Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

‘Did you get a description of the brothers, apart from the fact that they’re Eastern European?’ asked Brady.

Claudia shook her head.

‘The girl was too scared to tell the punter. Thought they might kill him if he found out too much. And she was scared they would harm her for talking.’

Brady nodded, disappointed.

‘Two rules when you’re a sex slave. Never say no to a punter, regardless of what they want. And rule number two, you don’t talk. Nothing personal about your old life or who’s pimping you.’ Claudia paused as she looked around the room. ‘Sorry. Wish I had more to give …’

‘You’ve told us a lot more than we expected,’ assured Brady.

He sat back and thought over what she had told them. His eyes were automatically drawn to the images of the sex slaves on the whiteboard whose whereabouts were unknown.

Brady leaned forward, turning his attention back to Claudia. ‘You said the punter was attacked? Who attacked him? Did he give you a description of them?’

Claudia shook her head. ‘No, it was dark and the attacker was wearing a hoodie under his leather jacket. Had it pulled right over his head, partially covering his face. The punter reckoned he was tall, about 6´2? and well-built. As if he went to the gym. He also reckoned he had an Eastern European accent.’

‘I see,’ muttered Brady. ‘Can we talk to this punter?’ He realised he could have some information that could help the investigation.

Claudia shook her head. ‘No … last Sunday evening, the night after we’d raided the Dock, his first-floor council flat in Elswick was firebombed. The front door was the only way in and out and it had been locked from the outside. He was barricaded in. I don’t know if you remember it on the news? It made national headlines.’

Brady nodded, as did everyone else. They had heard about it.

A single man in his early fifties had burnt to death, unable to get out the front door. Even if he hadn’t been locked in, he would have had to run through the petrol that had been poured through the letterbox and set alight. And then there was the Molotov cocktail they’d thrown in for good measure.

What the hell were they up against, Brady mused as he looked at Claudia.

He wondered if she knew more than she was telling him. If she was holding something back. Something connected to Simone Henderson. But what?

And as for the Eastern European brothers, he wondered whether they were the same men that Nick was working for and perhaps, as Claudia had suggested, the same men connected to Melissa Ryecroft’s murder. Brady didn’t want to think about the part Simone Henderson had played in all of this. Whatever she had found out had cost her more than she could ever have anticipated.

His biggest problem now was keeping Adamson in the dark as much as possible. He needed to get to Nick first. Talk to him before he brought these men down. He still couldn’t believe that his own brother could be involved in organised crime of this nature. And until he had confirmation from him and him alone, Brady still held onto the belief that Nick was being forced to do this against his will. That these men had some hold over Nick.

He looked at the photograph of the missing Lithuanian girl, Edita Aginatas. He had a gut feeling that she had suffered the same fate as Melissa Ryecroft. And what of the other girls that had been relocated?

The odds of finding them were heavily stacked against them.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

‘So, what have these European brothers and the sex business they’re now believed to be operating here in the North East got to do with “The Nietzschean Brotherhood”?’ Brady asked.

Claudia nodded at him. ‘That was my next point. The note left with the victim’s head in your car,’ she said, bringing up an enlarged image of the note. ‘It’s been signed with the letter “N”. Unfortunately, no forensic evidence was found on the note. Whoever left it was very careful not to leave any traces behind.’

Brady nodded, dreading what might be coming next.

‘From the source we have regarding the Nietzschean Brotherhood they wear a crest ring or a signet ring with the “N” emblem. Just like the “N” on the note here.’

Brady did his utmost not to react.

‘So you think someone from this Brotherhood followed me and dumped the victim’s head and a note in my car?’ he said calmly.

Her look said it all.

‘Why?’ asked Brady.

There was a heavy, pregnant silence in the room.

‘Can we discuss this in private?’ Claudia replied.

Brady frowned. This was obviously what she had wanted to talk about earlier.

He looked from Claudia to Conrad.

Conrad dropped his eyes.

He obviously knew what it was that Claudia was holding back.

Brady cursed under his breath, feeling very much left out of the loop. But it was his own fault. He had chosen not to listen to her. She had tried to tell him and he had insisted on starting the briefing regardless.

‘Look, Jack, this organisation is not to be messed with … These are powerful men who so far have eluded justice.’

Brady didn’t say a word.

Instead he looked at the brutal images of Melissa Ryecroft’s tortured body.

He then looked back at Claudia.

‘I don’t give a damn how rich or powerful this group is, no one has the right to rape, sodomise and torture a young girl,’ Brady said, his expression darkening as his voice slipped into a thick Geordie accent. ‘And I for one will not be threatened or scared away by anyone. So you tell your informant, whoever he is, that they can go fuck themselves.’

Claudia looked at Brady, her eyes burning a vivid emerald green.

‘Highly commendable, I’m sure, Jack,’ she said after some deliberation. ‘As for our informant …’ Claudia turned back to the whiteboard and brought up a new image.

A slender, tall, bleached-blonde-haired girl was unceremoniously laid out on an autopsy slab.

Brady looked at her. Her spiky, short punkish hair was discoloured a dirty rust colour: blood. The damage was as brutal as Melissa Ryecroft’s, if not worse. Apart from not having a hole through her head. Her body was covered in what appeared to be cigarette burns. But he wasn’t sure. He then caught sight of the autopsy photographs of the victim’s genitalia; damning evidence that she had been brutally gang-raped.

Brady turned away, sickened to his core.

‘Katya is her name. That’s the only detail we have. That and she said she was Russian. We tried tracing her with what few details we had, but nothing …’ She pointed at the murder victim. ‘Unless you’re psychic it would be difficult to talk to her,’ Claudia said, as she looked at Brady.

‘She was a nineteen-year-old Russian girl. Beautiful, model material. Brought over to London by a sex trafficker and bought by two men in the Brotherhood. She lived long enough to tell the Met officers who got there what we now know … The hotel she’d been taken to was in the West End of London. Old school money. A fellow guest had heard screams coming from the hotel room and had thought that she was some high-class hooker. He’d evidently seen her being led in by two well-dressed men. Heard her accent and knew that she was Russian. Room got raided and there she was tortured and bleeding to death on the bed. The two men torturing her had received a warning from someone that there had been a complaint made to the hotel staff and that the police were being called. They left before they had the opportunity to put the captive bolt pistol to her head. You see, Katya told us that one of the men had pulled out what looked like a black pistol and had put it to her head saying, and I quote: “This will be the best and last fuck of your life.”’