Danielle Ramsay - Vanishing Point

With his full weight holding Macmillan down, Brady grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged his head back.

Macmillan screamed in agony.

‘Ahhh! You bastard! You’re breaking my fucking neck!’ shouted Macmillan.

‘Yeah? Tell you what. That’s only the start of it you fucking bastard!’ snarled Brady.

Without thinking he smashed Macmillan’s head forward, hard into the ground.

‘Where are they? Eh? Where the fuck are they, you sick bastard?’

Blood spurted everywhere covering the front of Macmillan’s white shirt and black suit. The ground was splattered. Brady paid no attention. He yanked Macmillan’s head back again.

‘Didn’t fucking hear you! Where are they? Nicoletta? Melissa Ryecroft? What the fuck have you done to them?’

‘You bastard! I’ll get you done for police brutality!’

‘Yeah? Log it in the complaints book!’

Macmillan moaned through gritted teeth as Brady aggressively yanked his head back for the third time.

‘This is for Simone!’ Brady replied forcefully thrusting Macmillan’s broken and bloodied face back into the hard, jagged, bloodied tarmac.

Macmillan spluttered and moaned in agony as blood gushed out through his broken teeth.

‘I’ll kill you if you don’t fucking talk!’ growled Brady.

Macmillan cried out in pain as Brady snapped his head back again.

He bent down to his ear.

‘No witnesses see?’ hissed Brady. ‘Self-defence on my part. Already been shot at by your thugs. Didn’t know if you had a loaded gun aimed for my chest when you came at me … Your fucking choice!’

He ignored the blood pouring down his hands from Macmillan’s face.

He also ignored the sirens as they pulled up at the roundabout and the shouts from the armed response team.

‘One last fucking chance, you bastard!’

‘Suck my cock! That’s what I got your copper girlfriend to do. She’s good, but then you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ spat Macmillan.

Brady jerked his head back hard once more, ready to smash it into the ground again and again until he got rid of all his pent-up fury at what the bastard had done to Simone, Nicoletta and Christ knows who else.

But in that moment he suddenly realised what he was doing made him no better than the animal he was restraining.

‘Go on, you bastard!’ jeered Macmillan. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Brady didn’t react. Instead he fought every instinct coursing through his body to obliterate Macmillan’s face so that, like Simone, he’d never be able to talk again.

‘You and I are the same, Jack. We both have brothers who we have to protect. No matter what you fucking do I’ll never talk. Loyalty comes first. Then again, you’d know all about that as well, wouldn’t you?’ sneered Macmillan.

‘We’re nothing alike, Macmillan,’ stated Brady calmly, regaining his composure.

He released his hold on Macmillan’s head, letting it fall forward. He then twisted Macmillan’s arms even further behind his back, ignoring his cries of pain as he physically restrained him until the armed response team took charge.

‘She’s in the boot,’ Conrad called out. ‘I can’t get her out. It’s jammed … the boot lid’s jammed …’

Brady turned round but before he had a chance to react, Conrad had collapsed to the ground.

‘Conrad? Conrad? ’ shouted Brady as he jumped off Macmillan and ran towards his deputy.

Four armed officers immediately had Macmillan covered before he tried to get up and make a run for it.

Brady didn’t notice. His attention was on Conrad.

His deputy lay in a heap on the ground. His eyes closed. His mouth open. His breathing erratic.

It was then that Brady noticed the blood pooling out from under Conrad. A small burn hole in his shirt told Brady that he had been shot in the shoulder.

‘Paramedics! I need paramedics over here!’ screamed Brady as he bent over Conrad.

Chapter Forty-Five

Brady ran to the Jag. He tried the boot but it wouldn’t budge. The rear wing had buckled when the car had gone over the kerb and hit the low wall surrounding the car park.

He blocked out the noise of the armed response unit. They had already disarmed Ronnie Macmillan’s suited henchmen, Visa and Delta. Not that they were going to give them much trouble. Not after Conrad had rammed the driver’s door at speed. The glass on the driver’s side was shattered from the impact.

Visa, injured from the collision, had crawled out of the Jag through the driver’s side; the passenger door had been blocked tight against the low wall. Delta, the driver, was in a critical state. It was clear from the damage to his head that it had smashed with full force against the door pillar when the Saab had hit. Visa had climbed over his lifeless body, armed with a handgun, ready to take out Conrad. Then Brady.

Conrad had taken a hit to the shoulder. Straight through his windscreen.

Brady had been lucky. He had missed the couple of shots fired in his direction as he had run after Macmillan.

Conrad had reversed the Saab back and then put his foot to the floor and drove it straight at the armed henchman who, with deathly precision, had his gun aimed at the back of Brady’s head.

His bones had snapped like twigs as, unable to react quickly enough, he was rammed between Conrad’s bonnet and the driver’s side of the car.

Silence had followed.

Brady by then had had his hands full questioning Macmillan while Conrad had pulled himself from the Saab, bleeding profusely. He had moved over to the boot only to find it jammed.

It was Brady who was standing there now, struggling to release the lid. His mind sped while the world around seemed to move in slow motion. Flashing lights blurred around him while muted, distorted voices yelled orders and commands.

Brady thought of the crowbar in his boot. He ran to the Granada.

Questions came at him from every angle.

Brady heard himself state the situation, barely realising it was him talking.

‘She’s in the boot. Lid’s jammed.’

Grabbing the crowbar he ran back to the Jag, wincing in pain as the old gunshot wound in his leg kicked off.

He wedged the bar under the lip of the boot lid and somehow, with a strength he didn’t know he possessed, he prised it open.

He heard gasps behind him. And realised that the armed response unit had followed him, as had the paramedics.

A girl with long dark hair lay naked in a foetal position. Arms and legs bound, mouth gagged.

For a moment, Brady thought she was dead. Her skin unnaturally pale. The torches shining into the black, industrial plastic lined boot showed an arsenal of torture implements. Varying lengths of knives neatly arranged in a leather holder. Ropes and black tape lay across the knives, ready and waiting. But in the corner of the boot, Brady immediately recognised a captive bolt pistol from the images Claudia had shown them at the briefing which now felt like a life-time ago.

He looked at the girl’s chest, to see whether she was still breathing. To his relief he could see it move. Delicately and out of balance.

Brady bent down and as gently as he could tore off the black tape that gagged her mouth.

She gasped.

Eyes wide, terrified. She stared at him. Her large almond brown eyes screamed of the unimaginable horrors she had witnessed.

‘Monika?’ he quietly questioned. ‘It’s the police. You’re alright. You’re going to be alright.’

Brady stood back and let the paramedics get her out. He watched as she was wrapped in a blanket and then laid on a stretcher. He realised that her captors had drugged her: her eyes were wide open. Her mouth unmoving, her breathing like a bird with a broken wing struggling to fly.