‘Do you have a problem with that?’
Oh boy, Roy Grace thought, his heart sinking. The New Year was barely twelve hours old and they had their first serious crime. And the new ACC hadn’t even officially started and he’d managed to piss him off already.
He was conscious of E-J’s eyes on him, and her ears scooping this all up.
‘No, sir, absolutely not. This is actually fortuitous timing. It would seem we have our first critical incident of the year. It’s too early to tell at this moment, but it has potential for a lot of unwelcome media coverage.’
Grace then signalled to E-J that he needed privacy and she left the room, closing the door.
For the next couple of minutes he ran through what was happening. Fortunately, the new Assistant Chief Constable continued in a friendly vein.
When Grace had finished, Rigg said, ‘You’re going up there yourself, I take it?’
Roy hesitated. With the highly specialized and skilled team at Crawley, there was no actual need for him to be there at this stage, and his time would be far better employed here in the office, dealing with paperwork and keeping up to speed on the incident via the phone. But he decided that was not what the new ACC wanted to hear.
‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way shortly,’ he replied.
‘Good. Keep me informed.’
Grace assured him he would.
As he hung up, thinking hard, his door opened and the morose face and shaven dome of Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson appeared. His eyes, against his black skin, looked tired and dulled. They reminded Grace of the eyes of fish that had been dead too long, the kind Cleo had told him he should avoid on a fishmonger’s slab.
‘Yo, old-timer,’ Branson said. ‘Reckon this year’s going to be any less shitty than last?’
‘Nope!’ Grace said. ‘The years never get less shitty. All we can do is try to learn to cope with that fact.’
‘Well, you’re a sack-load of goodwill this morning,’ Branson said, slumping his huge frame down into the chair E-J had just vacated.
Even his brown suit, garish tie and cream shirt looked tired and rumpled, as if they’d also been on a slab too long, which worried Grace about his friend. Glenn Branson was normally always sharply dressed, but in recent months his marriage breakup had sent him on a downward spiral.
‘Wasn’t the best year for me last year, was it? Halfway through I got shot and three-quarters of the way through my wife threw me out.’
‘Look on the bright side. You didn’t die and you got to trash my collection of vinyls.’
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Want to take a drive with me?’ Grace asked.
Branson shrugged. ‘A drive? Yeah, sure. Where?’
Grace was interrupted by his radio phone ringing. It was David Alcorn calling again to give him an update.
‘Something that might be significant, Roy. Apparently some of the victim’s clothes are missing. Sounds like the offender might have taken them. In particular her shoes.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘I seem to remember there was someone doing that a few years back, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes, but he took just one shoe and the underwear,’ Grace replied, his voice quiet all of a sudden. ‘What else has been taken?’
‘We haven’t got much out of her. I understand she’s in total shock.’
No surprise there, he thought grimly. His eyes went down to one of the blue boxes on the floor – the one containing the cold-case file on the Shoe Man. He pondered for a moment.
That was twelve years ago. Hopefully it was just a coincidence.
But even as he thought that a wintry gust rippled through his veins.
1997
9
Thursday 25 December
They were moving. Driving somewhere. Rachael Ryan could hear the steady, dull boom of the exhaust and she was breathing in lungfuls of its fumes. She could hear the sound of the tyres sluicing on the wet road. Could feel every bump jarring her through the sacking on which she lay trussed up, arms behind her back, unable to move or speak. All she could see was the top of the back of his baseball cap in the driver’s cab up front and his ears sticking out.
She was frozen with cold, with terror. Her mouth and throat were parched and her head ached terribly from when he had hit her. Her whole body hurt. She felt nauseous with disgust – dirty, filthy. She desperately wanted a shower, hot water, soap, shampoo. Wanted to wash herself inside and out.
She felt the van going around a corner. She could see daylight. Grey daylight. Christmas morning. She should be in her flat, opening the stocking her mother had posted to her. Every year of her childhood and still now, at twenty- two, she had a Christmas stocking.
She began crying. She could hear the clunk-clop of windscreen wipers. Suddenly, Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind’ began playing loudly and crackly on the radio. She could see the man’s head swaying to the music.
Elton John had sung that song at Prince Diana’s funeral, with new lyrics. Rachael remembered that day so vividly. She had been one of the hundreds of thousands of mourners outside Westminster Abbey, listening to that song, watching the funeral on one of the huge television screens. She had camped the night on the pavement, and the day before had spent a big part of her week’s wages from her job on the help desk in the customer relations department of American Express in Brighton on a bouquet of flowers that she had placed, alongside the thousands of others, in front of Kensington Palace.
She had idolized the Princess. Something had died inside her the day Diana died.
Now a new nightmare had begun.
The van braked sharply to a halt and she slid forward a few inches. She tried again to move her hands and her legs, which were agonizingly cramped. But she could move nothing.
It was Christmas morning and her parents were expecting her for a glass of champagne and then Christmas lunch – followed by the Queen’s speech. A tradition, every year, like the stocking.
She tried again to speak, to plead with the man, but her mouth was taped shut. She needed to pee and had already once, some time ago, soiled herself. She could not do that again. There was a ringing sound. Her mobile phone; she recognized the Nokia ring-tone. The man turned his head for an instant, then looked to the front again. The van moved forward. Through her blurry eyes and the smeared windscreen she saw a green traffic light pass by. Then she saw buildings on her left that she recognized. Gamley’s, the toyshop. They were on Church Road, Hove. Heading west.
Her phone stopped. A short while later she heard a beep-beep, signalling a message.
From whom?
Tracey and Jade?
Or her parents calling to wish her Happy Christmas? Her mother anxious to know if she liked her stocking?
How long before they started to worry about her?
Oh, Christ! Who the hell is this man?
She rolled over to her left as the van made a sharp right turn. Then a left turn. Then another turn. And stopped.
The song stopped. A cheery male voice began talking about where the wonderful Elton John was spending his Christmas.
The man got out, leaving the engine running. The fumes and her fear were making her more and more nauseous. She was desperate for water.
Suddenly he came back into the van. They moved forward, into
increasing darkness. Then the engine was switched off and there was a moment of complete silence as the radio went off too. The man disappeared.
There was a metallic clang as the driver’s door shut.
