Dead Like You

by Peter James

  He’d now been on duty for eighteen hours straight and was exhausted. In half an hour he would hand over to his deputy and would finally go home, and celebrate by smoking a badly needed cigarette, then falling into bed and getting some even more badly needed sleep.

  The phone rang in his tiny, narrow office on the other side of the wall to the front desk.

  ‘Carlo,’ he answered.

  It was Daniela de Rosa, the Housekeeping Manager, another Italian, from Milano. A room maid was concerned about room 547. It was 12.30, half an hour past check-out time, and there was a Do Not Disturb sign still hanging on the room door. There had been no response when she knocked repeatedly, nor when she phoned the room.

  He yawned. Probably someone sleeping off a night of overindulgence. Lucky them. He tapped his keyboard to check on the room’s occupant. The name was Mrs Marsha Morris. He dialled the room number himself and listened to it ringing, without answer. He called Daniela de Rosa back.

  ‘OK,’ he said wearily, ‘I am coming up.’

  Five minutes later, he stepped out of the lift on the fifth floor and walked along the corridor, to where the Housekeeping Manager was standing, and knocked hard on the door. There was no response. He knocked again. Waited. Then, using his pass key, he opened the door slowly and stepped in.

  ‘Hello!’ he said quietly.

  The heavy curtains were still drawn, but in the semi-darkness he could make out the shape of someone lying on the wide bed.

  ‘Hello!’ he said again. ‘Good morning!’

  He detected the faintest movement on the bed. ‘Hello!’ he said again. ‘Good morning, Mrs Morris. Hello! Happy New Year!’

  There was no response. Just a little more movement.

  He felt on the wall for the light switches and pressed one. Several lights came on at once. They revealed a slender, naked woman with large breasts, long red hair and a dense triangle of brown pubic hair, spread-eagled on the bed. Her arms and legs were outstretched in a crucifix position and held in place with white cords. The reason there was no response from her was instantly clear as he stepped closer, feeling a growing spike of unease in his gullet. Part of a face towel protruded either side of duct tape pulled tight across her mouth.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ the Housekeeping Manager cried out.

  Carlo Diomei hurried over to the bed, his tired brain trying to make sense of what he was looking at and not entirely succeeding. Was this some strange sex game? Was her husband, or boyfriend or whoever, lurking in the bathroom? The woman’s eyes looked at him in desperation.

  He ran to the bathroom and flung open the door, but it was empty. He’d seen some strange things going on in hotel rooms and had to deal with some weird shit in his time, but for a moment, for the first time in his career to date, he was uncertain what he should do next. Had they interrupted some kinky sex game? Or was something else going on?

  The woman looked at him with small, frightened eyes. He felt embarrassed looking down at her nakedness. Overcoming it, he tried to remove the duct tape, but as he gave the first tentative pull the woman’s head thrashed violently. Clearly it was hurting her. But he had to get it off, he was certain. Had to speak to her. So he pulled it away from her skin as gently as he could, until he was able to pluck the towel out of her mouth.

  Instantly the woman began burbling and sobbing incoherently.

  8

  Thursday 1 January

  It had been a long time, Roy Grace reflected, since he had felt this good on a New Year’s Day. For as far back as he could remember, except for the times when he had been on duty, the New Year always began with a blinding headache and the same overwhelming sensation of doom that accompanied his hangovers.

  He had drunk even more heavily on those first New Year’s Eves since Sandy’s disappearance, when their close friends Dick and Leslie Pope would not hear of him being on his own and insisted he join in their celebrations. And, almost as if it was a legacy from Sandy, he had started to intensely dislike the festivity too.

  But now, this particular New Year’s Eve had been totally different. Last night’s had been the most sober – and the most enjoyable – he could remember in his entire life.

  For a start, Cleo passionately loved the whole idea of celebrating the New Year. Which made it all the more ironic that she was pregnant and therefore could not really drink very much. But he hadn’t minded; he was just happy to be with her, celebrating not just the coming year, but their future together.

  And, quietly, he celebrated the fact that his irascible boss, Alison Vosper, would no longer be there to dampen his spirits on an almost daily basis. He looked forward to his first meeting with his new boss, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Rigg, on Monday.

  All he had managed to glean about the man so far was that he was a stickler for detail, liked to be hands-on involved and had a short fuse with fools.

  To his relief, it had been a quiet morning in the CID HQ at Sussex House, so he’d spent the time steadily working through his paperwork and making brisk progress, while keeping a regular eye on the serials – the log of all reported incidents in the city of Brighton and Hove – on the computer.

  As expected, there had been a few incidents in the bars, pubs and clubs, mostly fights and a few handbag thefts. He noted a couple of minor road traffic collisions, a domestic – a couple fighting – a complaint about noise from a party, a lost dog, a stolen moped and a naked man reported running down Western Road. But now a serious entry had appeared. It was a reported rape, at Brighton’s smart Metropole Hotel, which had popped on to the screen a few minutes ago, at 12.55 p.m.

  There were four principal categories of rape: stranger, acquaintance, date and partner. At this moment there was no mention on the serial of which this might be. New Year’s Eve was the kind of time when some men got blind drunk and forced themselves on their dates or partners, and in all likelihood this incident would be in one of those categories. Serious enough, but not something likely to involve Major Crime.

