Blood Reckoning: DI Jack Brady 4 (23 page)

Tim Cowan was in his mid-to-late thirties and had worked at the station for the past five years. Brady liked him. Got on with him most of the time. Sometimes the job got in the way. Aside from that, he was a guy that Brady would happily have a pint with. The reason Brady liked him was because he was a realist and the job, as so often was the case, had made him cynical. Spend long enough dealing with the dregs of society, and your view of the world shifts – radically. Tim Cowan was no idealist. He did the job purely for the money. Most of the time he was called in, it was to represent some drug- and alcohol-addled scum who’d decided to rearrange someone’s face simply because they didn’t like the look of it.

‘Molly?’ Brady began.

Startled, she looked up at him with the frenzied eyes of a wild animal backed into a corner.

‘You can make this easier on yourself if you just tell me what you know.’

Molly looked at him as if trying to comprehend what he was saying.

Conrad coughed. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. He then coughed again. Before he knew it, he was in the midst of a coughing fit.

It was no surprise. The air was dusty and dry. And rank. Brady could feel it catching in the back of his own throat when he breathed.

Conrad’s coughing escalated. His face turned puce as he tried and failed to get it under control.

‘Go get some water,’ Brady ordered. His head was still pounding and Conrad’s persistent barking wasn’t helping.

Conrad did as he was told, scraped his chair back and left the room.

Tim Cowan raised his eyebrows at Brady. The look in his hazel eyes suggested he would like to follow suit.

Brady breathed out. Tried to relax. To not let the cloying air get to him. Nor the reluctance of the suspect to talk. He watched as Tim Cowan started to shuffle the papers in front of him, a clear sign that he was going to ask for the interview to be postponed until he had had another chance to have a talk with his client. Not that Cowan had fared any better than Brady. Apparently she had refused the right to a solicitor. When told that she had to have legal representation, she had refused to even tell him her name.

Whether she was still drunk, Brady wasn’t sure. However, from the state of her, he wouldn’t be surprised. Or she could still be in shock. After all, it wasn’t every day that you got dragged out of bed by two burly officers and brought in for questioning. Not the morning after you were informed of your boyfriend’s horrific death.

‘Look, Molly . . . let’s start again, shall we? Believe me when I say I want to let you go,’ Brady said.

She looked at him. Her eyes filled with uncertainty. Unsure of whether he was trying to trick her.

Brady continued, his voice low, trusting, ‘But first you need to help me understand. You see, there’s things about your boyfriend that we still don’t quite get.’

When Brady had requested the victim’s bank and credit card statements he had hoped that he had changed his personal details. But he hadn’t, which meant they still did not know his new address. Frustratingly, neither did his girlfriend. Brady needed to know exactly what kind of life De Bernier led. Clearly, it was one that had placed him in the hands of a sadistic murderer.

Brady looked at Molly in front of him. Painfully thin and terribly nauseous. The dark circles under her darting eyes added to her air of overall malaise. Her limp T-shirt had started to cling to her. The damp patches under her armpits had deepened. She was terrified. Of what? Brady had no idea. He thought back to last night. The change in Johansson was remarkable.

‘All right,’ Brady continued, ‘you said you had an argument with the victim on Saturday morning? Is that correct?’

She nodded. Barely.

‘And that’s why he never returned any of your calls and texts? Because of the argument?’

Again she nodded.

‘What was the argument about?’

She looked at him wearily and shrugged. ‘I . . . don’t remember . . .’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Brady fired back.

She looked stung.

‘I don’t believe you, because of all these texts you sent him,’ Brady stated, shoving the printed sheet towards her.

Molly refused to look at them. Brady knew why – because she remembered texting every single word.

‘If you can’t remember, take a look,’ Brady insisted.

Still she refused.

‘What’s wrong? Don’t want to be reminded of what you sent?’ Brady asked. He suddenly leaned in close. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it? All those threats? Not now they’ve been carried out!’

Molly looked as if Brady had just slapped her. Wide-eyed, she stared at him, trying to gauge whether he was serious.

Brady ignored the polite rap on the door. He was too busy trying not to lose his temper with the petulant young madam sat in front of him who had the misfortune to believe that she was somehow immune from being charged.

‘I’m not messing around here, Molly. I’ve dealt with worse than you. If you want to wait this out, then go for it. But I’ll charge you with the murder of your boyfriend,’ Brady threatened her, just as a surprised-looking Conrad walked back into the interview room.

