PSA: I'm reuploading revise version of previous chapters and then will continue the story from there.
I Will Not Die in Prison
25th March 2013
"Interview at Chester Police Station, with Brendan Brady."
Brendan salutes to the camera, before returning his haunted stare back to Shawnee, her own gaze also set steadily on him.
"Officers present are myself, DCI Shawnee and DI Price, also present is Mr Brady's solicitor, Jim McGinn. The time is 10:45 am, Tuesday the 25th of March 2013. I must remind you that you're still under caution and you are here on suspicion of murder."
"Suspicion of murder? I've confessed."
"It's just procedure, do you understand?" DI Price pipes up for he first time. He regrets it as soon as the first syllable leaves his mouth, his words come out rushed, blending into one before stopping abruptly.
DI Andrew Price has boyish features, speckled green eyes and short brown hair.
Brendan guesses he must be ambitious to have worked his way up the ranks so quickly. Ambitious maybe, but not all that brave, he hasn't looked at Brendan directly since entering the room, says as little as possible and hunches over in an attempt to be unnoticeable.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Brendan shifts his attention to the young lad, making it so he has no choice but to continue interacting with him.
"Tell us about the first murder?" Price's voice is low and shaky under the pressure of Brendan's scrutiny.
Brendan looks him dead in the eye, tilting his head to an angle to demonstrate deep thought, leaving a ludicrously long pause before answering. "What do you want to know?"
"Well, you've confessed, there are five bodies, but no apparent reason." Shawnee takes over the interview, not wanting Brendan to play games with her young colleague.
"None died that –"
"– that didn't deserve to die." She finishes, exasperated. "Yes. Yes, we know, we've read the transcript. Care to expand?"
"No, not really. I've said I did it, was literally caught with a smoking gun in my hand. What else do you people want? If you don't mind, I'd like to serve my sentence in peace now."
With that, Brendan stands ready to leave, but Jim drags him back down into his seat.
"Brendan, what happens here today is very serious." Jim warns his client in a hushed, fanatic whisper. "Although you've confessed and will plead guilty in the Magistrates' Court, the Judge will very likely send your case to Crown Court for sentencing. If they want, they have the power to give you a longer sentence and decide where exactly you'll carry out the sentence. So please, I beg of you, cooperate."
I will not die in prison, I will not die in prison, I will not die in prison. It's never going to happen.
Brendan takes a big inhale, steadying himself. "Daniel Huston, December 28th 2010, approximately 9:45 pm." Brendan concedes.
"Where did the murder take place?"
"The cellar of Chez Chez."
"You committed a murder in a club full of people?"
"No, it was closed at the time. There had been a fire weeks before across the high village, caused damage to our roof."
"So the place was empty?" She enquirers, sly tone to her voice. "Is that why planned to do it there? No one likely to interrupt-"
"Er, you don't have to answer that!" Jim warns his client.
In true Brady form, he ignores the advice. "No, I didn't plan it. Looking back I didn't plan any of them. I just kept getting myself into... unfortunate circumstances."
"Unfortunate? Five times? You must be the unluckiest man in the whole of the North West, to have accidently kill five people." Shawnee mocks, finding him ridiculous.
"Na-ah. I said they were all unplanned, not that they were all accidents. Very different."
"Why'd you do it?" Brendan looks over, it's Price asking the question now and he looks genuinely interested.
"Danny requested my services, asked me to kill someone. You know what's funny? The funny thing is, murder wasn't even an option for me, it was a line that I was unwilling to cross. I called, told Danny that I'd done it, offed the guy. Instead I let the guy know what Danny had planned for him. Thought, let them sort it out between themselves. When Danny found out that he wasn't in fact dead, that I had lied he asked to meet me at the club. He told me he was done with the place, signed his half of the club over to Warren Fox. He was done with me too, but said he'd 'pay a visit to my little friend' before he went. I saw red, Danny had already killed someone I knew, when he threatened Steven something snapped inside of me." He taps his chest twice, real pain through his face at the though of harm coming to Steven. "I didn't even have to think about it, I picked up a crowbar and smashed his skull in. It was simple, he threatened the life of the man I loved, he had to go. I don't think he even saw it coming."
"Then you dumped the body in the river?" Price on the edge of hid seat is visible enthralled in Brendan's account of the first of his many murders.
"Then you dumped the body in the river?" Brendan mimics. "Have you ever tried dragging around a body? All that dead weight. Not an easy task, not like I could push him through the village in a wheelbarrow. I stole a car, put the body in the boot, wrapped up in an old carpet. I was set to go, but the car wouldn't start. Lucky for me one of yours, Ethan Scott, came along. Wait, ain't he locked up? Hit and run, if memory serves? He was very helpful, there were coppers everywhere, patrolling the streets and there Ethan was to lend a hand. I should have known then that he was a rubbish copper."
-8-
"Michael Cornish, your second victim. He was seen hours before his death in Hollyoaks village. Where you live, or used to. The question is how did he end up in Southport, were you just happened to be, dead at the bottom of a lighthouse?"
"I-think-it's-time-for-a-break." Jim blurts out his words, seemingly worried.
"I'm sorry?" Shawnee questions.
"My client was shot, just four days ago. He came in willingly and has been nothing but compliant. Have you got a problem with him taking some time to regain his strength in between questions?"
"Interview suspended at 11:05 am. You've got 15 minutes, Brady."
Shawnee and Price get up, heading towards the door.