  Twenty minutes later he was about to head across the road to the ASDA supermarket, which doubled as the CID HQ canteen, to buy himself a sandwich for lunch, when his internal phone rang.

  It was David Alcorn, a detective inspector he knew and liked a lot. Alcorn was based at the city’s busy main police station in John Street, where Grace himself had spent much of his early career as a detective, before moving to the CID HQ at Sussex House.

  ‘Happy New Year, Roy,’ Alcorn said in his usual blunt, sardonic voice. From the tone of his voice, happy had just fallen off a cliff.

  ‘You too, David. Did you have a good night?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, it was all right. Had to keep off the booze a bit to be here for seven this morning. You?’

  ‘Quiet, but nice – thanks.’

  ‘Thought I’d better give you a heads-up, Roy. Looks like we might have a stranger rape at the Metropole.’

  He filled him in on the sketchy details. A Uniform Response Team had attended the hotel and called in CID. A Sexual Offences Liaison Officer or SOLO was now on her way over to accompany the victim to the recently opened specialist rape unit, the Sexual

  Assault Referral Centre or SARC, in Crawley, a post-war town located in the geographical centre of Sussex.

  Grace jotted down the details, such as Alcorn could give him, on a notepad. ‘Thanks, David,’ he said. ‘Keep me updated on this. Let me know if you need any help from my team.’

  There was a slight pause and he sensed the hesitation in the DI’s voice. ‘Roy, there’s something that could make this a bit politically sensitive.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The victim had been at a do last night at the Metropole. I’m informed that a number of police brass were at a table at this same function.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘The Chief Constable and his wife, for starters.’

  Shit, Grace thought, but did not say.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘The Deputy CC. And one assistant chief constab
le. You get my drift?’

  Grace got his drift.

  ‘Maybe I should send someone from Major Crime up to accompany the SOLO. What do you think? As a formality.’

  ‘I think that would be a good plan.’

  Grace quickly ran through his options. In particular he was concerned about his new boss. If ACC Peter Rigg was truly a stickler for detail, then he damned well had to start off on the right footing – and to cover himself as best he could.

  ‘OK. Thanks, David. I’ll send someone up there right away. In the meantime, can you get me a list of all attendees of that event?’

  ‘That’s already in hand.’

  ‘And all the guests staying there, plus all the staff – I would imagine there might have been extra staff drafted in for last night.’

  ‘I’m on to all of that.’ Alcorn sounded just slightly miffed, as if Grace was doubting his abilities.

  ‘Of course. Sorry.’

  Immediately after he ended the call, he rang DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, one of the few members of his team who was in today.

  She was also one of the detectives he had tasked with working through the mountains of bureaucracy required by the Crown Prosecution Service for Operation Neptune, a large and harrowing human-trafficking investigation he had been running in the weeks before Christmas.

  It took her only a few moments to reach him from her desk in the large, open-plan Detectives’ Room just beyond his door. He noticed she was limping a little as she came into his office – still not fully recovered from the horrific injuries she had sustained in a pursuit last summer, when she had been crushed against a wall by a van. Despite multiple fractures and losing her spleen, she had insisted on cutting short her advised convalescence period to get back to work as quickly as possible.

  ‘Hi, E-J,’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’

  Grace had just begun to run through the sketchy details David Alcorn had given him and to explain the delicate political situation when his internal phone suddenly rang again.

  ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, raising a finger to E-J to ask her to wait.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ said a chirpy, friendly voice with a posh, public-school accent. ‘How do you do? This is Peter Rigg here.’

  Shit, Grace thought again.

  ‘Sir,’ he replied. ‘Very nice to – er – um – hear from you. I thought you weren’t actually starting until Monday, sir.’

  ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  Oh boy, Roy Grace thought, his heart sinking. The New Year was barely twelve hours old and they had their first serious crime. And the new ACC hadn’t even officially started and he’d managed to piss him off already.

  He was conscious of E-J’s eyes on him, and her ears scooping this all up.

  ‘No, sir, absolutely not. This is actually fortuitous timing. It would seem we have our first critical incident of the year. It’s too early to tell at this moment, but it has potential for a lot of unwelcome media coverage.’

  Grace then signalled to E-J that he needed privacy and she left the room, closing the door.

  For the next couple of minutes he ran through what was happening. Fortunately, the new Assistant Chief Constable continued in a friendly vein.

  When Grace had finished, Rigg said, ‘You’re going up there yourself, I take it?’

  Roy hesitated. With the highly specialized and skilled team at Crawley, there was no actual need for him to be there at this stage, and his time would be far better employed here in the office, dealing with paperwork and keeping up to speed on the incident via the phone. But he decided that was not what the new ACC wanted to hear.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way shortly,’ he replied.

  ‘Good. Keep me informed.’

  Grace assured him he would.

  As he hung up, thinking hard, his door opened and the morose face and shaven dome of Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson appeared. His eyes, against his black skin, looked tired and dulled. They reminded Grace of the eyes of fish that had been dead too long, the kind Cleo had told him he should avoid on a fishmonger’s slab.

