cigarette, grateful to be alone. Things were winding down inside. Last orders had been called and the punters were more desperate for that last pint than they were for a tab.
He turned as he heard the doors of The Fat Ox open behind him. Conrad’s reserved figure appeared.
‘Where were you?’ Brady questioned.
‘Looking for you,’ Conrad replied. ‘Saw your girlfriend in there,’ he added.
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘That explains why she’s all over the lead singer then.’
Conrad’s words hung heavy in the cold night air. Brady stood for a moment as he dragged deeply on his cigarette. It helped ground him. Otherwise, he would have found himself going back inside and rearranging pretty boy’s face.
‘When we get back to the station I want you to run every check you can on Ben Ellison. I don’t trust that bastard.’
‘Sir? We’re already holding Simmons for questioning!’
‘But that doesn’t mean we stop looking for the boyfriend the victim wrote about on her blog. Does it?’
‘You don’t seriously believe her form tutor was having sex with her, do you?’
‘Why not? Some bastard was.’
A loud rap at his office door forced Brady to snap out of his maudlin mood.
His run-in with Sleeping Beauty had made him take a long hard look at his life. The end result wasn’t good. He hated what he’d become and couldn’t quite figure out how he’d ended up at such a low point in his life.
‘Simmons, sir,’ Conrad began as he entered the room.
Brady looked at him.
‘The lab results have come back … we’ve got nothing on him.’
‘You what?’
‘No legible prints could be found on the stone that was used on the victim. And as for the other DNA evidence Forensics found at the crime scene and on the victim … well… nothing matches with Simmons’ DNA. Same with the hand and footprints.’
‘Shit!’ cursed Brady.
‘The upshot is he’s been released.’
‘On whose bloody orders?’ Brady demanded.
‘Gates.’
‘Shit,’ said Brady. ‘I take it Gates has read Evie Matthews’ statement and the autopsy report?’
‘Yes sir. But Simmons’ solicitor pointed out it’s her word against his client’s. We have no other evidence against Simmons to substantiate her claim.’
‘Apart from the autopsy report.’
‘Yes, but as Simmons’ solicitor stated, we have no proof that Simmons was responsible for that.’
‘But what about the fact that he has no alibi?’
Conrad shook his head.
‘Simmons’ solicitor is good and Gates knows it. I don’t know what she said but she’s backed Gates into a corner.’
Brady sighed wearily, exhausted.
He didn’t like the way this day was starting out. They were less than an hour into it and already he wanted it to end.
‘Why the bloody hell has it taken so long to get hold of those?’ Brady asked as he gestured at the files Conrad was holding.
‘Adamson, sir,’ Conrad answered simply as he laid them on Brady’s desk. ‘Bureaucracy I think he said.’
‘I should have expected as much from him,’ muttered Brady.
He shook his head as he picked up the top file. It was after one-thirty in the morning and he still had a lot of reading to get through before he could even consider catching up on some sleep.
Brady closed the final medical file on Sophie Washington and reached for his BlackBerry.
‘Conrad? My office.’
He massaged his pounding forehead as he waited for Conrad. It was well after two and he was running on empty.
Brady held up the files for Conrad as he walked into the office.
‘If you see Adamson before I do, tell him I’ll shove bureaucracy up his arse. I should have had these hours ago.’
‘What did you find out?’ Conrad asked.
‘Nothing that I didn’t expect to find. Seems that from about the age of eleven Sophie Washington suffered from migraines. But the doctor diagnosed them as “emotional migraines',’ Brady explained.
Conrad frowned.
‘Meaning that something was really stressing her. She’d been having them on and off for the past four years and not surprisingly, she suffered a serious bout of them around the time her father committed suicide.’
‘Do you think the migraines were connected to Simmons?’ Conrad asked.
‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’ questioned Brady. ‘Bloody useless sods!’ Brady muttered as he gestured to the files. ‘If they’d done their job then I wouldn’t be sat here now.’
Conrad looked at him.
‘She was offered counselling when her father died,’ explained Brady. ‘Which she started, but from the files here it seems she was signed off after the third session. The counsellor noted that Sophie’s home life was causing her a lot of anxiety, but she put that down to her father’s suicide and her mother’s recent marriage to Simmons, who Sophie openly admitted she hated. The counsellor took that admission at face value and presumed that it was because her mother was seen to be replacing her father, who she idealised, with Simmons.’
Brady shook his head.
‘All too bloody middle-class, that’s the problem here. You know if she’d been dragged up on the Ridges the counsellor would have had a whole different approach to Sophie. But no, instead she sat back and heard what she wanted to hear. Nice middle-class family, straight-A student with a few emotional problems. Fairly typical given her father’s suicide. Add in that she doesn’t get on with her mum’s new husband, and there you go. Nothing to really worry about. Just a case of typical middle-class teenage angst.’
‘Yes sir,’ agreed Conrad, knowing not to question Brady in the middle of a tirade.
‘She was crying out for help, but no one was listening to her, Conrad. Her father bailed out on her by committing suicide, her mother chose to drown out her suspicions with alcohol and finally her doctor and counsellor literally accepted what she told them. She was a smart girl. She told them what they wanted to hear, too ashamed, too guilt-ridden and scared to admit to them what was really going on in her life,’ Brady explained. ‘When she really needed help, there was no one around. Surely if they had made that extra effort with her, then maybe she wouldn’t have ended up in the morgue.’
Sophie’s short, tragic life had really got to him.
‘No one really listened to her.’
Conrad nodded.
‘All it would have taken was one person in her life to notice … to really notice what was going on …’
He looked up at Conrad who was stood, patiently waiting for Brady to finish his diatribe.
‘I’ll get him, Conrad. Mark my words, I’ll get the bastard that did this to her,’ Brady threatened, as he looked at her medical files. ‘He may be roaming free but I’m not done looking for him yet.’
Brady took a mouthful of lukewarm coffee before he realised that Conrad was waiting to tell him something.
‘Go on then?’
‘You know you wanted me to run some checks on Ben Ellison?’ Conrad questioned.
Brady nodded, still distracted by the victim’s medical files.
‘He actually lives five minutes from The Beacon and a few minutes from Potter’s Farm.’
‘You’re kidding me?’ Brady spluttered.
