Dead Like You

by Peter James

He looked at the screen. It was a call from the dispatcher that read:

  China Garden rest. Preston St. 2 Pass. Starling. Dest. Roedean Cresc.

  The China Garden restaurant was just around the corner. He knew the destination. He could visualize it now, the way he could visualize every street and every dwelling in Brighton and Hove. Roedean Crescent sat high up above the cliffs to the east of the city. All the houses were big, detached and individual, with views out across the Marina and the Channel. Rich people’s homes.

  The sort of people who could afford nice shoes.

  He hit the acknowledge button, confirming that he would make the pick-up, then continued to sip his tea and read the newspaper that had been left in his taxi.

  They’d be finishing their meal still. When people ordered a taxi in a restaurant, they expected to wait a while, certainly a quarter of an hour or so on a Saturday night in downtown Brighton. And besides, he could not stop reading and then re-reading the story about the rape of the woman in the Metropole on New Year’s Eve. He was riveted.

  In his mirrors he could see the twinkly lights of the pier. He knew all about those lights. He used to work on the pier as an electrical engineer, part of the team maintaining and repairing the rides. But he got the sack. It was for the same reason he usually got the sack, because he lost his temper with someone. He hadn’t yet lost his temper with anyone in his taxi, but he had once got out and shouted at another driver who’d pulled on to a rank in front of him.

  He finished his tea, reluctantly folded the newspaper and put the mug back in the plastic bag alongside his Thermos, then placed the bag on the front seat.

  ‘Vocabulary!’ he said aloud. Then he began his checks.

  First check the tyres. Next start the engine, then switch on the lights. Never the other way around, because if the battery was low, the lights might drain the energy that the starter motor needed. The owner of the taxi had taught him that. Especially in winter, when there were heavy loads on the battery. It was winter now.

  As the engine idled, he checked the fuel gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. Then the oil pressure. Then the temperature gauge. The interior temperature was set to twenty degrees, as he had been instructed. Outside, a digital display told him, it was two degrees Celsius. Cold night.

  Uh-huh.

  He looked in his mirror, checked his seat belt was on, indicated, pulled out into the road and drove up to the junction, where the lights were red. When they changed to green he turned right into Preston Street and almost immediately pulled over to the kerb, halting outside the front door of the restaurant.

  Two very drunk yobs staggered down the hill towards him, then knocked on his window and asked if he was free to take them to Coldean. He wasn’t free, he was waiting for passengers, he told them. As they walked away he wondered whether they had high-flush or low-flush toilets in their homes. It suddenly became very important to him to know. He was about to get out and hurry after them, to ask them, when finally the restaurant door opened.

  Two people emerged. A slim man in a dark coat, with a scarf wound around his neck, and a woman who was clinging to him, teetering on her heels; she looked like she’d fall over if she let go. And from the height of the stilettos she was wearing, that would be a long fall.

  They were nice heels. Nice shoes.

  And he had their address! He always liked to know where women who had nice shoes lived.

  Uh-huh.

  Yac lowered his window. He didn’t want the man knocking on it. He didn’t like people knocking on his window.

  ‘Taxi for Starling?’ the man said.

  ‘Roedean Crescent?’ Yac replied.

  ‘That’s us!’

  They climbed in the back.

  ‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ the man said.

  ‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ Yac repeated. He had been told always to repeat the address clearly.

  The car filled with smells of alcohol and perfume. Shalimar, he recognized instantly. The perfume of his childhood. The one his mother always wore. Then he turned to the woman.

  ‘Nice shoes,’ he said. ‘Bruno Magli.’

  ‘Yesh,’ she slurred.

  ‘Size four,’ he added.

  ‘An expert on shoes, are you?’ the woman asked him sourly.

  Yac looked at the woman’s face in the mirror. She was all uptight. She did not have the face of a woman who had had a good time. Or who was very nice. The man’s eyes were closed.

  ‘Shoes,’ Yac said. ‘Uh-huh.’

