by Peter James
The Constable led the way inside and Grace was impressed that he’d had the good sense to mark on the ground with tape a single entry and exit route.
The open-plan hall, with polished parquet flooring, elegant metal sculptures, abstract paintings and tall, lush plants, was something that Cleo would love, he thought. There was a strong, pleasant smell of pine and a slightly sweeter, muskier scent, probably from pot-pourri, he thought. It made a refreshing change not to walk into a house that smelt of curry.
The Constable said he would come upstairs, to be available to answer questions, but he would not enter the bedroom, to minimize the disturbance in there.
Grace hoped that the officer, being this forensically aware, hadn’t trampled all over it when he had responded to the emergency call earlier. He followed Alcorn and Tindall up a glass spiral staircase, along a short galleried landing and into a huge bedroom that smelt strongly of perfume.
The windows had curtains like a fine white gauze and the walls were lined with fitted wardrobes with curtained glass panels. The double doors of one of them were open and several dresses on their hangers lay fallen on the carpeted floor.
The centrepiece of the room was a king-sized bed with four tapered wooden columns rising from it. An unwound dressing gown cord lay around one of them, and a striped man’s tie, knotted to a plain tie, around another. Four more ties, knotted together into two doubles, lay on the floor. The cream satin duvet was badly rumpled.
‘Mrs Pearce was left gagged and tied by her wrists and ankles to each of those posts,’ the Constable said from the doorway. ‘She managed to free herself at about half past six this morning, and then she called her friend.’ He checked his notebook. ‘Mrs Amanda Baldwin. I have her number.’
Grace nodded. He was staring at a photograph on a glass-topped dressing table. It was of an attractive woman, with sleek black hair clipped up, wearing a long evening dress, standing next to a sharp-looking guy in a dinner suit.
Pointing at it, he said, ‘Presume this is her?’
‘Yes, chief.’
David Alcorn studied her too.
‘What state was she in?’ Grace asked the Constable.
‘Pretty bad shock,’ he replied. ‘But quite compos mentis, considering her ordeal, if you know what I mean.’
‘What do we know about her husband?’
‘He went away yesterday on a business trip to Helsinki.’
Grace thought for a moment, then looked at David Alcorn. ‘Interesting timing,’ he said. ‘Might be significant. I’d like to find out how often he goes away. It could be someone who knows her, or who’s been stalking her.’
Turning to the Constable, he said, ‘He was wearing a mask, right?’
‘Yes, sir, he was – a hood with slits cut in.’
Grace nodded. ‘Has the husband been contacted?’
‘He’s going to try to get a flight back today.’
Alcorn went out to check the other rooms.
Joe Tindall was holding a compact camera up to his eye. He took a 360-degree video of the scene, then zoomed in on the bed.
‘Did you attend alone?’ Grace asked the Constable.
He cast his eyes around the room as he spoke. On the floor lay a pair of cream undies, a white blouse, a navy skirt and top, tights and a bra. They weren’t strewn around the room as if they had been torn off the woman; they looked as if they had been stepped out of carelessly and left where they fell.
‘No, sir, with Sergeant Porritt. He’s accompanied her and the SOLO to the Saturn Centre.’
Grace made a brief sketch plan of the room, noting the doors – one to the hallway, one to the en-suite bathroom – and the windows, all as possible entry/exit areas. He would require careful combing of the room for fingerprints, hair, fibres, skin cells, saliva, semen, possible lubricant traces from a condom, if one had been used, and footprints. The outside of the house would need to be searched carefully also, especially for footprints, and for clothing fibres that might have come off on a wall or a frame if the offender escaped via a window, as well as for cigarette butts.
He would need to write out and give Tindall his recovery policy on how much of the contents of the room and the house and surroundings he might want bagged and tagged for lab testing. The bedding, for sure. Towels in the bathroom in case the offender had dried his hands or any parts of his body. The soap.
