He turned his head away and looked across at St Paul’s Anglican Church, on the corner of the traffic lights opposite the Fat Ox. It was a beautiful church built out of slabs of sandstone, surrounded by old trees. Headstones dating back a couple of hundred years still stood, despite the decades of lashing rain coupled with the hard, biting northerly wind that would sweep in from the North Sea.
It passed Brady in a shadowy, ghostly blur as Conrad put his foot down and headed up the small incline towards the roundabout which led out of Whitley Bay.
‘Wait here, will you, Conrad?’ instructed Brady as he made a move to get out the car.
Conrad cast a glance over at the Ship Inn and the ruins and the ominous, unlit flat lands surrounding them.
‘Are you sure about this, sir?’ asked Conrad.
Brady could understand Conrad’s reticence. He felt exactly the same way.
The Ship Inn – or the Hole, as it was known locally, for obvious reasons – stood alone against a backdrop of a shipping industry that had long gone. The house lights of the Hole cast the only bit of warmth in this black, bleak, evacuated landscape.
The place was deserted. A no-man’s land. The River Tyne and docklands, once crammed with ships and twisting sky-high cranes, were empty. All that was left behind were the shadowy, iron-crusted bones of what looked to be part of a helicopter landing platform and the weather-beaten base of an oil rig.
The Hole, a solitary, run-down, whitewashed Victorian building had been left to rack and ruin now that the shipyard workers had evaporated to become part of the North East’s ever-increasing dole figures. But it still ran a business. One that involved strippers and sex. And, despite the dubious surroundings, the punters still came. Guaranteed anonymity given the Hole’s unique location. No housing estate overlooked it, no grassland for dog walkers, only the bleak river and empty warehouses and flattened wasteland that spoke of an industrial era that had been sold down the Tyne.
Brady turned and looked behind them at the dark embankment that led down to this pit of despair. Again, deserted.
He thought about Conrad’s question. Was he sure about what he was doing?
He shook his head as he turned and looked at Conrad.
‘No,’ Brady replied. ‘But I’ve got no choice.’
‘Tell me this is connected to our investigation into Melissa Ryecroft’s murder, sir,’ said Conrad, needing the reassurance that whatever Brady was about to do wasn’t going to bring him more trouble than he was already in.
Brady knew he needed his deputy on side. And crucially, needed him to watch his back.
‘I have information that someone in there knows about this Brotherhood that Claudia discussed,’ he explained as he uneasily looked over at the Hole.
‘Surely you want me in there with you, then?’ asked Conrad.
‘No,’ firmly answered Brady. He turned and looked at Conrad. ‘Firstly, two coppers going in there will get us nothing but trouble. Secondly, I need you out here watching who comes and goes.’
Conrad reluctantly nodded. He knew that arguing with Brady was pointless.
‘Look, Conrad … I know the person in there that I need to talk to, alright? And I know for a fact that she wouldn’t come near me if you were there. She hates coppers. I’m not sure she’ll even give me a chance …’ Brady stopped and sighed.
He was tired. Too tired for all this. He wanted to go home and take a long hot shower, followed by a couple of glasses of the full-bodied bottle of Rioja he had in his wine rack, accompanied by some blues music playing in the background. He knew he couldn’t eat though: he had lost his appetite when he had found the victim’s head in his car, along with a note that he was now certain was from his brother.
All he wanted to do was forget this day had ever happened. Instead, his guts told him it was just getting started.
‘Keep your eyes open, Conrad,’ Brady warned before getting out the car. ‘You see anything, you radio it in. Understand?’
Brady was more worried about leaving Conrad out here in the middle of nowhere in darkness with no assistance than he was about facing whatever lay ahead of him in the Hole.
He had noted, as had Conrad, the three other cars parked up. One was a flash white Range Rover Sport, another, a beaten-up blue Volvo estate, and the third, a silver 1.9 Vauxhall Vectra.
Brady hazarded a guess the owners would be inside the Hole. Given the desolate location it was the obvious conclusion. Nobody in their right mind would stray down here and if they did, they sure as hell would turn straight back up the embankment to the main road.
Brady nodded as he approached the lumbering, thick-necked, shaven-headed man in his early thirties standing outside the front door of the Hole smoking.
‘It’s shit! muttered the man, staring straight ahead at Conrad’s car.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ replied Brady as he pulled open the door.
‘Just trying to save you money, mate. Better coming back after eleven. That’s when the good acts are on. Got in some fucking gorgeous young tight-arsed girls with big tits. Don’t speak much English but who’s interested in talking? Better than the old trollops that are in there just now!’
The man scowled at the silver Saab as he drew heavily on his cigarette. He then threw it on the ground and turned to go back in.
Brady held the door open for him.
‘It’s your money!’ the man grunted by way of thanks.
Brady let the door swing shut behind them.
The large room was dark. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. And his sense of smell.
The place was rancid.
It stank of men. The worst kind of men.
Wankers that would come here and throw not only their money around. Forcing girls to do things that their mothers had never taught them.
The smell of stale piss, stale beer and sex – dirty, passionless, perfunctory sex – clung to the air.
Brady watched as the thick-necked critic made his way to the bar. A bartender pushed a coffee towards him.
He grunted in appreciation, sat down and picked up a folded paper and started doing what Brady presumed was a crossword.
It was obvious that he was the club’s hired muscle.
Brady looked around the place. It was virtually empty. It didn’t surprise him. It was just after nine-thirty on a Saturday evening, which was early for this place.
A bleached-blonde, long-haired woman was contorting her body provocatively as she danced in a cage suspended from the ceiling. A glazed look in her eye as she smiled and moaned, head back, mouth open, at the only man watching her.
Towards the back of the room he could make out four men who were drinking and laughing while a lap dancer did what she could to earn money.
‘Black coffee,’ Brady ordered as the bartender raised an eyebrow at him.
The man poured Brady some scalding, stewed coffee into a white cup and saucer and brought it over to him.
Brady took out his wallet.
‘On the house,’ the bartender said.
Before Brady had a chance to object the man had turned and was busying himself unloading the glasses from the dishwasher.
It was clear to the barman that Brady was a copper: he wasn’t a regular and he wasn’t interested in watching the girl dancing provocatively on the stage to the left of the bar or the young girl with the four men.
‘Trina?’ Brady called over. ‘Trina McGuire. Has she started work yet?’
The bartender looked at Brady.
‘What’s it to you?’ he asked.
