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Of course, it could just be a vintage car, but even then he knew a dealer who would pay good money for instruments from vintage cars; steering wheels, gear levers, badges, bo
He stood still in the darkness, looking up at the apartment building, checking for shadows at the window that might signal someone looking out. But he could see no one.
Quickly, he delved into his bag and set to work on the first of the locks. It yielded after less than a minute. The others followed suit, equally easily.
He stepped back into the shadows and again checked all around him and above. No sign of anyone.
He pulled open the up-and-over door, then stood still in astonishment, for some moments, absorbing what he was looking at. This was not what he had expected at all.
He stepped inside nervously, yanked the door down behind him, pulled his torch out of his carrier and switched it on.
‘Oh shit,’ he said, as the beam of light confirmed it for him.
Scared as hell, he backed out, his thoughts in a whirl. With trembling hands he locked it up again, not wanting to leave any tracks. Then he hurried away into the night.
90
Saturday 17 January
Jessie Sheldon
View photos of me (128)
Jessie now has 253 friends on Facebook
Benedict’s meeting my parents tonight at charity ball for first time. I’m nervous!!! Got my early-evening kick-boxing class first, so if there are any issues and they start being horrible to him, they’d better watch out. And… will be wearing my new Anya Hindmarch shoes with five-inch stilettos!!!!
He read Jessie’s latest Facebook entry with a thin smile. You are so good to me, Jessie. You let me down at the Withdean Sports Stadium, but you won’t let me down tonight, will you? You will finish your kick-boxing at the usual time, then walk back the half-mile to your Sudeley Place flat and change into your beautiful dress and your new shoes – dressed to kill. Then you will step out into Benedict’s car, which will be waiting outside. That’s your plan, isn’t it?
Sorry to be a party pooper…
91
Saturday 17 January
Because of the surveillance operation, Roy Grace had cancelled yesterday’s evening briefing. Now, at the 8.30 a.m. Saturday briefing, there was a whole twenty-four hours of activity for the team to catch up on.
Plenty of activity but little progress.
Ellen Zoratti and her colleague analyst still had no results in their nationwide trawl of sexual offences that could be linked to the Shoe Man and the High-Tech Crime Unit still had no potential leads for them.
The Outside Inquiry Team’s questioning of the managers and working girls at all thirty-two of the city’s known brothels was now complete and had produced nothing tangible so far. Several of their regular punters had shoe or feet fetishes, but as none of the managers kept names and addresses of their clientele, all they could do was promise to phone when any of them next made an appointment.
It was looking more and more as if whatever the Shoe Man might have been up to during these past twelve years, he’d done a damned good job of keeping it quiet.
Last night had also been quiet. The whole city had felt like a graveyard. Having partied hard over the Christmas holidays, it seemed that now its inhabitants, last night at least, were well and truly homebodies in recovery mode and feeling the bite of the recession. And despite his team’s long vigil, there had been no further sighting of taxi driver John Kerridge – Yac – since his earlier, brief appearance in the area.
One positive was that Grace now had the full surveillance complement of thirty-five officers he needed to blanket cover the Eastern Road vicinity tonight. If the Shoe Man showed up, his team was going to be ready for him.
Dr Julius Proudfoot remained confident that he would.
As the meeting ended, an internal phone began ringing. Gle
But just as he stepped out through the doorway, Michael Foreman called out to him, ‘Gle
He squeezed back through the crowd of people leaving and picked up the receiver, which Foreman had laid on the table.
‘DS Branson,’ he answered.
‘Oh, yeah. Er, hello, Sergeant Branson.’
He frowned as he recognized the rough-sounding voice.
‘It’s Detective Sergeant Branson,’ he corrected.
‘Darren Spicer here. We met, at the-’
‘I know who you are.’
‘Look, I have – er – what you might call a delicate situation here.’
‘Lucky you.’
Branson was anxious to get him off the line and call Ari. She always hated it when he killed her incoming calls. He’d also found another unwelcome letter from her solicitor awaiting him at Roy Grace’s house, when he’d finally got home last night, or rather earlier this morning, and he wanted to talk to her about it.
Spicer gave him a half-hearted, uncertain laugh. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a problem. I need to ask you a question.’
‘Fine, ask it.’
‘Yeah, well, you see – I got this problem.’
‘You just told me that. What’s your question?’
‘Well, it’s like – if I said to you that I was, like – like, I saw something, right? Like – someone I know saw something, like, when they were somewhere that they shouldn’t ought to be? Yeah? If they, like, gave you information that you really needed, would you still prosecute them because they were somewhere they shouldn’t have been?’
‘Are you trying to tell me you were somewhere you shouldn’t have been and saw something?’
‘It wasn’t like I breached my licence restrictions or anything. It wasn’t like that.’
‘Do you want to come to the point?’
Spicer was silent for a moment, then said, ‘If I saw something that might help you catch your Shoe Man, would that give me immunity? You know, from prosecution.’
‘I haven’t got that power. Calling to collect the reward, are you?’
There was a sudden silence at the other end, then Spicer said, ‘Reward?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Reward for what?’
‘The reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who attacked Mrs Dee Burchmore on Thursday afternoon. It’s been put up by her husband. Fifty thousand pounds.’
Another silence, then, ‘I didn’t know about that.’
‘No one does yet, he only informed us this morning. We’re about to pass it on to the local media, so you’ve got a head start. So, anything you’d like to tell me?’
‘I don’t want to go back inside. I want to stay out, you know, try to make a go of it,’ Spicer said.
‘If you’ve got information, you could call Crimestoppers anonymously and give it to them. They’ll pass it on to us.’
‘I wouldn’t get the reward then, would I, if it was anonymous?’
‘Actually, I believe you might. But you’re aware that withholding information’s an offence, aren’t you?’ Branson said.
Instantly he detected the panic rising in the old lag’s voice.
‘Yeah, but wait a minute. I’m phoning you, to be helpful, like.’
‘Very altruistic of you.’
‘Very what?’