‘For those of you who aren’t familiar with captive bolt pistols, they’re a device used for stunning animals prior to slaughter. Also known as a cattle gun.’
Harvey had everyone transfixed.
This was a new kind of crime. Or at least that’s what Brady thought. But the inquisitive look on Claudia’s face told him this was something she’d already come across in her sex trafficking work.
‘The point of it is to stun the animal into unconsciousness, enabling the slaughter house to hang it up and slit its throat, so it bleeds to death.’
Claudia nodded.
She then tucked a long, stray red curl behind her ear before politely interrupting.
‘I’ve come across this before but I never thought I’d see a case of it being used on a victim here in the North East. Let alone Whitley Bay. Having said that, this isn’t as atypical as you might think. It’s becoming a growing trend amongst a certain clientele in the sex slavery business.’
Brady looked at her questioningly.
She held his gaze for a second too long before turning back to the room.
‘However, the use of penetrating captive bolts, which if I’m right is exactly what has been used on the victim, Melissa Ryecroft, has been discontinued in commercial situations in order to minimise the risk of transmission of disease. Sometimes it causes the brain tissue to actually go into the bloodstream of the animal, contaminating other tissue with bovine spongiform encephalopathy,’ Claudia explained. Realising she had lost them, she added, ‘To you and me, that’s BSE, otherwise more commonly known as mad cow disease.’
Harvey looked at her with candid surprise.
Conrad didn’t.
It was clear to Brady that Claudia and Conrad had already discussed the case while he had been busy in his office.
‘Claudia’s right. The captive bolt pistol used on the victim …’ Harvey paused as he directed them to the hole in the centre of the victim’s head ‘… is a stunner. It uses a pointed bolt propelled by a blank cartridge. The bolt penetrates the skull of the animal, or in the case here, the victim’s head. It enters the cranium and damages the cerebrum and part of the cerebellum. The damage to the brain tissue here was catastrophic.’
He stopped and cleared his throat, disgusted with the thought of what had been done to the victim.
‘She would have lost consciousness pretty much immediately, as it destroyed the brain matter in her skull. But crucially, and this is the point of the captive bolt pistol, it left her brain stem intact.’
‘But she’s dead, right? So what does it matter if the brain stem’s intact?’ asked Daniels as he looked from Harvey to his partner Kenny.
Kenny shrugged.
‘Don’t look at me, mate. Biology was never my strong point!’ Kenny pointed out.
‘Is that why you don’t know your arse from your elbow?’ quizzed Daniels, giving him a wry smile.
‘If you two bloody paid attention then you might learn something, you boneheads!’ commented Harvey.
Kenny and Daniels refrained from saying something.
Brady dismissed what on the surface appeared to be insensitive camaraderie, aware that this was the men’s way of dealing with the horror of what had happened to the victim.
‘That’s precisely why it’s been used on the victim. It had the same effect as it does on cattle. Leaving the brain stem intact allows the heart to continue beating, so the animal bleeds to death.’
Claudia looked across at Kenny and Daniels, clearly unimpressed with their cavalier attitude.
‘You want to know the reason a captive bolt stunner was used on this sixteen-year-old girl?’ Claudia questioned as she stared at them.
‘To kill her?’ bluntly answered Daniels as Kenny nudged him under the table.
‘The whole point is that she dies two minutes later. During that time she gets fucked. Mind you, given what I’ve heard about you two, that’s probably a minute and half longer than you’d need,’ Claudia said pointedly, as her eyes flashed emerald green.
Claudia’s eyes could change from a tranquil bluish-green to a passionate emerald green in a split second. Brady recognised the sign, unlike Kenny and Daniels. And was more than relieved it was them on the receiving end.
Brady sat forward.
He caught Claudia’s eye. It was enough.
He then shot Kenny and Daniels a look which told them they deserved as much for fucking around.
‘Tom, did Wolfe’s autopsy report show the victim to have been raped and sodomised in the leadup to her death?’ Brady asked, backing up Claudia’s statement.
Harvey nodded, not wanting to get caught in the firing line.
‘That’s one word for it,’ he said uncomfortably, as he caught Brady’s eye.
Harvey knew Claudia of old. Both in a professional capacity when she had worked as the Duty Solicitor at the station, but also in a personal role, when she had been married to Brady. And something Kenny and Daniels didn’t know but were about to find out, was that Claudia didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Claudia looked at Harvey and then turned to Daniels and Kenny, not finished with them yet.
‘While her body contorts and convulses, while she lies there unconscious with half her brain tissue blown away, men will pay a great deal of money to have the ultimate fuck. The ultimate fuck being … fucking a woman and making it the very last thing she’ll ever feel.’
In one sentence she wiped the boyish smirks off Daniels and Kenny’s faces.
Nobody said a word.
Harvey dropped his gaze to the floor, clearly finding the reality of how the victim had died distasteful.
The atmosphere in the room was tense and suffocating.
Every man in the room wished they were anywhere else at this precise moment than sitting here with the glaring evidence of the level of depravity some men would reach to get their kicks.
Men were bastards. Brady couldn’t dispute it. The evidence was plastered in front of them on the whiteboard.
Brady looked at Kenny and Daniels who were squirming with discomfort at having made light of the situation. And then at Harvey and Conrad.
But
And Claudia knew that. As did Kodovesky.
These were the men who would spend thankless, sleepless hours hunting down and apprehending the sick bastards who gave mankind a bad name.
Harvey was the first to break the awkward silence.
‘The cartridge used had 3 grains – that’s about 190mg of gunpowder, giving the velocity of the bolt 55 metres per second.’
Claudia nodded at Harvey. She then looked at the rest of the team.
‘What is frightening here is that this penchant for paying for sex with a girl while she’s dying is a growing phenomenon,’ Claudia explained.
She looked up at the countless, brutal images of the victim, deliberating for a moment.
‘What we’re dealing with is a new breed of sex crime,’ concluded Claudia.
No one said a word. Not even Brady.
All of them were lost in the horror of what was before them.
‘You might be wondering why I’m here, apart from to make you feel like shit,’ Claudia said, looking directly at Kenny and Daniels.
She then shot them a wry smile.
Her objective hadn’t been to alienate or humiliate them, it had been simply to wake them up to the seriousness of the situation.
‘This is what I do,’ she said, with a note of sadness as she cast her eyes up at the photographs of the victim laid bare and naked for all to see.
