Dead Like You (34 page)

88

Friday 16 January

At 6.45 p.m., Roy Grace, running on adrenalin and caffeine, sat in a small office at the end of the Ops Room, on the third floor of Brighton Central police station. The John Street location of the huge, six-storey building, right on the edge of Kemp Town and just a couple of hundred yards from Edward Street – part of the area where Julius Proudfoot was predicting the Shoe Man’s next attack would take place – made it ideal for this current operation.

In the short space of time since this morning’s briefing, with the aid of some helpful pressure in the right places from ACC Rigg, the Detective Superintendent had assembled a Covert Team of twenty officers, and was busily working on increasing that to his target of thirty-five for tomorrow.

He currently had a surveillance team of eight out on the streets, on foot and in vehicles, and another twelve, including some members of his own inquiry team, together with several constables, Specials and PCSOs he had commandeered, who were located in buildings at strategic intervals along Edward Street and Eastern Road – as it became – and some of the nearby side streets. Most of them, as was common in surveillance, were in upstairs rooms of private houses or flats, with the consent of their owners.

A bank of CCTV monitors covered most of the wall in front of his desk. Grace could instantly call up on them views from any of the 350 cameras situated around the city’s downtown area, as well as zooming, panning and tilting them. The room was used for the officer in charge, the Gold Commander, at all major public order events, such as party political conferences or for monitoring major demonstrations, and for major operations in the city, as this had now become.

His number two on this, his Silver Commander, was the Crime and Ops Superintendent at John Street, who was currently in the Ops Room, liaising by secure radio with the two Bronze commanders. One, a female detective inspector who ran the Force Surveillance Teams from CID headquarters, was out in an unmarked car, coordinating the street surveillance team. The other, Roy Apps, a senior uniform inspector at John Street, was running the static team, who radioed in anything of potential interest from their observation points.

So far all had been quiet. To Grace’s relief it was not raining – many police officers jokingly referred to foul weather as
policeman rain
. Crime levels always dropped during heavy rain. It seemed that villains didn’t like getting wet any more than anyone else did. Although the Shoe Man appeared, on past form, to have a penchant for light drizzle.

The rush hour was drawing to an end and Eastern Road was quietening down. Grace flicked through all the screens showing views close to his observation points. He stopped as he saw one unmarked surveillance car slow down and park.

Taking a quick break, he phoned Cleo, telling her he was likely to be late and not to wait up. She was exhausted after last night, she said, and was going to bed early.

‘I’ll try not to wake you,’ he said.

‘I
want
you to wake me,’ she replied. ‘I want to know you’re home safe.’

He blew her a kiss and turned back to his task.

Suddenly his internal command phone rang. It was the Silver Commander.

‘Boss,’ he said. ‘Just had an alert from an RPU car – it’s picked up the index of the taxi driven by John Kerridge on its ANPR and just clocked it turning left into Old Steine from the seafront.’

Grace tensed, feeling the hollow sensation he often got in the pit of his stomach when things were starting.

‘OK, alert the Bronzes.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Grace switched his radio to pick up all comms from the Bronzes to any members of their team. He was just in time to hear the excited voice of one of the surveillance team, through a radio crackling with interference, ‘Target turning right-right, into Edward Street!’

Moments later there was a response from an observation post just to the east of John Street. ‘Target passing, continuing east-east. Hang on – he’s stopping. Picking up one male passenger.’

Bugger!
Grace thought.
Bugger! Bugger!

If Kerridge stopped for a passenger, that meant he wasn’t hunting. Yet it seemed curious that he had turned into the very area where they suspected the next attack would take place.

Coincidence?

He wasn’t so sure. Something about this John Kerridge character bothered him. From his years of experience, offenders like the Shoe Man often turned out to be oddball loners and Kerridge ticked that box. They might have had to let him go because of lack of evidence at this moment, but that did not mean he wasn’t their man.

If I was driving a cab, plying for fares, why would I drive along almost deserted Eastern Road at this time on a Friday night? Why not along St James’s Street, one street to the south, which was always teeming with people? Or North Street, or London Road, or Western Road?

