The Tattoo Thief

Book 1: Sullivan and Mullins

by Alison Belsham

Genres: Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A policeman on his first murder case
A tattoo artist with a deadly secret
And a twisted serial killer sharpening his blades to kill again....

When Brighton tattoo artist Marni Mullins discovers a flayed body, newly-promoted DI Francis Sullivan needs her help. There's a serial killer at large, slicing tattoos from his victims' bodies while they're still alive. Marni knows the tattooing world like the back of her hand, but has her own reasons to distrust the police. So when she identifies the killer's next target, will she tell Sullivan or go after the Tattoo Thief alone?

Release date: May 3, 2018

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

 

i

I peel away the blood-soaked T-shirt from the unconscious man’s back to reveal a spectacular tattoo. The photocopy I take from my pocket is crumpled but it’s good enough for me to check against the image on his skin. Thankfully, there’s just enough light from the street lamp to see that the two designs look the same. A round Polynesian tattoo in heavy black ink adorns the man’s left shoulder, an intricate tribal face scowling from its centre. Spreading out from the edges is a pair of stylised wings, one extending down the man’s shoulder blade, the other extending across the left side of his chest. All of it is speckled with blood.

The images match. I have the right man.

There’s still a pulse in his neck, but it’s faint enough to reassure me that he won’t cause any problems. It’s essential to do the job while his body’s still warm. If the corpse cools, the skin stiffens and the flesh becomes rigid. That makes the job harder and I can’t afford mistakes. Of course, flaying the skin off a living body means so much more blood. But I don’t mind blood.

My backpack is lying nearby, discarded as I pulled him into the bushes. It was easy enough – the small park was deserted at this hour. It only took one blow to the back of his head and he crumpled at the knees. No noise. No commotion. No witnesses. I knew this was the route he’d take when he left the nightclub because I’d watched him take it before. People are so stupid. He suspected nothing, even as I walked towards him with a wrench in my fist. Seconds later, his blood was spreading across the ground from a wound at the temple. The first step executed most satisfactorily.

Once he was down, I hooked my hands underneath his armpits and dragged him as quickly as I could across the stone paving. I wanted the cover of the shrubs so we wouldn’t be seen. He’s heavy but I’m strong, and I was able to pull him through a gap between two laurel bushes.

The exertion has left me breathless. I hold out my hands, palms down. I see the ghost of a tremor. Clench fists, then open again. Both hands flutter like moths, just as my heart flutters against my ribs. I curse under my breath. A steady right hand is essential to carry out my assignment. The solution’s in a side pocket of my backpack. A packet of tablets, a small bottle of water. Propranolol – the snooker player’s beta-blocker of choice. I swallow two and close my eyes, waiting for them to take effect. At the next check, the tremor is gone. Now I’m ready to begin.

Taking a deep breath, I reach into the bag and feel for my knife roll. Satisfaction floods through me as my fingers touch the soft leather, the steel outlined beneath. I sharpened the blades with great care last night. Intuition, you might say, that today would be the day.

I drop the roll onto the man’s back and untie the cords. The leather unfurls with a soft clink of metal, the blades cold beneath my fingertips. I select the short-handled knife that I’ll use for the first cuts, marking the outline of the skin to be removed. After that, for the flaying itself, I’ll use a longer, backward-curving knife. I buy them from Japan and they cost a small fortune. But it’s worth it. They’re fashioned using the same techniques employed for Samurai swords. Tempered steel enables me to cut with speed and precision, as if I’m carving shapes out of butter.

I put the rest of the knives on the ground next to his body and check his pulse again. Fainter than before but he’s still alive. Blood seeps from his head, more slowly now. Time for a quick, deep test cut into his left thigh. There’s no flinch or intake of breath. Just a steady oozing of dark, slippery blood. Good. I can’t afford for him to move while I’m cutting.

The moment has arrived. With one hand holding the skin taut, I make the first incision. I draw the blade swiftly down from the top of his shoulder across the jutting angles of his scapula, following the outline of the design. A red ribbon appears in the wake of my blade, warm as it runs down onto my fingers. I hold my breath as the knife carves its path, savouring the shiver that rolls up my spine and the hot rush of blood to my groin.

The man will be dead by the time I finish.

He isn’t the first. And he won’t be the last.

 

1

Marni

The needles punctured the skin faster than the eye could see, depositing dark ink into the dermis and leaving a bloom of bloody roses oozing on the surface. Marni Mullins wiped away the beads every couple of seconds with a fold of paper towel so she could see the outlines on her client’s arm. A slick of Vaseline, then the sharp dig of the needles into the flesh again, creating a new black line that would last forever. The alchemy of skin and ink.

