Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

‘The whole point is that she dies two minutes later. During that time she gets fucked. Mind you, given what I’ve heard about you two, that’s probably a minute and half longer than you’d need,’ Claudia said pointedly, as her eyes flashed emerald green.

Claudia’s eyes could change from a tranquil bluish-green to a passionate emerald green in a split second. Brady recognised the sign, unlike Kenny and Daniels. And was more than relieved it was them on the receiving end.

Brady sat forward.

He caught Claudia’s eye. It was enough.

He then shot Kenny and Daniels a look which told them they deserved as much for fucking around.

‘Tom, did Wolfe’s autopsy report show the victim to have been raped and sodomised in the leadup to her death?’ Brady asked, backing up Claudia’s statement.

Harvey nodded, not wanting to get caught in the firing line.

‘That’s one word for it,’ he said uncomfortably, as he caught Brady’s eye.

Harvey knew Claudia of old. Both in a professional capacity when she had worked as the Duty Solicitor at the station, but also in a personal role, when she had been married to Brady. And something Kenny and Daniels didn’t know but were about to find out, was that Claudia didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Claudia looked at Harvey and then turned to Daniels and Kenny, not finished with them yet.

‘While her body contorts and convulses, while she lies there unconscious with half her brain tissue blown away, men will pay a great deal of money to have the ultimate fuck. The ultimate fuck being … fucking a woman and making it the very last thing she’ll ever feel.’

In one sentence she wiped the boyish smirks off Daniels and Kenny’s faces.

Nobody said a word.

Harvey dropped his gaze to the floor, clearly finding the reality of how the victim had died distasteful.

The atmosphere in the room was tense and suffocating.

Every man in the room wished they were anywhere else at this precise moment than sitting here with the glaring evidence of the level of depravity some men would reach to get their kicks.

Men were bastards. Brady couldn’t dispute it. The evidence was plastered in front of them on the whiteboard.

Brady looked at Kenny and Daniels who were squirming with discomfort at having made light of the situation. And then at Harvey and Conrad.

But these men weren’t the bastards here, Brady reminded himself.

And Claudia knew that. As did Kodovesky.

These were the men who would spend thankless, sleepless hours hunting down and apprehending the sick bastards who gave mankind a bad name.

Harvey was the first to break the awkward silence.

‘The cartridge used had 3 grains – that’s about 190mg of gunpowder, giving the velocity of the bolt 55 metres per second.’

Claudia nodded at Harvey. She then looked at the rest of the team.

‘What is frightening here is that this penchant for paying for sex with a girl while she’s dying is a growing phenomenon,’ Claudia explained.

She looked up at the countless, brutal images of the victim, deliberating for a moment.

‘What we’re dealing with is a new breed of sex crime,’ concluded Claudia.

No one said a word. Not even Brady.

All of them were lost in the horror of what was before them.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘You might be wondering why I’m here, apart from to make you feel like shit,’ Claudia said, looking directly at Kenny and Daniels.

She then shot them a wry smile.

Her objective hadn’t been to alienate or humiliate them, it had been simply to wake them up to the seriousness of the situation.

‘This is what I do,’ she said, with a note of sadness as she cast her eyes up at the photographs of the victim laid bare and naked for all to see.

‘I deal in shit like that,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level. ‘My job is to find these women – sometimes girls as young as eleven – before it’s too late. Before they end up on your desk either as missing persons or, at worst, murder victims. I’m here because I can help you find the men who did this to her. I help you and you help me by catching the perpetrators and making sure they never do this to another girl again.’

Claudia turned and stared at the team, clearly worried.

‘Because I guarantee, she isn’t the first. And unless you apprehend the group of men responsible, she won’t be the last.’

Brady shot her a questioning look.

‘Can you expand?’

‘My team, which I co-head with DCI Davidson, have spent the last few months trying to get information on an international, elitist group who call themselves “The Nietzschean Brotherhood”. We initially got intelligence from Scotland Yard about this group when we first set up the sex trafficking unit in Newcastle.’

‘I’ve never heard of them,’ Brady replied.

From the puzzled looks on the faces around the table, he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of the Nietzschean Brotherhood. However, Brady had heard of Friedrich Nietzsche, a nineteenth-century German philosopher. And he presumed the name of the group was no coincidence, given the Nietzschean Brotherhood’s quest for the ultimate power – to take another person’s life while climaxing.

‘I wouldn’t expect you to have heard of them,’ Claudia began. ‘They are a covert organisation who are the most difficult group we’ve ever come across to infiltrate. SOCA set up a unit twelve months ago to break into this group without much success.

‘Firstly, they communicate through encrypted chat rooms and websites. Secondly, these men are wealthy. They can buy whatever they want, including a girl’s life. Our informant has said that a year’s membership costs £100,000. Now that’s membership only. That doesn’t buy you the girl of your choice. What they do have is an exquisite catalogue of girls ranging from ten to twenty-five years old. Whatever creed or nationality you want, they deal in it. And from the evidence on the victim here,’ Claudia pointed to Melissa Ryecroft’s severed head, ‘I’d say the Nietzschean Brotherhood is spreading out from London.’

‘How do you know it’s not just some kind of copycat killing then?’ interrupted Harvey.

‘We don’t know for certain. But from the way she’s been sadistically raped and sodomised by a group of men, I’d say it’s in keeping with previous murders. Especially the use of the captive bolt pistol.’

She looked around the room. It was uncomfortably silent.

‘The Nietzschean Brothers have their own unique take on life. As I’m sure you can guess by their name, we presume they have been inspired by the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, whose idea of the “superman” is what this brotherhood appears to be emulating. Nietzsche wanted to challenge the ingrained values of society, especially the Church’s indoctrination of ideas about good and evil, believing they hamper human potential. The rejection of God could give us “superman” – a man who would trust his own sense of good and evil and not some Christian doctrine. In 1900 Nietzsche declared the death of God, leading to outright nihilism …’ Claudia paused, realising that she had lost her audience.

Brady gave her a look which told her to move it along.

‘Nihilism is the belief that nothing has any inherent importance and that life lacks purpose. If God is dead, then nothing remains to which man can cling and orient himself by. He can effectively do what he wants as long as he doesn’t get caught.’

Brady noted that Claudia had lost Kenny and Daniels five minutes ago.

‘That’s all very interesting, I’m sure,’ interrupted Brady. ‘But what has a group of nihilistic blokes got to do with this investigation?’ he asked.