Dead Like You

‘You could put me behind bars for the rest of my life. Do you know what they do to people like me in prison? It’s not nice. I can’t take that chance.’

The knot of fear in her stomach spread like poison through her blood. She was trembling, quaking, whimpering.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he really did sound sorry. Really apologetic, like a man in a crowded bar who had just accidentally stepped on her foot. ‘You’re in the papers. You are on the front page of the Argus. There’s a photograph of you. Rachael Ryan. That’s a nice name.’

He stared down at her. He looked angry. And sulky. And genuinely apologetic. ‘I’m sorry you saw my face,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t clever, Rachael. It could all have been so very different. Know what I’m saying?’

24

Monday 5 January

The newly formed Cold Case Team was part of Roy Grace’s Major Crime Branch responsibility. It was housed in an inadequate office within the Major Incident Suite on the first floor of Sussex House, with views across a yard cluttered with wheelie bins, emergency generator housings and SOCO vehicles to the custody block, which cut out much of the natural light.

There were few things in the world, Roy Grace always thought, that could create as much paperwork as a Major Crime investigation. The grey-carpeted floor was piled high with stacks of large green crates and blue cardboard boxes, all labelled with operation names, as well as reference books, training manuals and a doorstop of a tome sitting on its own, Practical Homicide.

Almost every inch of the desktop space of the three workstations was covered by computers, keyboards, phones, racks of box files, crammed in trays, Rolodex files, mugs and personal effects. Post-it notes were stuck on just about everything. Two freestanding tables visibly sagged beneath the weight of files piled on them.

The walls were plastered with news cuttings of some of the cases, and photographs and old wanted posters of suspects still at large. One was a picture of a smiling dark-haired teenager, with the wording above:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?

£500 reward

Another was a black-and-white Sussex Police poster featuring an amiable-looking man with a big smile and a shock of unruly hair. It was captioned:

SUSSEX POLICE

MURDER of JACK (John) BAKER.

Mr Baker was murdered at Worthing, Sussex on 8/9 January 1990.

Did you know him? Have you seen him before?

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT THE MURDER INCIDENT ROOM

telephone no. 0903-30821,

OR ANY POLICE STATION.

There were hand-drawn sketches of victims and suspects, computer-generated E-Fits, one of a rape suspect shown with different hats and hoods, with and without glasses.

In charge of this entire new cold case initiative, and answering to Roy Grace, was Jim Doyle, a former detective chief superintendent with whom Grace had worked many years back. Doyle was a tall, studious-looking man, whose appearance belied his mental – and physical – toughness. He had about him more the courteous air of a distinguished academic than a police officer. Yet with his firm, unflappable ma

Doyle’s two colleagues were similarly experienced. Eamon Greene, a quiet, serious man, was a former Sussex under-16 chess champion and was now a grand master, still playing and wi

Roy Grace, wearing a suit and tie for his first meeting with the new Assistant Chief Constable later that morning, cleared a space on one of the work surfaces and sat down on it, cradling his second mug of coffee of the day. It was 8.45 a.m.

‘OK,’ he said, swinging his legs. ‘It’s good to have the three of you. Actually, let me rephrase that – it is bloody brilliant!’

They all gri

‘Popeye, you taught me just about everything I know, so I don’t want to sit here and teach you how to suck eggs. The “Chief” – ’ by which he meant Chief Constable Tom Martinson – ‘has given us a generous budget, but we’re going to have to deliver if we want the same again next year. Which is shorthand for saying if you guys still want your jobs next year.’

Turning to the others, he said, ‘I’m just going to tell you something Popeye told me when I first worked with him. As part of his work-load back in the 1990s he had just been given responsibility for cold cases – or whatever they were called then!’

That raised a titter. All three retired officers knew the headaches caused by the ever-changing police terminology.

Grace pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and read from it. ‘He said, and I quote, “Cold-case reviews utilize the forensic technology of today to solve the crimes of the past, with a view to preventing the crimes of the future.”’

‘Glad all those years with you weren’t wasted, Roy,’ Jim Doyle said. ‘At least you remembered something!’

‘Yep. Impressive to have learned anything from an old sweat!’ quipped Foster.

Doyle did not rise to the bait.

Roy Grace went on: ‘You’ve probably seen it on the serials or in the Argus that a woman was raped on New Year’s Eve.’

‘In the Metropole Hotel?’ Eamon Greene said.

‘That’s the one.’

‘I attended the initial interview of the victim last Thursday, New Year’s Day,’ Grace said. ‘The offender, apparently disguised in drag, appears to have forced the victim into a hotel room on the pretext of asking for help. Then, wearing a mask, he tied her up and sexually assaulted her vaginally and anally with one of her stiletto shoes. He then attempted to penetrate her himself, with only partial success. This has similarities to the MO of the Shoe Man cold case back in 1997. In those cases, the Shoe Man adopted a series of different disguises and pretexts for requiring help to lure his victims. Then he stopped offending – in Sussex at any rate – and was never apprehended. I have a summary of this case file which I’d like you all to read as a priority. You will each have your own individual cases to review, but for now I want you all to work on this one, as I think it could help with the case I’m investigating now.’

‘Was there any DNA evidence, Roy?’ Jim Doyle asked.

‘There was no semen from any of the women, but three of his victims said that he wore a condom. There were clothing fibres, but nothing conclusive from those. No nail scrapings, no saliva. A couple of his victims reported that he had no pubic hair. This man was clearly very forensically aware, even back then. No DNA was ever found. There was just one common link – each of the victims was seriously into shoes.’

‘Which covers about 95 per cent of the female population – if my wife is anything to go by,’ Jim Doyle said.

‘Precisely.’ Grace nodded.

‘What about descriptions?’ asked Brian Foster.

‘Thanks to the way in which rape victims were treated back then, not much. We have a slightly built man, with not a lot of body hair, a classless accent and a small dick.