He made notes, padding around the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was a huge fixed mirror facing the bed, put there for kinky purposes he thought, not disapprovingly. On one bedside table were a diary and a chick-lit novel and on the other a pile of IT magazines. He opened each of the wardrobe doors in turn. There were more dresses hanging here than he had ever seen in his life.
Then he opened another and, breathing in a luxurious rich scent of leather, he encountered an Aladdin’s cave of shoes. They were racked floor-to-ceiling on slide-out drawers. Grace was no expert on ladies’ footwear, but he could tell at a glance that these were serious and classy. There had to be more than fifty pairs in here. The next door he opened revealed another fifty pairs. Followed by the same behind the third door.
‘Looks like she’s a high-maintenance lady!’ he commented.
‘I understand she has her own business, Roy,’ David Alcorn said.
Grace silently chided himself. It had been a stupid comment, the kind of sexist assumption he might have expected from someone like Norman Potting.
‘Right.’
He walked over to the window and peered out at the rear garden, a handsomely landscaped plot, with an oval swimming pool, beneath its winter cover, as its centrepiece.
Beyond the garden, visible through dense shrubs and young trees, were school playing fields. Rugby posts were up on two pitches and netted football goals on a third. This would have made a possible access route for the offender, he thought.
Who are you?
The Shoe Man?
Or just another creep?
33
Friday 9 January
‘Yer could have fucking knocked,’ Terry Biglow whined.
Knocking had never been Darren Spicer’s style. He stood in the small room, in the semi-darkness from the drawn window blind, clutching his holdall and trying to breathe in as little as possible of the fetid air. The room reeked of ingrained cigarette smoke, old wood, dusty carpet and rancid milk.
‘Thought you was still inside.’ The elderly villain’s voice was small and reedy. He lay, blinking into Spicer’s torch beam. ‘Anyhow, what the fuck you doing here at this hour?’
‘Been shagging,’ Spicer replied. ‘Thought I’d pop by and tell you all about her, and pick up my stuff while I was at it.’
‘Like I need to know. My days of shagging are over. Can hardly get it to piss. What do you want? Stop shining that bleedin’ thing in my face.’
Spicer flicked the beam around the walls, found a wall switch and clicked it on. A gloomy overhead light in an even gloomier tasselled shade came on. He wrinkled his face in disgust at the sight of this room.
‘You gone over the wall again?’ Biglow said, still blinking.
He looked terrible, Spicer thought. Seventy, going on ninety.
‘Good behaviour, mate, yeah? I’m on early release licence.’ He tossed a wristwatch on to Biglow’s chest. ‘Brought you a present.’
Biglow grabbed it with his gnarled little hands and peered at it greedily. ‘Wossis? Korean?’
‘It’s real. Nicked it last night.’
Biglow hauled himself up a little in the bed, scrabbled on the table beside him and put on some reading glasses that were unfashionably large. Then he studied the watch. ‘Tag Heuer Aquaracer,’ he announced. ‘Nice one. Thieving and shagging?’
‘Other way around.’
Biglow gave him a thin smile, revealing a row of sharp little teeth the colour of rusty tin. He was wearing a filthy-looking T-shirt that might once have been white. Beneath it he was all skin and bone. He smelt of old sacks.
&
nbsp; ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice. Wot yer want for it?’
‘A grand.’
‘Yer having a laugh. Might get yer a monkey if I can find a buyer – and if it’s kosher and not some copy. Otherwise, a one-er now. I could give yer a one-er now.’
A monkey was £500; a one-er £100.
‘It’s a two-grand watch,’ Spicer said.
‘And we’re in a bleedin’ recession and all.’ Biglow looked at the watch again. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t come out much later.’ He fell silent, then when Spicer said nothing he went on. ‘I ain’t got long, see?’ He coughed, a long, harsh, racking cough that made his eyes water, and spat some blood into a grimy handkerchief. ‘Six months they gimme.’
‘Bummer.’
