Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

‘As long as you remember that’s why we’re here, sir,’ warned Conrad as he pulled into Rake Lane Hospital.

‘Drop me off at the emergency entrance. Then meet me at the morgue,’ Brady instructed, ignoring Conrad’s comment.

Conrad didn’t reply.

Instead, his steel-grey eyes looked straight ahead as he did as he was told and parked by the emergency entrance. His strong jaw remained firmly set as he watched Brady get out, throwing what was left of his cigarette butt to the ground.

Conrad noticed that the ground was covered in cigarette butts. Smoked by either patients driven to distraction by their prognosis, or their equally worried relatives.

He watched Brady stride towards the entrance. He knew exactly where he was heading. And that was straight for trouble. He didn’t trust Brady to let it go. He decided to park the car and then follow him. The problem was, he knew exactly where he would go – and it wouldn’t be the morgue.

Without looking back at Conrad or the car, Brady made his way through the addicts who were standing, regardless of the smoking ban now in place on the hospital grounds, shivering in dressing gowns and slippers, with tubes attached to their arms and portable oxygen tanks or morphine drips.

Desperate wasn’t the word.

Brady walked straight over to the reception desk and flashed his ID badge at the receptionist.

‘Here to see Simone Henderson,’ Brady said.

The receptionist nodded at Brady before keying the name into the hospital’s database.

‘ICU, Ward 7, Room 2,’ she replied when she found her.

Grateful, Brady nodded.

Before he turned away the receptionist stopped him.

She conspiratorially bent forward.

‘I think you should know that two men were in first thing this morning asking if they could see her. I thought it was suspicious at the time since she’s under police protection and they obviously weren’t officers.’

‘What did they look like? The two men?’ Brady asked.

‘Maybe late twenties, early thirties? Dark, good-looking. Well-built. And they had a funny accent like they were foreign. Definitely not from around here.’

Brady accepted that anyone who didn’t have a Geordie accent was seen as being foreign in North Tyneside.

‘I thought they were lawyers or something … you know? Both wearing suits. Expensive-looking. Looked like they had money.’

He nodded, thinking back to the two men he had seen talking to Simone in the Blue Lagoon. They could easily have fitted the receptionist’s description. But as for their accent, Brady didn’t get close enough to hear whether they were locals, or to clearly see their features.

‘Was there anything about them that stood out? Something they said, maybe? Or even a distinguishing mark?’

‘There was something that struck me as odd …’

Brady nodded for her to elaborate.

‘One of them had a large platinum signet ring on the third finger of his right hand.’

‘Why did that strike you as odd?’ quizzed Brady.

‘Because when they turned to leave I realised that they were both wearing them. One of them had his hand in his pocket you see. Then his phone rang. And when he took it out I saw that he was wearing an identical ring. And on the same finger.’

‘What did the rings look like?’

‘It was the letter “N”. But it was all fancy, inset with diamonds. And the backdrop to the letter had what looked like Latin writing on it. They looked expensive, you know?’

‘You’ve got a good eye,’ Brady said. ‘Ever thought about becoming a copper?’

She laughed. ‘Divorced and single,’ she explained. ‘Force of habit, checking out whether a man’s married or not. First thing I look for now is a wedding ring, or the tell-tale sign that it’s been temporarily removed. Been stung in the past you see.’

Brady shoved his hand in his pocket and gripped the silver wedding ring he kept on him at all times. He couldn’t manage to let go of it, despite the undeniable fact that Claudia had taken up with another man. DCI James M. Davidson was a muscle-bound, ex-military Ross Kemp look-alike, who had swaggered into the Armed Response Unit on the back of his hands-on combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not that Brady would take that away from him. It took balls to risk your life in a war reminiscent of Vietnam. In other words, a war against fundamentalist insurgents who used dirty, guerrilla warfare against the enemy. But, regardless of his heroism, Davidson was still an arrogant, tall, good-looking, dangerously charming player, who had war stories that mere mortal men would kill for.

And that was Brady’s problem. He didn’t want Claudia to be played. But he wasn’t in a position to say anything, given his own history with her.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Brady said.

He stopped and turned back.

‘What did you say to them when they asked to see her?’

‘I said only immediate family could visit,’ she answered. ‘But what was odd was their reaction. They didn’t say a word. Just walked straight back out.’

Brady nodded. He expected as much. They had got all the information they had needed. Whether or not Simone Henderson was still alive.

‘Where’s the security camera?’ asked Brady.

The receptionist pointed at the camera discreetly placed on the ceiling behind the reception area. Perfectly positioned to capture whoever came in and out the hospital main entrance.

Brady would need the footage from earlier that morning to see whether the two men who had come in were the same ones he’d seen with Simone hours before she was brutally attacked.

Somehow he would have to get Amelia to request it. Nobody would question her authority. After all, she was working on the investigation as a forensic psychologist. Her job was to come up with a profile of the attacker.

He knew that he couldn’t get any of his team to do it. Inevitably word would get back to Adamson and then Gates. Brady knew that that letter ‘N’ wasn’t just coincidence. What it meant he didn’t know but he sure as hell was going to find out why it had been burnt into Simone Henderson’s breast.

‘Thanks,’ he said to the receptionist before turning and heading down the maze-like corridor.

The only thing on his mind now was Simone.

Regardless of what Conrad had said in the car, he needed to see her.

Chapter Eleven

Brady pressed the intercom button for the security doors leading into the Intensive Care Unit.

‘Detective Inspector Brady to see Simone Henderson,’ Brady said into the intercom, trying to keep his voice level.

The door buzzed open and Brady walked through into the sterile, white hall and headed for the nurses’ desk at the end.

‘Simone Henderson? DI Brady,’ he added as he flashed his ID at the young Filipino nurse.

She nodded distractedly as an alarm from one of the patients’ machines went off.

‘Down there, Room 2. On your left,’ she instructed before hurriedly walking off in the direction of the alarm.

Brady turned and walked past the ward of male and female patients. Most of an age, attached to bleeping machines that monitored their every breath and heartbeat. Brady looked straight ahead, not wanting to witness the loss of humility that came with old age. Craggy, parched mouths hanging open, with skin peeling off from their tongues due to lack of hydration and eyes either tightly shut against their situation or open, staring ahead with a watery, glazed look.

Brady hated hospitals. Hated the smell, the noise and the fact that death morbidly clung to every patient, silently waiting.

Brady didn’t need to be told which room. The uniform outside was obvious enough. Brady approached the door of the private room, noting that the blinds on the window looking into the room were closed. Immediately, he knew it was a bad sign.