In charge of this entire new cold case initiative, and answering to Roy Grace, was Jim Doyle, a former detective chief superintendent with whom Grace had worked many years back. Doyle was a tall, studious-looking man, whose appearance belied his mental – and physical – toughness. He had about him more the courteous air of a distinguished academic than a police officer. Yet with his firm, unflappable manner, his enquiring mind and a precision in the way he approached everything, he had been a devastatingly effective detective, involved in solving many of the county’s most serious violent crimes during his thirty-year career. His nickname in the force had been Popeye, after his namesake, Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in the film The French Connection.
Doyle’s two colleagues were similarly experienced. Eamon Greene, a quiet, serious man, was a former Sussex under-16 chess champion and was now a grand master, still playing and winning tournaments. Before retiring at just forty-nine, and then returning to the force as a civilian, he had reached the rank of detective superintendent in Sussex CID, Major Crime Branch. Brian Foster, a former detective chief inspector known as Fossy, was a lean sixty- three-year-old, with close-cropped hair and still, despite his age, boyishly handsome features. In the previous year he had run four marathons in four consecutive weeks in different countries. Since retiring from Sussex CID at the age of fifty-two, he had worked for the past decade in the prosecutor’s office of the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, and had now returned home eager to start a new phase in his career.
Roy Grace, wearing a suit and tie for his first meeting with the new Assistant Chief Constable later that morning, cleared a space on one of the work surfaces and sat down on it, cradling his second mug of coffee of the day. It was 8.45 a.m.
‘OK,’ he said, swinging his legs. ‘It’s good to have the three of you. Actually, let me rephrase that – it is bloody brilliant!’
They all grinned.
‘Popeye, you taught me just about everything I know, so I don’t want to sit here and teach you how to suck eggs. The “Chief” – ’ by which he meant Chief Constable Tom Martinson – ‘has given us a generous budget, but we’re going to have to deliver if we want the same again next year. Which is shorthand for saying if you guys still want your jobs next year.’
Turning to the others, he said, ‘I’m just going to tell you something Popeye told me when I first worked with him. As part of his work-load back in the 1990s he had just been given responsibility for cold cases – or whatever they were called then!’
That raised a titter. All three retired officers knew the headaches caused by the ever-changing police terminology.
Grace pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and read from it. ‘He said, and I quote, “Cold-case reviews utilize the forensic technology of today to solve the crimes of the past, with a view to preventing the crimes of the future.”’
‘Glad all those years with you weren’t wasted, Roy,’ Jim Doyle said. ‘At least you remembered something!’
‘Yep. Impressive to have learned anything from an old sweat!’ quipped Foster.
Doyle did not rise to the bait.
Roy Grace went on: ‘You’ve probably seen it on the serials or in the Argus that a woman was raped on New Year’s Eve.’
‘In the Metropole Hotel?’ Eamon Greene said.
‘That’s the one.’
‘I attended the initial interview of the victim last Thursday, New Year’s Day,’ Grace said. ‘The offender, apparently disguised in drag, appears to have forced the victim into a hotel room on the pretext of asking for help. Then, wearing a mask, he tied her up and sexually assaulted her vaginally and anally with one of her stiletto shoes. He then attempted to penetrate her himself, with only partial success. This has similarities to the MO of the Shoe Man cold case back in 1997. In those cases, the Shoe Man adopted a series of different disguises and pretexts for requiring help to lure his victims. Then he stopped offending – in Sussex at any rate – and was never apprehended. I have a summary of this case file which I’d like you all to read as a priority. You will each have your own individual cases to review, but for now I want you all to work on this one, as I think it could help with the case I’m investigating now.’
‘Was there any DNA evidence, Roy?’ Jim Doyle asked.
‘There was no semen from any of the women, but three of his victims said that he wore a condom. There were clothing fibres, but nothing conclusive from those. No nail scrapings, no saliva. A couple of his victims reported that he had no pubic hair. This man was clearly very forensically aware, even back then. No DNA was ever found. There was just one common link – each of the victims was seriously into shoes.’
‘Which covers about 95 per cent of the female population – if my wife is anything to go by,’ Jim Doyle said.
‘Precisely.’ Grace nodded.
‘What about descriptions?’ asked Brian Foster.
‘Thanks to the way in which rape victims were treated back then, not much. We have a slightly built man, with not a lot of body hair, a classless accent and a small dick.
‘I’ve spent the weekend reading through the files of those victims, and all other major crimes committed during this same period,’ Grace went on. ‘There is one more person that I suspect might have been a victim of the Shoe Man – possibly the last victim. Her name is Rachael Ryan. She disappeared in the early hours of Christmas Eve – or rather Christmas Day, 1997. What has brought her to my attention is that I was a DS back then on the day she was reported missing. I went to interview her parents. Respectable people, completely mystified that she never turned up for Christmas dinner. By all accounts she was a decent young woman of twenty-two, sensible, although low after having split up with a boyfriend.’
He nearly added, but did not, that she had vanished off the face of the earth, just like his own wife, Sandy, had vanished.
‘Any theories?’ asked Foster.
‘Not from the family,’ Grace said. ‘But I interviewed the two friends she was out with on Christmas Eve. One of them told me that she was a bit obsessed with shoes. That she bought shoes which were way beyond her means – designer shoes at upwards of a couple of hundred quid a pop. All the Shoe Man’s victims wore expensive shoes.’ He shrugged.
‘Not much of a peg to hang your coat on there, Roy,’ said Foster. ‘If she’d split up with her boyfriend she could have topped herself. Christmas, you know, that’s a time when people feel pain like this. I remember my ex walking out on me three weeks before Christmas. I damned near topped myself over that Christmas holiday – 1992, it was. Had Christmas dinner on my own in a bloody Angus Steak House.’
Grace smiled. ‘It’s possible, but from all I learned about her at that time I don’t think so. Something I do think is significant is that one of her neighbours happened to be looking out of his window at three o’clock on Christmas morning – the timing fits perfectly – and saw a man pushing a woman into a white van.’
‘Did he get the registration?’
‘He was shit-faced. He got part of it.’
‘Enough to trace the vehicle?’
‘No.’
‘You believed him?’
‘Yes. I still do.’
‘Not a lot to go on, is it, Roy?’ said Jim Doyle.
‘No, but there’s something strange. I came in early this morning to look up that particular file before this meeting – and do you know what?’ He stared at each of them.
They all shook their heads.
‘The pages I was looking for were missing.’
‘Who would remove them?’ Brian Foster said. ‘I mean – who would have access to them to be able to remove them?’
‘You used to be a copper,’ Grace said. ‘You tell me. And then tell me why?’
