‘Shit!’
The last thing he wanted to do was piss Gates off. Not on his first day back. If Conrad had put his foot down like Brady had said then they would have gotten here over five minutes ago.
‘Do either of you have any mints?’
‘Sorry, sir?’ questioned the young officer, confused.
‘Bloody mints! Do you have any?’ replied Brady losing his patience. The knowledge that Gates had already gone had left him in a foul mood.
PC Hamilton hurriedly pulled out a packet of mints from his jacket pocket and handed them to Brady.
He would need them when he came face to face with Gates. The last thing Gates would tolerate was the smell of booze. A reformed alcoholic, Gates had led a Puritanical crusade against the vice, intolerant of any officer who came in to work oozing the telltale lingering perfume of a heavy night’s drinking.
Brady pocketed the mints and bent down under the tape and walked through the open gate.
Below in the distance he could see the cold glow of lights set up over the crime scene. The constant hum of the generator to power the spotlights muffled the low talk of the officers behind him.
He walked down the dirt track that had been ravaged by weeds and long, wild grass.
‘Never knew this existed,’ said Conrad catching him up.
Brady nodded as he looked around. It was a dark, lonely spot; an ideal location to murder someone or dump a body. All around him thick clumps of bushes loomed threateningly, wild and overgrown, hiding a multitude of sins.
‘Who do you think comes down here?’ asked Conrad.
‘Kids,’ answered Brady. He had already noticed a couple of empty, plastic cider bottles dumped in the overgrown bushes.
‘It’s the ideal place to come and get pissed or high. No one is going to bother you,’ continued Brady as he turned his head and looked back at the unlit track leading up to the main road.
He stopped abruptly and sighed.
‘Shine your torch down here, will you, Conrad?’
‘Crap!’ Brady cursed as he looked at the dog faeces stuck to the sole of his boot. ‘There’s your answer, Conrad.’
‘Sir?’
‘Kids and bloody dog walkers. That’s who come down here,’ he muttered as he tried his best to clean his boots.
‘What the bloody hell is this? Didn’t I make myself clear when I said that I don’t want any more bloody footprints messing up my crime scene? You lot have already buggered up enough! Now clear off!’ thundered an irate white-clad figure as he emerged fuming from the crumbling walls that would have once been a farmhouse. Behind the ruined walls spotlights coldly illuminated the crime scene.
Conrad stiffened his shoulders, his jaw rigid as he readied himself for battle with Ainsworth, the Scene of Crime Unit’s senior officer; infamous for his ill-temper and obstinacy.
‘Good to hear that you’re still the same sour-faced old bugger!’
‘Jack Brady?’ spluttered Ainsworth.
‘They couldn’t get rid of me that easily,’ answered Brady as he approached the senior SOCO. He was a short, portly man with a receding head of curly silver hair and a large, ravaged face that belied the fact that he was only in his mid-forties.
‘Bloody hell! So when did you start back?’ Ainsworth questioned as he shook his tired head in disbelief. ‘I didn’t think it would be for a while yet, not with what I heard had happened to you …’ He paused as his small, razor-sharp eyes quickly took in Conrad who stiffly waited behind Brady.
‘Yeah, well seems the boss thought I was ready to start back so here I am,’ Brady answered with a wry smile.
‘Well, Jack, I’ll say this, you’ve got your work cut out here. It’s a mess … a bloody mess …’ Ainsworth said, shaking his large head. ‘And you better tread carefully. I don’t want you being replaced like that other poor bugger,’ he warned.
Brady felt himself flinch as Ainsworth’s words struck him. He turned to Conrad.
‘Do you know about this?’
‘No sir.’
Brady already had a bad feeling about this investigation without hearing from Ainsworth that he’d been called in at the last minute to replace some other poor sod who had no doubt got on the wrong side of Gates. One thing he didn’t like was surprises. Not where Gates was concerned.
‘Now follow my exact footsteps, and I bloody mean mine not one of the other set of bloody footprints we have all over the place here,’ Ainsworth ordered. ‘Like I said, Jack, it’s a bloody mess.’
‘So it seems,’ answered Brady, feeling uneasy about what lay ahead.
Brady slowly breathed out. From a distance the victim’s long blonde hair hid the extent of the trauma. It was only when you got up close did you realise that her features had been horrifically smashed beyond recognition. The skin hung in shards, exposing lumps of shapeless, raw flesh and bone. Something hard and jagged had ripped and torn at what had once been her face, leaving behind a gut-wrenching, unidentifiable, gory mess.
Brady didn’t want to think about the fact that the body lying there was someone’s daughter. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets he looked up at the oppressive, dark sky.
Conrad attempted to clear his throat.
Brady turned to him. He stood rigid by Brady’s side, his face sickly pale.
‘At least she was dead before …’ Conrad’s confident, privately educated voice trailed off.
Brady nodded, he didn’t feel much like talking.
He forced himself to look back down at the body. He had seen enough murder victims to know that luckily for her she was already dead before her attacker had decided to remove her face, otherwise they would have been looking at a gruesome bloodbath. The purplish, bluish marks around her neck were indicative of death by asphyxiation. Brady presumed the black scarf loosely knotted around the victim’s discoloured neck had been used to strangle her first, before the frenzied attack on her face took place. He could make out desperate scratches on her neck where he presumed the victim had tried in vain to loosen the choking material.
He couldn’t help but notice the short denim skirt that barely covered her mottled, greyish-blue naked thighs. Or the tight, short-cropped black T-shirt that was so low cut that her well-developed breasts and black lacy bra were on show. His eyes drifted to her navel, attracted by the sparkling gem pierced into her belly button. But something else caught his eye. He crouched down and took a closer look.
‘Sir?’ Conrad asked as Brady turned to him.
‘Gloves?’
Conrad handed Brady a pair of latex gloves.
‘What is it?’ Conrad asked.
‘I don’t know,’ muttered Brady, frowning.
He gently undid the button and zip on her hipster denim skirt revealing black see-through pants. She had no pubic hair which didn’t surprise Brady. He was savvy enough to know that fashion, or more precisely the ever- expanding porn world, pressurised young women to sport Brazilian waxes, coupled with ludicrous fake boob jobs.
But what did surprise him was the striking tattoo of a fire breathing jade dragon discreetly curled below her left hip. Brady turned and looked at Conrad.
‘See how red and raised the skin is?’
Conrad nodded.
‘This is recent. The scab has gone but the skin’s still inflamed,’ Brady stated. ‘I reckon she got this done about four or five weeks ago.’
He didn’t know much about tattoos, but even he recognised that this was a work of art.
He carefully buttoned up her skirt, covering her modesty. Not that it mattered to her now, he thought, but she was still someone’s daughter.
