Nameless Kill (9 page)

“Are you proposing bribery?” Brian said, opening his eyes and half-smiling at Hannah.

Hannah tapped Brian on the end of his nose with her pointy nail. “Usually works with men.”

Brian moved in towards Hannah. Moved closer to her brown eyes, her puffed-out lips. He watched as her eyelids drooped. Waited for the salty taste of her lips to kiss against his.

And then he heard the bleeping of the Facebook app on his iPad.

He swung back and reached for the iPad, leaving Hannah hanging. He grabbed the iPad. Lifted it above him. It was Davey. Davey had sent him a message. It had to be Davey. He was just online a few minutes ago and…

Brian did have a new message, but it wasn’t from Davey. It was from Hannah’s friend, Sally. “hi lol” it read.

Brian bit into his lip. Felt his heart pounding.

“What’s your problem?” Hannah said, moving away and pushing Brian’s feet off her lap playfully.

Brian let the disappointment sink in. “I don’t know how to say this, but I really fucking need to delete Sally, Hannah.”

Chapter Fourteen

Brad was waiting beside Brian’s desk when Brian got into work the following morning.

He smelled. More than usual, actually. A strong, beery tang on his breath. His veiny hands were shaking too. His curly dark hair was greasier than ever. A part of Brian crumbled inside seeing Brad like this. He wanted to tell him to get the fuck home and have a wash. He wanted to tell him to pull himself out of his alcoholic rut.

But Brian had been there. He’d been there, just years earlier. And he knew what little use motivational talks were.

“Got a gift for me this morning, Brad?” Brian asked, pulling his leather desk chair towards him, the taste of his morning porridge lingering on his tongue like a parasite.

“A report on that CCTV from the African Connection place,” Brad said, tapping the papers‌—‌
more
papers‌—‌that he’d stacked on Brian’s crowded desk.

“And?” Brian asked, as Brad kept his index finger on the papers.

Brad cleared his throat. Scratched his dark beard. He looked like a tramp in a suit, not a police officer. “Nothing. Nobody goes in and buys any hats. Hardly anyone goes in at all, to be honest. Dunno how that place is still standing.”

Brian rubbed his fingers against his temple. Typical. Just fucking typical. “Right. Okay. How long does the CCTV go back?”

Brad shrugged. Stared into space. “Three months then nothing before that.”

“So there’s a chance somebody bought a hat before those three months of filming.”

The lines on Brad’s forehead turned. “And what? Kept her hostage before killing her, or something?”

“We can’t rule out that possibility,” Brian said, his eyes still closed, scratching at his temple as phones rang and keyboards tapped around the office. “Signs suggested she’d been kept prisoner.”

There was a slight pause. Brian could tell Brad wanted to say something.

“What about you, anyway?” Brad asked.

Brian opened his eyes and looked over at Brad. Brad looked past him.

“What about me?” Brian asked.

Brad shrugged. “Just I…‌I heard. About‌—‌about yesterday. After the press. Passing out, ey?”

Brian waved his hand at Brad. “It’s nothing. I was just warm.”

“Just warm. Right.”

Brian looked right at Brad again. Brad’s glassy eyes were focused on Brian now. He was snappy. Acting like he hadn’t slept in days. “Right,” Brian repeated.

“Anyway,” Brad said, lifting the papers from Brian’s desk and turning them over. “Heard back from CSI just earlier, too.”

Brian rubbed his tongue against his furry teeth. Fuck. He’d forgotten to brush them. Another few days and he’d look and smell as rough as Brad. “And?”

“You’re probably not going to be so surprised when I tell you nothing conclusive showed up.”

Brian’s cheeks heated. His whole body felt like it had been put in a microwave. “Seriously? No blood? No spunk?”

Brad leafed through the report with his shaky hands, dirt between his fingernails. “No blood spilled on the scene, suggesting the girl was killed elsewhere. No fingerprints on the girl or on her clothing, anything like that.”

“Fuck,” Brian said, squeezing the bridge of his nose. His head was pounding. He’d felt fresh when he’d walked into the office, too. What the hell was all this about? “So we’ve got a mystery unidentified girl with a mystery unidentified killer and no fucking evidence of what might’ve‌—‌”

“I said nothing
conclusive
,” Brad said, a rare glimmer in his eyes.

Brian felt his fists tense as Brad stood there with his smug face. “Just tell me what the fuck we have here, Brad. I’m not in a mood for fucking around.”