Darren Spicer cast his eyes around the basement bedsit. It shook as a train thundered close by outside, emitting an eerie howl. A cold draught of air blew through the room. The place was a tip, just like he remembered it when he had last been here, over three years ago. A threadbare carpet covered some of the floorboards. Clothes hung from the dado rail on wire hangers. An old wooden clock on a shelf said it was 8.45. A crucifix was nailed to the wall just above the bed and a Bible lay on the table beside Biglow, along with several labelled bottles of medication.
This is going to be me in thirty years’ time, if I get that far.
Then he shook his head. ‘This it, Terry? This where you’re ending your days?’
‘It’s all right. It’s convenient.’
‘Convenient? Convenient for what? The fucking funeral parlour?’
Biglow said nothing. A short distance away, across the Lewes Road, adjacent to the cemetery and the mortuary, was a whole line of undertakers.
‘Ain’t yer got running water?’
‘Course I have,’ Biglow spluttered, through another fit of coughing. He pointed across the room at a washbasin.
‘Don’t you ever wash? It smells like a toilet in here.’
‘You want a cup of tea? Coffee?’
Spicer looked at a corner shelf on which sat a kettle and some cracked mugs. ‘No thanks. Not thirsty.’
He shook his head as he looked down at the old villain. You were a big player in this city. Even I was shit scared of you as a lad. Just the name Biglow put the fear into most people. Now look at you.
The Biglows had been a crime family to be reckoned with, running one of the major protection rackets, controlling half of Brighton and Hove’s drug scene, and Terry had been one of the scions. He wasn’t a man you messed with, not if you didn’t want a razor scar across your cheek or acid thrown in your face. He used to dress mean and sharp, with big rings and watches, and drive fancy cars. Now, ruined by booze, his face was all sallow and shrunken. His hair, which used to be freshly coiffed, even at midnight, now looked more worn than the carpet, and was the colour of nicotine from some off-the-shelf dye.
‘On the nonce’s wing, were you, in Lewes, Darren?’
‘Screw you. I was never no nonce.’
‘Not what I heard.’
Spicer looked at him defensively. ‘I told you it all before, right? She was gagging for it. You can tell a woman that’s gagging for it. Threw herself at me, didn’t she? I had to push her away.’
‘Funny the jury didn’t believe yer.’
Biglow pulled a packet of cigarettes out of a drawer, shook out a cigarette and put it in his mouth.
Spicer shook his head. ‘Lung cancer and you’re lighting up?’
‘Big lot of difference that’s going to make now, nonce.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Always nice to see yer, Darren.’
He lit his cigarette using a plastic lighter, inhaled and was then lost in a coughing fit.
Spicer knelt down, rolled back the carpet, removed some floorboards, then extricated the old, square leather suitcase which had three chains around it, each secured with a heavy-duty padlock.
Biglow held up the watch. ‘Tell you what. I always been a fair man and don’t want you thinkin’ ill of me after I gone. We got three years’ left-luggage fee to negotiate and all. So what I’ll do is give you thirty quid for the watch. Can’t say fairer than that.’
‘A fucking carpet?’
In a fit of fury, Spicer grabbed Terry Biglow’s hair with his left hand and jerked him up, out of bed, and held him in front of his face, dangling him like a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was surprised how light the man was. Then he slammed a rising punch under his chin as hard as he could, with his right hand. So hard it hurt like hell.
Terry Biglow went limp. Spicer released him and he fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. He took a few steps forward and trampled out the cigarette that was burning. Then he looked around the squalid bedsit for anything that might be worth taking. But other than recovering the watch, there was nothing. Nothing at all. There really wasn’t.
Lugging the heavy suitcase under one arm, and his holdall containing all his basics, he let himself out of the door, hesitating for one moment, in which he turned back to the crumpled heap.
‘See you at your funeral, mate.’
He closed the door behind him, then climbed the stairs and went out into the freezing, blustery Brighton Friday morning.
34
Friday 9 January
For the second time in just over a week, the Sexual Offences Liaison Officer, DC Claire Westmore, was back at the Saturn Centre, the Sexual Assault Referral Centre attached to Crawley Hospital.
