He should have parked the car where he could see it. Not that he would have ever expected someone to break into his car and leave behind a black bin liner filled with human remains.
Picking up his phone he saw he had two missed calls. One from Conrad and one from Claudia.
He scrolled through his phone until he found the number he needed. He pressed call and waited. He needed to talk to the head SOCO.
‘Ainsworth? It’s Jack.’
‘This has to be serious for you to be calling me,’ Ainsworth replied.
Brady steeled himself.
‘It is …’
‘Spit it out then, lad. I haven’t got all day!’
‘Evidence was left in my car.’
‘What evidence?’ questioned Ainsworth.
‘A black bin liner containing what I believe to be the murder victim’s head and … a note …’
‘Bloody hell!’ spluttered Ainsworth.
‘Ainsworth? Can we keep this between me and you for now? Just until I can figure out what’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on, lad, someone’s fucking with you. And that someone is serious.’
‘Tell me something new,’ muttered Brady as he looked up at the dark, overcast sky.
‘Right, where the bloody hell is your car?’ demanded Ainsworth.
‘At St Mary’s Lighthouse,’ answered Brady.
‘What the fuck are you doing there?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ answered Brady.
‘Aye, knowing you, Jack, you’ll be right about that. Alright, we’ll be there soon.’
‘Thanks.’ Brady hung up then scrolled down his phonebook and found Wolfe’s number. He pressed call.
‘What’s your problem?’ answered Wolfe.
‘The head’s turned up,’ answered Brady.
‘That was bloody quick work, laddie,’ answered Wolfe. ‘Where was it?’ he questioned, realising from Brady’s silence that he was being serious.
‘In my car,’ replied Brady.
‘Oh shit,’ wheezed Wolfe.
Brady sighed heavily. ‘Are you still at the morgue?’
‘Where else would I be?’
‘The pub?’ replied Brady.
‘Aye, but not in the middle of the afternoon, Jack.’
‘Ainsworth will have it sent over as soon as he’s finished,’ Brady replied before disconnecting the call.
He got out the car, slamming the door shut. He resisted the urge to start kicking it. Pounding it with all the pent-up fury he felt towards his brother. He wanted to destroy it. Destroy everything and anything that connected Brady to Nick.
The car had been bought as a project, one that he and Nick had worked on. Nick had a gift. He had always been able to fix things ever since he was a young child. He had a knack of making something out of nothing, which was exactly what he had done with the car. It had been a shell when they had bought it ten years ago, but Nick had spent months working on it on the odd weekends, patiently rebuilding it to beyond its former glory.
That was before Nick’s work started to get in the way and he moved to London permanently. He had said it was for more lucrative jobs, but Brady knew better. He was basically keeping out of Brady’s way. The last thing Nick wanted was for his choice of profession to sabotage Brady’s career as a copper. Or for his brother to be the one to nick him, should it come to that. Brady knew exactly what Nick did for a living; but he never asked questions. Nick hired himself out as a bodyguard; at least that’s what he had told Brady. At 6?3?, muscle-bound but lithe, with intelligent, calculating green eyes and cropped dark blonde hair, and a thick, three-inch scar down his left cheek, he was never short of work. Or money.
The loyalty between them was unquestionable. Brady had always made sure that he took his father’s sadistic and drunken beatings instead of Nick. He had protected Nick at all costs, even to the detriment of his mother’s life. If it hadn’t been for Nick, Brady would never have left his mother to die at his father’s hands. But instead he had done as his mother had begged, taken his younger brother and hidden him from his father’s murderous rage.
And Nick had been worth protecting.
So why would Nick, his own brother, turn on him? Let alone get involved in something so sick, so wrong?
Brady stared at the car, his watering eyes burning with pain as he fought the tumult of emotions that were threatening to break him. He wanted to get a can of petrol and throw it over the car and torch it in a bid to exorcise himself of the agonising betrayal he felt. But he couldn’t. It was part of a crime scene. One that involved him in too many ways.
He took the DVD which he had removed from the laptop and thrust it into the inner pocket of his jacket. The last person he wanted getting their hands on this evidence was Adamson.
Despite what he felt, he still couldn’t believe that his brother was capable of such a heinous crime. Not against Madley and definitely not against him. Above all, he wouldn’t be part of something that would abuse and terrorise a woman like that. It was unthinkable.
He turned away from the car unable to look at it. Unable to accept that here he was still protecting Nick. He was putting his career on the line and for what?
But he knew the answer. Nick was all he had now. And until he had spoken to him, Brady refused to believe, despite the evidence in his pocket, that his own brother could be involved in such a sickening crime against a female copper. Let alone one who meant so much to him personally.
Brady drew heavily on his cigarette as he thought about the evidence on the surveillance tape Madley had given him.
He watched as Conrad hit the traffic lights where the amusements had once been on the sea front opposite the Spanish City Dome. He automatically glanced in the wing mirror to make sure they weren’t being followed. Or more to the point,
He’d left his car being examined forensically by Ainsworth’s team. He had no choice. Hopefully he’d get it back by the end of the day.
He was worried about explaining all this to Gates. The reason he had been at the lighthouse was because he was meeting with Madley – a suspect in Adamson’s books when it came to Simone Henderson’s attack. And one alleged to be a local drugs baron, although that was still an unsubstantiated claim.
‘The serial number, sir,’ Conrad began. ‘Sir?’ he repeated when Brady didn’t reply.
Brady distractedly turned to Conrad, unable to rid himself of the gruesome image of the victim’s head in the black bin liner.
‘Sorry?’
His mind was racing.
There had been a note in the black bin liner. A note which made it quite clear that it was no accident that a severed head had been left in Brady’s car. He hadn’t told Conrad about the note. He had simply handed it over to Ainsworth to be forensically examined. He needed time to figure out exactly what the note meant before sharing it with Conrad and the rest of the team.
‘The serial number you gave me, sir,’ explained Conrad. ‘It seems that every silicone implant has a serial code which is registered with the clinic where they are surgically inserted. The silicone implants removed from the murder victim are registered with a cosmetic surgery clinic named Virenyos in Budapest, sir.’
Brady thought about the sixteen-year-old girl who had been reported missing earlier.
‘Did they have the patient’s name registered with the serial number?’
‘No, sir. Seems they have too high a turnover to keep all the records. They keep records for up to two months after the surgical procedure and then they delete them. I think it’s more to do with patients suing them for malpractice once they get back to the UK and realise that cheap surgery combined with a holiday comes at a price.