  1997

  21

  Saturday 27 December

  Rachael woke with a start. Her head was throbbing. Disoriented, for a cruel, fleeting instant she thought she was at home in bed with a mighty hangover. Then she felt the hard metal floor. The hessian matting. Breathed in the stink of diesel oil. And reality gate-crashed her consciousness, kicking her wide awake, sending dark dread spiralling through her.

  Her right eye hurt like hell. God, it was agony. How long had she been lying there? He could come back at any moment, and if he did he would see that she’d freed her wrists. He would tape them up again and probably punish her. She had to free her legs and run, now, while she had the chance.

  Oh, God. Please help me.

  Her lips were so parched they cracked painfully when she tried to move them. Her tongue felt like a ball of fur in her mouth. She listened for an instant, to make sure she was still alone in here. All she could hear was a distant siren and again she wondered, with the faintest uplift of hope, whether that might be the police out looking for her.

  But how would they find her in here?

  She rolled over until she felt the side of the van, then hauled herself upright and began picking at the tape binding her ankles with her fingernails. Trying to find a join on the slippery, diesel-coated PVC where she could get a grip.

  Finally she found one and slowly, carefully, worked it free, until she had a whole wide strip of it. She began to unwind it, jerking it free with a series of sharp ripping noises. Then she winced in pain as the last of it came away from the skin of her ankles.

  Grabbing the sodden hessian matting, she got to her feet, stretched and rubbed her legs to get feeling back into them, and stumbled her way, weakly, to the back of the van, crying out in pain, suddenly, as she stood on something sharp in her bare feet – a nut or a bolt. Then she felt her way across the rear doors for the handle. She found a vertical metal rod and ran her hands up it until she reached the handle. She tried to pull it down. Nothing happened. She tried to move it upwards and it would not budge.

  It was locked, she realized, her heart sinking.

  No. Please, no. Please, no.

  She turned and made her way down to the front, her fast, rasping breaths echoing in the metallic cavern of the van’s interior. She found the back of the passenger seat, climbed over clumsily, then ran her finger along the sill of the passenger window until she found the lock pin. She gripped it as hard as she could with her slippery fingers and pulled.

  To her relief, it popped up easily.

  Then she groped for the handle, pulled it and shoved as hard as she could on the door, almost tumbling out on to the concrete floor as it opened, and simultaneously the interior light in the van came on.

  Now, in its dim glow, she could see the inside of her prison. But there wasn’t much. Just some tools hanging on hooks on the bare wall. A tyre. Grabbing the matting, she hurried along the side of the van towards the garage door, her heart thudding with fear. Suddenly the matting snagged on something and, when she tugged it, there was a loud metallic crash as several objects fell to the floor. She winced but carried on, until she reached the up-and-over door.

  There was a two-sided handle in the centre, attached to wires to the mechanism at the top of the door. She tried to turn the handle, first to the right, then to the left, but it would not move. It must be locked from the outside, she realized. With panic increasing inside her, she grabbed the wire and pulled. But her fingers slipped on it, not g
etting any purchase.

  In desperation, Rachael bashed the door with her shoulder, oblivious to the pain. But nothing happened. Whimpering in fear and increasing desperation, she tried again. There was a loud, echoing, metallic booommmmm.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Please, God, somebody must hear this. Please, God. Please.

  Then suddenly the door swung up, startling her, almost knocking her over backwards.

  In the stark glare of the street lighting outside he stood there, looking at her inquisitively.

  She stared back at him in utter terror. Her eyes darted, desperately hoping there might be a passer-by, wondering if she could find the strength to dodge by him and run.

  But before she had a chance, he hit her, slamming his fist up beneath her chin, snapping her head back so hard it bashed with a loud crack against the rear of the van.

  22

  Monday 29 December

  Detective Sergeant Roy Grace was surprised at the number of people packed into the top-floor conference room of Brighton’s John Street police station, on this December morning. Despite the cold outside, it was feeling stuffy in here.

