Danielle Ramsay: Broken Silence

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.

‘How did you know it was there, sir?’ asked Conrad, surprised.

‘Part of it caught my eye,’ answered Brady as he carefully took in the rest of her body.

She was also wearing an open black jacket and tan suede Ugg boots that reached halfway up her slender, bluish calves. But the boots had nothing to do with the weather. Ugg boots were just a fashion statement; a very expensive fashion statement at that. She could have been any one of a hundred young women who would have been out drinking last night in Whitley Bay. Brady was suddenly filled with revulsion at what was going through his head; she looked no older than the girl he had taken home. He felt a deep twist of regret as he realised he knew as little about Sleeping Beauty as he did about the body lying before him. Behind him he could hear the hushed voices of the forensic officers, waiting for him to finish.

Let them wait, he thought. The SOCOs already had all the photographs they needed of the victim and the crime scene, so a few more minutes would make no difference when it came to bagging up evidence. Brady needed time to think, to breathe in the bitter reality of what had happened to this girl. He needed to understand why she had been brought here of all places. And crucially, why the murderer had chosen to kill her.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he mused.

‘It never does,’ answered Conrad with quiet reverence.

Brady shook his head but couldn’t bring himself to explain what he had meant.

He let his eyes drift over her outstretched small, fragile open hands. He could make out that her finger nails were neatly manicured but couldn’t see anything else. Forensics would find something, he was sure of that. Whoever had done this to her would have left some trace behind. It was the law of averages, thought Brady.

He paused for a moment, catching his breath as his eyes were drawn back to her mutilated face; the harsh lights set up by the SOCOs sparing nothing.

‘Poor bloody girl,’ Brady quietly stated.

‘Yes sir,’ answered Conrad.

‘What do you think?’ Brady asked.

Conrad shrugged.

Brady wasn’t offended; Conrad rarely committed himself.

‘Does anything strike you as odd?’ Brady continued.

‘Yes, her face or what’s left of it,’ Conrad offered.

‘No, I’m more interested in what her attacker didn’t do as opposed to what he did,’ answered Brady.

‘She doesn’t seem to have been sexually assaulted,’ answered Conrad. ‘If she had her clothes would either have been fully or partially removed, but there doesn’t appear to have been any attempt made here, sir.’

‘And, she doesn’t appear to have struggled,’ Brady added. ‘Apart from these scratches on her throat here, Conrad,’ he said pointing. ‘Which suggests she fought to loosen the scarf from her neck. But that seems to be the extent of it.’

If she had struggled with her attacker he would have expected some visible hair or tissue from the assailant to have been left in the victim’s hands or under her nails. A last attempt at desperately holding on to life. He was sure her own skin tissue would be evident under her nails, but as to her attacker’s, he wasn’t so certain.

‘Maybe she was knocked unconscious from behind first?’ Conrad offered.

‘But then why strangle her?’

‘Perhaps she started to come round, sir? So her attacker then strangled her with her scarf?’

‘Maybe … Let’s see,'Brady said as he carefully knelt down beside the girl’s body, wincing as a burst of white pain exploded in his thigh.

He breathed in shallowly for a few moments, waiting for it to pass.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Conrad asked with genuine concern noticing that Brady’s olive-skinned complexion had paled.

‘It’s nothing,’ Brady lied.

The last thing he wanted was Conrad questioning his ability to work.

‘Shine your torch over the back of her head for me, will you?’

Trying to ignore the searing pain he felt, Brady carefully lifted what was left of the victim’s head and examined the back of it for trauma.

‘Nothing, we’ll just have to wait and see if any fractures are found during the post-mortem.’ He had seen enough blows to the head to recognise the trademark and there didn’t appear to be one there. But he could still be wrong.

‘Why did he do that to her face?’ Brady questioned as he shook his head.

‘To make it difficult for us to ID? Or maybe it’s not that straightforward. Maybe the murderer is playing with us psychologically?’ Conrad suggested.

‘Could be,’ Brady said, swallowing hard as he looked at the victim.

He had to agree, the murderer had made their job difficult, whether it was intentional, he couldn’t say.

‘But crucially, why spend time after she was dead doing that to her face? That says something, don’t you think?’ Brady said as he looked at what was left of the victim.

‘You definitely think she was strangled to death rather than a blow to the head?’ questioned Conrad.

Brady nodded.

Conrad stared at the telltale smudged bruising around the victim’s neck. He had worked with Brady long enough to know that when he had a hunch he was rarely proved wrong.

‘Her death makes no bloody sense though,’ muttered Brady irritably to himself as he staggered to his feet, wincing slightly.

‘No sir,’ agreed Conrad.

‘Come on then, let’s leave this to Forensics,’ he concluded.

They’d find out what he couldn’t see; always did. If he was lucky Forensics would find some traces of the murderer’s DNA on the victim’s body, if not hopefully under her fingernails. But from where he was standing, it didn’t look as if she had resisted her attacker. Which led Brady to the assumption that she had known her murderer. But before he could put together a list of potential suspects known to the victim, he needed a positive ID on the body. Only when they knew who the victim was, could they start to piece together exactly what had happened to her.

Brady took in the crime scene. Trees circled the building adding to the dense, suffocating blackness. He dropped his gaze back to the surrounding bushes and wild bracken growing in thick clumps in between the fallen rubble and the crumbling walls of the farmhouse. The abandoned Belfast sink lying in the corner gave Brady the impression that they were standing in what would have once been the kitchen. The size of the room was at least ten feet by twelve feet, but the crumbling stone walls and old wooden rafters that lay rotting amongst the rubble and wild vegetation made the space cramped; so much so that the victim lay on a mound of grass and weeds in the centre. Brady was certain about one thing; it was the ideal location to bring someone in secret. Conrad shifted uneasily. It was clear he had had enough; the greyish hue to his face gave him away.

He’d get over it, thought Brady. Something worse would happen; it always did. It was human nature. Imagine the worst and someone’s already done it; at least ten times over.

Brady hated civilisation; it gave people a false sense of security. In reality they were just animals in clothes. Animals that raped, sodomised, tortured and murdered whoever and whatever, even their own; regardless of society. He had seen it, tasted it and breathed it every day of his working life. The world was dark; the problem was people chose to ignore it and believe in a false god: civilisation.

Unfortunately for Conrad, he was still one of those poor, deluded bastards. The job would soon beat that idealism out of him, thought Brady. It had happened to him. It happened to everyone, sooner or later.