The Tattoo Thief Page 6

  There’s a meat saw here in the van that should make speedy work of his neck. My watch shows it’s close to two a.m. Plenty of time. I could be back at my workshop before dawn and if the head’s still warm, it’ll still be easy enough to peel away his tattoo before the skin stiffens. After that, there’ll be no hurry disposing of what remains of his head.

  With a plan in place, it’s time to get to work. I secure his wrists and ankles with cable ties – he’s bound to come round again before I’ve finished with him. Then I wrap a large bath towel around his head, securing it at the back in a bulky knot. There can be no damage to the skin of his scalp – dead skin doesn’t heal and any small nick will be a blemish forever on the preserved tattoo.

  Forty minutes later, I’m driving along Madeira Drive, past the top of the pier and down towards Kemptown. I don’t pass another car on the road. Thankfully there’s no moon tonight – just velvety blackness which will swallow us up as we head down the beach. I pull into a row of deserted parking places and stop the van. I wait for a few minutes but it’s deathly quiet. No one would be out walking their dog at this hour. I have to trust that I’m alone.

  The boy starts moaning and writhing in the back, terrified. The stink of piss and fear gives me pleasure, and I play with the idea of letting him stay awake until the saw blade takes him back down into the darkness. But there’s no point risking a struggle that could see his precious head being ground into the shingle. A minute later, when the ether has made him docile again, I open the doors at the back of the van. No one sees me dragging him across the pavement and onto the shingle. No one sees me squatting, at the water’s edge, as I start to cut. Or hears the rasp of my serrated blade tearing through his flesh or the grittier sound of it grinding across his bone. The ferocity of the waves sees to that. We are totally alone as his body slumps into the shallows. There’s no one here to see the ribbons of blood dissipating into the black water of the creeping Channel. None but a solitary seagull, its eyes darting in search of junk food. And me, of course.

  Back in my studio, I stand face to face with the severed head. His brown eyes are open. In the absence of life they look like glass eyes. The spider’s web is quite visible on the left-hand side of his forehead, but a fine growth of stubble blurs the outline of the giant spider that sits on top of his cranium. I caress the dome of the skull, enjoying the rough nap of the shorn hair against the soft pads of my fingertips. It won’t stay, though – the hair will be chemically removed during the tanning process. His head is still warm, the skin still soft and pliable. I turn it around and read the legend incorporated into the strands of web issuing from the spider’s abdomen.

  Belial

  The name of the Devil in sinuous Gothic script wrapped around the back of his skull.

  ‘“And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?”’ I whisper softly, picking up my knife. A favourite verse of mine from Corinthians. I’ll show that bastard who didn’t believe in me. I’ll show him what I can do. When your own flesh and blood rejects you, the fires of ambition burn that much more brightly, don’t they? You want to prove yourself successful as an act of vengeance.

  All that remains is for me to start slowly peeling the flesh away from the bone.

  10

  Rory

  Rory Mackay was in his element, delighted to see the boss floundering in that briefing. Arriving late would have scored Sullivan’s first black marks with the chief and it had gone from bad to worse with every answer. Meanwhile, Rory himself would make sure he got every ounce of credit due to him for any contribution he made and, with any luck, Sullivan wouldn’t last much past his first case.

  But for now, the team had a job to do and at least, for once, the victim wasn’t a child or a sexually exploited young woman. This one shouldn’t prove too hard to solve. If the motive wasn’t a robbery, then it would be a falling-out of thieves and Rory had a handle on most of the villains that called Brighton home. He’d wager money that the killing was gang related but the new boss was wet behind the ears. When Sullivan made a total cock-up of things Rory would be able to step in and become a DI himself, no doubt about it.

  Despite Bradshaw’s grumbling, the incident command board wasn’t looking too bad for thirty-six hours in. There were pictures of the body and of the crime scene pinned up, and now they had an ID. Once they dug around a bit in Evan Armstrong’s past, Rory felt sure they’d come up with a list of suspects too.

  ‘Mackay. A word.’

  Rory looked up from his desk to see DI Sullivan standing in the doorway.

  ‘Boss,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  He followed the DI into the glorified pigeonhole he’d been assigned on his promotion. The threadbare carpet still bore cigarette burns from the days when it was legal to smoke at work, but then the youngest DI on the force was hardly going to get a corner office with a view.

  It should have been mine.

  Francis sat on one side of the desk and Rory sat on the other. Rory said nothing, watching as the boss settled into his chair and fingered the corner of a manila folder in his in-tray. He had the look of a schoolboy who’d been torn off a strip. There were red patches on both his cheeks.

  ‘Right, we’re bringing Marni Mullins and Thierry Mullins in for formal questioning. Get the team onto it now. I want to see them both this evening, before they’ve had time to discuss their alibis.’

  Their alibis? Was he serious?

  ‘Sure, boss. You think they’re involved? Together? I thought they were divorced.’

  ‘They are. Apparently.’ They’d definitely shared some sort of rapport in the convention centre office.

  Rory gave him a questioning look.

