Dead Like You (25 page)

62

Tuesday 13 January

Billy No Mates
was seated in a window table of the café, digging her fork into a mountainous veggie salad, with watercress and frisée lettuce overflowing all around the rim of the bowl. It looked like she was eating a hairdo.

She chewed pensively, picking up her iPhone and staring at something on the screen in between mouthfuls. Her shoulder-length bleached hair was scooped up into a ponytail, with a few loose strands hanging down, just the way it had been the last time he had seen her, in Marielle Shoes, on Saturday.

She had a pretty face, despite her curiously hooked nose, and was dressed casually, almost sloppily, in a shapeless, sleeveless grey tunic over a black roll neck, jeans and sparkly trainers. He would have to get her to change out of those! Trainers on women just did not do it for him.

Clearly Jessie Sheldon didn’t bother with her appearance for work, or maybe her look was deliberate. Her albums on Facebook showed she could look very pretty with her hair down and in nice clothes. Beautiful in some. Stunning. A very sexy lady indeed!

And she wasn’t really Billy No Mates at all, although she did look like that at this moment, just sitting there all on her own. She actually had 251 friends, as of earlier today, when he’d last checked out her Facebook site. And one of them, Benedict Greene, was her fiancé – well, as good as, although they were not formally engaged, yet, she’d explained on the site.
Sssshh! Don’t tell my parents!

She was a good networker. She kept all her friends updated daily on her activities. Everyone knew what she would be doing in three hours’ time, in six hours’ time, in twenty-four hours’ time, and for the next several weeks. And just like Dee Burchmore, she Tweeted. Mostly, at the moment, about her diet.
Jessie is thinking of eating a KitKat … Jessie resisted the KitKat … Lost a pound today! … Rats, put on a pound today! Only eating vegetarian for rest of this week!

She was a good girl, so helpful to him! She Tweeted far more than Dee Burchmore. Her latest was sent just an hour ago:
Keeping to diet! Lunching vegetarian today at Lydia, my current fave!

She was tapping away on the iPhone now. Maybe she was Tweeting again?

He liked to keep an eye on his women. This morning, Dee Burchmore was at the spa at the Metropole Hotel, having a Thalgo Indocéane Complete Body Ritual. He wondered whether to have one too. But thought better of it. He had things to do today; in fact he should not be here at all. But it felt so good! How could he resist?

Billy No Mates had Tweeted earlier:
Going to look at those shoes again at lunchtime – hope they’ll still be there!

They were! He’d watched her take a photo of them with her iPhone, then tell the assistant she was going to have a think about them over lunch. She asked the shop assistant if she would keep them aside for her until 2 p.m. The assistant said she would.

They were dead sexy! The black ones, with the ankle straps and the five-inch steel-coloured heels. The ones she wanted to wear, she had told the assistant, when she went to a function with her boyfriend, who would be meeting her parents for the first time.

Billy No Mates tapped out something on the keyboard, then raised the phone to her ear. Moments later her face lit up, animated. ‘Hi, Roz! I just sent you a photo of the shoes! Have you got it? Yeah! What do you think? You do? Really? OK! I’m going to get them! I’ll bring them over and show them to you tonight, after my squash game! What film are we going to see? You got
The Final Destination
? Great!’

He smiled. She liked horror movies. Maybe she might even enjoy the little show he had planned for her! Although it was not his intention to give pleasure.

‘No, the car’s fine now, all fixed. I’ll pick up the takeaway. I’ll tell him not to charge us for the seaweed. He forgot it last week,’ she continued. ‘Yeah, OK, soy sauce. I’ll make sure he puts extra in.’

His own mobile rang. He looked at the display. Work. He pressed the red button, sending it to voicemail.

Then he looked down at the copy of the
Argus
he had just bought. The front page headline shouted:

POLICE STEP UP VIGILANCE AFTER THIRD CITY RAPE

He frowned, then began to read. The third attack, over the weekend, was in the ghost train on the pier. There was hot speculation that the so-called Shoe Man, who in 1997–8 had committed four and perhaps five rapes – and possibly many more that had never been reported – was back. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer, stated it was too soon for such speculation. They were pursuing a number of lines of enquiry, he said, and gave assurances that every possible resource Sussex Police had at their disposal was being harnessed. The safety of the city’s women was their number-one priority.

Then the next paragraph hit him with a jolt.