He sat back down quietly.

‘You’ve got nothing on me,’ she answered. Her voice was suddenly defiant.

‘What about the last text you sent the victim? Sent at ten forty-five p.m., shortly before he was murdered. Remember what you said?’ Brady asked. But he didn’t give her a chance to answer. ‘I do. You said, quote: “Fucking bastard. I know where you are and who you’re with. I’m in the bar downstairs waiting to cut your cheating dick off!” ’

She shook her head. ‘So? I was angry. That’s not a crime. We’d had an argument. That’s all.’

‘You see, that’s where you’re wrong. That argument gave you a motive to kill him,’ Brady pointed out calmly. He waited a moment to allow her to absorb the magnitude of her situation.

She shrugged. ‘I thought he was seeing someone else. That’s why I sent that text. Nothing was meant by it. Not really—’

Brady didn’t give her a chance to continue. He’d had enough bullshit. ‘Then tell me why you were at the Royal Hotel on the night in question?’

She shook her head. ‘I . . . I wasn’t . . .’

First lie. Brady knew that it was hard enough when you were telling the truth to be consistent; to be able to relay the events in the same way each time. But when a suspect starts lying it is almost impossible to get all of the details to match the previous version. Molly Johansson had just started to talk and she was already inventing. As soon as she opened her mouth, out came the first lie. All he’d have to do was sit back and wait to hear something change when he asked her to retell the story again and again. There’d be a subtle change; something different would come into play. It was all about waiting. About giving the suspect enough rope to let them hang themselves.

But Brady didn’t have time to play mind games. He knew she was lying. Had the evidence to substantiate it.

‘I’ve got a reliable witness that places you there. Drunk, hysterical – you walked into reception demanding to know which room your cheating boyfriend was in. Sound familiar? They wouldn’t tell you, so you took off to the toilets to sort yourself out. You then went into the hotel bar and waited. Waited for what exactly?’

The look in her eyes told Brady he had her. Molly crossed her arms in front of herself, her nails anxiously digging into the flesh.

‘What happened? Did you confront him? Did you carry out your threat? Did you cut his penis off as a punishment for screwing around on you?’

‘No . . . Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’m not the stupid one here, Molly. I’m not the one whose boyfriend was found—’

‘Sir!’ interjected Conrad.

It worked. It had stopped Brady from adding ‘with his penis stuffed down his throat’.

He breathed out slowly. He needed to get a grip. He had come dangerously close to losing his temper and, perhaps, losing the case. Details of the mutilation had not been released. And Brady had made a point of not informing the victim’s parents. Some things were better left unsaid. There was also the possibility that it would be leaked to the press. The last thing the police wanted was a public frenzy – not again.

Molly Johansson looked at Brady with red-rimmed watery eyes. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand as she waited for him to finish whatever he was going to say.

Instead, he pushed the box of tissues he had brought in her direction.

She took one. Blew her nose. Another to wipe her tear-filled eyes.

‘Ready?’ Brady asked. ‘Because if you don’t talk I’ll have no choice but to charge you with your boyfriend’s murder.’

Not that he had any intention of doing any such thing. But it had the desired effect.

Molly nodded, defeated.

Brady imagined that last night after he and Conrad had left she had gone on a self-pitying bender. Two blows had hit her hard. The first was that her boyfriend, soon-to-be fiancé, was screwing someone else. The second, that his infidelity had got him killed.

‘Right, I want you to explain to me what happened on Saturday. How did you know Alex was going to be at the hotel in question?’

She looked at Brady. There was no resistance or defiance in her eyes. Instead, she had the look of someone whose fate was sealed.

‘Am I in trouble?’ she asked, biting her bottom lip. Tears started to well up again. Spilling silently down her face.

Brady ignored the tears. ‘Depends on what you tell me.’

Molly took a breath. And then she began, her voice unsteady, eyes focused on nothing in particular. ‘I knew he was seeing someone . . .’ She paused, chewing her lip, then looked at Brady. ‘You can tell. We’d argue about it and he’d claim I was paranoid. Messed up in the head and the like . . .’ she shook her head as more tears welled up. ‘But I loved him. You know? I just hoped it would pass. That he’d just get it out of his system. I mean, she’s like twice my age.’ She stopped and reached for another tissue to wipe her nose.

Brady decided to just let her talk. To get it all out. She was going nowhere. Neither was he.