  ‘I think it’s highly unlikely either one of them had anything to do with it,’ said Francis. ‘However, we need to tick all the boxes. Evan Armstrong had a tattoo cut from his body, so this case is going to generate a hell of a lot of interest from the press. We can’t afford to miss something obvious.’

  Rory could hear an echo of Bradshaw.

  ‘A fishing expedition, in other words?’

  The DI sighed and tilted his head to one side.

  ‘Have we got overtime for this, boss?’ said Rory. He knew full well that they hadn’t.

  ‘Get out and get on with it. I’ll deal with Bradshaw if there’s any problem about overtime.’

  Interesting. The boy had a temper on him and it looked like he wouldn’t be afraid to take on the chief.

  ‘And keep this under your hat – I don’t expect to see it reported in the Argus.’

  It sounded like an accusation. He’d changed his tune over keeping the press sweet.

  It was after ten p.m. when Rory peered through the rectangular window in the door of the interview room to take a look at the witness. This was a deliberate tactic – interviewing witnesses when they were tired made them more vulnerable. A small, dark-haired woman was sitting at the table, twisting the sleeves of her cardigan nervously, her face wearing the guilt-ridden expression of someone who could only be innocent.

  He grabbed the door handle and went into the room.

  ‘Marni Mullins, right?’

  She glared at him without speaking.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about what happened in the Pavilion Gardens on Sunday.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to your DI. I don’t have anything further to add.’

  ‘However that may be, I need to take a formal statement from you.’

  He got out his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil. ‘Now, Ms Mullins, please tell me exactly what happened when you went to the Pavilion Gardens on Sunday.’

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘You haven’t read me my rights.’

  ‘Because you’re not under arrest. You’re here to give a wit
ness statement.’

  The woman stood up, pushing her chair back. ‘Then I’m free to go.’

  It was a statement, not a question.

  Rory stood up too. ‘Ms Mullins, it will make all our lives easier if you just give the statement and answer a few questions voluntarily. We need you to answer these questions and if you don’t do it now, we’ll have a warrant drawn up.’

  ‘Just tell me one thing straight, Sergeant. Am I or am I not a suspect?’

  She might not be a suspect but she certainly wasn’t going out of her way to help. And it wasn’t as if she’d have anything useful to tell him anyway.

  ‘You’re not a suspect. But a man has been murdered, and you found the body. What you can tell us might shed some light on who did it, even if it means nothing to you. Please sit down and we’ll get through this as quickly as possible.’

  Marni Mullins sat down again, reluctantly. Something told Rory that she knew her way around a police interview, and she certainly seemed to have some prior knowledge of police procedure. Not so unusual perhaps, given the world she moved in.

  ‘Now, tell me what happened on Sunday.’

  ‘I went to the Pavilion Gardens for a coffee. I found a body in a dumpster. I phoned the police.’

  Round One to Marni Mullins.

  Rory settled into his chair. ‘The short version. Nice. Now, tell me properly, in full technicolour detail, about what happened on Sunday morning.’

  It took him six attempts to get the level of detail he needed, but finally he felt he’d extracted any and every fact that could have been of any conceivable use to the investigation. When they finished, she looked worn down.

  ‘Thank you for your co-operation, Ms Mullins. You’re free to go.’

  She stood up, not looking him in the eye.

  Rory walked towards the door to show her out. With his hand on the door handle, he paused and turned towards her.

  ‘Just one last thing,’ he said. ‘Where were you on Sunday morning between one a.m. and five a.m.?’

  Marni took a step back, using one hand to steady herself against the table. ‘You can’t ask me that.’

  ‘I certainly can. Where were you on Sunday morning between one a.m. and five a.m.?’

  ‘I’m not a suspect.’

  Rory remained by the door. He could hear her breathing, shallow and fast. She was frightened.

  ‘I was asleep in my bed. At home.’

  ‘With your husband?’

  ‘Ex-husband. I’d be the last person he’d want to sleep with.’

  Her voice cracked as she spoke, and she reached for the paper cup of water that still stood on the table. As she raised it to her lips, her hand was shaking so violently that most of the water splashed out onto the Formica table top.

  Rory felt pleased with himself. Hopefully Sullivan, watching via CCTV in the next room, would have picked up on some of his interviewing technique. As he led Marni Mullins out of the interview room and towards the reception, they passed her ex-husband in the corridor, being escorted up for his interview. It was past one a.m. now, and being kept waiting for several hours had done little to soften his mood.

  ‘Merde,’ said Thierry, glaring at Marni.

  She looked away without saying anything.

  ‘Nice way to greet your wife,’ said Rory. ‘Not surprised you ditched him.’

  The look she gave him when he said that was every bit as hostile as Thierry’s look had been to her. It was definitely them against the police, rather than her against him. Rory showed her through the reception area to the main doors, wondering about their relationship.

  ‘Am I free to go now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. But we might need to talk to you again.’ That, of course, would depend on what Thierry Mullins told them in his interview, but he wasn’t about to share that with Marni.

  Rory took Sullivan’s place as an observer when the DI went in to interview Thierry.

  ‘Where were you on Sunday morning between one a.m. and five a.m.?’ said Sullivan with no preamble.

  Bam! Straight in with no subtlety. No building up a false sense of security with his suspect. Idiot.

