Dead Like You

Sandy smiled. ‘Well, there’s a first! Don’t think I’ve ever heard you be so honest in all the years we’ve been married. Thank you, soon-to-be Detective Inspector!’

He gri

‘You will. You’re the force’s blue-eyed boy. You’ll get the promotion. You know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because it means more to you than your marriage.’

‘Sandy! Come on, that’s-’

He laid his cigarette in the ashtray, jumped up from his chair, sat on the edge of the sofa and tried to put an arm around her, but she resisted.

‘Go on. Tell me about your day,’ she said. ‘I want every detail. If you truly love me, that is. I’ve never actually heard a minute-by-minute account of your day before. Not once.’

He stood up again and crushed the cigarette out, then moved the ashtray to the table beside the sofa and sat back down.

‘I’ve spent the whole day looking for this young woman, all right? Just as I’ve been doing for the past week.’

‘Yeah, fine, but what did that entail?’

‘You really want to know the details?’

‘Yes, I do. I really want to know the details. You have a problem with that?’

He lit another cigarette and inhaled. Then, with the smoke jetting from his mouth, he said, ‘I went round with a detective sergeant – a guy called Norman Potting, he’s not the most tactful officer in the force – to see the missing woman’s parents again. They’re in a terrible state, as you can imagine. We tried to reassure them about all we were doing, and took down every detail they could give us about their daughter that they might not already have done. Potting managed to upset them both.’

‘How?’

‘By asking a lot of awkward questions about her sex life. They needed to be asked – but there are ways of doing it…’

He took another sip of his drink and another drag, then laid the cigarette down in the ashtray. She was looking at him inquisitively.

‘And then?’

‘You really want to hear everything else?’

‘I do, I really want to hear everything else.’

‘OK, so we’ve been trying to prise out of them everything about Rachael’s life. Did she have any friends or close work colleagues we haven’t already talked to? Had anything like this ever happened before? We tried to build up a picture of her habits.’

‘What were her habits?’

‘Phoning her parents every day, without fail. That’s the most significant one.’

‘And now she hasn’t phoned them for ten days?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is she dead, do you think?’

‘We’ve checked her bank accounts to see if any money’s been withdrawn and it hasn’t. She has a credit card and debit card, and no transactions have taken place since the day before Christmas Eve.’

He drank some more whisky and was surprised to find that he’d emptied the glass. Ice cubes tumbled against his lips as he drained the last drops.

‘She’s either being held against her will or she’s dead,’ Sandy said flatly. ‘People don’t just vanish off the face of the earth.’

‘They do,’ he said. ‘Every day. Thousands of people every year.’

‘But if she had that close co

He shrugged.

‘What does your copper’s nose tell you?’

‘That it doesn’t smell good.’

‘What happens next?’

‘We’re widening the search, the house-to-house enquiries are expanding to cover a bigger area, we’re drafting in more officers. We’re searching the parks, the waste dumps, the surrounding countryside. CCTV footage is being examined. Checks are being made at all stations, harbours and airports. Her friends are being questioned and her ex-fiancé. And we’re using a criminal psychologist – a profiler – to help.’

After some moments Sandy asked, ‘Is this the shoe rapist again, do you think? The Shoe Man?’

‘She’s mad about shoes, apparently. But this is not his MO. He’s never taken one of his victims.’

‘Didn’t you once tell me that criminals get bolder and more violent – that it’s an escalating thing?’

‘That’s true. The guy who starts out as a harmless flasher can turn into a violent rapist. So can a burglar, as he gets bolder.’

Sandy sipped her wine. ‘I hope you find her quickly and that she’s OK.’

Grace nodded. ‘Yup,’ he said quietly. ‘I hope so too.’

‘Will you?’

He had no answer. Not, at least, the one she wanted to hear.

43

Saturday 10 January

Yac did not like drunk people, especially drunk slappers, especially drunk slappers who got into his taxi. Especially this early on a Saturday night, when he was busy reading the latest on the Shoe Man in the Argus.

There were five drunk girls, all without coats, all in skimpy dresses, all legs and flesh, displaying their breasts and tattoos and pierced belly buttons. It was January! Didn’t they feel the cold?

He was only licensed to carry four of them. He’d told them that, but they’d been too drunk to listen, all piling in at the rank on East Street, shouting, chattering, giggling, telling him to take them to the pier.

The taxi was full of their scents: Rock ’n Rose, Fuel for Life, Red Jeans, Sweetheart, Shalimar. He recognized them all. Uh-huh. In particular, he recognized the Shalimar.

His mother’s perfume.

He told them it was only a short walk, that with the Saturday-night traffic they’d be quicker to walk. But they insisted he take them.

‘It’s bleedin’ freezing, for Christ’s sake!’ one of them said.

She was a plump little thing, wearing the Shalimar, with a mass of fair hair and half-bared breasts that looked like they’d been inflated with a bicycle pump. She reminded him a little of his mother. Something in the coarseness, the shape of her figure and the colour of her hair.

‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘Sodding bleedin’ freezing!’

One of them lit a cigarette. He could smell the acrid smoke. That was against the law too, he told her, staring at her crossly in the mirror.

‘Want a drag, gorgeous?’ she said, pouting, holding out the cigarette to him.

‘I don’t smoke,’ he said.

‘Too young, are you?’ said another, and they broke into peals of squeaky laughter.

He nearly took them to the skeletal remains of the West Pier, half a mile further along the coast, just to teach them a lesson not to risk a taxi driver’s livelihood. But he didn’t, for one reason only.

The shoes and the perfume the plump one was wearing.

Shoes that he particularly liked. Black and silver sparkly Jimmy Choos. Size four. Uh-huh. His mother’s size.

Yac wondered what she would look like naked, just wearing those shoes. Would she look like his mother?

At the same time, he wondered if she had a high- or low-flush loo in her home. But the problem with people who were drunk was that you couldn’t have a proper conversation with them. Waste of time. He drove in silence, thinking about her shoes. Smelling her perfume. Watching her in the mirror. Thinking more and more how much she looked like his mother had once looked.

He made a right turn into North Street and crossed over Steine Gardens, waited at the lights, then turned right and queued at the roundabout before coming to a halt in front of the gaudy lights of Brighton Pier.

Just £2.40 showed on the meter. He’d been sitting in the queue at the cab rank for thirty minutes. Not much for it. He wasn’t happy. And he was even less happy when someone handed him £2.50 and told him to keep the change.

‘Huh!’ he said. ‘Huh!’

The man who owned the taxi expected big money on a Saturday night.

The girls disgorged themselves, while he alternated between watching the Jimmy Choos and glancing anxiously around for any sign of a police car. The girls were cursing the cold wind, clutching their hair, tottering around on their high heels, then, still holding the rear door of the taxi open, began arguing among themselves about why they’d come here and not stayed in the bar they’d just left.