  Mispers never usually attracted much attention, but this was a quiet time of the year for news. A bird flu epidemic in Hong Kong was one of the few big stories that the national headline writers could use as a shocker in between the Xmas festivities and the upcoming New Year’s celebrations.

  But the story of the missing young woman, Rachael Ryan, in the wake of the series of rapes that had occurred in the city in the past couple of months, had caught the imagination of the press and media not only locally but nationally. And the Argus, of course, was having a field day with Brighton heading into a new year with the Shoe Man still at large.

  Newspaper, radio and television reporters occupied all the chairs, and the standing room as well, in the cramped windowless space. Grace sat suited and booted behind a table on the raised platform facing them, next to Chief Inspector Jack Skerritt, in full dress uniform, reeking of pipe tobacco, and the Police Press Officer, Tony Long. A blue back board carrying the Sussex Police crest stood behind them, next to which was a blow-up photograph of Rachael Ryan, and the table was covered in microphones and tape recorders. Cables led down from the table and across the floor to TV cameras from BBC South Today and Meridian.

  With cameras clicking and the constant strobing of flash, Sker-ritt first introduced his colleagues on the top table, then read in his blunt voice from a prepared statement: ‘A twenty-two-year-old resident of Brighton, Ms Rachael Ryan, was reported missing by her family on the evening of Christmas Day, after she failed to turn up for Christmas dinner. No word has been heard from her since. Her parents have informed us that this is completely uncharacteristic behaviour. We are concerned for the safety of this young lady and would ask her, or anyone with information about her, to contact the Incident Room at Brighton police station urgently.’

  A tenacious, balding, bespectacled crime reporter from the Argus, Phil Mills, dressed in a dark suit, sitting hunched over his notepad, asked the first question. ‘Chief Inspector, do Brighton police suspect that the disappearance of this young lady might be connected with Operation Houdini and the rapist you have nicknamed the Shoe Man?’

  Both Skerritt and Grace reacted to this in silent fury. Although the police knew him as the Shoe Man, his MO had been kept secret from the public, as was usual. This was in order to weed out time-wasters who either confessed to the crime or phoned in purporting to have knowledge of the perpetrator. Grace could see Skerritt wrestling with whether or not to deny the nickname. But he clearly decided that it was out in the open now and they were stuck with it.

  ‘We have no evidence to suggest that,’ he replied curtly and dismissively.

  Jack Skerritt was a popular and diligent member of the CID. A tough, blunt, no-nonsense copper of nearly twenty years’ experience, he had a lean military bearing and a hard face, topped with a slick of brown hair clipped short. Grace liked him, although Skerritt made him a little nervous because he was intensely demanding of his officers and did not treat mistakes lightly. But he had learned a lot working under him. Skerritt was the kind of detective he would like to be himself one day.

  A female reporter immediately raised her hand. ‘Chief Inspector, can you explain more about what you mean by “Shoe Man”?’

  ‘We believe the offender who has been preying on women in the Brighton area for several months now has an abnormal interest in women’s shoes. It is one of a number of lines of enquiry we are pursuing.’

  ‘But you haven’t mentioned this publicly before.’

  ‘We haven’t, no,’ Skerritt replied. ‘As I said, it is one line.’

  Mills came straight back at him. ‘The two friends Rachael was out with on Christmas Eve say that she had a particular obsession with shoes and spent a disproportionate amount of her income on them. I understand that the Shoe Man specifically targets women wearing so-called designer shoes.’

  ‘On a night like Christmas Eve, every young lady in Brighton and Hove would have been out in her finery,’ Skerritt retorted. ‘I repeat that, at this stage of our investigations, we have no evidence to suggest there is any connection to the so-called Shoe Man rapes that have occurred in this vicinity.’

  A woman reporter Grace did not recognize raised her hand. Skerritt nodded at her.

  ‘You have assigned the name Operation Sundown to Rachael Ryan’s disappearance. Creating a formal operation tells us you are taking this more seriously than a normal missing persons inquiry. Is that correct?’

  ‘We take all missing persons inquiries seriously. But we have elevated the status of this particular inquiry to a major incident.’