Marni sought refuge in her work, mesmerised by the hum and the soft vibration of the tattoo iron in her hand. It was a temporary escape from the memories that plagued her, the things she could never forget.

Black and red. The imprint she dug into the yielding skin. Her client flinched and jerked under the pressure of the needle heads, even as Marni used her wiping hand to keep his arm still. She knew all too well the pain he was experiencing. Hadn’t she endured too many hours at the sharp end of a tattoo machine? She could sympathise but it was the price that had to be paid – a moment to be endured for something that would last a lifetime. Something that no one could ever take away from you.

She used her forearm to push a lock of dark hair from her forehead and swore under her breath as it slipped back into her eyes. Angling her lips to blow the hair to one side, she dipped the seven-tipped needle into a small pot of water to change the ink from black to slate grey.

‘Marni?’

‘Yeah. How you doin’, Steve?’

He was lying face down on her massage bench. He twisted his head towards her, blinking and grimacing. ‘Can we take a break?’

Marni glanced at her watch. She’d been working on him for three hours straight and she suddenly became aware of the tension that had built up in her shoulders.

‘Sure, of course.’ Three hours was a long session, even for a regular like Steve. ‘You’re sitting like a champ,’ she added, putting her iron down on the equipment stand next to her stool. It was something she always said to clients, regardless of whether they were sitting like a champ or not – and Steve, with all his fidgeting and moaning, definitely wasn’t.

But she needed a break too as she was starting to feel claustrophobic. It was always that way at conventions – artificially lit halls, stale air and noisy crowds. The lack of windows meant you couldn’t tell if it was light or dark outside, and Marni needed to see the sky wherever she was. In here, the air was thick and hot, the hall crammed with bodies being tattooed and a crush of voyeurs watching the needles. All this was underscored by blaring rock music and the continuous grind of the tattoo irons on bloodied skin.

She took a deep breath, rolling her head across her shoulders to release the tension in her neck. The sharp smell of ink mingled with blood and disinfectant hung in the air. She peeled back the black latex gloves and thrust them into a rubbish sack. Steve was stretching and flexing his arm, clenching and opening his fist to get the circulation back. He was paler than he had been when she’d started tattooing him.

‘Go and get a snack. Come back in half an hour.’

Marni quickly wrapped the bloody design in cling film to keep it clean, and pointed Steve in the direction of the cafeteria. Once he’d gone, she pushed through a knot of people on the stairs to reach ground level and burst outside through a pair of fire escape doors. Sucking in a lungful of cold air, she realised she’d escaped not a moment too soon. She leant back against the cool concrete wall and closed her eyes, concentrating on decompressing, letting the combined weight of the people and the building lift from her chest.

She opened her eyes and blinked. The artificial glare of the hall was now replaced with bright sunlight. Gulls wheeled overhead, screeching at one another, and at the bottom of the deserted side street a slice of the sea shimmered invitingly. She tasted the salty air with relish and then arched her back until it hurt. Bones clicked and crunched as she rolled her shoulders. She had to wonder if she was getting too old for tattooing. But there was nothing else she could do – and truly, nothing else she’d damn well want to do. She’d been inking people since she was eighteen, nineteen long years, tattooing thousands of square metres of skin in that time.

Thrusting a hand into her bag to check she had a packet of cigarettes, Marni set off through the warren of narrow streets that made up Brighton’s Lanes. It was a bank holiday weekend and tourists thronged the alleys, drawn like magpies to the vintage jewellery and antique shops, or looking in the chi-chi boutiques for the ideal wedding outfit or perfect pair of brogues. All her favourite cafés were packed, but she didn’t mind. Today she’d rather take her caffeine fix in the open air, so she emerged from the Lanes onto North Street and cut through to the outdoor café in the Pavilion Gardens.

There was a long queue of people waiting at the serving hatch, which meant she’d probably be late getting back for Steve, but an extra few minutes out in the fresh air would make it worthwhile. She looked up at the sky. Pale blue. Not the bright azure of a summer’s day, but a soft periwinkle, diluted by wisps of dissolving cloud, fading to a hazy grey horizon that merged with the sea. Perfect for a spring bank holiday weekend.

‘What’ll it be, love?’

‘Black Americano. Two shots, please.’

‘Right you are.’

‘And a muffin,’ she added as an afterthought. Low blood sugar. It wasn’t the best choice of food for a diabetic but she could adjust her insulin dose later to compensate.