‘I knew he was meeting her that night. He started the argument. Thought I was stupid. That I didn’t realise that he was trying to pick a fight to give him an out. We were meant to be going to a party that night. It was that morning when he checked his phone that his attitude changed. I knew he had a text. Even though he acted like he hadn’t. I asked him who he was texting when he thought I wasn’t looking and he gave me his usual answer of “no one”. I knew he was lying, so when he went to get a shower I had a look. I knew something was up. He was too cagey and off-hand with me. He always locked his phone but I had watched him enough times to figure out the password. But when I accessed it, he’d obviously deleted the text he’d had and the one he sent. There were a couple of numbers on his phone that had no contact details. I assumed they were other girls he had been seeing. Or ex-girlfriends,’ she said resignedly.

Brady was still waiting for this information from the mobile phone company. He was expecting something on his desk by the end of the day. The team were also busy tracking down friends and students on De Bernier’s Masters course in case they knew something that might help. But so far, it seemed that despite the victim being popular and well-liked, nobody actually knew much about his personal life. They knew he had a girlfriend and shared a student house in Heaton. After that, they had no idea about him; not the money, his old job as a bartender at the gentleman’s club, or where he had moved to two weeks prior to his murder.

Embarrassed at her next admission, Molly Johansson looked down at her hands. ‘So, I had a good look through his phone. I couldn’t find anything. No texts. He must have deleted everything she sent to him and vice versa. So I decided to have a look though his online history. He’d recently closed down a browser for a page on the Royal Hotel, showing the availability for that Saturday night. That’s when I realised that she must have texted him about arrangements and asked him to sort out a hotel. Or at least said that she had chosen a hotel. I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do.’ Molly paused.

Brady waited for her to get her thoughts together and continue.

‘After his shower, I challenged him. I demanded to know who had texted him. Told him I wasn’t a fool, that I knew he was seeing someone. That was when he lost it. Said that he didn’t like me prying on him, asking him who was texting whenever his phone went off. He accused me of being fucked in the head. That all he was doing was putting in late hours for Robert Smythe. For us. That he was working hard to get his career established so that we could get married. That whenever a text or email came in, it would be connected with the political campaign he was working on. But I knew it wasn’t. You know? Intuition? You know when someone’s cheating on you. It’s a feeling you can’t shake off. Anyway, he stormed out and that was the last I saw or heard from him . . .’ she faltered, realising the magnitude of what she had just said.

‘I tried ringing and texting, but he ignored me,’ Molly shrugged, her eyes now focused on the tissue paper she was absentmindedly twisting between her long fingers. ‘So . . . I got mad. Had a few too many drinks, as you do. And I guess it clouded my judgement. You see? He just kept ignoring my calls and texts. So I decided to confront them. Him. At the hotel. Make a scene. Shame her. Get her to leave him alone. Threaten her face to face that I would tell her husband. That would have scared her off. She had too much to lose if he found out.’

Brady shot a glance at Conrad. He face may have been impassive, but Brady knew that he was transfixed by every word.

She suddenly looked at Brady, fearful. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she stuttered as tears fell down her face. ‘I . . . I just wanted them to end it. I . . . I loved Alex. I really did.’

Brady nodded. ‘I understand that,’ he replied. It was time now to start directing the interview. He had questions that needed answering. He exhaled slowly. Looked at her and then spoke. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘Apart from make a fool of myself.’

Brady waited for her to fill in the gap.

Eventually she continued. ‘I . . . I got a taxi from Heaton to the coast. To the hotel. I went up to reception and asked if my boyfriend had checked in. There was a male and female receptionist. The guy was abrupt and shut me down. Said it wasn’t company policy to reveal who had checked in. So I decided to wait it out. I went into the bar. Had a couple more drinks and watched until he left. Then I asked the woman, who had been really friendly, if she could help. I showed her a photo of Alex. She didn’t say anything but I knew that she recognised him. Just the look on her face. She looked so sorry for me. That’s how I knew she had checked him in. So I took a chance and explained what I thought he was up to and asked if she could ring his room. Let him know that I was in reception. That I needed to talk to him. She was really nice. She said it was breaking the rules and she’d get into trouble if anyone found out, but she did it for me. Said she’d been there before herself. But he didn’t answer the phone. She let it ring, but nothing.’ Molly paused for a moment, as if remembering what had happened.