by Peter James
She was a good girl, so helpful to him! She Tweeted far more than Dee Burchmore. Her latest was sent just an hour ago: Keeping to diet! Lunching vegetarian today at Lydia, my current fave!
She was tapping away on the iPhone now. Maybe she was Tweeting again?
He liked to keep an eye on his women. This morning, Dee Burchmore was at the spa at the Metropole Hotel, having a Thalgo Indocéane Complete Body Ritual. He wondered whether to have one too. But thought better of it. He had things to do today; in fact he should not be here at all. But it felt so good! How could he resist?
Billy No Mates had Tweeted earlier: Going to look at those shoes again at lunchtime – hope they’ll still be there!
They were! He’d watched her take a photo of them with her iPhone, then tell the assistant she was going to have a think about them over lunch. She asked the shop assistant if she would keep them aside for her until 2 p.m. The assistant said she would.
They were dead sexy! The black ones, with the ankle straps and the five-inch steel-coloured heels. The ones she wanted to wear, she had told the assistant, when she went to a function with her boyfriend, who would be meeting her parents for the first time.
Billy No Mates tapped out something on the keyboard, then raised the phone to her ear. Moments later her face lit up, animated. ‘Hi, Roz! I just sent you a photo of the shoes! Have you got it? Yeah! What do you think? You do? Really? OK! I’m going to get them! I’ll bring them over and show them to you tonight, after my squash game! What film are we going to see? You got The Final Destination? Great!’
He smiled. She liked horror movies. Maybe she might even enjoy the little show he had planned for her! Although it was not his intention to give pleasure.
‘No, the car’s fine now, all fixed. I’ll pick up the takeaway. I’ll tell him not to charge us for the seaweed. He forgot it last week,’ she continued. ‘Yeah, OK, soy sauce. I’ll make sure he puts extra in.’
His own mobile rang. He looked at the display. Work. He pressed the red button, sending it to voicemail.
Then he looked down at the copy of the Argus he had just bought. The front page headline shouted:
POLICE STEP UP VIGILANCE AFTER THIRD CITY RAPE
He frowned, then began to read. The third attack, over the weekend, was in the ghost train on the pier. There was hot speculation that the so-called Shoe Man, who in 1997–8 had committed four and perhaps five rapes – and possibly many more that had never been reported – was back. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer, stated it was too soon for such speculation. They were pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, he said, and gave assurances that every possible resource Sussex Police had at their disposal was being harnessed. The safety of the city’s women was their number-one priority.
Then the next paragraph hit him with a jolt.
In an exclusive interview with the Argus, Detective Superintendent Grace stated that the offender had a physical sexual deformity. He declined to be specific, but told this reporter that it included an exceptionally diminutive manhood. He added that any woman who had had previous relations with him would remember this feature. A psycho-sexual therapist said that such an inadequacy could lead a person to attempt to compensate via violent means. Anyone who believed they might know such a person was urged either to phone 0845 6070999 and ask for the Operation Swordfish Incident Room or to call the Crimestoppers number anonymously.
His phone beeped twice with a voicemail message. He ignored it, glaring down at the print with rising fury. Sexual deformity? Was that what everyone was thinking of him? Well, maybe Detective Superintendent Grace was not very well endowed in another department, his brain. The detective hadn’t caught him twelve years ago and he was not going to catch him now.
Little dick, big brain, Mr Grace.
He read the article again, every word of it, word by word. Then again. Then again.
A friendly female voice with a South African accent startled him. ‘Are you ready to order, madam?’
He looked up at the young waitress’s face. Then across to the table next to him by the window.
Billy No Mates had left.
It didn’t matter. He knew where to find her later. In the car park at Withdean Sports Stadium after her game of squash this evening. It was a good car park, open air and large. It should be quiet at that time of day and pitch dark. With luck he’d be able to park right alongside the bitch’s little black Ka.
