Dead Like You (30 page)

77

Wednesday 14 January

Roy Grace’s rapidly expanding team on
Operation Swordfish
was now too big to fit comfortably into MIR-1, so he held the 6.30 p.m. briefing in the Conference Room in the Major Incident Suite.

The room could hold twenty-five people seated on the red chairs around the open-centred rectangular table and another thirty standing. One of its uses was for Major Crime briefings for press conferences, and it was to provide a visual backdrop for these that there stood, at the far end opposite the video screen, a concave, two-tone blue board, six feet high and ten feet wide, boldly carrying the Sussex Police website address and the
Crime-stoppers
legend and phone number.

The Detective Superintendent sat with his back to this, facing the door, as his team filed in, half of them on their phones. One of the last to enter was Norman Potting, who strutted in, looking very pleased with himself.

At 6.30 sharp, Roy Grace opened the meeting by announcing, ‘Team, before I start on the agenda, DS Potting has some news for us.’ He gestured to him to begin.

Potting coughed, then said, ‘I’m pleased to report I’ve arrested a suspect.’

‘Brilliant!’ Michael Foreman said.

‘He’s in custody now while we continue a search of his home, a houseboat moored on the Adur at Shoreham Beach.’

‘Who is he, Norman?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘John Kerridge, the man I mentioned at this morning’s briefing. A local taxi driver. Calls himself by a nickname, Yac. We conducted a search of his premises and discovered a cache of eighty-seven pairs of ladies’ high-heeled shoes concealed in bags in the bilges.’

‘Eighty-seven pairs?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood said, astonished.

‘There may be more. The search is continuing,’ he said. ‘I suspect we’re going to find the ones taken from our first two victims – and past ones.’

‘You don’t have those yet?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘No, but we’ll find ’em. He’s got a whole stack of current newspaper cuttings about the Shoe Man that we’ve seized, as well as a wodge of printouts from the Internet on the Shoe Man back in 1997.’

‘He lives alone?’ Bella Moy asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Any wife? Separated? Girlfriend, or boyfriend?’

‘Doesn’t sound like it.’

‘What reason did he give for having these cuttings – and the shoes?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t. When I asked him that question he went into a sulk and refused to speak. We also found a large number of toilet chains concealed, as well as the shoes, which he got extremely agitated about.’

Branson frowned, then made a flushing movement with his arm. ‘Toilet chains? You mean as in
bog
chains, right?’

Potting nodded.

‘Why?’ Branson continued.

Potting looked around, a little hesitantly, and then stared at Roy Grace. ‘Dunno if it’s politically correct to say it – um – chief.’

‘The suspense is killing us,’ Grace replied, with good humour.

Potting tapped the side of his head. ‘He’s not got all his lights on.’

There was a titter of laughter. Potting smiled proudly. Grace watched him, glad for this man to have shown his value to the team. But at the same time, he was thinking hard about Pewe, privately concerned that while this current suspect under arrest ticked a lot of boxes, he left one big unanswered question.

He turned his attention back to DS Potting’s prisoner in custody. Great they had an arrest, and here was a story the
Argus
would lead with in the morning. But he was experienced enough to know there was a big gap between arresting a suspect and establishing he was the offender.

‘How is he reacting, Norman?’ he asked.

‘He’s angry, chief,’ Potting said. ‘And we could have a problem. His brief’s Ken Acott.’

‘Shit,’ Nick Nicholl said.

There were a number of Legal Aid solicitors available to suspects, and their abilities and attitudes varied widely. Ken Acott was the smartest of all of them, and the bane of any arresting officer’s life.

‘What’s he saying?’ Grace asked.

‘He’s requesting a medical examination of his client before he speaks any further to us,’ the Detective Sergeant replied. ‘I’m arranging that. Meantime I’m holding Kerridge in custody overnight. Hopefully the search team will find further evidence.’

‘Perhaps we’ll get a DNA match,’ DC Foreman said.

‘So far the Shoe Man has shown himself very forensically aware,’ Grace said. ‘It’s one of the big problems that we’ve never obtained anything from him. Not one damned hair or fibre.’ He looked at his notes. ‘OK, excellent work, Norman. Let’s move on for a moment. Glenn, you have something to report on another possible suspect.’

