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 grateful 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