He phoned Streamline Taxis, stated who he was and asked if John Kerridge had been sent to Eastern Road to do a pick-up. The controller confirmed back to him that he had.

Grace thanked her. So there was an innocent explanation for the taxi driver’s presence here.

But he still had a bad feeling about him.

89

Friday 16 January

Spicer was perspiring, despite the cold. The innocuous-looking Tesco supermarket carrier bag, filled with his tools, weighed a ton, and the walk from St Patrick’s to the junction with The Drive and Davigdor Road seemed much further tonight than it had on Sunday. The two pints of beer and the whisky chaser, which an hour ago had fuelled his courage, were now sapping his energy.

The old apartment block loomed on his left. The traffic on the road was light and he had passed few pedestrians on his way here. Half a dozen vehicles on his right, travelling north up The Drive, were waiting for the red light to change. Spicer slowed his pace, also waiting for it to change, not wanting to risk anyone noticing him, just in case. You never knew …

Finally the cars moved off. Hurriedly, he turned left, down the steep driveway beside the apartment block, crossed the car park at the front and walked around the side of the building, towards the row of lock-up garages around the corner at the rear that were in almost total darkness, lit only by the glow of lights from some of the apartment windows above.

He walked along to the one at the far left end, the one that had interested him so much on his recce on Sunday. All of the others had just a single, basic lock inset into their door handles. But this one had four heavy-duty deadlocks, two on each side. You didn’t put locks like that on a garage unless you had something of serious value inside.

Of course, it could just be a vintage car, but even then he knew a dealer who would pay good money for instruments from vintage cars; steering wheels, gear levers, badges, bonnet mascots and anything else that could be removed. But, if he was lucky, he might find a stash of valuables of some kind. He knew from his years of experience that burglars like himself favoured anonymous lock-up garages as storage depots. He’d used one himself for many years. They were good places to keep valuables that could be easily identified by their owners until things had quietened down and he could then fence them, maybe a year or so later.

He stood still in the darkness, looking up at the apartment building, checking for shadows at the window that might signal someone looking out. But he could see no one.

Quickly, he delved into his bag and set to work on the first of the locks. It yielded after less than a minute. The others followed suit, equally easily.

He stepped back into the shadows and again checked all around him and above. No sign of anyone.

He pulled open the up-and-over door, then stood still in astonishment, for some moments, absorbing what he was looking at. This was not what he had expected at all.

He stepped inside nervously, yanked the door down behind him, pulled his torch out of his carrier and switched it on.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, as the beam of light confirmed it for him.

Scared as hell, he backed out, his thoughts in a whirl. With trembling hands he locked it up again, not wanting to leave any tracks. Then he hurried away into the night.

90

Saturday 17 January

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Jessie Sheldon

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Jessie now has 253 friends on Facebook

Benedict’s meeting my parents tonight at charity ball for first time. I’m nervous!!! Got my early-evening kick-boxing class first, so if there are any issues and they start being horrible to him, they’d better watch out. And … will be wearing my new Anya Hindmarch shoes with five-inch stilettos!!!!

He read Jessie’s latest Facebook entry with a thin smile.
You are so good to me, Jessie. You let me down at the Withdean Sports Stadium, but you won’t let me down tonight, will you? You will finish your kick-boxing at the usual time, then walk back the half-mile to your Sudeley Place flat and change into your beautiful dress and your new shoes – dressed to kill. Then you will step out into Benedict’s car, which will be waiting outside. That’s your plan, isn’t it?

Sorry to be a party pooper …

91

Saturday 17 January

Because of the surveillance operation, Roy Grace had cancelled yesterday’s evening briefing. Now, at the 8.30 a.m. Saturday briefing, there was a whole twenty-four hours of activity for the team to catch up on.

Plenty of activity but little progress.

Ellen Zoratti and her colleague analyst still had no results in their nationwide trawl of sexual offences that could be linked to the Shoe Man and the High-Tech Crime Unit still had no potential leads for them.