‘Yes, boss. I’m pleased to say we’ve identified the driver of the Mercedes E Class saloon. The one that was seen driving at speed away from the Pearces’ house in The Droveway around the time of the attack on Mrs Roxanna Pearce, and we’ve now interviewed him. It explains the romantic dinner for two she was preparing, but it’s not helpful news, I’m afraid.’ Branson shrugged, then went on. ‘His name’s Iannis Stephanos, a local restaurateur. He owns Timon’s down in Preston Street, and Thessalonica.’

‘I know that!’ DC Foreman said. ‘Took my wife there for our anniversary last week!’

‘Yeah, well, me and E-J went and spoke to Stephanos this afternoon. He admitted with some embarrassment that he and Mrs Pearce were having an affair. She’s subsequently confirmed this. She’d invited him over because her husband was away on a business trip – which we know to be the case. He’d gone to the house but not been able to gain access. He said he’d hung around outside, ringing the doorbell and phoning. He was sure she was in because he’d seen shadows move behind the curtains. In the end, he wasn’t sure what she was playing at – then had a sudden fit of panic that perhaps the husband had returned home early, which was why he left at speed.’

‘Do you believe him?’ Grace looked first at him, then at Emma-Jane Boutwood.

Both of them nodded.

‘Doesn’t make any sense that he should have raped her if he’d been invited over.’

‘Can you be sure she didn’t cry
rape
because her husband returned and she felt guilty?’ Michael Foreman asked.

‘Her husband didn’t return until we contacted him the next day,’ Branson replied.

‘Does he know about the affair?’ Grace asked Glenn.

‘I’ve tried to be discreet,’ he said. ‘I think we’d best keep that to ourselves, for the moment.’

‘I’ve had Mr Pearce on the phone several times, asking about our progress,’ Grace said. He looked at the SOLO, Claire Westmore. ‘Are you happy for us to try to keep it quiet?’

‘I don’t see any value in making things worse than they already are for Mrs Pearce, at this stage, sir,’ she replied.

*

After the meeting, Grace asked DC Foreman to come to his office, and there he briefed him, in confidence, about his suspicions concerning Detective Superintendent Pewe.

Foreman had not been around during the time Cassian Pewe was with Sussex CID, so no one would be able to accuse him of being biased against the man. He was the perfect choice.

‘Michael, I want you to check all Detective Superintendent Cassian Pewe’s alibis back in 1997 and now. I have concerns about him, because so much fits. But if we arrest him, it has to be on watertight evidence. We don’t have that yet. See what you can come up with. And remember, you’re going to be dealing with a very devious and manipulative person.’

‘I’m sure I’m his match, boss.’

Grace smiled. ‘That’s why I’ve chosen you.’

1998

78

Tuesday 20 January

The lab tests confirmed the age of the woman who had been partially incinerated in the van as being between eighty and eighty-five.

Whoever she was – or rather had been – she was not the missing Rachael Ryan. Which now left Detective Sergeant Roy Grace with a second problem. Who was she, who had put her in the van, and why?

Three big unticked boxes.

So far no undertakers had reported a missing body, but Grace could not get the image of the woman out of his mind. During the past couple of days some of her details had been filled in for him. She was five feet, four inches tall. White. Lab tests carried out by Dr Frazer Theobald on her lung tissue and on the small amount of flesh intact on her back confirmed that she had been dead for some considerable time before the van caught fire – several days before. She had died from cancer secondaries.

But, it seemed, the county of Sussex was knee deep in little old ladies who were terminally ill. Some of its towns, like Worthing, Eastbourne and Bexhill, with their high elderly populations, were jokily known as God’s waiting rooms. To contact every undertaker and every mortuary was a massive task. Because of the pathologist’s findings, the case was regarded as bizarre rather than as a major crime, so resources allocated to it were limited. It was virtually down to Roy Grace alone.

She had been someone’s child, he thought. Someone’s daughter. She’d had children herself, so she had been someone’s wife or lover. Someone’s mother. Probably someone’s grandmother. Probably a caring, loving, decent person.

So how come her last journey had been buckled into the driver’s seat of a stolen van?

Was it a sick prank by a bunch of youths?

But if so, where had they taken her from? If an undertaker’s premises had been broken into and a corpse stolen, surely it would have been reported as a matter of urgency? But there was nothing on the serials. He’d checked them all, for three weeks back.