In an exclusive interview with the
Argus
, Detective Superintendent Grace stated that the offender had a physical sexual deformity. He declined to be specific, but told this reporter that it included an exceptionally diminutive manhood. He added that any woman who had had previous relations with him would remember this feature. A psycho-sexual therapist said that such an inadequacy could lead a person to attempt to compensate via violent means. Anyone who believed they might know such a person was urged either to phone 0845 6070999 and ask for the
Operation Swordfish
Incident Room or to call the Crimestoppers number anonymously.

His phone beeped twice with a voicemail message. He ignored it, glaring down at the print with rising fury.
Sexual deformity?
Was that what everyone was thinking of him? Well, maybe Detective Superintendent Grace was not very well endowed in another department, his brain. The detective hadn’t caught him twelve years ago and he was not going to catch him now.

Little dick, big brain, Mr Grace.

He read the article again, every word of it, word by word. Then again. Then again.

A friendly female voice with a South African accent startled him. ‘Are you ready to order, madam?’

He looked up at the young waitress’s face. Then across to the table next to him by the window.

Billy No Mates had left.

It didn’t matter. He knew where to find her later. In the car park at Withdean Sports Stadium after her game of squash this evening. It was a good car park, open air and large. It should be quiet at that time of day and pitch dark. With luck he’d be able to park right alongside the bitch’s little black Ka.

He looked up at the waitress. ‘Yes, I’ll have a rump steak and chips, bloody.’

‘I’m afraid this is a vegetarian restaurant.’

‘Then what the fuck am I doing here?’ he said, totally forgetting his ladylike voice.

He got up and flounced out.

63

Tuesday 13 January

At the end of Kensington Gardens he turned left and walked down Trafalgar Street, looking for a payphone. He found one at the bottom and went in. Several cards featuring half-naked ladies offering
French Lessons
,
Oriental Massage
,
Discipline Classes
were stuck in the window frames. ‘Bitches,’ he said, casting his eye across them. It took him a moment to work out what he had to do to make a call. Then he dug in his pocket for a coin and shoved the only thing he had, a pound, into the slot. Then, still shaking with rage, he looked at the first number in the
Argus
article and dialled it.

When it was answered, he asked to be put through to the Incident Room for
Operation Swordfish
, then waited.

After three rings, a male voice answered. ‘Incident Room, Detective Constable Nicholl.’

‘I want you to give a message to Detective Superintendent Grace.’

‘Yes, sir. May I say who’s calling?’

He waited for a moment, as a police car raced past, its siren wailing, then he left his message, hung up and hurried away from the booth.

64

Tuesday 13 January

All the team at the 6.30 p.m. briefing of
Operation Swordfish
, gathered in MIR-1, were silent as Roy Grace switched on the recorder. The tape that had been sent over from the Call Handling Centre began to play.

There was a background rumble of traffic, then a man’s voice, quiet, as if he had been making an effort to stay calm. The roar of traffic made it hard to hear him distinctly.

‘
I want you to give a message to Detective Superintendent Grace
,’ the man said.

Then they could hear Nick Nicholl’s voice replying. ‘
Yes, sir. May I say who’s calling?
’

Nothing for some moments, except the almost deafening wail of a passing siren, then the man’s voice again, this time louder: ‘
Tell him it’s not small, actually.
’

It was followed by a loud clattering sound, a sharp click and the line went dead.

No one smiled.

‘Is this real or a hoax?’ Norman Potting asked.

After a few moments Dr Julius Proudfoot said, ‘I’d put my money on that being real, from the way he spoke.’

‘Can we hear it again, boss?’ Michael Foreman asked.

Grace replayed the tape. When it finished, he turned to Proud-foot. ‘Anything you can tell us from that?’

The forensic psychologist nodded. ‘Well, yes, quite a bit. The first thing, assuming it is him, is that you’ve clearly succeeded in rattling his cage. That’s why I think it’s real, not a hoax. There’s genuine anger in the voice. Full of emotion.’

‘That was my intention, to rattle his cage.’

‘You can hear it in his voice, in the way the cadence rises,’ the forensic psychologist went on. ‘He’s all bottled up with anger. And the fact that it sounded like he fumbled replacing the receiver – probably shaking so much with rage. I can tell also that he’s nervous, feeling under pressure – and that you’ve struck a chord. Is that information about him true? Something that’s been obtained from statements by the victims?’

‘Not in so many words, but yes, reading between the lines of the witness statements from back in 1997 and now.’

‘What’s your reasoning for giving that to the
Argus
, Roy?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.

