She tried to speak again.
He leaned down and, in a sudden movement that took her by surprise, flipped her over on to her stomach, then sat on her legs, pinioning them to the floor, crushing them painfully with his weight. She felt something being wound around her ankles and knotted tight. He stood up and suddenly her legs were being pulled over to the left. Then, after some moments, she felt them being pulled to the right. She tried to move them, but couldn’t.
Then she heard the clank of metal and an instant later felt something cold and hard being wound around her neck and pulled tight. There was a sharp snap that sound liked a lock closing. Suddenly her head was jerked forward, then to the right. She heard another snap, like another lock. Then her head was being pulled to the left. Another snap.
She was stretched out as if she was on some medieval rack. She could not move her head or her legs or her arms. She tried to breathe. Her nose was blocking up again. She shimmied in growing panic.
‘I have to go now. I’m expected for dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Hasta la vista!’
She moaned in terror, trying to plead with him. No, please! No, please don’t leave me face down. I can’t breathe. Please, I’m claustrophobic. Please-
She heard the door sliding shut.
Footsteps. A distant rending and echoing bang of metal.
Then the sound of a motorcycle engine starting up, revving and fading into the distance, roaring away, fading rapidly into silence. As she listened, quaking in terror, fighting for air she felt a sudden, unpleasant warm sensation spreading around her groin and along her thighs.
101
Saturday 17 January
Roy Grace sat in the small interview room in the Custody Centre, alongside DC Michael Foreman, who, like himself, was a trained Witness and Suspect Cognitive Interviewer. But at this moment, none of that past training was doing them any good. John Kerridge had gone no comment on them. Thanks but no thanks to his smartalec lawyer, Ken Acott.
The tape recorder with three blank cassettes sat on the table. High up on the walls, two CCTV camera lenses peered down at them like mildly inquisitive birds. There was a tense atmosphere. Grace was feeling murderous. At this moment he could have happily reached across the narrow interview table, grabbed John Kerridge by the neck and strangled the truth out of the little shit, disability or no disability.
His client was on the autism spectrum, Ken Acott had informed them. John Kerridge, who kept insisting he be called Yac, suffered from Asperger’s syndrome. His client had informed him that he was in pursuit of a passenger who had run off without paying. It was patently obvious that it was his client’s passenger who should have been apprehended, not his client. His client was being discriminated against and victimized because of his disability. Kerridge would make no comment without a specialist medical expert present.
Grace decided he would like to strangle Ken sodding Acott too at this moment. He stared at the smooth solicitor in his elegantly tailored suit, his shirt and tie, and could even smell his cologne. In contrast his client, also in a suit, shirt and tie, cut a pathetic figure. Kerridge had short dark hair brushed forward, and a strangely haunted face that might have been quite handsome, were his eyes not a little too close together. He was thin, with rounded shoulders, and seemed unable to keep totally still. He fidgeted like a bored schoolboy.
‘It’s nine o’clock,’ Acott said. ‘My client needs a cup of tea. He has to have one every hour, on the hour. It’s his ritual.’
‘I’ve got news for your client,’ Grace said, staring pointedly at Kerridge. ‘This is not a Ritz-Carlton hotel. He’ll get tea outside of the normal times that tea is provided here if and when I decide he can have it. Now, if your client would care to be more helpful – or perhaps if his solicitor would care to be more helpful – then I’m sure something could be done to improve the quality of our room service.’
‘I’ve told you, my client is not making any comment.’
‘I have to have my tea,’ Yac said suddenly.
Grace looked at him. ‘You’ll have it when I decide.’
‘I have to have it at nine o’clock.’
Grace stared at him. There was a brief silence, then Yac eye-balled Grace back and said, ‘Do you have a high- flush or low-flush toilet in your home?’
There was a vulnerability in the taxi driver’s voice, something that touched a chord in Grace. Since the news of the reported abduction in Kemp Town two hours ago, and the discovery of a shoe on the pavement where it had allegedly taken place, there had been a development. A young man had arrived to collect his fiancee for an evening out at a black-tie function, thirty minutes after the time of the abduction and she had not answered the door. There was no response from her mobile phone, which rang unanswered, then went to voicemail.
It had already been established that the last person to have seen her was her kick-boxing instructor, at a local gym. She’d been in high spirits, looking forward to her evening out, although, the instructor had said, she was nervous at the prospect of introducing her fiance to her parents for the first time.
So she could have funked out, Grace considered. But she didn’t sound the type of girl to stand up her boyfriend and let down her family. The more he heard, the less he liked the way the whole scenario was developing. Which made him even angrier here.
Angry at the smugness of Ken Acott.
Angry at this creepy suspect hiding behind no comment and behind his condition. Grace knew a child with Asperger’s. A police officer colleague and his wife, with whom he and Sandy had been friends, had a teenage son with the condition. He was a strange but very sweet boy who was obsessed with batteries. A boy who was not good at reading people, lacking normal social skills. A boy who had difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong in certain aspects of behaviour. But someone, in his view, who was capable of understanding the line between right and wrong when it came to things as major as rape or murder.
‘Why are you interested in toilets?’ Grace asked Kerridge.
‘Toilet chains! I have a collection. I could show you them some time.’
‘Yes, I’d be very interested.’
Acott was glaring daggers at him.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ Kerridge went on. ‘Do you have high flush or low flush in your home?’
Grace thought for a moment. ‘Low flush.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you like ladies’ shoes, John?’ he replied suddenly.
‘I’m sorry,’ Acott said, his voice tight with anger. ‘I’m not having any questioning.’
Ignoring him, Grace persisted. ‘Do you find them sexy?’
‘Sexy people are bad,’ Yac replied.
102
Saturday 17 January
Roy Grace left the interview room feeling even more uneasy than when he had gone in. John Kerridge was a strange man and he sensed a violent streak in him. Yet he did not feel Kerridge possessed the cunning or sophistication that the Shoe Man would have needed to get away undetected with his crimes of twelve years ago and those in the past few weeks.
Of particular concern to him at the moment was the latest news of the possible abduction of Jessie Sheldon this evening. It was the shoe on the pavement that really worried him. Jessie Sheldon had been in her tracksuit and trainers. So whose was the shoe? A brand-new ladies’ shoe with a high heel. The Shoe Man’s kind of shoe.
But there was something else gnawing at him even more than John Kerridge and Jessie Sheldon at this moment. He couldn’t remember exactly when the thought had first struck him – some time between leaving the