"Don't forget the camcorder, I'd hate for a confidential conversation between a lawyer and his client to be 'accidently' recorded. Imagine the number of laws that would be breaking, and the disciplinary hearing that would inevitably follow, oh what terrible business that would be."
"Price, turn off that fucking camera will you?"
Once alone Jim takes out a stack of notes from his briefcase, frantically looking through pages and pages of police interviews and notes. When he looks up at Brendan he is noticeably frazzled.
"I knew there was something odd about this one, you don't make things half easy do you?"
"What are you withering on about, James?"
"We're not under any delusions that you're going to get off this one, you admitted to killing five people. The question is how long you'll go away for. My job, the reason you're paying me, is to make your sentence as short as the law will allow."
"What's the problem?"
"Well they have extensive notes from Simon Walker's report of the murder of Michael Cornish. There's a gap between his arrival to the village and him falling to his death. I think they're trying to catch you out on this one. I need you to listen to what I'm about to say, think about it, I mean really thing before you tell be exactly what happened that day, as you remember it. Can do that for me?"
"Yes, I can do that."
"You have killed multiple people, meaning life imprisonment, that's a minimum of 30 years before parole will even be considered. Now, there are certain things that will take parole off the table completely, meaning you'll get a whole-life order. Are you with me so far?"
"Yes! Just get on with it!"
Brendan's entire body is on alert, conscious on the seriousness of Jim's words and doesn't want to miss a thing.
"Okay, okay. When sentencing a murderer of two or more people there are additional aggravating factors, which include premeditation, abduction and inhuman conduct against the victim. I don't want to hear anything that may further incriminate you, I don't need to be complicit. I simply want you to tell me what happened, in a thought out well-worded way that will not add time on your sentence. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"Ahhh." Brendan moaned, bearing teeth before smacking the palms of his hand against his forehead.
He recalls that day. Mick tied up in the boot of his car, abduction. Driving to a car park where Joel battered him with a hammer and later hanging him from the lighthouse by his feet, inhuman conduct. That was two out of three. He knew any half decent prosecution lawyer would argue that he took Mick to that lighthouse with the intention of throwing him off it, premeditation. Strike three.
Brendan understood all right, understood that one of the murders that he didn't commit might be the end of him. He might spend his last days on earth, a pathetic weak old man in a prison cell.
"I understand."
-8-
"Michael Cornish was the step father of my business partner, Joel Dexter. The day before his death I saw Michael getting handsy with Joel in the courtyard outside our club, slapping the kid about. I invited Joel to Southport with my sister, Cheryl and myself, thought some time away would get his mind of things. I have no idea how Mick knew where we were, but he sent us a message saying he had Joel's girlfriend, he must have followed her there. We tracked them down, Joel got Theresa to safety but Mick took off. Early the next morning I finial tracked him down on the roadside, I chased him to a lighthouse, where we fought. I won."
"You won?" Shawnee inquires, venom and disgust in her tone.
"He fell. In the struggle. Treacherous ledge."
"And the body?"
"As you know I called Simon Walker, he put it in the boot of my car. I drove around with it for a while, unsure of what to do. I put him in a barn, because driving around in car full of my family and friends with a body in the boot was not clever. Then you showed up, 'looking for a missing person' that's when I new something was off. Walker, he was too calm. No surge of panic, no acceleration of his heart rate, no sweat in his brow." For a second Brendan gets lost in his memories, even then when it should have been obvious, Walker was able to fool him. "Anyway, later that night I went back to the barn and the body was gone. I went back to my room, and the next day we took nana Flo to the holiday home."
"The body was gone?" Price repeats, his face distorted in disbelief.
"POOF. GONE." Brendan brushes his hands together twice and innocently shrugs, the innocent man that knows nothing of the magically disappearing corpse.
"Bodies don't just vanish." Shawnee states. More confident in her disbelief of Brendan's tale, unlike Price her face remains steady.
"Well this one did. Maybe it was dragged away by a giant country fox, I don't know."
"That didn't strike you as odd? You kill a person, lose the body and then just keep going with the family holiday?"
"Yup, pretty much."
Shawnee looks at Brendan through squinted eyes, trying to find a proof of his lie on his unreadable face. She's frustrated and agitated, and Brendan cannot let the moment pass without wind her up further.
"Maybe Walker to the body."
"Walker, and why would he do that?"
"The man was unhinged, consumed by the crazy idea that I was to blame for his brother's untimely death. He was sent under cover by you, to live with and befriend the man he hated more than anything. Remember when I said I knew something was up? After you searched my car, Walker didn't even react, I looked over at him and there was nothing, he just wanted to know where the body was. I didn't trust him after that, and he knew it. I guess that's why he came on to me."
Brendan stops to admire the reaction this elicits from his audience. Smirking as shock and disbelief spreads over their faces.
"Oppose!" Brendan pouts his lips and covers them with his hands, feigning embarrassment. "Was that not part of his assignment? Me fucking him? The guy was willing to go to any lengths to get at me, after what he did to my teenage son, which is on you." He points an accusing finger a Shawnee. "And the events of the last week it's quite clear that his plan wasn't to get me sent down. So yes, my best guess would be that Walker disposed of the body to give him more time to fuck with my life. But alas, we will never know."
"That's enough. The time is 1:12 pm, the interview is suspended to be continue at a later date."
NEXT UP: Brendan meets his cell mate and sees a familiar face.