He looked up at the waitress. ‘Yes, I’ll have a rump steak and chips, bloody.’
‘I’m afraid this is a vegetarian restaurant.’
‘Then what the fuck am I doing here?’ he said, totally forgetting his ladylike voice.
He got up and flounced out.
63
Tuesday 13 January
At the end of Kensington Gardens he turned left and walked down Trafalgar Street, looking for a payphone. He found one at the bottom and went in. Several cards featuring half-naked ladies offering French Lessons, Oriental Massage, Discipline Classes were stuck in the window frames. ‘Bitches,’ he said, casting his eye across them. It took him a moment to work out what he had to do to make a call. Then he dug in his pocket for a coin and shoved the only thing he had, a pound, into the slot. Then, still shaking with rage, he looked at the first number in the Argus article and dialled it.
When it was answered, he asked to be put through to the Incident Room for Operation Swordfish, then waited.
After three rings, a male voice answered. ‘Incident Room, Detective Constable Nicholl.’
‘I want you to give a message to Detective Superintendent Grace.’
‘Yes, sir. May I say who’s calling?’
He waited for a moment, as a police car raced past, its siren wailing, then he left his message, hung up and hurried away from the booth.
64
Tuesday 13 January
All the team at the 6.30 p.m. briefing of Operation Swordfish, gathered in MIR-1, were silent as Roy Grace switched on the recorder. The tape that had been sent over from the Call Handling Centre began to play.
There was a background rumble of traffic, then a man’s voice, quiet, as if he had been making an effort to stay calm. The roar of traffic made it hard to hear him distinctly.
‘I want you to give a message to Detective Superintendent Grace,’ the man said.
Then they could hear Nick Nicholl’s voice replying. ‘Yes, sir. May I say who’s calling?’
Nothing for some moments, except the almost deafening wail of a passing siren, then the man’s voice again, this time louder: ‘Tell him it’s not small, actually.’
It was followed by a loud clattering sound, a sharp click and the line went dead.
No one smiled.
‘Is this real or a hoax?’ Norman Potting asked.
After a few moments Dr Julius Proudfoot said, ‘I’d put my money on that being real, from the way he spoke.’
‘Can we hear it again, boss?’ Michael Foreman asked.
Grace replayed the tape. When it finished, he turned to Proud-foot. ‘Anything you can tell us from that?’
The forensic psychologist nodded. ‘Well, yes, quite a bit. The first thing, assuming it is him, is that you’ve clearly succeeded in rattling his cage. That’s why I think it’s real, not a hoax. There’s genuine anger in the voice. Full of emotion.’
‘That was my intention, to rattle his cage.’
‘You can hear it in his voice, in the way the cadence rises,’ the forensic psychologist went on. ‘He’s all bottled up with anger. And the fact that it sounded like he fumbled replacing the receiver – probably shaking so much with rage. I can tell also that he’s nervous, feeling under pressure – and that you’ve struck a chord. Is that information about him true? Something that’s been obtained from statements by the victims?’
‘Not in so many words, but yes, reading between the lines of the witness statements from back in 1997 and now.’
‘What’s your reasoning for giving tha
t to the Argus, Roy?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.
‘Because I suspect this creep thinks he’s very clever. He got away with his attacks before and now he’s confident he’s going to get away with these new ones too. If Dr Proudfoot is right and he committed the ghost train rape as well, then he’s clearly stepping up both the speed and the brazenness of his attacks. I wanted to lance his ego a little and hopefully get him into a strop. People who are angry are more likely to make mistakes.’
‘Or be more brutal to their victims,’ Bella Moy said. ‘Isn’t that a risk?’
‘If he killed last time, Bella, which I think is likely,’ Grace replied, ‘there’s a high risk he’ll kill again, strop or no strop. When someone has taken a life once, they’ve crossed a personal Rubicon. It’s far easier the second time. Particularly if they found they enjoyed it the first time. We’re dealing with a nasty, warped freak here – and someone who’s not stupid. We need to find ways to trip him up. I don’t just want him not being more brutal to a victim – I want him not to have another victim, full stop. We have to catch him before he attacks again.’