Chattering sightseers emerged from the Pavilion, still amazed by what they’d seen inside. It was a Disney palace built in Regency times, a wedding cake concoction of onion domes, spiky towers and pale creamy stucco which always made Marni think of Scheherazade and the One Thousand and One Nights. She’d fallen in love with the place on her very first day in Brighton. She sighed, looking round for a place to sit. All the benches were taken and people sprawled on the lawns, eating and drinking, laughing or lying peacefully in the sun.

Then she saw him and her stomach contracted. She turned straight back to the serving hatch, hoping that he hadn’t seen her. She wasn’t in the mood for an encounter with her husband this morning. Her ex-husband, to be precise – unpredictable at the best of times and always challenging in terms of the mixed emotions he stirred up. Together since they married when she was eighteen, apart for the last twelve years, but there was never a day when he wasn’t in her thoughts. Co-parenting complicated a relationship that the term love-hate could have been invented for.

She risked a quick glance, and watched Thierry Mullins striding across the grass with a thunderous expression clouding his features. He looked shifty, glancing from side to side and over his shoulder. What was he doing out here? He was supposed to be at the convention hall – he was a member of the organising team.

‘Two pounds forty, please.’

Marni paid for her coffee, grabbed the cardboard cup and sidled around to the far side of the café to avoid being seen by Thierry. Her hands shook with adrenalin as she lit a cigarette. How did he still have that effect on her? They’d been divorced for longer than they’d been married, but he still looked the same as when she’d first met him. Tall and lean with a handsome face, his black skin darkened by the tattoos that had kick-started her life-long fascination with this living art. Just as often as she tried to avoid him, she felt drawn to him. They’d nearly got back together on a score of occasions, until her instinct for self-protection had slammed on the brakes. But moving on from the relationship? She’d given up hope. She took a deep drag of her cigarette. Caffeine, nicotine, deep breaths. She closed her eyes, waiting for the chemicals to make themselves felt.

She dropped the stub of her cigarette in the dregs of her coffee and looked around for a bin, spotting a green plastic dumpster at the back corner of the café. She raised the lid with the foot pedal and, as she dropped the cup inside, a rush of putrid air overwhelmed her. It was a stench far worse than the usual smell of a park bin on a balmy day. Bile rose in her throat as she peered into the dark interior. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

Amid the crushed Coke cans, discarded newspapers and fast food wrappers she could see something. Pallid and glistening shapes that swiftly materialised into an arm, a leg, a torso. A human body, unmistakeably dead. She saw a flurry of movement – a rat, gnawing at the edge of a dark wound. Disturbed by the onslaught of daylight, it disappeared back into the rubbish with a squeal.

Marni stepped back, letting the lid come crashing down.

She fled.

 

2

Francis

Francis Sullivan closed his eyes as he allowed the communion wafer to glue itself to the roof of his mouth. He tried to focus on the murmurs of the celebrants and the congregation around him, but his mind was elsewhere.

Detective Inspector Francis Sullivan.

He let the words roll silently over his tongue. That would be him, tomorrow, first day on the job. The shock promotion had made him, at twenty-nine, the youngest DI on the Sussex force. He was more nervous about it than he had been on his first day at secondary school. It was a good thing, but terrifying. It showed a huge leap of faith by his superiors. Sure, he’d passed the exams he needed to with flying colours. He’d performed well for the interview board. But why promote him so soon, given his relative inexperience on the job? Because his father had been a celebrated QC? He hated the thought.

His new boss, DCI Martin Bradshaw, had looked less than thrilled when he’d told Francis of the promotion. He hadn’t congratulated him, either. It made Francis wonder if Bradshaw had been totally behind the decision, or whether he’d simply been railroaded by the other members of the interview board.

His stomach lurched as his thoughts turned to Rory Mackay. Detective Sergeant Rory Mackay. Passed over for the job and now assigned to be his number two. He’d met Mackay last week. A formal introduction in the boss’s office, during which the infinitely more experienced DS had made it clear that he wasn’t impressed. He’d worn the expression of a man who’d found the remaining half of a maggot in the apple he’d just bitten. Francis had kept his cool with polite detachment – he was aware of the risks of trying to become too chummy with your team – but he could sense theirs was going to be a prickly relationship.

The man was willing him to fail. And Francis knew that he wasn’t the only one.

‘The blood of Christ.’

Francis snapped open his eyes and raised his head to receive the scant sip of wine from the chalice.

‘Amen,’ he murmured.

So be it.