‘Because I suspect this creep thinks he’s very clever. He got away with his attacks before and now he’s confident he’s going to get away with these new ones too. If Dr Proudfoot is right and he committed the ghost train rape as well, then he’s clearly stepping up both the speed and the brazenness of his attacks. I wanted to lance his ego a little and hopefully get him into a strop. People who are angry are more likely to make mistakes.’

‘Or be more brutal to their victims,’ Bella Moy said. ‘Isn’t that a risk?’

‘If he killed last time, Bella, which I think is likely,’ Grace replied, ‘there’s a high risk he’ll kill again, strop or no strop. When someone has taken a life once, they’ve crossed a personal Rubicon. It’s far easier the second time. Particularly if they found they enjoyed it the first time. We’re dealing with a nasty, warped freak here – and someone who’s not stupid. We need to find ways to trip him up. I don’t just want him not being more brutal to a victim – I want him not to have another victim, full stop. We have to catch him before he attacks again.’

‘Anyone figure out his accent?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘Sounds local to me,’ DC Foreman said, ‘but difficult with that background noise. Can we get the recording enhanced?’

‘That’s being worked on now,’ Grace replied. Then he turned to Proudfoot. ‘Can you estimate the man’s age from this?’

‘That’s a hard one – anywhere between thirty and fifty, I’d guess,’ he said. ‘I think you need to run this through a lab, somewhere like J. P. French, which specializes in speaker profiling. There’s quite a bit of information they could get us from a call like this. Probably the man’s regional and ethnic background, for a start.’

Grace nodded. He’d used the specialist firm before and the results had been helpful. He could also get a voiceprint from the lab that would be as unique as a fingerprint or DNA. But could they do it in the short amount of time he believed he had?

‘There have been mass DNA screenings in communities,’ Bella Moy said. ‘What about trying something like that in Brighton with the voiceprint?’

‘So all we’d have to do, Bella,’ Norman Potting said, ‘is get every bloke in Brighton and Hove to say the same words. There’s only a hundred and forty thousand or so males in the city. Shouldn’t take us more than about ten years.’

‘Could you play it again, boss, please,’ said Glenn Branson, who’d been very quiet. ‘Wasn’t it that movie,
The Conversation
, with Gene Hackman, where they worked out where someone was from the traffic noise in the background on the tape?’

He played the tape again.

‘Have we been able to trace the call, sir?’ Ellen Zoratti asked.

‘The number was withheld. But it’s being worked on. It’s a big task with the amount coming through the Call Centre every hour.’ Grace played the tape again.

When it finished, Glenn Branson said, ‘Sounds like somewhere in the centre of Brighton. If they can’t trace the number we’ve still got the siren and the time of day – that vehicle sounds like it went right past very close to him. We need to check what emergency vehicle was on its blues and twos at exactly 1.55 p.m., and we’ll get its route and know he was somewhere along it. A CCTV might have picked up someone on their mobile – and possibly bingo.’

‘Good thinking,’ Grace said. ‘Although it sounded more like a landline than a mobile from the way he hung up.’

‘Yes,’ Michael Foreman said. ‘That clunking sound – that’s like an old-fashioned handset being replaced.’

‘He might have just dropped his phone, if he was as nervous as Dr Proudfoot suggests,’ said DC Boutwood. ‘I don’t think we should rule out a mobile.’

‘Or it could be a public phone booth,’ Foreman said. ‘In which case there may be fingerprints.’

‘If he’s angry,’ Proudfoot said, ‘then I think it’s even more likely he’ll strike again quickly. And a racing certainty is that he’ll copy his pattern from last time. He’ll know that worked. He’ll be fine if he sticks to the same again. Which means he’s going to strike in a car park next – as I’ve said before.’

Grace walked over to a map of central Brighton and stared at it, looking at each of the main car parks. The station, London Road, New Road, Churchill Square, North Road. There were dozens of them, big and small, some run by the council, some by NCP, some part of supermarkets or hotels. He turned back to Proudfoot.

‘It would be impossible to cover every damned car park in the city – and even more impossible to cover every level of every multi-storey,’ he said. ‘We just don’t have the number of patrols. And we can hardly close them down.’

He was feeling anxious suddenly. Maybe it had been a mistake telling Spinella that yesterday. What if it pushed the Shoe Man over the edge into killing again? It would be his own stupid fault.

‘The best thing we can do is get plain-clothes officers into the CCTV control rooms of those car parks that have it, step up patrols and have as many undercover vehicles drive around the car parks as we can,’ Grace said.

‘The one thing I’d tell your team to watch out for, Detective Superintendent, is someone on edge tonight. Someone driving erratically on the streets. I think our man is going to be in a highly wired state.’