  ‘Sleeping mostly.’

  Sullivan stared him down. Mullins was justifiably indignant about being dragged in here after helping to identify the victim earlier but the boss wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Sleeping mostly? And what about the times when you weren’t sleeping?’

  ‘I was in bed for the duration.’ Thierry Mullins evidently wanted to close down this line of questioning.

  ‘Where?’

  There was a long silence. At least the boy knew better than to prompt his suspect.

  ‘I picked up a girl. Went back to her place. I can’t remember exactly where it was.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘In the Heart and Hand.’

  A grungy pub on North Road. Rory knew it well enough, though he didn’t drink there. It wasn’t the sort of place where being a policeman would go down too well.

  ‘The girl’s name?’

  Mullins looked blank and shrugged. ‘Linny? Lizzy? Something like that.’

  ‘Mr Mullins, would you recognise her if you saw her again?’

  ‘Of course I would. She had a mermaid tramp stamp on her arse. It’s not a big deal. I was drunk, so I don’t remember the details.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to check them out more thoroughly.’

  ‘Why? You think I had something to do with Evan Armstrong’s death? I’m a suspect?’ Mullins literally spat out the words.

  ‘He did owe you money, didn’t he?’

  The tattooist grunted and turned sideways in his chair so he didn’t have to look at Francis. In other words, Francis had blown it. He’d lost what scant co-operation there was and he wasn’t going to get anything of any use out of Thierry Mullins now.

  ‘I want my lawyer. No more questions.’

  This was going nowhere fast and when Rory’s phone rang, he answered it without compunction.

  It was the duty inspector. He sounded out of breath.

  ‘Mackay? We’ve got a body. Just called in. Down on the beach, under the Palace Pier.’

  11

  Francis

  The chances of getting any sleep that night had gone from slight to zero, Francis reflected as they came off Old Steine at speed. Rory drove straight across the empty roundabout and, in an illegal manoeuvre, brought the car to a standstill on the wide apron of pavement at the entrance of the Palace Pier. There were already two uniform branch cars pulled up, and an ambulance stood, engine running, on the pedestrian crossing zig-zags on Madeira Drive.

  ‘That lot might as well piss off,’ said Rory, as they jogged over to the stone steps that would take them from the promenade onto the beach.

  Francis agreed. There was no point in the ambulance. Processing the scene would take several hours and then the body would head straight for the morgue.

  ‘Unless Hitchins needs hospitalisation after throwing his guts up,’ Rory added.

  They picked their way over the shingle towards the scene.

  ‘Fill us in, Sergeant,’ Francis said, as a giant of a man in police uniform approached them.

  ‘Body under the pier, called in by a young couple about an hour ago.’

  ‘Definitely dead when they found him, or her?’

  ‘Him. His head’s missing.’

  Yes, definitely dead.

  ‘Let’s take a look.’

  The sergeant led them into the inky darkness under the pier. There were a number of uniforms unspooling blue-and-white tape to wrap around the giant pillars that supported the iron and wood structure above.

  ‘What were the couple doing under here?’ said Francis.

  Rory guffawed.

  ‘On
their way home from a nightclub,’ said the sergeant with a completely straight face.

  The penny dropped and Francis felt his cheeks reddening.

  Rory said nothing. He didn’t have to. He pulled a black plastic vape out of his pocket and sucked on it as they walked across the shingle.

  The body was lying near the water’s edge, face down. The stump of the neck was a bloody mess that looked black in the dull light of the sergeant’s torch. The man was naked from the waist up, but still wearing blood-stained jeans and trainers. There was a wallet-shaped bulge in the back pocket of his trousers. One of his feet was just within reach of the waves.

  ‘Tide coming in or out?’ said Francis.

  Rory looked along the beach for a couple of moments.

  ‘Coming in, boss, but it looks like it’s just about reached high water.’

  ‘If it has further to rise, it’ll compromise the scene. We need to work fast.’ Francis glanced around the area. ‘Right, no one comes within this perimeter unless they have business here. Rory, we need crime suits. Sergeant, find out how long until SOCO gets here and get some bloody lights set up.’

  Rory set off up the shingle back to the car.

  ‘And get a search underway for the head.’

  By the time Rose Lewis arrived ten minutes later, Francis was suited up and in control of the situation. SOCO set up their huge LED lamps, allowing Francis and Rose to inspect the body more closely. In the powerful beam, the man’s skin took on a greenish tinge and the stump of his neck changed from black to dark, glistening red. Quivering blood clots clung to the mangled tissue, like giant globules of jelly. The skin at the perimeter was torn and ragged, chewed up by whatever had inflicted the cut. His torso was heavily tattooed and there were more tattoos on either arm – dark black shapes that from the wrong angle made no sense to Francis. Rose instructed one of the SOCOs to take photographs, while she measured the body temperature, ground temperature and air temperature to help her assess the time of death.

  Francis used a pair of disposable tweezers from Rose’s evidence collection kit to extract the wallet from the pocket. It was a brown leather gate-fold, sodden and heavy. With gloved hands, he gave it a cursory check for ID. There was money, and a wad of receipts, but nothing that gave any clue as to who its owner was.