Peter James - Dead Like You

Defending his friend, Maurice shook his head. ‘Can’t smell anything.’

Ulla leaned across and sniffed Garry, like a dog on heat. ‘Nice cologne!’ she said evasively. ‘Smells quite feminine, though.’

‘Chanel Platinum,’ he replied.

She sniffed again, giving a dubious frown, and raised her eyebrows at Denise.

‘So where the hell have you been?’ Denise demanded. ‘You look a mess. Couldn’t you at least have brushed your hair?’

‘It’s blowing a hooley out there, in case you haven’t noticed!’ Garry replied. ‘I had to deal with an irate client – we’re short-staffed tonight – one down with flu, one down with something else, and a bolshy Mr Graham Lewis in Steyning, whose alarm keeps going off for no reason, was threatening to change suppliers. So I had to go and sort him out. OK? Turns out it was damned mice.’

She tilted her glass into her mouth, to drain it, then realized it was already empty. At that moment a waiter appeared with a fresh bottle. Garry pointed at his own wine glass, draining his beer at the same time. His nerves were shot to hell and he needed drink right now. Lots of it.

‘Cheers, everyone!’ he said.

Maurice and Ulla raised their glasses. ‘Cheers!’

Denise took her time. She was glaring at Garry. She just did not believe him.

But, Garry thought, when had his wife last believed him about anything? He drained half of the sharp white wine in just one gulp, momentarily relieving the burning sensation in the roof of his mouth. If the truth be known, the last time she had believed him was probably on the day they got married, when he said his vows.

Although… he hadn’t even been sure then. He could still remember the look she had given him in front of the altar, as he’d slipped the ring on to her finger and got prompted through the wording by the vicar. It was not the love in her eyes that he might have expected, more the smug satisfaction of a hunter returning home with a dead animal over their shoulder.

He had nearly bailed out then.

Twelve years later, there was not a day that went by when he didn’t wish he had.

But hey. There were advantages to being married. It was important never to forget that.

Being married gave you respectability.

Saturday 10 January

‘I’ve had a go at the wording on the wedding invites,’ Cleo called out from the kitchen.

‘Great!’ Roy Grace said. ‘Want me to take a look?’

‘We’ll go through it when you’ve had supper.’

He smiled. One thing he was learning about Cleo was that she liked to plan things well in advance. It was going to be touch and go for the wedding to take place before their child was born. They couldn’t even set a firm date yet because of all the bureaucracy that had to be dealt with to have Sandy declared legally dead first.

Humphrey lay contentedly beside him now on Cleo’s living-room floor with a goofy grin, head flopped over, his tongue half out. Roy ran his palm back and forward across the happy creature’s soft, warm belly, while a Labour politician on the flat-screen TV on the wall pontificated on News at Ten.

But he wasn’t listening. With his suit jacket removed and his tie loosened, his thoughts were on the evening briefing and the pages of work he had brought home, which were spread out on the sofa beside him. In particular, he was poring over the similarities between the Shoe Man and the new offender. A number of unanswered questions were going around his mind.

If the Shoe Man was back, where had he been for the past twelve years? Or if he had remained in the city, why had he stopped offending for so long? Was it possible that he had raped other victims who had not reported it?

Grace doubted that he could have raped repeatedly for twelve years without someone reporting it. Yet so far there were no rapists showing up on the national database with a comparable MO. He could of course have gone abroad, which would take a massive amount of time and resourcing to establish.

However, this evening it emerged that there was one potential suspect in the city, following the Analyst’s search of the ViSOR and MAPPA databases, ViSOR being the Violent and Sex Offender Register and MAPPA the Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements.

Having been set up to manage the release of violent and sexual offenders back into the community after their release from prison on licence, MAPPA graded these offenders into three categories. Level 1 was for released prisoners who were considered to have a low risk of reoffending and were monitored to ensure that they complied with the terms of their licence. Level 2 was for those considered to be in need of moderately active inter-agency monitoring. Level 3 was for those considered to have a high risk of reoffending.

Zoratti had discovered that there was a Level 2 who had been released on licence, from Ford Open Prison, having served three years of a six-year sentence, mostly at Lewes, for burglary and indecent assault – a career burglar and drugs dealer, Darren Spicer. He’d attempted to kiss a woman in a house he had broken into, then run off when she’d fought back and had pressed a hidden panic button. Later, she’d picked him out in an identity parade.

Spicer’s current place of residence was being traced urgently tonight through the Probation Service. But while he was worth interviewing, Grace wasn’t convinced Darren Spicer ticked many boxes. He had been in and out of jail several times in the past twelve years, so why had he not offended in the interim? More important, in his view, was the fact that the man had no previous record of sexual assaults. The last offence that had contributed to Spicer’s sentence appeared to be a one-off – although, of course, there was no certainty of that. With the grim statistic that only 6 per cent of rape victims ever reported the crimes, it was quite possible he had committed previous such offences and got away with them.

Next he turned his mind to the copycat theory. One thing that was deeply bothering him was the missing pages from the Rachael Ryan file. Sure, it was possible that they had simply been misfiled somewhere else. But there could be a much darker reason. Could it be that the Shoe Man himself had accessed the file and removed something that might incriminate him? If he had access to that file, he would have had access to all the Shoe Man’s files.

Or was it someone else altogether who had gained access to them? Someone who had decided, for whatever sick reason, to copy the Shoe Man’s MO.

Who?

A member of his trusted team? He didn’t think so, but of course he couldn’t discount that. There were plenty of other people who had access to the Major Crime Suite – other police officers, support staff and cleaning staff. Solving that mystery, he realized, was now a priority for him.

‘Are you nearly ready to eat, darling?’ Cleo called out.

Cleo was grilling him a tuna steak. Roy took this as a sign that maybe, finally, she was starting to wean herself off curries. The reek of them had gone and there was now a strong smell of wood smoke from the crackling fire that Cleo had lit in the grate some time before he had arrived, and the welcoming aroma of scented candles burning in different parts of the room.

He took another long sip of the deliciously cold vodka martini she had mixed, enviously, for him. He now had to drink for both of them, she’d told him – and tonight he did not have a problem with that. He felt the welcoming buzz of the alcohol and then, still mechanically stroking the dog, he lapsed back into his thoughts.

A car had been seen leaving the Pearce house in The Droveway at 9 p.m. on Thursday, which fitted perfectly with the timing of the attack. It had been travelling at speed and nearly ran over a local resident. The man was so angry he tried to take a note of the number plate, but could only be certain of two digits and one letter of the alphabet. Then he did nothing about it until he read of the attack in the Argus, which prompted him to phone the Incident Room this evening.