Peter James - Dead Like You

IS MISSING RACHAEL SHOE MAN’S VICTIM NO. 6?

Grace stared at the photograph, then at the headline. He could remember when he had first seen this page of the paper. This chilling headline. It had been the shoutline on every news-stand in the city.

He tested the lid of the tea chest. It was loose. He lifted it up and stood, his eyes boggling, at what was inside.

It was crammed with women’s high-heeled shoes, each wrapped and sealed in cellophane. He rummaged through them. Some packages contained a single shoe and a pair of panties. Others, a pair of shoes. All of the shoes looked as if they’d barely been worn.

Shaking with excitement, he needed to know how many. Mindful of not wanting to damage any forensic evidence, he counted them out and laid them on the floor in their wrapping. Twenty-two packages.

Also bundled together in one taped-up sheet of cellophane were a woman’s dress, tights, panties and bra. The Shoe Man’s drag gear, maybe. He wondered. Or were these the clothes taken from Nicola Taylor at the Metropole?

He knelt, staring at the shoes for some moments. Then he returned to the cuttings on the wall, wanting to ensure he did not miss anything significant that might lead him to his quarry.

He looked at each one in turn, focusing on the ones on Rachael Ryan, big and small, which covered a large section of one wall. Then his eyes fell on an A4 sheet of paper that was different. This wasn’t a newspaper cutting; it was a printed form, partly filled out in ballpoint pen. It was headed:

J. BUND & SONS, FUNERAL DIRECTORS

He walked across so that he could read the small printing on it. Beneath the name it said:

Registration Form

Ref. D5678

Mrs Molly Winifred Glossop

D. 2 January 1998. Aged 81.

He read every word of the form. It was a detailed list:

Church fee

Doctor’s fee

Removal of pacemaker fee

Cremation fee

Gravedigger’s fee

Printed service sheets fees

Flowers

Memorial cards

Obituary notices

Coffin

Casket for remains

Organist’s fee

Cemetery fee

Churchyard burial fee

Clergy’s fee

Church fee

Funeral on: 12 January 1998, 11 a.m. Lawn Memorial Cemetery, Woodingdean.

He read the sheet again. Then again, transfixed.

His mind was racing back to twelve years ago. To a charred body on a post-mortem table at Brighton and Hove Borough Mortuary. A little old lady, whose remains had been found, incinerated, in the burnt-out shell of a Ford Transit van, and who had never been identified. As was customary, she had been kept for two years and then buried in Woodvale cemetery, her funeral paid for out of public funds.

During his career with the police to date, he’d seen many horrendous sights, but most of them he had been able to put out of his mind. There were just a few, and he could count them on the fingers of one hand, that he knew he would carry to his grave. This old lady, and the mystery accompanying her, he had long thought would be one of them.

But now, standing in the back of this shabby old lock-up garage, something was starting, finally, to make sense.

He had a growing certainty that he now knew who she was.

Molly Winifred Glossop.

But then who had been buried at 11 a.m. on Monday 12 January 1998 in the Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Woodingdean?

He was pretty damned sure he knew the answer.

Sunday 18 January

Jessie heard the vibrating sound of her phone, yet again, in the half-darkness. She was parched and she had no idea of the time. She could detect the faintest grey light. Was it dawn? Once in a while she drifted into a fitful doze, then woke again in stark panic, unable to breathe through her bunged-up nose and fighting for air.

She had agonizing pains in her shoulders, from her arms being stretched out in front of her. There were noises all around her: clankings, creakings, bangings, grindings. With every new sound, she was terrified that the man was returning, that he might be creeping up behind her at this very moment. Her mind swirled in a constant vortex of fear and confused thoughts. Who was he? Why had he brought her here, wherever it was? What was he planning to do? What did he want?

She couldn’t stop thinking about all the horror films that had most scared her. She tried to shut them out, to think of happy times. Like her last holiday with Benedict on the Greek island of Naxos. The wedding they had been discussing, their life ahead.

Where are you now, darling Benedict?

The vibrating sound continued. Four rings, then it stopped once more. Did that mean there was a message? Was it Benedict? Her parents? She tried again and again, desperately, to free herself. Shaking and tossing, struggling to loosen the bonds on her wrists, to work one of her hands free. But all that happened was that she bounced around, painfully, her shoulders almost wrenched out of their sockets, her body crashing down against the hard floor, then up again, until she was exhausted.

Then all she could do was lie here in utter frustration, the damp patch around her groin and thighs no longer warm and starting to itch. She had an itch on her cheek too that she desperately wanted to scratch. And all the time she was fighting constantly to swallow back the bile that kept rising in her throat, which could choke her, she knew, if she allowed herself to vomit with her mouth still clamped shut.

She cried again, her eyes raw with the salt from her tears.

Please help me, somebody, please.

For a moment she wondered whether she should just let herself vomit, choke on it and die. End it all before the man came back to do whatever terrible things he had in mind. To at least deprive him of that satisfaction.

Instead, putting a faltering half-trust in the man she loved, she closed her eyes and prayed for the first time in as long as she could remember. It took her a while before she could properly remember the words.

No sooner had she finished than her phone rang again. The usual four rings, then it stopped. Then she heard a different sound.

A sound she recognized.

A sound that froze her.

The roar of a motorbike engine.

Sunday 18 January

The Coroner for the city of Brighton and Hove was a doughty lady. When she was in a bad mood, her demeanour was capable of scaring quite a few of her staff, as well as many hardened police officers. But, Grace knew, she possessed a great deal of common sense and compassion, and he’d never personally had a problem with her, until now.