Peter James - Dead Like You

According to him, the driver was male, but with the vehicle’s tinted windows he had not been able to get a clear look at his face. Somewhere in his thirties or forties with short hair was the extent of his description. He did much better with the car, asserting it was a light-coloured old-model Mercedes E-Class saloon. Just how many of those Mercedes were there around, Grace wondered? Loads of them. It was going to take a while to sift through all the registered keepers when they didn’t have a full registration number to work from. And he did not have the luxury of time.

With the rising frenzy in the media after two stranger rapes in the city in a little over a week, the news stories were ramping up fear in the public. The call handlers were being inundated with queries from anxious women about whether it was safe to go out and he was aware that his immediate superiors, Chief Superintendent Jack Skerritt and ACC Peter Rigg, were anxious to see rapid progress with this case.

The next press conference was scheduled for midday on Monday. It would calm everything down greatly if he could announce they had a suspect and, even better, that they had made an arrest. OK, they had Darren Spicer as a possible. But nothing made the police look more inefficient than having to release a suspect because of lack of evidence, or because it was the wrong person. The Mercedes was more promising. But the driver wasn’t necessarily the offender. There could be an innocent explanation – perhaps a family friend who had popped round for a visit to the Pearce household, or simply someone delivering a package?

The fact that the car was being driven recklessly was a good indicator that it might have been the suspect. It was a known fact that offenders often drove badly immediately after committing a crime – because they were in a heightened state of anxiety, the red mist.

He’d sent all his team home for the night to get some rest, except for the two Analysts, who were working a 24/7 rota between them. Glenn Branson had asked him for a quick pint on the way home, but he’d apologetically excused himself, having barely seen Cleo this weekend. With his mate’s marital woes spiralling from bad to worse, he was running out of sympathetic things to say to Glenn. Divorce was a grim option, especially for someone with young kids. But he could no longer see much alternative for his friend – and wished desperately that he could. Glenn was going to have to bite the bullet and move on. An easy thing to tell someone else, but an almost impossible thing to accept oneself.

He felt a sudden craving for a cigarette, but resisted, with difficulty. Cleo was not bothered if he smoked in here, or anywhere, but he was mindful of the baby she was carrying, and all the stuff about passive smoke, and the example he needed to try to set. So he drank some more, ignoring the craving.

‘Ready in about five minutes!’ she called out from the kitchen. ‘Need another drink?’ She popped her head around the door.

He raised his glass to show it was nearly empty. ‘I’ll be under the table if I have another!’

‘That’s the way I like you!’ she replied, coming over to him.

‘You’re just a control freak!’ he said with a big grin.

He would take a bullet for this woman. He would die for Cleo gladly, he knew. Without an instant’s hesitation.

Then he felt a sudden strange pang of guilt. Wasn’t this how he’d felt once about Sandy?

He tried to answer himself truthfully. Yes, it had been total hell when she disappeared. That morning on his thirtieth birthday, they had made love before he went to work, and that same evening, when he returned home, looking forward to their celebration, she had not been there – that had been total hell.

So had the days, weeks, months and then years after. Imagining all the terrible things that might have happened to her. And sometimes imagining what might still be happening to her in some monster’s lair. But that was just one of many scenarios. He’d lost count of the number of psychics he’d had consultations or sittings with over these past ten years – and not one of them had said she was in the spirit world. Despite all of them, he was reasonably certain that Sandy was dead.

In a few months’ time it would be ten years ago that she had disappeared. An entire decade, in which he’d gone from a young man to a middle-aged fart.

In which he’d met the loveliest, smartest, most incredible woman in the world.

Sometimes he woke up and imagined he must have dreamed it all. Then he would feel Cleo’s warm, naked body beside him. He would slip his arms around her and hold her tightly, the way someone might try to hold on to their dreams.

‘I love you so much,’ he would whisper.

‘Shit!’ Cleo broke away from him, breaking the spell.

There was a smell of burning as she dashed back over to the hob. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

‘It’s OK! I like it well done. I don’t like fish with its heart still beating!’

‘Just as well!’

The kitchen filled with black smoke and the stink of burning fish. The smoke alarm started beeping. Roy opened the windows and the patio door and Humphrey raced outside, barking furiously at something in his squeaky puppy bark, then raced back inside and tore around barking at the alarm.

A few minutes later, Grace sat at the table and Cleo placed a plate in front of him. On it lay a blackened tuna steak, a lump of tartare sauce, some limp-looking mangetout, and a mess of disintegrated boiled potatoes.

‘Eat that,’ she said, ‘and you are proving it’s true love!’

The television above the table was on, with the sound turned down. The politician had gone and now Jamie Oliver was energetically demonstrating how to slice the coral from scallops.

Humphrey nudged his right leg, then tried to jump up.

‘Down! No begging!’ he said.

The dog looked at him uncertainly, then slunk away.

Cleo sat down beside him and gave him a wide-eyed frown.

‘You don’t have to eat it if it’s really horrible.’

He forked some fish into his mouth. It tasted even worse than it looked, but only marginally. No question, Sandy was a better cook than Cleo. A thousand times better. But it did not matter to him one jot. Although he did glance a tad enviously at the dish Jamie Oliver was preparing.

‘So how was your day?’ he asked, dubiously forking another section of burnt fish into his mouth, thinking that the curries really had not been so bad after all.

She told him about the body of a forty-two-stone man she’d had to recover from his home. It had required the help of the fire brigade.

He listened in astounded silence, then ate some salad, which she put down on a side plate. At least she had managed not to burn that.

Switching subjects she said, ‘Hey, something occurred to me about the Shoe Man. Do you want my thoughts?’

He nodded.

‘OK, your Shoe Man – if it is the same offender as before and if he stayed in this area – I can’t see that he would have just totally stopped getting his kicks.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘If he stopped offending, for whatever reason, he must still have had urges. He would need to satisfy them. So maybe he’d go to dominatrix dungeons – or places like that – weird sex places, fetishes and stuff. Put yourself in his shoes, as it were – forgive the pun! You’re a creep who gets off on women’s shoes. OK?’

‘That’s one of our lines of enquiry.’

‘Yes, but listen. You’ve found a fun way of doing it – raping strangers in classy shoes and then taking those shoes. OK?’

He stared at her, without reacting.

‘Then, oooops! You go a bit too far. She dies. The media coverage is intense. You decide to lie low, ride it out. But…’ She hesitated. ‘You want the but?’