The Outside Inquiry Team’s questioning of the managers and working girls at all thirty-two of the city’s known brothels was now complete and had produced nothing tangible so far. Several of their regular punters had shoe or feet fetishes, but as none of the managers kept names and addresses of their clientele, all they could do was promise to phone when any of them next made an appointment.

It was looking more and more as if whatever the Shoe Man might have been up to during these past twelve years, he’d done a damned good job of keeping it quiet.

Last night had also been quiet. The whole city had felt like a graveyard. Having partied hard over the Christmas holidays, it seemed that now its inhabitants, last night at least, were well and truly homebodies in recovery mode and feeling the bite of the recession. And despite his team’s long vigil, there had been no further sighting of taxi driver John Kerridge – Yac – since his earlier, brief appearance in the area.

One positive was that Grace now had the full surveillance complement of thirty-five officers he needed to blanket cover the Eastern Road vicinity tonight. If the Shoe Man showed up, his team was going to be ready for him.

Dr Julius Proudfoot remained confident that he would.

As the meeting ended, an internal phone began ringing. Glenn Branson made his way towards the exit of the packed Conference Room to call Ari – he’d blocked one from her during the briefing. He knew why she was calling, which was to ask him to take the kids today. No chance, he thought sadly. Much though he would have given anything to have been able to.

But just as he stepped out through the doorway, Michael Foreman called out to him, ‘Glenn! For you!’

He squeezed back through the crowd of people leaving and picked up the receiver, which Foreman had laid on the table.

‘DS Branson,’ he answered.

‘Oh, yeah. Er, hello, Sergeant Branson.’

He frowned as he recognized the rough-sounding voice.

‘It’s
Detective
Sergeant Branson,’ he corrected.

‘Darren Spicer here. We met, at the—’

‘I know who you are.’

‘Look, I have – er – what you might call a delicate situation here.’

‘Lucky you.’

Branson was anxious to get him off the line and call Ari. She always hated it when he killed her incoming calls. He’d also found another unwelcome letter from her solicitor awaiting him at Roy Grace’s house, when he’d finally got home last night, or rather earlier this morning, and he wanted to talk to her about it.

Spicer gave him a half-hearted, uncertain laugh. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a problem. I need to ask you a question.’

‘Fine, ask it.’

‘Yeah, well, you see – I got this problem.’

‘You just told me that. What’s your question?’

‘Well, it’s like – if I said to you that I was, like – like, I saw something, right? Like – someone I know saw something, like, when they were somewhere that they shouldn’t ought to be? Yeah? If they, like, gave you information that you really needed, would you still prosecute them because they were somewhere they shouldn’t have been?’

‘Are you trying to tell me you were somewhere you shouldn’t have been and saw something?’

‘It wasn’t like I breached my licence restrictions or anything. It wasn’t like that.’

‘Do you want to come to the point?’

Spicer was silent for a moment, then said, ‘If I saw something that might help you catch your Shoe Man, would that give me immunity? You know, from prosecution.’

‘I haven’t got that power. Calling to collect the reward, are you?’

There was a sudden silence at the other end, then Spicer said, ‘
Reward?
’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Reward for what?’

‘The reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who attacked Mrs Dee Burchmore on Thursday afternoon. It’s been put up by her husband. Fifty thousand pounds.’

Another silence, then, ‘I didn’t know about that.’

‘No one does yet, he only informed us this morning. We’re about to pass it on to the local media, so you’ve got a head start. So, anything you’d like to tell me?’

‘I don’t want to go back inside. I want to stay out, you know, try to make a go of it,’ Spicer said.

‘If you’ve got information, you could call
Crimestoppers
anonymously and give it to them. They’ll pass it on to us.’

‘I wouldn’t get the reward then, would I, if it was anonymous?’

‘Actually, I believe you might. But you’re aware that withholding information’s an offence, aren’t you?’ Branson said.

Instantly he detected the panic rising in the old lag’s voice.

‘Yeah, but wait a minute. I’m phoning you, to be helpful, like.’

‘Very altruistic of you.’

‘Very what?’

‘I think you’d better tell me what you know.’

‘What about if I just give you an address? Would that qualify me for the reward if you find something there?’

‘Why don’t you stop fucking about and tell me what you have?’