Peter James - Dead Like You

‘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?’

‘Roxanna – or Roxy – Pearce.’ Alcorn spelled the surname out in full. ‘Address 76 The Droveway, Hove. She has a PR agency in Brighton and her husband’s in IT. That’s all I really know at this stage. I’ve been in contact with Scenes of Crime and I’m going to the house now. Want me to pick you up on the way?’

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 Glenn Branson standing in front of his desk and said, ‘What’s your problem?’

‘Life. I’m planning to end it all.’

‘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 grinned. ‘What other great pearls of wisdom do you have for me?’

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.’

Friday 9 January

Roy Grace’s father had been a true copper’s copper. Jack Grace told his son that to be a police officer meant that you looked at the world differently from everyone else. You were part of a healthy culture of suspicion, he’d called it.

Roy had never forgotten that. It was how he looked at the world, always. It was how he looked, at this moment, at the posh houses of Shirley Drive on this fine, crisp, sunny January morning. The street was one of hilly Brighton and Hove’s backbones. Running almost into the open countryside at the edge of the city, it was lined with smart detached houses way beyond the pocket of most police officers. Wealthy people lived here: dentists, bankers, car dealers, lawyers, local and London business people, and of course, as with all the smartest addresses, a smattering of successful criminals. It was one of the city’s aspirational addresses. If you lived in Shirley Drive – or one of its tributaries – you were a somebody.

At least, you were to anyone driving by who did not have a copper’s jaundiced eye.

Roy Grace did not have a jaundiced eye. But he had a good, almost photographic memory. As David Alcorn, in a smart grey suit, drove the small Ford up past the recreational ground, Grace clocked the houses one by one. It was routine for him. The London protection racketeer’s Brighton home was along here. So was the Brighton brothel king’s. And the crack cocaine king’s was just one street away.

In his late forties, short, with cropped brown hair and smelling permanently of cigarette smoke, David Alcorn looked outwardly hard and officious, but inside he was a gentle man.

Turning right into The Droveway he said, ‘This is the street the missus would like to live in.’

‘So,’ Grace said, ‘move here.’

‘I’m just a couple of hundred grand short of being a couple of hundred grand short of the down payment,’ he replied. ‘And then some.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘You know what I reckon?’

‘Tell me.’

Grace watched each of the detached houses slide by. On his right, they passed a Tesco convenience store. On his left, a dairy with an ancient cobbled wall.

‘Your Cleo would like it here. Suit a classy lady like her, this area would.’

They were slowing now. Then Alcorn braked sharply. ‘That’s it there on the right.’

Grace looked for any signs of a CCTV camera as they drove down the short, laurel-lined driveway, but saw none. He clocked the security lights.

‘All right, isn’t it?’ David Alcorn said.

It was more than sodding all right, it was totally stunning. If he had the money to design and build his dream house, Grace decided, this might be one he’d copy.

It was like a piece of brilliant white sculpture. A mixture of crisp, straight lines and soft curves, some played off against each other in daring geometric angles. The place seemed to be built on split levels, the windows were vast and solar panels rose from the roof. Even the plants strategically placed around the walls looked as if they had been genetically modified just for this property. It wasn’t a huge house; it was on a liveable scale. It must be an amazing place to come home to every night, he thought.

Then he focused on what he wanted to get from this crime scene, running through a mental checklist as they pulled up behind a small marked police car. A uniformed constable, a solid man in his forties, stood beside it. Behind him, a chequered blue-and-white crime scene tape closed off the rest of the driveway, which led up to a large integral garage.