Facebook and Twitter. I’ve had a look at some of her posts over this past week and it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to plot her whereabouts on an almost hourly basis. All three previous victims have had a Facebook presence for a while also, and Mandy Thorpe Tweeted regularly as well.’
‘So,’ Nick Nicholl said, ‘we’ve narrowed the Shoe Man’s next victim down to someone who’s bought an expensive pair of shoes in the past week and has a presence on either Facebook or Twitter, or both.’ He grinned.
‘We might be able to be more specific than that,’ Ellen Zoratti said. ‘The age of the victims could be significant. Nicola Taylor is thirty-eight, Roxy Pearce is thirty-six, Mandy Thorpe is twenty, and Dee Burchmore is forty-two. These four ages correspond closely to the age range of the Shoe Man’s victims back in 1997.’
The Crime Analyst paused to let this sink in, then went on: ‘If Detective Superintendent Grace is correct that Rachael Ryan was the Shoe Man’s fifth victim back in 1997, maybe it can help us narrow down who his next will be now – assuming there will be another one.’
‘There will be,’ Proudfoot said confidently.
‘Rachael Ryan was twenty-two years old,’ Ellen said. She turned to the forensic psychologist. ‘Dr Proudfoot, you’ve already told us you think the Shoe Man could be repeating his pattern because that’s his comfort zone. Might that comfort zone extend to the age of his next victim? Someone of corresponding age to his fifth victim in 1997? A twenty-two-year-old?’
Proudfoot nodded pensively. ‘We can’t be sure about Rachael Ryan, of course,’ he said pompously, and gave Roy Grace a pointed look. ‘But if we assume for the moment that Mandy Thorpe was a victim of the Shoe Man and that Roy is right about Rachael Ryan, then yes, Ellen, your assumption is one we shouldn’t rule out. It’s very possible he’ll go for someone of that age. If he attacked poor Rachael Ryan, and she’s never been found, and he’s never been caught for whatever he did to her, then it’s quite likely, after yesterday’s shock, that he’ll go for the familiar. Someone more vulnerable than an experienced middle-aged woman. Someone who’ll be a soft touch. Yes, I think that’s who we should be focusing on. Young women in high heels and with a Facebook presence.’
‘Which means just about every young woman in Brighton and Hove. And everywhere else in this country,’ E-J said.
‘There can’t be that many who can afford the prices of the shoes that attract the Shoe Man,’ Bella Moy said. ‘I would think we could get a list of recent customers in that age bracket from the local shops.’
‘Good thinking, Bella, but we haven’t got the time,’ Grace said.
‘It could be narrowed down, sir,’ Ellen Zoratti said. ‘The connection could be this person in the bouffant wig. If we could find footage of a woman in her early twenties in a shop and footage of this person close to her, we might have something.’
‘We’ve had the Outside Inquiry team viewing all the footage they can from cameras inside shoe shops, but it’s a nightmare, because of the January sales,’ Bella Moy said. ‘I’ve been in the CCTV room at Brighton nick, looking at footage from cameras close to some of the city’s shoe shops. There are hundreds of people of that age out and about shopping. And the problem is there’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of CCTV footage.’
Grace nodded.
‘Sir,’ Claire Westmore said, ‘a lot of shoe shops these days take down customer details for their mailing lists. The chances are that the shop that has sold – or has yet to sell – the shoes of the next potential victim will have her name and address on its system.’
Grace considered this. ‘Yes, worth a try. We have a list of all the shops in the city that sell expensive designer shoes.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Twenty-one of them. The victim is likely to have bought her shoes within the past week – if she has bought them yet. We could try a trawl of all the shops, and get the names and addresses of all the customers who fit this profile who’ve bought shoes, but with the resources we have this is going to take days. Our problem is we don’t have the luxury of that time.’
‘How about putting out some decoys, sir?’ DC Boutwood said.
‘Decoys?’
‘Send some of us out shopping.’
‘You mean send you out to buy expensive shoes?’
She nodded, beaming. ‘I’d volunteer!’
Grace grimaced. ‘Women and nice shoes in the January sales. It’s like looking for a bloody needle in a haystack! We’d need dozens of decoys to hit the right shops at the right times. Dr Proudfoot thinks the Shoe Man will attack again tonight or tomorrow.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s an interesting idea, E-J, but it’s too much of a long shot – and we just don’t have the time. We need to get the Eastern Road area under observation by 3 p.m. today.’
He looked at his watch. It was coming up to 9 a.m. He had just six hours.
The CCTV surveillance camera was a clever invention, Roy Grace thought. But there was a big issue with them. There were currently hundreds of cameras running 24/7 in this city. But there simply wasn’t the manpower to physically examine all the footage – and half of it was crap quality anyway. He needed some kind of super computer program to check it automatically – and he didn’t have one. All he had was a limited number of human beings with limited concentration spans.
‘Sir, you were involved yourself with the Rachael Ryan disappearance, weren’t you?’ Ellen Zoratti said.
Grace smiled. ‘I still am. The file’s still open. But yes, I was, very involved. I interviewed the two friends she had been out with on that Christmas Eve several times. Rachael was into shoes, big time, which was why I’ve always suspected the Shoe Man’s involvement. She’d bought a very expensive pair of shoes a week before, from Russell and Bromley in East Street, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s another reason I’m not sure we’d gain anything by sending people out shopping today. I think he plans ahead.’
‘Unless he’s feeling frustrated by yesterday, chief,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘And just decides to go for someone at random.’
‘Our best hope at the moment,’ Proudfoot said, ‘is that after yesterday afternoon he’s feeling rattled, and that maybe he’ll rush into something unprepared. Perhaps you succeeded in rattling his cage by insulting his manhood in the Argus – which is how he came to make his mistake.’
‘Then I think we’d better find a way of rattling his cage again, and this time even harder,’ Grace said.
87
Friday 16 January
The job at the Grand Hotel was not working out the way Darren Spicer had hoped. There were security systems in place to prevent him creating his own room keys on the system, and a supervisor who kept watch on him and his co-workers from the minute he started in the morning to the minute he signed off each evening.
Sure, he was getting paid for his work, renovating the hotel’s antiquated electrical system, replacing miles of wiring along its labyrinth of basement corridors, where the laundry, kitchens, boilers, emergency generators and stores were housed. But in taking this particular job, he’d had hopes of being able to do a little more than spend his days unspooling lengths of new electric cables from huge reels and hunt for wires chewed by mice.
He’d imagined he would be getting access to the 201 bedrooms, and the contents left in their safes by their well-off occupants, but so far this first week he had not found a way. He needed to be patient, he knew. He could do patience all right. He was very patient when he fished, or when he waited outside a house he planned to burgle for the occupants to go out.
But there was such temptation here, he was keen to get started.
Because 201 bedrooms meant 201 bedroom safes! And the hotel was busy, 80 per cent occupancy all year round.
A mate in prison had told him the way to do hotel safes. Not how to break into them – he didn’t need that, he had all the kit he needed for the safes in the Grand. No, this was how to steal from safes without getting found out.
It was simple: you stole only a little. You mustn’t get greedy. If someone left 200 quid in cash or some foreign currency, you took just a small amount. Always cash, never jewellery; people missed jewellery, but they weren’t going to miss twenty quid out of 200. Do that ten times a day and you were on to a nice little earner. A grand a week. Fifty Gs in a year. Yeah. Nice.