It just did not make sense.

He expanded his enquiries to undertakers and mortuaries beyond Sussex and into all the bordering counties, without success. The woman must have had family. Perhaps they were all dead, but he hoped not. The thought made him sad. It also saddened him to think that no undertaker had noticed her absence.

The indignity of what had happened to her made matters worse too.

If she wasn’t the helpless victim in some sick prank, was there something he was missing?

He replayed the scenario over and over in his mind. For what possible reason would someone steal a van and then put a dead old lady into it?

How stupid would you have to be not to know there were tests that would prove the old woman had not been driving, and that her age would be worked out?

A prank was the most likely. But where had they got the body from? Every day he was broadening his search of undertakers and mortuaries. There had to be one, somewhere in this country, that had a body that was missing. Surely?

It was a mystery that was to remain with him for the next twelve years.

79

Thursday 15 January

Norman Potting sat on the green chair in the interview room in the Custody Suite adjoining the CID headquarters. There was a window, high up, a CCTV camera and a microphone. The heavy green door, with its small viewing window, was closed and locked.

Opposite the DS, across a small table the colour of granite, sat John Kerridge, dressed in a regulation-issue, ill-fitting blue paper jump suit and plimsolls. Beside him sat a Legal Aid solicitor who had been allocated to him, Ken Acott.

Unlike many of his duty solicitor colleagues, who tended not to fuss too much about their clothing as they weren’t needing to impress their clients, Acott, who was forty-four, was always impeccably dressed. Today he wore a well-cut navy suit, with a freshly laundered white shirt and a sharp tie. With his short, dark hair and genial good looks, he reminded many people of the actor Dustin Hoffman, and he had plenty of the theatrical about him, whether protesting his client’s rights in an interview room or addressing the bench in a courtroom. Of all the criminal practice solicitors in the city, Ken Acott was the one that arresting officers disliked coming up against the most.

Kerridge seemed to be having problems sitting still. A man of about forty, with short hair brushed forward, he was squirming, writhing, as if attempting to free himself from imaginary bonds, and repeatedly looking at his watch.

‘They haven’t brought my tea,’ he said anxiously.

‘It’s on its way,’ Potting assured him.

‘Yes, but it’s ten past,’ Yac said nervously.

On the table sat a tape recorder with slots for three cassettes, one for the police, one for the defence and one file copy. Potting inserted a cassette into each slot. He was about to press the Play button when the solicitor spoke.

‘DS Potting, before you waste too much of my client’s time, and my own, I think you should take a look at these, which were recovered from my client’s home on the
Tom Newbound
houseboat during the night.’

He pushed a large brown envelope across the table to the Detective Sergeant.

Hesitantly, Potting opened it and pulled out the contents.

‘Take your time,’ Acott said with an assurance that made Potting feel uneasy.

The first item was an A4 printout, which he stared at. It was a receipt from an eBay transaction for a pair of Gucci high-heeled shoes.

During the next twenty minutes, Norman Potting read, with increasing gloom, the receipts from second-hand clothes shops and eBay auctions for eighty-three of the eighty-seven pairs of shoes they had seized from the houseboat.

‘Can your client account for the last four pairs?’ Potting asked, sensing he was clutching at straws.

‘I am told that they were left in his taxi,’ Ken Acott said. ‘But as none of these, or any of the others, fit the descriptions of the ones in the recent series of attacks, I would respectfully ask that my client be released from custody immediately, so he does not suffer further loss of earnings.’

Potting insisted on proceeding with the interview. But Acott made his client reply
No comment
to every question. After an hour and a half, Potting left to speak to Roy Grace. Then he returned and conceded defeat.

‘I’ll accept bailing him 47(3), to come back in two months while our enquiries are continuing,’ Potting suggested as a compromise.

‘He also wants his property returned to him,’ Ken Acott said. ‘Any reason why he shouldn’t have back the shoes and newspaper cuttings that were seized, his computer and his mobile phone?’

Despite a tantrum from Kerridge, Potting insisted on retaining the shoes and the cuttings. The phone and the laptop were not a problem, as the High-Tech Crime Unit had extracted all they needed from the phone, and they had cloned the hard drive of the computer, which they would continue to analyse.

Acott gave in on the shoes and cuttings, and twenty minutes later Yac was released. The solicitor drove him home with his computer and phone.