But was it too soon? Throughout the selection process, he’d felt calm and confident. Exams had never been a problem for him. But had his success on paper created expectations that he’d find difficult to live up to on the job? The dangers of early promotion were mythical in the force. He’d heard stories in the cafeteria, apocryphal or not. Running before you could walk. Failing to get results. It wouldn’t need to be a catastrophic mistake for him to end up sidelined at this point, just a couple of tough cases that went cold.

Anxiety dulled the pleasure of his achievement. Detective Inspector Francis Sullivan. He hadn’t been sleeping since he’d heard the news. And the mental focus he’d need to rely on had evaporated. Damn it. He might be wet behind the ears but he wasn’t stupid. The team he was taking charge of didn’t think he could do the job. Didn’t think he was ready for it. He needed to get them on side from the very first day, on the very first case. Otherwise, they’d be proved right – he’d fail. They could see to that. Bradshaw and Mackay would be watching and waiting. They’d find ways of tripping him up.

He glanced up at the carved figure of Jesus, suspended on his cross above the chancel. The Son of God was giving him a reproachful look, and Francis looked down again quickly. He muttered the bare bones of a prayer, crossed himself and rose to go back to his pew, feeling admonished for his distraction.

He sang the final hymn on autopilot, taking no meaning from the words, then knelt to pray. He refocused for a couple of minutes on his reason for being here – a thought for his mother, an intercession for his sister. A benediction for their carers. Nothing for his father.

The vibration in his trouser pocket didn’t give him enough time to get to his phone before the notification sounded. A bleeping that seemed longer and louder than usual in the silent church. Heads turned and a woman hissed her disapproval. He scrambled to mute his phone, glancing up at Father William.

Francis bowed his head in regret, then surreptitiously read the text that had come in.

It was from DS Mackay.

Starting work a day early. Dead body called in. Pavilion Gardens.

As soon as it was decently possible, Francis left his pew and headed towards the open doors at the back of the church. In the porch, Father William pursed his lips before speaking.

‘Francis.’

‘I can’t apologise enough, Father. I thought it was switched off.’

‘That’s not my worry. You looked troubled throughout the service. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘I would like to,’ said Francis. He meant it. ‘But I have to go. A body’s been found.’

Father William crossed himself with a silent murmur, then put a hand on Francis’s forearm. ‘So much evil abounds. I worry for you doing this work, Francis. Always walking on the edge of despair.’

‘But on the side of justice.’

‘God is the final arbiter, remember that.’

A middle-aged woman jostled Francis with her elbow. He was taking up more than his fair share of the vicar’s time.

The final arbiter. Francis chewed the phrase over. In heaven, maybe. But down here on earth it fell to people like him to chase down the evil that men do. His job was to track killers and bring them to justice. The first had just come calling and he was determined to succeed, so help him God.

And if there was no help coming from above, he’d damn well manage it on his own.

 

3

Francis

Francis inched his car along New Road. Even with his blue light flashing, the bank holiday crowds weren’t accommodating. Shared bloody space – it meant nobody knew who owned which bit of the road and everybody assumed they had right of way. He gave a short blast of his siren to shift a slow-moving family out of his path, raising his eyebrows as they glared at him.

He pulled up by a row of benches in front of the Pavilion Gardens. A woman feeding ice cream to her children scowled at him for driving where she was walking, but most of the small crowd of people that had gathered there were too busy craning their necks at the police activity on the other side of the fence to take any notice of his arrival. He was relieved to see that the whole area had been taped off and that several uniformed officers were maintaining the cordon.

He showed his warrant card and was quickly waved in. Rory Mackay spotted him straight away and came towards him, his bulky figure swathed in a white paper SOCO suit.

‘Sergeant Mackay,’ said Francis, with a nod. ‘Give me a run-down on what we’ve got.’

‘You’ll need to cover up first, boss,’ said the DS, giving him a withering look. ‘I’ve got a spare suit in the boot of my car.’

Francis followed Mackay to a silver Mitsubishi parked with several other cars just inside the North Gate, on the other side of the gardens. He was silently spitting that he hadn’t anticipated the need for a crime scene suit. And that he hadn’t thought to come to this side where he could have parked more easily.

‘Thought you’d be here a bit quicker, given it’s your first case.’

Francis felt his shoulder muscles contract. ‘I was in church, Mackay. I shouldn’t have got the message at all. Or at least not until I got outside.’

‘Right you are.’

Francis saw the smirk that drifted momentarily across the sergeant’s features.

Mackay opened the boot of his car and tossed Francis a SOCO suit. Francis took an inventory of the boot’s contents as he pulled it on. Three boxes of Stella, bottles, and two boxes of Heineken, tins. Barbecue coal. It was easy to tell how Mackay had been planning to spend his Sunday.