  ‘Yo, old-timer,’ Branson said. ‘Reckon this year’s going to be any less shitty than last?’

  ‘Nope!’ Grace said. ‘The years never get less shitty. All we can do is try to learn to cope with that fact.’

  ‘Well, you’re a sack-load of goodwill this morning,’ Branson said, slumping his huge frame down into the chair E-J had just vacated.

  Even his brown suit, garish tie and cream shirt looked tired and rumpled, as if they’d also been on a slab too long, which worried Grace about his friend. Glenn Branson was normally always sharply dressed, but in recent months his marriage breakup had sent him on a downward spiral.

  ‘Wasn’t the best year for me last year, was it? Halfway through I got shot and three-quarters of the way through my wife threw me out.’

  ‘Look on the bright side. You didn’t die and you got to trash my collection of vinyls.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘Want to take a drive with me?’ Grace asked.

  Branson shrugged. ‘A drive? Yeah, sure. Where?’

  Grace was interrupted by his radio phone ringing. It was David Alcorn calling again to give him an update.

  ‘Something that might be significant, Roy. Apparently some of the victim’s clothes are missing. Sounds like the offender might have taken them. In particular her shoes.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘I seem to remember there was someone doing that a few years back, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, but he took just one shoe and the underwear,’ Grace replied, his voice quiet all of a sudden. ‘What else has been taken?’

  ‘We haven’t got much out of her. I understand she’s in total shock.’

  No surprise there, he thought grimly. His eyes went down to one of the blue boxes on the floor – the one containing the cold-case file on the Shoe Man. He pondered for a moment.

  That was twelve years ago. Hopefully it was just a coincidence.

  But even as he thought that a wintry gust rippled through his veins.

  1997

  9

  Thursday 25 December

  They were moving. Driving somewhere. Rachael Ryan could hear the steady, dull boom of the exhaust and she was breathing in lungfuls of its fumes. She could hear the sound of the tyres sluicing on the wet road. Could feel every bump jarring her through the sacking on which she lay trussed up, arms behind her back, unable to move or speak. All she could see was the top of the back of his baseball cap in the driver’s cab up front and his ears sticking out.

  She was frozen with cold, with terror. Her mouth and throat were parched and her head ached terribly from when he had hit her. Her whole body hurt. She felt nauseous with disgust – dirty, filthy. She desperately wanted a shower, hot water, soap, shampoo. Wanted to wash herself inside and out.

  She felt the van going around a corner. She could see daylight. Grey daylight. Christmas morning. She should be in her flat, opening the stocking her mother had posted to her. Every year of her childhood and still now, at twenty-two, she had a Christmas stocking.

  She began crying. She could hear the clunk-clop of windscreen wipers. Suddenly, Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ began playing loudly and crackly on the radio. She could see the man’s head swaying to the music.

  Elton John had sung that song at Prince Diana’s funeral, with new lyrics. Rachael remembered that day so vividly. She had been one of the hundreds of thousands of mourners outside Westminster Abbey, listening to that song, watching the funeral on one of the huge television screens. She had camped the night on the pavement, and the day before had spent a big part of her week’s wages from her job on the help desk in the customer relations department of American Express in Brighton on a bouquet of flowers that she had placed, alongside the thousands of others, in front of Kensington Palace.

  She had idolized the Princess. Something had died inside her the day Diana died.

  Now a new nightmare had begun. />
  The van braked sharply to a halt and she slid forward a few inches. She tried again to move her hands and her legs, which were agonizingly cramped. But she could move nothing.

  It was Christmas morning and her parents were expecting her for a glass of champagne and then Christmas lunch – followed by the Queen’s speech. A tradition, every year, like the stocking.

  She tried again to speak, to plead with the man, but her mouth was taped shut. She needed to pee and had already once, some time ago, soiled herself. She could not do that again. There was a ringing sound. Her mobile phone; she recognized the Nokia ring-tone. The man turned his head for an instant, then looked to the front again. The van moved forward. Through her blurry eyes and the smeared windscreen she saw a green traffic light pass by. Then she saw buildings on her left that she recognized. Gamley’s, the toyshop. They were on Church Road, Hove. Heading west.

  Her phone stopped. A short while later she heard a beep-beep, signalling a message.

  From whom?

  Tracey and Jade?

  Or her parents calling to wish her Happy Christmas? Her mother anxious to know if she liked her stocking?

  How long before they started to worry about her?

  Oh, Christ! Who the hell is this man?

  She rolled over to her left as the van made a sharp right turn. Then a left turn. Then another turn. And stopped.

  The song stopped. A cheery male voice began talking about where the wonderful Elton John was spending his Christmas.

  The man got out, leaving the engine running. The fumes and her fear were making her more and more nauseous. She was desperate for water.

  Suddenly he came back into the van. They moved forward, into

  increasing darkness. Then the engine was switched off and there was a moment of complete silence as the radio went off too. The man disappeared.

  There was a metallic clang as the driver’s door shut.

  Then another metallic clang, cutting out all light.

  She lay still, whimpering in fear, in total darkness.

  10