Peter James: Dead Like You

The front door of the house was opening. He stiffened and took a deep breath, as he had been taught by his therapist. He didn’t really like passengers getting into his taxi and invading his space – except ones with nice shoes. But he had to put up with them until he could deliver them to their destination, then get them out again and be free.

They were coming out now. The man was tall and slim, his hair slicked back, wearing a tuxedo with a bow tie and holding his coat over his arm. She had a furry-looking jacket on, red hair all done nicely, flowing around her head. She looked beautiful, as if she might be a famous actress, like the ones he saw pictures of in the papers that people left in his taxi or on television of stars arriving at premieres.

But he wasn’t really looking at her; he was looking at her shoes. Black suede, three ankle straps, high heels with glinting metal around the edges of the soles.

‘Good evening,’ the man said, opening the door of the taxi for the woman. ‘Metropole Hotel, please.’

‘Nice shoes,’ Yac said to the woman, by way of reply. ‘Jimmy Choo. Uh-huh?’

She squealed in proud delight. ‘Yes, you’re right. They are!’

He recognized her intoxicating scent too, but said nothing. Oscar de la Renta Intrusion, he thought to himself. He liked it.

He started the engine and quickly ran through his mental checks. Meter on. Seat belts. Doors closed. Into gear. Handbrake off. He had not checked the tyres since dropping off the last fare, but he had done so half an hour ago, so they might still be all right. Check in mirror. As he did, he caught another glimpse of the woman’s face. Definitely beautiful. He would like to see her shoes again.

‘The main entrance,’ the man said.

Yac did the calculation in his head as he steered back down the drive: 2.516 miles. He memorized distances. He knew most of them within this city because he had memorized the streets. It was 4,428 yards to the Hilton Brighton Metropole, he recalculated; or 2.186 nautical miles, or 4.04897 kilometres, or 0.404847 of a Swedish mile. The fare would be approximately £9.20, subject to traffic.

‘Do you have high-flush or low-flush toilets in your house?’ he asked.

After a few moments of silence while Yac pulled out into the road, the man glanced at the woman, raised his eyes and said, ‘Low flush. Why?’

‘How many toilets do you have in your house? I bet you’ve got a lot, right? Uh-huh?’

‘We have enough,’ the man said.

‘I can tell you where there’s a good example of a high-flush toilet – it’s in Worthing. I could take you there to see it if you’re interested.’ Hope rose in Yac’s voice. ‘It’s a really good example. In the public toilets, near the pier.’

‘No, thank you. They’re not my thing.’

The couple in the back fell silent.

Yac drove on. He could see their faces in the glow of the street lights, in his mirror.

‘With your low-flush toilets, I bet you have some push-button ones,’ he said.

‘We do,’ the man said. ‘Yes.’ Then he put his mobile phone to his ear and answered a call.

Yac watched him in the mirror before catching the woman’s eyes. ‘You’re a size five, aren’t you? In shoes.’

‘Yes! How did you know?’

‘I can tell. I can always tell. Uh-huh.’

‘That’s very clever!’ she said.

Yac fell silent. He was probably talking too much. The guy who owned the taxi told him there had been complaints about him talking too much. The guy said people didn’t always like to talk. Yac did not want to lose his job. So he kept quiet. He thought about the woman’s shoes as he headed down to the Brighton seafront and turned left. Instantly the wind buffeted the taxi. The traffic was heavy and it was slow going. But he was right about the fare.

As he pulled up outside the entrance to the Metropole Hotel, the meter showed £9.20.

The man gave him £10 and told him to keep the change.

Yac watched them walk into the hotel. Watched the woman’s hair blowing in the wind. Watched the Jimmy Choo shoes disappearing through the revolving door. Nice shoes. He felt excited.

Excited about the night ahead.

There would be so many more shoes. Special shoes for a very special night.

Wednesday 31 December

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace stared out of his office window into the dark void of the night, at the lights of the ASDA superstore car park across the road and the distant lights of the city of Brighton and Hove beyond, and heard the howl of the gusting wind. He felt the cold draught that came though the thin pane on his cheek.

New Year’s Eve. He checked his watch: 6.15. Time to go. Time to quit his hopeless attempt at clearing his desk and head home.

It was the same every New Year’s Eve, he reflected. He always promised himself that he would tidy up, deal with all his paperwork and start the next year with a clean slate. And he always failed. He would be coming back in tomorrow to yet another hopeless mess. Even bigger than last year’s. Which had been even bigger than the one the year before.

All the Crown Prosecution files of the cases he had investigated during this past year were stacked on the floor. Next to them were small, precarious tower blocks of blue cardboard boxes and green plastic crates crammed with unresolved cases – as cold cases were now starting to be called. But he preferred the old title.

Although his work was predominantly concerned with current murders and other major crimes, Roy Grace cared about his cold cases very much, to the point that he felt a personal connection with each victim. But he had been unable to dedicate much time to these files, because it had been a strangely busy year. First, a young man had been buried alive in a coffin on his stag night. Then a vile snuff-movie ring had been busted. This had been followed by a complex case of a homicidal identity thief, before he’d successfully potted a double-killer who had faked his disappearance. But he’d had precious little acknowledgement for getting these results from his departing boss, Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper.

Perhaps next year would be better. Certainly it was filled with promise. A new ACC, Peter Rigg, was starting on Monday – five days’ time. Also starting on Monday, which would greatly relieve his workload, was a brand-new Cold Case Team comprised of three former senior detectives under his command.

But most important of all, his beloved Cleo was due to give birth to their child in June. And some time before then, at a date still to be sorted out, they would be getting married, so long as the one obstacle standing in their way could be removed.

His wife, Sandy.

She had disappeared nine and a half years ago, on his thirtieth birthday, and, despite all his efforts, no word had been heard from her since. He did not know whether she had been abducted or murdered, or had run off with a lover, or had had an accident, or had simply, elaborately, faked her disappearance.

For the past nine years, until his relationship with Cleo Morey had begun, Roy had spent almost all of his free time in a fruitless quest to discover what had happened to Sandy. Now he was finally putting her into the past. He had engaged a solicitor to have her declared legally dead. He hoped the process could be fast-tracked so they would be able to get married before the baby was born. Even if Sandy did turn up out of the blue, he would not be interested in resuming a life with her, he had decided. He had moved on in his own mind – or so he believed.

He shovelled several piles of documents around on his desk. By stacking one heap on top of another, it made the desk look tidier, even if the workload remained the same.

Strange how life changed, he thought. Sandy used to hate New Year’s Eve. It was such an artifice, she used to tell him. They always spent it with another couple, a police colleague, Dick Pope, and his wife, Leslie. Always in some fancy restaurant. Then afterwards Sandy would invariably analyse the entire evening and pull it apart.