Brady stopped and turned to look at Madley. He had his back to him as he looked out the window.
‘Tell Nick from me that I never want to see his fucking face around here again.’
Brady limped back to his car, kicking a vodka bottle out of his way. He turned back instinctively, checking that no one was following him. He realised that his paranoia was getting the better of him. He was starting to see things that weren’t there.
‘
He needed to get his head together. And fast. But he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was being watched from every shadowy corner. Ghosts from his past coming back to haunt him.
He took his phone out. It was now 7:48pm and he had two missed calls.
One from Conrad and the other from Claudia.
He unlocked the Granada and climbed in, making a point of checking the back seat and floor first for any more surprises. Nothing.
Despite Ainsworth and his forensics team’s meticulous search, whoever had had left the severed head in a black bin liner on the back seat had been very careful not to leave any other incriminating evidence behind.
Brady tried to block the image of the black bag’s contents from his mind. He shakily breathed out, trying to steady himself.
‘
He held his head in his hands trying to rid himself of the panic he was feeling.
He had to focus. He needed to call Conrad. To get back on track.
He forced himself to look at his mobile. He pressed call and waited.
‘What did you find?’ he quickly questioned, as soon as Conrad picked up.
‘They didn’t turn up Marine Avenue. They continued along the Promenade to the Links, sir,’ answered Conrad. ‘The CCTV camera on the Siam Restaurant on the corner of Marine Avenue shows them continuing along the Links Road towards Whitley Bay cemetery. That was at approximately 1:19am.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes sir, the Jaguar followed by the Mercedes van.’
‘Where were they heading?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ answered Conrad. ‘I know that they don’t get as far as Seaton Sluice or even Old Hartley. So they’ve stopped somewhere along the Links. Either Feathers caravan park or by Whitley Bay cemetery.’
‘Or by St Mary’s Lighthouse,’ muttered Brady.
He thought back to the victim’s head and note left by his brother in his car and the significance of the location – the lighthouse. Brady already had a gut feeling what it was his brother was trying to tell him. But he didn’t want to believe it.
‘Sir?’ questioned Conrad.
‘Think about it, Conrad. Why do you think the van followed Macmillan’s car?’
‘If it is his car, sir?’
‘It’s his bloody car alright! Check the licence plate,’ hissed Brady.
‘Couldn’t get a shot of the licence plate from the angle of the camera, sir.’
‘Moot point. It’s him alright,’ muttered Brady darkly.
‘I have checked and there’s no black Jaguar registered in Ronnie Macmillan’s name, sir.’
‘I wouldn’t expect it to be registered in his name. He’s too clever for that, Conrad. He uses the car for business and the kind of business he deals in he won’t want anything that connects him to it.’
Brady sighed as he started up the engine, resisting the urge to put the car in first and drive. He felt too vulnerable sitting there.
‘What those bastards did to Simone was carried out in that Mercedes van. They’d have the space and the privacy to carry out what they wanted with her. And you tell me where no one would question hearing a woman screaming?’ demanded Brady, not taking his eyes off the street and road around him.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ answered Conrad uneasily, worried by the fraught tension in his boss’s voice.
Brady sighed irritably. ‘What do you do with yourself when you’re not at work, Conrad?’
Conrad didn’t reply.
Brady already knew about his personal life. It was something they didn’t talk about.
‘Well, there’s one place you obviously don’t go and that’s St Mary’s Lighthouse. The two car parks there are used by doggers from all over the North East. So a woman screaming in a van with a couple of men might have raised something, but it wouldn’t have been an eyebrow, that’s for sure.’
Still Conrad remained silent.
‘What about later on in the morning? We know that Simone was discovered by Carl, Madley’s bartender, at approximately 3:15am so that means that they had to return to the Blue Lagoon to leave Simone in the gents’ there.’
‘I already checked the CCTV footage for around that time, sir,’ answered Conrad.
‘And?’
‘No Jaguar but the same Mercedes van returns along the Links, continuing onto the Promenade at approximately 2:56am.’
‘Which is in the direction of Madley’s nightclub, the Blue Lagoon.’
Brady cursed under his breath as he thought about Nick and what he was trying to tell him.
‘Look, Conrad,’ he began, trying to steady his voice, ‘I have a gut feeling that Edita Aginatas wasn’t the first victim. I reckon that the Mercedes van is used to transport girls. Victims that have been murdered for sexual pleasure. Just as Claudia detailed when she talked about the Nietzschean Brotherhood.’
‘You really believe it’s happening here, sir?’ queried Conrad incredulously. ‘In Whitley Bay of all places?’
‘You do the maths, Conrad. Edita Aginatas’ body washes up on the shore of Whitley Bay beach. High tide last night was at 11:18pm BST and then low tide was 4:23am BST.’
‘Sir?’
‘I checked yesterday morning’s tides with the coastguard,’ Brady explained. ‘Either they don’t know their tides or she was deliberately dumped mid-tide position. Hell of a coincidence then don’t you think that her body washes up around 4:00 in the morning? Same morning that Simone’s butchered, drugged body is dumped in Madley’s nightclub. I reckon it’s the same van that was used to dump Edita Aginatas’ body.’
‘So how do they get the body out there so it gets washed up? If they do it by Whitley Bay or Cullercoats or even Tynemouth Beach surely someone would see them? And the van was heading in the opposite direction, sir,’ Conrad pointed out.
‘Wrong location, Conrad,’ snapped Brady. ‘I used to play around the lighthouse when I was a kid. There’s a sandy beach down there hidden from view on the left-hand side. The other side is covered in rock pools and jagged rocks so a boat wouldn’t be able to come in on that side to take the body out. And nor would they throw a body over the railings on that side as it would hit the rocks below. I reckon a small tugboat must have met them down there on that beach. It wouldn’t make much noise so it wouldn’t bring unwanted attention. Edita’s body would have been taken out and dumped in between tides. If they wanted her to disappear they would have weighted her down, Conrad. And they didn’t. After talking to Nicoletta I reckon that Edita was murdered and her body was intentionally dumped so it would wash up as a warning to the other girls like her not to attempt to make a run for it.’
Conrad’s silence said it all.
‘Get back to me as soon as you’ve got something,’ he muttered thickly, realising that Conrad didn’t quite trust him on this.
He sighed heavily as he cut the call. He couldn’t blame Conrad. None of it made sense; least of all to him. He had been certain from everything that Carl had said that Ronnie Macmillan and his boys Visa and Delta had attacked Simone. But now he wasn’t so sure. The CCTV evidence showing the black Mercedes van heading back to the Blue Lagoon suggested that this was the work of the Dabkunas brothers. And he couldn’t ignore the fact that Nick was in their employment. Trina McGuire had said as much. Nor could he ignore the fact that his brother had left Simone’s body in the toilets before making the 999 call.
All Brady could think was that Ronnie Macmillan and his boys procured Simone for the Dabkunas brothers as
