doing.
The first reported sexual assault in Operation Houdini had been on 15 October 1997. It was a botched attack on a young woman late one evening in a twitten – a narrow alleyway – in the North Laine district of Brighton. A man walking his dog had come to her rescue before her assailant had removed her panties, but he had run off with one of her shoes. The next was, unfortunately, more successful. A woman who had attended a Halloween ball at the Grand Hotel at the end of the month had been seized in the corridor of the hotel by a man dressed as a woman and was not found by hotel staff until the morning, bound and gagged.
Cleo, curled up on the sofa opposite him, wrapped in a camel poncho over woollen black leggings, was reading a tome on the ancient Greeks for her Open University philosophy degree studies. Pages of her typed and handwritten notes, all plastered with yellow Post-its, were spread out around her. Her long blonde hair tumbled across her face and every few minutes she would sweep it back with her hand. Grace always loved watching her do that.
A Ruarri Joseph CD was playing on the hi-fi and on the muted television screen Sean Connery, in Thunderball, held a beautiful woman in an urgent clinch. During the past week, since Christmas, Cleo had developed a craving for king prawn kormas and they were waiting for the delivery of tonight’s meal – their fourth curry in five days. Grace didn’t mind, but tonight he was giving his system a rest with some plain tandoori chicken.
Also on the table sat one of Grace’s Christmas presents to Cleo, a big new goldfish bowl, replacing the one that had been smashed by an intruder the previous year. Its incumbent, which she had named Fish-2, was busily exploring its environment of weed and a miniature submerged Greek temple in sharp, nervy darts. Next to it was a stack of three books that had been Glenn Branson’s Christmas present to him. Bloke’s 100 Top Tips for Surviving Pregnancy, The Expectant Father and You’re Pregnant Too, Mate!
‘Yup, I’m fine,’ he said, looking up with a smile.
Cleo smiled back and he felt a sudden rush of such intense happiness and serenity that he wished he could just stop the clock now and freeze time. Make this moment last forever.
‘And I’d rather share your company,’ Ruarri Joseph was singing to his acoustic guitar, and yes, Grace thought, I’d rather share your company, my darling Cleo, than anyone else’s on this planet.
He wanted to stay here, on this sofa, in this room, staring longingly at this woman he loved so deeply, who was carrying their child, and never, ever leave it.
‘It’s New Year’s Day,’ Cleo said, raising her glass of water and taking a tiny sip. ‘I think you should stop working now and relax! We’ll all be back in the fray on Monday.’
‘Right, like the example you’re setting, working on your degree. Is that relaxing?’
‘Yes, it is! I love doing this. It’s not work for me. What you’re doing is work.’
‘Someone should tell criminals they’re not permitted to offend during public holidays,’ he said with a grin.
‘Yep, and someone should tell old people they shouldn’t die over the Christmas break. It’s very antisocial! Morticians are entitled to holidays too!’
‘How many today?’
‘Five,’ she said. ‘Poor sods. Well, actually three of them were yesterday.’
‘So they had the decency to wait for Christmas.’
‘But couldn’t face the prospect of another year.’
‘I hope I never get like that,’ he said. ‘To the point where I can’t face the prospect of another year.’
‘Did you ever read Ernest Hemingway?’ she asked.
Grace shook his head, acutely aware of how ignorant he was compared to Cleo. He’d read so little in his life.
‘He’s one of my favourite writers. I’m going to make you read him one day! He wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” That’s you. You’re stronger, aren’t you?’
‘I hope so – but I sometimes wonder.’
‘You have to be stronger than ever now, Detective Superintendent.’ She patted her stomach. ‘There are two of us who need you.’
‘And all the dead people who need you!’ he retorted.
‘And the dead who need you too.’
That was true, he thought ruefully, glancing at the file again. All those blue boxes and green crates on his office floor. Most of them representing victims who were waiting from beyond the grave for him to bring their assailants to justice.
Would today’s rape victim, Nicola Taylor, get to see the man who did this brought to justice? Or would she end up one day as just a name on a plastic tag on one of those cold-case files?
‘I’m reading about a Greek statesman called Pericles,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t really a philosopher, but he said something very true. “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” That’s one of the many reasons I love you, Detective Superintendent Grace. You’re going to leave good things woven into the lives of others.’
‘I try,’ he said, and looked back down at the files on the Shoe Man.
‘You poor love, your mind really is somewhere else tonight.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I hate rapists. It was pretty harrowing today up in Crawley.’
‘You haven’t really talked about it.’
‘Do you want to hear about it?’
‘Yes, I do. I really do want to hear about it. I want to know everything you learn about the world that our child is going to be born into. What did this man to do her?’
Grace picked up his bottle of Peroni from the floor, took a long pull on it, draining it, and could have done with another. But instead he put it down and thought back to this morning.
‘He made her masturbate with the heel of her shoe. It was some expensive designer shoe. Marc Joseph or something.’
‘Marc Jacobs?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes. That was the name. Are they expensive?’
‘One of the top designers. He made her masturbate? You mean using the heel like a dildo?’
‘Yes. So, do you know much about shoes?’ he asked, a little surprised.
He loved the way Cleo dressed, but when they were out together she rarely looked in shoe-shop or fashion- shop windows. Whereas Sandy used to all the time, sometimes driving him to distraction.
‘Roy, darling, all women know about shoes! They’re part of a woman’s femininity. When a woman puts on a great pair of shoes, she feels sexy! So, he just watched her doing this to herself?’
‘Six-inch stilettos, she said,’ he replied. ‘He made her push the heel all the way in repeatedly, while he touched himself.’
‘That’s horrible. Sick bastard.’
‘It gets worse.’
‘Tell me.’
‘He made her turn over, face down, then he pushed the heel right up her back passage. OK? Enough?’
‘So he didn’t actually rape her? In the sense that I understand it?’
‘Yes, he did, but that was later. And he had problems getting an erection.’
After some moments’ silent thought she said, ‘Why, Roy? What makes someone like that?
He shrugged. ‘I talked to a psychologist this afternoon. But he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Stranger rape – which this one looks like – is rarely about sex. It’s more about hatred of women and power over them.’
‘Do you think there’s a connection between whoever did this and your file on the Shoe Man?’
‘That’s why I’m reading it. Could be coincidence. Or a copycat. Or the original rapist reoffending.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘The Shoe Man did the same things to some of his victims. He also had problems getting an erection. And he always took one of his victim’s shoes.’
‘This woman today – did he take one of her shoes?’
‘He took both, and all her clothes. And from what the victim has said so far, it sounds like he might be a transvestite.’
‘So there’s a slight difference.’