She knew from experience that no two victims ever reacted the same way, and nor did their conditions remain static. One of the difficult tasks facing her right now was to keep abreast of the changing state of mind of the woman she was with. But while treating her sensitively and sympathetically, and trying to make her feel as safe as possible, she could not lose sight of the cruel fact that Roxy Pearce, like it or not, was a crime scene from whom every possible scrap of forensic evidence needed to be obtained.
When that was completed, she would let the woman rest – safe here in this suite – and with the help of medication get some sleep. Tomorrow, when hopefully the woman would be in a better state, the interview process could start. For Roxy Pearce, as with most victims, that was likely to mean three gruelling days of reliving what had happened, with Westmore extracting from her a harrowing narrative that would eventually fill thirty pages of her A4 notebook.
At this moment she was going through the most distressing part of all for the victim – and for herself. They were alone with a female Forensic Medical Examiner, or FME, as Police Surgeons were now called, in the sterile Forensic Room. Roxy Pearce was wearing only the white towelling dressing gown and pink slippers in which she had travelled here. She’d had a blanket wrapped around her for warmth in the police car, but now that had been removed. She sat, hunched and silent and forlorn, on the blue examining couch, her head bowed, eyes staring blankly at nothing, her long black hair matted and partially obscuring her face. From being hyper-talkative when the police had first arrived at her house, she had now become almost catatonic.
Claire Westmore had heard victims say that being raped was like having their souls murdered. Just as with murder, there was no going back. No amount of therapy would restore Roxy Pearce to the person she had previously been. Yes, in time she would recover a little, enough to function, to live a seemingly normal life. But it would be a life constantly stalked by the shadow of fear. A life in which she would find it hard ever to trust anyone or any situation.
‘You’re safe here, Roxy,’ Claire said to her with a bright smile. ‘You’re in the safest possible place. He can’t get to you here.’
She smiled again. But there was no response. It was like talking to a waxwork.
‘Your friend Amanda is here,’ she went on. ‘She just went out for a ciggie. She’s going to stay with you all day.’ Again she smiled.
Again the blank expression. The dead eyes. Blank. As blank as everything in here around her. As blank and numb as her insides.
Roxy Pearce’s eyes
registered the magnolia-coloured walls of the small room. Recently painted. The round, institutional clock showing the time as 12.35. A rack of boxes containing blue latex gloves. Another rack of blue and red crates containing syringes, swabs and vials, all sealed in sterile wrappers. A pink chair. Weighing scales. A basin with a moisturizer dispenser on one side and sterile handwash on the other. A telephone sitting on a bare white work-surface like some unused lifeline in a television quiz game. A foldaway screen on castors.
Tears welled in her eyes. She wished Dermot was here. She wished, in her addled mind, that she hadn’t been unfaithful to him, hadn’t had this crazy thing with Iannis.
Then suddenly she blurted out, ‘It’s all my fault, isn’t it?’
‘Why do you think that, Roxy?’ the SOLO asked, jotting down her words in the log she was keeping in her notepad. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself at all. That’s not right.’
But the woman lapsed back into silence.
‘OK, my love. Don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything to me. We don’t have to talk today if you don’t want to, but what I do need to do is obtain forensic evidence from you, to help us try to catch the man who did this to you. Is that all right with you?’
After some moments, Roxy said, ‘I feel dirty. I want to take a shower. Can I do that?’
‘Of course, Roxy,’ the Forensic Medical Examiner said. ‘But not just yet. We don’t want to wash away any evidence, do we?’ She had a slightly bossy tone, Claire Westmore thought, a little too officious for the victim’s fragile state.
Silence again. Roxy’s mind went off on a tangent. She had taken out two of Dermot’s best bottles. Left them somewhere. One open on the kitchen table, the other in the fridge. She would have to buy a bottle somewhere to replace the opened one, and go to the house before Dermot came back and replace them in the cellar. He’d go loopy otherwise.