“Are you ever?” Brad mumbled.

Brian let that one go. Just this once.

“Firstly, good job on the little pink hat crusade,” Brad said, tapping the paper again. “The fibres in the hat from African Connection matched the fibres in the hat on mystery girl’s head.”

“Which we knew already. But okay.” Good solid evidence that African Connection had some level of involvement with whatever had happened. Better than nothing.

“Not just that,” Brad said, a wave of his alcohol-bitter breath bashing against Brian as he turned a page. “Marks, too. The marks around her neck. Left a good impression, as you know. Managed to work out where they came from.”

Brian’s chest tingled. He leaned forward in his creaky, wobbly desk chair. “Where?”

Brad placed a paper on the table. It was a print-screen of a Pet Supremo webpage. And on it was a black leather dog collar.

“The leather of this collar matched the leather in our girl’s neck. And the marks on her neck were pretty raw, so it looks like she’d been chained up pretty tight like a dog.”

Brian gulped down a sickly taste in his mouth as he stared at the image of the dog collar. His mind went back to those kids that Yemi Moya had kept as slaves. Those poor kids. Hopefully, they hadn’t suffered too much. Hopefully this girl hadn’t suffered too much either.

Although that was a long shot.

“So…‌so there has to be someone at Pet Supremo. Someone who’s‌—‌”

“Not necessarily,” Brad cut in, which always fucking annoyed Brian. “Like you see, these collars are available online. And I’m sure they sell bucket loads.”

Brian rubbed his hand up and down the rough black plastic of his chair arm. “So all we know now is that our mystery girl had a collar around her neck some time before she died. And that she died pretty roughly.”

“Until the body’s properly examined later today, that’s probably all we’re going to get.”

Brian shook his head. He looked at all the paper scattered across his desk, which he liked to keep tidy. “No semen. No DNA. I just…‌I don’t get that.”

Brad leaned on the edge of Brian’s desk, making it creak. The noise got on Brian’s nerves, but he didn’t say anything. He figured Brad’s shaking hands needed somewhere to support themselves. “All we can do now is wait for pathology.”

Brian rubbed his hand through his thinning hair. The image of the girl was strong in his head. Turned down in the water, pink hat over sheep-fur, antlers on top of her head, hands bound. “Nothing on the other materials?” he asked.

Brad was staring into space again. His eyes were wide. He looked a million miles away as the rest of the office buzzed around him.

“Brad?”

Brad blinked. Turned back to Brian. Tilted his head as a way of asking Brian to repeat himself.

“The bound arms, the ties around the feet and the white, sheepy stuff. Anything on those?”

Brad’s eyes narrowed. He yawned, even more of a strong alcohol smell covering Brian’s face. “As we expected. Ties around her arms and feet is just standard bandage equipment. Could be from anywhere. Um, the sheep wool was actually from an imitation rug. Again, pretty wholesale stuff, could be from anywhere. And the antlers‌—‌look like they’re from a live stag. Not sure what to make of it, really.”

Brian sighed. He pictured the three items in front of him. Bandage equipment. An imitation sheep’s wool rug. Antlers taken from a stag. And the pink hat. What was the link? Had he seen any wool rugs in African Connection? He remembered the shop. Remembered the damp smell, the dark room. He couldn’t remember any wool rugs. But there could’ve been some in the back room. Something like that. They’d have to check. They couldn’t just leave African Connection unchecked, not with its links to Yemi Moya, not with its history.

“Don’t I get a thanks?” Brad asked, half-smiling through his beardy mouth.

Brian shook his head. “You get something,” he mumbled.

“McDone.”

The voice came from Brian’s left. He looked up from his desk and saw DCI Marlow pacing in his direction, freshly shaven, eyes fixed on Brian like he was Terminator.

“DCI Marlow. What can I do‌—‌”

“You can start by paying a visit down to Price’s,” DCI Marlow said. “76 Woodplumpton Road. Refused to speak to us on the phone. Told us to shove our case up our arses. Probably smack you in the face on first sight.”

Brian turned to Brad and smiled.

“Sounds like our kind of challenge,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen

Brad pulled up his blue Toyota Yaris on the pavement on Woodplumpton Road. As soon as he did, Brian clicked his seatbelt and stepped out into the fresh air, a stark contrast to the boozy smell in Brad’s car. In truth, the way Brad was smelling, he probably shouldn’t even be driving. It’d be a miracle if he weren’t over the limit. But y’know. Been there, done that.