‘Anyone figure out his accent?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
‘Sounds local to me,’ DC Foreman said, ‘but difficult with that background noise. Can we get the recording enhanced?’
‘That’s being worked on now,’ Grace replied. Then he turned to Proudfoot. ‘Can you estimate the man’s age from this?’
‘That’s a hard one – anywhere between thirty and fifty, I’d guess,’ he said. ‘I think you need to run this through a lab, somewhere like J. P. French, which specializes in speaker profiling. There’s quite a bit of information they could get us from a call like this. Probably the man’s regional and ethnic background, for a start.’
Grace nodded. He’d used the specialist firm before and the results had been helpful. He could also get a voiceprint from the lab that would be as unique as a fingerprint or DNA. But could they do it in the short amount of time he believed he had?
‘There have been mass DNA screenings in communities,’ Bella Moy said. ‘What about trying something like that in Brighton with the voiceprint?’
‘So all we’d have to do, Bella,’ Norman Potting said, ‘is get every bloke in Brighton and Hove to say the same words. There’s only a hundred and forty thousand or so males in the city. Shouldn’t take us more than about ten years.’
‘Could you play it again, boss, please,’ said Glenn Branson, who’d been very quiet. ‘Wasn’t it that movie, The Conversation, with Gene Hackman, where they worked out where someone was from the traffic noise in the background on the tape?’
He played the tape again.
‘Have we been able to trace the call, sir?’ Ellen Zoratti asked.
‘The number was withheld. But it’s being worked on. It’s a big task with the amount coming through the Call Centre every hour.’ Grace played the tape again.
When it finished, Glenn Branson said, ‘Sounds like somewhere in the centre of Brighton. If they can’t trace the number we’ve still got the siren and the time of day – that vehicle sounds like it went right past very close to him. We need to check what emergency vehicle was on its blues and twos at exactly 1.55 p.m., and we’ll get its route and know he was somewhere along it. A CCTV might have picked up someone on their mobile – and possibly bingo.’
‘Good thinking,’ Grace said. ‘Although it sounded more like a landline than a mobile from the way he hung up.’
‘Yes,’ Michael Foreman said. ‘That clunking sound – that’s like an old-fashioned handset being replaced.’
‘He might have just dropped his phone, if he was as nervous as Dr Proudfoot suggests,’ said DC Boutwood. ‘I don’t think we should rule out a mobile.’
‘Or it could be a public phone booth,’ Foreman said. ‘In which case there may be fingerprints.’
‘If he’s angry,’ Proudfoot said, ‘then I think it’s even more likely he’ll strike again quickly. And a racing certainty is that he’ll copy his pattern from last time. He’ll know that worked. He’ll be fine if he sticks to the same again. Which means he’s going to strike in a car park next – as I’ve said before.’
Grace walked over to a map of central Brighton and stared at it, looking at each of the main car parks. The station, London Road, New Road, Churchill Square, North Road. There were dozens of them, big and small, some run by the council, some by NCP, some part of supermarkets or hotels. He turned back to Proudfoot.
‘It would be impossible to cover every damned car park in the city – and even more impossible to cover every level of every multi-storey,’ he said. ‘We just don’t have the number of patrols. And we can hardly close them down.’
He was feeling anxious suddenly. Maybe it had been a mistake telling Spinella that yesterday. What if it pushed the Shoe Man over the edge into killing again? It would be his own stupid fault.
‘The best thing we can do is get plain-clothes officers into the CCTV control rooms of those car parks that have it, step up patrols and have as many undercover vehicles drive around the car parks as we can,’ Grace said.
‘The one thing I’d tell your team to watch out for, Detective Superintendent, is someone on edge tonight. Someone driving erratically on the streets. I think our man is going to be in a highly wired state.’
