitley Bay and also do a round of the pubs down North Parade.’
Brady could see Daniels and Kenny both wincing at the thought of checking out the pubs in North Parade. Most of the drinkers in North Parade had travelled there for the weekend looking for trouble. And two plain-clothes coppers asking questions were easy targets.
‘Can I say a few words, Jack?’ asked Jenkins as she stood up.
Brady nodded and sat down. He knew what she wanted to say, having already briefed him earlier.
Jenkins moved over to the whiteboard.
‘I know that we’re looking for someone known to the victim,’ Jenkins began as she turned from the board and faced the room.
‘The modus operandi tells us that Sophie Washington knew her attacker. There was no struggle, at least not until she was being choked which suggests that she knew whoever did this to her and she trusted them.’
Jenkins paused as she looked back at the whiteboard.
‘She either met her attacker at the crime scene or went willingly to the location with them. Forensics found no marks on the ground to indicate that she had been dragged or dumped there.’
She turned and briefly caught Brady’s eye.
‘The reason I’m going over what DI Brady has already effectively said is that the gravity of the attack to her face concerns me. And I think we can be blinded into thinking this is just overkill, which you’ll all be familiar with, is any effort that goes beyond what is necessary to kill the victim. I’m presuming most of you will be surmising that it wasthis unidentified boyfriend of hers who killed her and then mutilated her face afterwards?’ Jenkins asked.
The consenting grumbles around the room confirmed her suspicions.
‘What I’m asking of you is to think out of the box for a moment. Think about why her murderer chose to specifically attack her face.’
The silence was heavy and awkward. Brady could see that no one was quite understanding Jenkins’ point.
‘Maybe he was the jealous sort? For all we know she could have been playing around and he’d found out?’ suggested Adamson.
‘Maybe. But why not mutilate her breasts and private parts? Why specifically her face and to such a degree of destruction?’
Adamson shrugged.
‘You tell me, Doctor?’ he said, smiling.
‘That’s the point, I can’t. The attack to her face is definitely overkill, but not the kind I’d expect from a boyfriend. This is different. This hints of repressed anger and jealousy towards the victim. As we can see she was a very pretty young woman,’ Jenkins pointed out as she looked at the photograph of Sophie Washington on the whiteboard.
‘Someone hated her for that. So much so, that even when she was dead they couldn’t bear to look at that face. Her murder wasn’t enough to satisfy their anger and jealousy. Not until every identifiable trait was eradicated.’
‘But isn’t that the same as the jilted boyfriend or husband who throws acid in their ex-spouse’s face? Or even slashes their face?’ Adamson asked.
Jenkins looked at him and shook her head.
‘No,’ she simply answered.
‘Why? It’s the same mutilation surely?’ Adamson queried, confused.
‘No, the two couldn’t be more different. In the cases you’re referring to, the key distinction is that the victim is still alive. The point is to punish the victim. She has to live the rest of her life severely disfigured, satisfying the ex-spouse that if he can’t have her, then no one else will want her.’
Jenkins paused as she looked around the room. She realised that most of them were on the same page as Adamson.
‘The key difference with Sophie Washington is that she was already dead. The disfigurement to her face was never about punishment. It was about relieving the resentment and fury on the murderer’s part,’ Jenkins said, realising that she was talking to herself.
‘I know I’m stating the obvious here, but we really want to be taking everything that’s being left on the victim’s wall on Facebook seriously. For all we know, the murderer has left a message. It’s similar to the murderer feeling the compulsion to attend his victim’s funeral, or even in some cases trying to get involved in the murder investigation. Same applies with the cyberworld,’ Jenkins concluded.
The victim’s blog and Facebook posts had thrown Brady, as much as they had thrown the rest of the team. There were some details that even he found unpalatable. Her entries had confirmed what they had already suspected. However, no photos were posted of her ‘cyber boyfriend’ and no name was given. Instead, his unsavoury sexual antics with her were graphically and immodestly blogged. At times it was too easy to forget that victim was only fifteen.
Jenkins looked at Brady as she stepped back and sat down.
‘Thanks, Dr Jenkins,’ Brady said as he stood up and tookover. ‘All right people, we have our work cut out for us. So let’s get started.’
The room grumbled in response as people started to get ready to leave.
‘And Adamson,’ Brady said, as he turned to the DS. ‘You may have forgotten, but I haven’t. I’m still waiting for Sophie Washington’s medical records. I don’t care who you wake up to get them but I want them before the night’s out!’ Brady ordered, fuming over the stunt he had pulled requesting that he be partnered with Jenkins. Brady wasn’t sure whether Adamson thought he had a chance with Jenkins. But from what Brady knew of her, he didn’t think she’d give him the time of day.
Adamson shot him a sour look.
‘I don’t give a fuck if you don’t like it. I’m sure Sophie Washington didn’t like the fact that someone was sexually abusing her from the age of eleven and then at fifteen she ends up dead with her face smashed beyond human recognition! It’s our job to find out exactly what the hell was going on in that kid’s life which led to someone fucking her and then murdering her. Someone, can I add, who that kid knew. This was personal. Someone hated that kid so much that even when she had stopped breathing they couldn’t let go of the loathing they felt towards her. Were they connected to the sexual abuse that started when the victim was ten or eleven, who knows? Had she threatened to betray them and so they tried to silence her, again who knows? But it’s our job to bloody find out. And if that means searching her medical records for some kind of clue as to what was happening to her then that’s what we do.’
Brady suddenly caught Gates’ eyes and wondered exactly how long he had been standing there.
‘Can I have a word, Jack?’
Heads turned and looked at Gates.
Brady shot Conrad a questioning look. But Conrad seemed as unsure about Gates’ sudden interruption as Brady.
‘Now!’ Gates ordered as he walked out, slamming the door shut.
Brady couldn’t help but notice DS Adamson’s self-satisfied smile. He clenched his fists in an attempt to resist the urge to wipe it off his face.
‘What do you know about this?’ Gates irritably demanded as he thrust a sheet of paper at Brady.
Brady quickly realised that it was the murder victim’s toxicological report.
‘I haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet, sir,’ Brady answered.
‘Well here’s your chance.’
Brady picked it up and quickly scanned through the information. He abruptly stopped.
The alcohol concentration in her blood sample was 3.9 grammes per litre, which meant she had been heavily intoxicated.
