‘Yes.’
‘What’s your instinct? What does your copper’s nose tell you?’
‘Not to jump to conclusions. But…’ He fell silent.
‘But?’
He stared at the file.
14
Saturday 3 January
Ask people to recall where they were and what they were doing at the moment – the exact moment – they heard about the planes striking the Twin Towers on 9/11, or about Princess Diana’s death, or that John Lennon had been shot or, if they are old enough, that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and most will be able to tell you, with crystal clarity.
Roxy Pearce was different. The defining moments in her life came on those days when she finally bought the shoes that she had been lusting after. She could tell you exactly what was happening in the world on the day she acquired her first Christian Louboutins. Her first Ferragamos. Her first Manolo Blahniks.
But today, all those gleaming leather treasures languishing in her cupboards paled into insignificance as she strutted around the grey-carpeted floor of Brighton’s Ritzy Shoes emporium.
‘Oh yes! Oh, God, yes!’
She looked at her ankles. Pale, slightly blue from the veins beneath the surface, they were too thin and bony. Never before her best feature, today they were transformed. They were, she had to admit, one pair of drop-dead- beautiful ankles. The thin black straps wrapped themselves like sensuous, living, passionate fronds around the white skin either side of the protruding bone.
She was sex on legs!
She stared in the mirror. Sex on legs stared back at her! Sleek black hair, a great figure, she definitely looked a lot younger than a woman three months short of her thirty-seventh birthday.
‘What do you think?’ she said to the assistant, staring at her reflection again. At the tall stilettos, the curved sole, the magical black gloss of the leather.
‘They were made for you!’ the confident thirty-year-old salesgirl said. ‘They were just absolutely made for you!’
‘I think so!’ Roxy squealed. ‘You think so too?’
She was so excited that several people in the shop glanced round at her. Brighton was busy this first Saturday morning of the new year. The bargain hunters were out in force as the Christmas sales headed into their second week and some prices came down even more.
One customer in the shop did not glance round. Anyone looking would have seen an elegantly dressed middle- aged woman with a long dark coat over a high roll-neck jumper and expensive-looking high-heeled boots. Only if they peeled back the top of the roll-neck would they have spotted the giveaway Adam’s apple.
The man in drag did not glance round, because he was already looking at Roxy. He had been observing her discreetly from the moment she’d asked to try on those shoes.
‘Jimmy Choo just has it!’ the assistant said. ‘He really knows what works.’
‘And you really do think these look good on me? They’re not very easy to walk in.’
Roxy was nervous. Well, ?485 was a lot of money, particularly at the moment, when her husband’s software solutions business was in near meltdown and her own small PR agency was barely washing its face.
But she had to have them!
OK, ?485 could buy an awful lot of things.
But none would give her the pleasure of these shoes!
She wanted to show them off to her friends. But more than anything she wanted to wear them for Iannis, her crazily sexy lover of just six weeks. OK, not the first lover she’d had in twelve years of marriage, but the best, oh yes. Oh yes!
Just thinking about him brought a big grin to her face. Then a twist of pain in her heart. She had been through it all twice before and knew she should have learned from experience. Christmas was the worst time for lovers having an affair. It was when workplaces shut down and most people got drawn into family stuff. Although they had no kids of their own – neither she nor Dermot had ever wanted any – she’d been forced to accompany her husband to his family in Londonderry for four whole days over Christmas, and then another four, following straight on, with her parents – the ageing Ps, as Dermot called them – in the remote wilds of Norfolk.
On the one day they had planned to meet, before the end of the year, Iannis, who owned two Greek restaurants in Brighton and a couple more in Worthing and Eastbourne, had had to fly unexpectedly to Athens to visit his father, who’d had a heart attack.
This afternoon they were going to be seeing each other for the first time since the day before Christmas Eve – and it felt more like a month. Two months. A year. Forever! She longed for him. Yearned for him. Craved him.
And, she had now decided, she wanted to wear these shoes for him!
Iannis was into feet. He loved to take off her shoes, breathe in their scents, smell them all over, then inhale, as if he was tasting a fine wine in front of a proud sommelier. Maybe he’d like her to keep her Jimmy Choos on today! The thought was turning her on so much she was feeling dangerously moist.
‘You know the great thing with these shoes is you can dress up or down with them,’ the assistant continued. ‘They look terrific with your jeans.’
‘You think so?’
It was a stupid question. Of course the assistant thought so. She was going to say they looked good on her if she came in wrapped in a bin liner full of sardine heads.
Roxy was wearing these leg-hugging, ripped DKNYs because Iannis said she had a great arse in jeans. He liked to unzip them and pull them slowly down, telling her in that rich, deep accent of his that it was like unpeeling beautiful ripe fruit. She liked all the romantic tosh he spoke. Dermot never did anything sexy these days. His idea of foreplay was to walk across the bedroom in his socks and Y-fronts and fart twice.
‘I do!’ the assistant said earnestly.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any discount on these? Not part of the sale or anything?’
‘I’m afraid not, no. I’m sorry. They are new stock, only just in.’
‘That’s my luck!’
‘Would you like to see the handbag that goes with them?’
‘I’d better not,’ she said. ‘I daren’t.’
But the assistant showed it to her anyway. And it was gorgeous. Roxy rapidly reached the conclusion that, having seen the two together, the shoes now looked quite naked without the bag. If she didn’t buy that bag, she would regret it later, she knew.
Because the shop was so busy, and because her thoughts were totally on how she could keep the receipt concealed from Dermot, she took no notice at all of any of the other customers, including the one in the roll-neck jumper, who was examining a pair of shoes a short distance behind her. Roxy was thinking she’d have to grab her credit card statement when it came in and burn it. And anyway, it was her own money, wasn’t it?
‘Are you on our mailing list, madam?’ the assistant asked.
‘Yes.’
‘If you could let me have your postcode I’ll bring your details up.’
She gave it to the assistant, who tapped it into the computer beside the till.
Behind Roxy, the man jotted something down quickly on a small electronic notepad. Moments later her address appeared. But the man didn’t need to read the screen.
‘Mrs Pearce, 76 The Droveway?’
‘That’s right,’ Roxy said.
‘Right. That’s a total of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-three pounds. How would you like to pay?’
Roxy handed over her credit card.
The man in drag slipped out of the shop, swinging his hips. He actually had developed, with much practice,