65
You think you’ve been clever, don’t you, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace? You think you’re going to make me angry by insulting me, don’t you? I can see through all that shit.
You should accept you are just a lame duck. Your colleagues didn’t catch me before and you won’t catch me now. I’m so much smarter than you could ever dream of being. You see, you don’t realize I’m doing you a favour!
I’m getting rid of the poison in your manor! I’m your new best friend! One day you’ll come to realize that! One day you and I will walk along under the cliffs at Rottingdean and talk about all of this. That walk you like to take with your beloved Cleo on Sundays! She likes shoes too. I’ve seen her in some of the shops I go in. She’s quite into shoes, isn’t she? You are going to need saving from her, but you don’t realize that yet. You will do one day.
They’re all poison, you see. All women. They seduce you with their Venus fly trap vaginas. You can’t bear to be apart from them. You phone them and text them every few minutes of your waking day, because you need to know how much they still love you.
Let me tell you a secret.
No woman ever loves you. All she wants to do is control you. You might sneer at me. You might question the size of my manhood. But I will tell you something, Detective Superintendent. You’ll be grateful to me, one day. You’ll walk with me arm in arm along the Undercliff Walk at Rottingdean and thank me for saving you from yourself.
66
Tuesday 13 January
Jessie felt a deep and constant yearning all the time she was away from Benedict. It must be an hour now since she had texted him, she thought. Tuesdays were their one night apart. She played squash with a recently married friend, Jax, then after would pick up a takeaway Chinese and go round to Roz’s and watch a DVD – something they had done almost every Tuesday night for as long as she could remember. Benedict, who liked to compose guitar music, had a similar long-standing Tuesday evening commitment – working late into the night with his co-writing partner, coming up with new songs. At the moment they were putting together an album they hoped might be their breakthrough.
Some weekends Benedict played gigs in a band in a variety of Sussex pubs. She loved watching him on stage. He was like a drug she just could not get enough of. Still, after eight months of dating, she could make love to him virtually all day and all night – on the rare opportunities they had such a length of time together. He was the best kisser, the best lover by a million, million miles – not that she’d had that many for comparison. Four, to be precise, and none of them memorable.
Benedict was kind, thoughtful, considerate, generous, and he made her laugh. She loved his humour.
She loved the smell of his skin, his hair, his breath and his perspiration. But the thing she loved most of all about him was his mind.
And of course she loved that he really, truly, genuinely did seem to like her nose.
‘You don’t really like it, do you?’ she’d asked him in bed, a few months ago.
‘I do!’
‘You can’t!’
‘I think you’re beautiful.’
‘I’m not. I’ve got a hooter like Concorde.’
‘You’re beautiful to me.’
‘Have you been to an optician lately?’
‘Do you want to hear something I read that made me think of you?’ he asked.
‘OK, tell me.’
‘It’s beauty that captures your attention, personality that captures your heart.’
She smiled now at the memory as she sat in the traffic jam in the sodium-lit darkness, the heater of her little Ford Ka whirring noisily, toasting her feet. She was half listening to the news on the radio, tuned to Radio 4, Gordon Brown being harangued over Afghanistan. She didn’t like him, even though she was a Labour supporter, and she switched over to Juice. Air were playing, ‘Sexy Boy’.
‘Yayyyy!’ She grinned, nodding her head and drumming the steering wheel for a few moments, in tune to the music. Sexy Boy, that’s what you are, my gorgeous!
She loved him with all her heart and soul, of that she was sure. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him – she had never ever been so certain of anything. It was going to hurt her parents that she wasn’t marrying a Jewish boy, but she couldn’t help that. She respected her family’s traditions, but she was not a believer in any religion. She believed in making the world a better place for everyone who lived in it, and she hadn’t yet come across a religion that seemed capable of or interested in doing that.
Her iPhone, lying beside her on the passenger seat, pinged with an incoming text. She smiled.