Brian walked down the pavement outside 76 Woodplumpton Road. The air was fresh, cooler than the last few days, which was a big relief considering how muggy it got on warm Preston days. Birds tweeted as Brian approached the driveway of Price’s house. The drive was a bold shade of black, freshly tarmacked, not a speck of dirt on it. At the bottom of the driveway, a purple BMW was parked.

“So how are we going about this?” Brad called. Brian heard the sound of the car bleeping as Brad locked the door, then jogged over to Brian’s side. The fresh air was immediately tainted by Brad’s boozy stench.

“I’m…‌I’m not sure you coming is a good idea,” Brian said, looking down the driveway at Price’s semi-detached, red-brick house. Ivy clawed its way up the side wall. What a nightmare taking care of that would be. Reminded Brian of his grandma’s house when he was younger, and the hours she’d force him to spend chopping leaves from the side of the house until his knuckles were numb.

“Bullshit,” Brad said, punching Brian on his right arm. He frowned at Brian. His chapped lips were shaking. “I‌—‌I’m Deputy SIO. I know how this works.”

“And you’re doing a great job,” Brian said a little sternly. “But I…‌I know Price. This should just be me and him.”

Brad tutted and shook his head. “Then why’d you ask me to taxi you down here then, eh? Lazy shit.”

“That’s how taxis work, isn’t it?” Brian said, amusing himself to see Brad so het up. “What’s got you so agitated anyway? Look like you’ve had some ants shoved up your‌—‌”

“Just fuckin’ leave it,” Brad said. He stuck two fingers up at Brian then skulked back to the blue Toyota Yaris, head hanging low.

Brian gulped as Brad opened and slammed the car door a little too loud. Had he gone too far? He was only teasing him around. And the truth was, he wanted to speak to Price one on one because of their history. They had an understanding of one another. An understanding that Brian didn’t like, not after Price’s negligence in the Nicola Watson case, not after his cover up of Robert Luther’s involvement in Nicola’s death for “the good of the community.” But an understanding nonetheless.

Brian walked down the driveway, smooth beneath his shoes. He felt like he should be wearing protective plastic over his soles judging by how clean the tarmac was. And remembering how former Detective Inspector Price used to be, well, wouldn’t surprise Brian for him to make that kind of request either.

Brian got closer to the patterned glass of the white-rimmed front door. He contemplated what he was going to say, his chest tingling.
“Hello, Price.” “Hi, old pal.” “How you doing, Price?”
Fuck. What
did
he say to Price? As long as he said something. Made it clear he was here about the Yemi Moya case. Any “confidential” findings Price could give him, Brian would eat it up. Because this wasn’t about friendship. It wasn’t about reconciliation. It was about the missing, unidentified girl in Avenham Park. Nothing else.

Brian lifted his tensed fist and counted down from three as he prepared to pound on the glass.

Three.

Two.

One.

Knock, knock, knock.

Brian kept still. He waited. Waited for Price to come to his door. Waited for him to let Brian in.

But through the tinted glass, Brian couldn’t see a thing. He listened to the hum of the radio on Brad’s car, and the chorus of birdsong, so loud it was actually quite annoying. He listened, watched and waited.

Nothing.

Brian bit his lip and lifted his fist again, his cheeks burning as he banged on the glass. His stomach tickled as he did. He looked to the right, over the brown wooden fence at the neighbour’s house. Looked to the left, past the well-trimmed front garden and to the accompanying house. Price had to be in. He had to be home. His BMW was in the driveway.

“Price, it’s…” His voice froze. Completely stalled. His announcement of his arrival sounded much better in his head, and it didn’t even sound that great in his head. He coughed. Cleared his throat. “Are you in, Dale?”

No movement behind the frosted, patterned glass. No noises from inside. Nothing.

Brian looked back at Brad’s blue car. Brad was sat inside it staring out of the window on the driver’s side, music humming from within. Fuck. The police calls to Price must’ve scared him away. Forced him into hiding.

But Yemi Moya. African Connection. The abductions. They had to have something to do with the mystery girl’s death. And that wasn’t something Brian was just going to let slip by.

He breathed in the grassy-smelling air, held that breath, then banged even harder on the glass doorway.