Dead Like You

31

Friday 9 January

One good thing, or rather, one of the many good things about Cleo being pregnant, Grace thought, was that he was drinking a lot less. Apart from the occasional glass of cold white wine, Cleo had been dutifully abstemious, so he had cut down too. The bad thing was her damned craving for curries! He wasn’t quite sure how many more of those his system could take. The whole house was starting to smell like an Indian fast-food joint.

He longed for something plain. Humphrey was unimpressed too. After just one lick, the puppy had decided that curries were not going to provide him with any tasty leftover scraps in his bowl that he would want to eat.

Roy endured them because he felt duty-bound to keep Cleo company. Besides, in one of the pregnancy-for-men books Gle

Normally, he liked to drink lager with curry, Grolsch preferably or his favourite German beer, Biltberger, or the weissbier he’d developed a taste for through his acquaintance with a German police officer, Marcel Kullen, and from his visits last year to Munich. But this week it was his rota turn to be the Major Crime Branch’s duty Senior Investigating Officer, which meant he was on call 24/7, so he was reduced to soft drinks.

Which explained why he felt bright as a button, sitting in his office at 9.20 a.m. this Friday, sipping his second coffee, switching his focus from the serials to the emails that poured in as if they were coming out of a tap that had been left ru

Just two and a bit more days to go until midnight Sunday, then another detective superintendent or detective chief inspector on the rota would take over the mantle of Senior Investigating Officer and it would be another six weeks before his turn came round again. He had so much work to get through, preparing cases for trial, as well as supervising the new Cold Case Team, that he really did not need any new cases to consume his time.

But he was out of luck.

His phone rang and as soon as he answered he instantly recognized the blunt, to-the-point voice of DI David Alcorn from Brighton CID.

‘Sorry, Roy. Looks like we’ve got another stranger rape on our hands.’

Up until now, Brighton CID had been handling the Metropole Hotel rape, although keeping Roy informed. But now it sounded as if the Major Crime Branch was going to have to take over. Which meant him.

And it was a sodding Friday. Why on Fridays? What was it about Fridays?

‘What do you have, David?’

Alcorn summed up briefly and succinctly: ‘The victim is deeply traumatized. From what Uniform, who attended, have been able to glean, she arrived home alone last night – her husband is away on a business trip – and was attacked in her house. She rang a friend, who went around this morning, and she was the one who called the police. The victim was seen by an ambulance crew but did not need medical attention. She’s been taken up to the rape centre at Crawley accompanied by a SOLO and a CID constable.’

‘What details do you have?’

‘Very sketchy, Roy. As I said, I understand she’s deeply traumatized. It sounds like a shoe was involved again.’

Grace frowned. ‘What do you have on that?’

‘She was violated with one of her shoes.’

Shit, Grace thought, scrabbling through the mess of papers on his desk for a pen and his notepad. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Roxa

His office was hardly on the way to the address for someone at Brighton nick, Roy thought, but he didn’t argue. He could use the time in the car to get any more information on the Metropole rape that might have surfaced and to discuss the transfer of all information to the Major Crime Branch.

‘Sure, thanks.’

When he terminated the call, he sat still for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

In particular, his mind went back to the Shoe Man. All this week, the Cold Case Team had been focusing on him as a priority to see what links, if any, they could establish in the MOs between the known cases, back in 1997, and the assault on Nicola Taylor at the Metropole on New Year’s Eve.

Her shoes had been taken. That was the first possible link. Although back in 1997 the Shoe Man took just one shoe and the woman’s panties. Both Nicola Taylor’s shoes had been taken, along with all her clothes.

Somewhere beneath his paper mountain was the massively thick folder containing the offender profile, or rather, as these were now known, the Behavioural Investigator Report. It had been written by a distinctly oddball forensic psychologist, Dr Julius Proudfoot.

Grace had been sceptical of the man when he first encountered him back in 1997 on his investigations into Rachael Ryan’s disappearance, but had consulted him on a number of cases since.

He became so absorbed in the report that he did not notice the click of his door opening and the footfalls across the carpet.

‘Yo, old-timer!’

Grace looked up with a start to see Gle

‘Life. I’m pla

‘Good idea. Just don’t do it here. I’ve got enough shit to deal with.’

Branson walked around his desk and peered over his shoulder, reading for some moments before saying, ‘You know that Julius Proudfoot’s seriously off his trolley, don’t you? His reputation, right?’

‘So what’s new? You have to be seriously off your trolley to join the police force.’

‘And to get married.’

‘That too.’ Grace gri

Branson shrugged. ‘Just trying to be helpful.’

What would be really helpful, Grace thought, but did not say, would be if you were about a thousand miles from here right now. If you stopped trashing my house. If you stopped trashing my CD and vinyl collections. That’s what would be really helpful.

Instead, he looked up at the man he loved more than any man he had ever met before and said, ‘Do you want to fuck off, or do you want to really help me?’

‘Sweetly put – how could I resist?’

‘Good.’ Grace handed him Dr Julius Proudfoot’s file on the Shoe Man. ‘I’d like you to summarize that for me for this evening’s briefing meeting, into about two hundred and fifty words, in a form that our new ACC can absorb.’

Branson lifted the file up, then flipped through the pages.

‘Shit, two hundred and eighty-two pages. Man, that’s a fucker.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’