‘Should be your size. Careful putting it on – they tear easily.’

‘I have worn them before,’ said Francis.

The suit was a size too small, the trouser legs too short. Rory propped himself against the side of his car, sucking on an e-cig as he waited.

‘Let’s get on,’ said Francis, still adjusting the sleeves of the suit to his satisfaction.

Mackay slammed the boot and they set off back towards the café.

‘Desk sergeant took a call at 11.47 a.m. reporting a dead body in a dumpster behind the Pavilion Gardens Café. No other details at that point.’

‘Any idea yet who made the call?’

‘Woman’s voice. She hung up before the sarge could ask her name.’

‘But we’ve got the number?’

‘It was a pay-as-you-go.’

That was the first thing that would need to be followed up.

‘The body?’ continued Francis.

‘Male, naked. Very obvious bang on the head and a significant wound to the left shoulder and torso. No ID as yet but he’s got a number of tattoos which should help.’

‘Find anything else?’

‘We’ll be able to search the dumpster once the body’s been removed – we’re just waiting on Rose.’

Rose Lewis, the forensic pathologist. A safe pair of hands – Francis had worked with her on a couple of cases during his stint as a DC.

‘Right, I’d better take a look,’ said Francis.

As they walked back down towards the café, Rory took a call. ‘Yes, sir, he’s here now, sir . . . I’ve secured the area and put SOCO to work. Liaised with pathology, yes . . .’

Rory fell silent for moment, nodding. ‘Yes, I think his phone’s switched on now. He was in church.’

Francis could hear by Rory’s tone what he thought of that. He sped up his pace – this wasn’t exactly the start he’d envisaged for his first case.

Rory led him across the grass and around the side of the café. There was a green plastic bin towards the rear of the building. Francis picked up the stench of the contents as they drew nearer, and began breathing through his mouth. He felt his gag reflex tighten and saliva flooded his tongue but he fought against it. White-suited SOCOs swarmed the area, scouring the ground, measuring distances and taking photos.

‘Open it up,’ said Rory.

DC Tony Hitchins was standing guard over the dumpster. As Francis and Rory approached, he used the foot pedal to raise the lid, trying to avoid looking inside as he did so. Francis pulled on a pair of latex gloves and stepped forward.

Hitchins was looking distinctly off-colour, and as Francis came level with him, he saw the constable’s stomach and chest start to contract. His lips were clamped together in a thin line.

‘If you’re going to puke, Hitchins, get out of my crime scene.’

Francis caught the lid of the dumpster as Hitchins made a dash across the lawn. He only just managed to scrabble under the blue-and-white tape before bending double and depositing what was left of his Sunday breakfast in the grass.

‘For pity’s sake,’ said Francis, and Rory shook his head. But their eyes didn’t meet. There wasn’t a policeman on the force who hadn’t thrown up after seeing a body at one time or another, and probably more recently than any of them would care to admit.

Francis turned back to the dumpster and steeled himself to look inside, hoping desperately he wouldn’t repeat Hitchins’ faux pas. Not today.

And there it was. His body. His first victim as senior investigating officer. This initial encounter was something akin to a blind date, with an individual he would come to know extremely well over the coming weeks and months. He’d learn more about the victim than he knew about members of his own family – and he’d likely discover secrets that would shake the victim’s family to its core. For now, the man was a stranger – grey, slick-skinned and decomposing, rotting like the garbage which surrounded him. But with his team, Francis would burrow under his skin to see what made him tick and who might want him dead.

Francis mentally logged the shocking image. Limbs twisted, skin like putty, and red-black flesh where his face and torso had become rat fodder. Even the man’s own mother wouldn’t recognise him. This image would fuel Francis’s outrage and keep his focus sharp.

‘Sergeant Mackay? Sergeant Mackay?’

A voice from behind made Francis turn round. Rory was already walking towards the tape perimeter where a man with a camera slung round his neck was standing. Press.

‘Tom,’ said Rory with a nod. ‘Thought you’d pitch up sooner or later.’

‘Your bad penny,’ said the man, grinning. ‘What you got, Mackay?’

‘Nothing for you,’ said Rory. ‘We’ll release information to the press when it’s appropriate, not before. Now fuck off.’

He turned and walked back over to Francis. ‘Watch out for that one. Tom Fitz of the Argus. All over bloody crime scenes like a rash.’

‘How does he get here so fast?’ said Francis.

Rory shrugged. ‘Moni. . .