Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

She had an air of cool detachment about her which Brady assumed she needed for the job. She was a woman in her late twenties trying to make a career for herself in a male-dominated police force. Consequently she had more to prove than her colleagues.

Brady’s eyes glanced over at Conrad, sitting opposite Kodovesky. He was very much the male version of Kodovesky, but with a few years on.

Daniels and Kenny were the other two DCs who made up the team. Both in their early thirties. Unlike Conrad and Kodovesky, they weren’t graduates. Nor were they focused on fast-tracking.

Daniels was well-built at 5´11? – a testament to the long hours he put in at the gym. Good looking in a hard way, with his hair shaved so close to his scalp that you could only just make out that his hair was sandy blond. He had hazel eyes that were normally filled with mirth and a strong, determined, clean-shaven jawline.

He and Kenny were inseparable: best mates on the job, best mates off. Kenny was tall at 6´4?, with short, curly dark brown hair. His face with his deep set, small, mischievous, darting brown eyes was already heavily lined. Brady had lost count of the amount of times he had to get Kenny to tone down his role as the team’s stand-up comic. But Brady knew it was Kenny’s way of dealing with the dark world they were paid to investigate. Being a copper suited Kenny, there was no disputing that fact.

As it did all of them.

As Brady observed them all he was keenly aware that no one was speaking. The air was tense.

DC Kenny and DC Daniels sat motionless. Both averting their eyes from Brady’s penetrating gaze.

As were DS Harvey and DC Kodovesky.

Even Conrad was studying his hands.

Brady knew that their minds were elsewhere.

The critical condition of Simone Henderson was affecting everyone. That, and the fact that, given a choice they would all rather be working on finding her attacker. Not stuck here, forced to deal with another brutal crime investigation. As it was, whether it due to unspoken loyalty to Brady or a deep, intrinsic dislike of DI Adamson, this was Brady’s investigative team. Demoralised and preoccupied.

Brady unintentionally caught Claudia’s eye. She was the only one looking straight at him. And if he wasn’t mistaken, she looked worried. Worried about him.

Maybe it was the open cuts to his cheek and above his eyebrow that had got to her. But Brady seriously doubted that. He was certain it would be connected to her earlier meeting with DCI Gates. Brady knew that Gates wouldn’t take the incident at the hospital with Frank Henderson lightly. Especially since both Frank Henderson and Adamson had made a formal complaint against him.

Brady rubbed the coarse dark stubble on his chin as he thought about the job at hand.

‘Harvey, Kodovesky. You two have the details on the victim who we now know has been identified as the missing sixteen-year-old girl, Melissa Ryecroft. How about you update us?’

‘Right,’ began Harvey as he stood up and walked over to the whiteboard.

Harvey cleared his throat and looked around his colleagues.

Brady waited. He knew what was coming next.

Harvey pointed to the photographs of the decapitated head that Ainsworth had sent through.

‘Wolfe has confirmed that the decapitated head left in DI Brady’s car does in fact belong to the victim, who we now know has been positively identified as Melissa Ryecroft, a local girl.’

Around the table there were a few murmurs at the gruesome sight of the victim’s head.

‘As you can see, Melissa Ryecroft was partially strangled and then a captive bolt pistol was placed in the centre of her forehead and fired,’ stated Harvey. ‘In between that … well … you can all see what they did to her after she was dead. Presumably, this was to make it difficult to identify the victim.’

Brady looked at the rigid faces around the room. The only one whose expression never altered was Kodovesky. She sat expressionless, not allowing the photographic carnage on the whiteboard to penetrate.

‘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.