  A local radio reporter raised his hand. ‘Chief Inspector, do you have any leads in your search for the Shoe Man?’

  ‘At this stage, as stated, we are pursuing several lines of enquiry. There has been a substantial response from the public and all calls to our Incident Room are being followed up by my team.’

  ‘But you are not close to an arrest?’

  ‘At this stage, that is correct.’

  Then a journalist Grace recognized as a stringer for several national papers raised his hand. ‘What steps are Brighton police currently taking to find Rachael Ryan?’

  ‘We have forty-two officers deployed in the search for her. They are carrying out house-to-house enquiries in her immediate neighbourhood and along the route we believe she took home. We are searching all garages, warehouses and empty buildings in the vicinity. We have been given particularly good information by a witness who lives near Ms Ryan’s residence in Kemp Town, who believes he saw a young lady forced into a white van in the early hours of Christmas morning,’ Skerritt said, then studied the journalist for some moments, as if eyeing him up as a suspect, before once more addressing everyone present.

  ‘Unfortunately we have only part of the registration number for this van, which we are working on, but we would urge anyone who thinks they might have seen a white van in the vicinity of Eastern Terrace on Christmas Eve or early Christmas morning to contact us. I will give out the Incident Room phone number at the end of this briefing. We are also anxious to hear from anyone who may have seen this young lady on her way home.’ He pointed at the screen behind him, on which were displayed a series of photographs of Rachael Ryan, obtained from her parents.

  He paused for a moment and patted his pocket, as if checking his pipe was there, then continued: ‘Rachael was wearing a black mid-length coat over a miniskirt, and black patent-leather shoes with high heels. We are trying to trace her precise route home from the time she was last seen, at the taxi rank in East Street, shortly after 2 a.m.’

  A diminutive, rotund man, his face largely obscured by an unkempt beard, raised a stubby, chewed finger. ‘Chief Inspector, do you actually have any suspects in your Shoe Man enquiries?’

  ‘All I can say at this stage is that we are following some good leads and we are gr
ateful to the public for their response.’

  The tubby man got in a second question quickly. ‘Your enquiry into Rachael Ryan seems to be a departure from police policy,’ he said. ‘You don’t normally react so quickly to missing-person reports. Would I be correct in assuming you think there may be a link here to the Shoe Man – Operation Houdini – even if you are not publicly announcing this?’

  ‘No, you would not be correct,’ Skerritt said bluntly.

  A woman reporter raised her hand. ‘Can you tell us some of the other lines of enquiry you are pursuing on Rachael Ryan, Chief Inspector?’

  Skerritt turned to Roy Grace. ‘My colleague DS Grace is organizing a reconstruction of the parts of Rachael’s journey home that we can be reasonably certain of. This will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.’

  ‘Does this mean you don’t believe you are going to find her before then?’ Phil Mills asked.

  ‘It means what it says,’ retorted Skerritt, who had had several run-ins with this reporter before. Then he nodded at his colleague.

  Roy Grace had never spoken at a press briefing before and suddenly he was nervous as all hell. ‘We have a WPC who is of similar height and build to Rachael Ryan, who will be dressed in similar clothing and will walk the route we believe Rachael took on the night – or rather early morning – of her disappearance. I would urge all people who might have been out early on Christmas morning to spare the time to retrace their steps and see if it jogs their memories.’

  He was perspiring when he finished. Jack Skerritt gave him a brief nod of approval.

  These reporters were after a story that would sell their papers, or bring listeners to their radio stations or viewers to their channels. He and Skerritt had a different agenda. To keep the streets of Brighton and Hove safe. Or at least to make the citizens feel they were safe in a world that never had been safe and never would be. Not with the kind of human nature he had come to know as a police officer.

  There was a predator out on the streets of this town. As a result of the Shoe Man’s reign of terror, there was not a woman in Brighton who felt comfortable right now. Not a single woman who did not look over her shoulder, did not ram home her door chain, did not wonder if she might be next.