Dead Like You (6 page)

14

Saturday 3 January

Ask people to recall where they were and what they were doing at the moment –
the exact moment
– they heard about the planes striking the Twin Towers on 9/11, or about Princess Diana’s death, or that John Lennon had been shot or, if they are old enough, that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and most will be able to tell you, with crystal clarity.

Roxy Pearce was different. The defining moments in her life came on those days when she finally bought the shoes that she had been lusting after. She could tell you exactly what was happening in the world on the day she acquired her first Christian Louboutins. Her first Ferragamos. Her first Manolo Blahniks.

But today, all those gleaming leather treasures languishing in her cupboards paled into insignificance as she strutted around the grey-carpeted floor of Brighton’s Ritzy Shoes emporium.

‘Oh yes! Oh, God, yes!’

She looked at her ankles. Pale, slightly blue from the veins beneath the surface, they were too thin and bony. Never before her best feature, today they were transformed. They were, she had to admit, one pair of drop-dead-beautiful ankles. The thin black straps wrapped themselves like sensuous, living, passionate fronds around the white skin either side of the protruding bone.

She was sex on legs!

She stared in the mirror. Sex on legs stared back at her! Sleek black hair, a great figure, she definitely looked a lot younger than a woman three months short of her thirty-seventh birthday.

‘What do you think?’ she said to the assistant, staring at her reflection again. At the tall stilettos, the curved sole, the magical black gloss of the leather.

‘They were made for you!’ the confident thirty-year-old salesgirl said. ‘They were just absolutely made for you!’

‘I think so!’ Roxy squealed. ‘You think so too?’

She was so excited that several people in the shop glanced round at her. Brighton was busy this first Saturday morning of the new year. The bargain hunters were out in force as the Christmas sales headed into their second week and some prices came down even more.

One customer in the shop did not glance round. Anyone looking would have seen an elegantly dressed middle-aged woman with a long dark coat over a high roll-neck jumper and expensive-looking high-heeled boots. Only if they peeled back the top of the roll-neck would they have spotted the giveaway Adam’s apple.

The man in drag did not glance round, because he was already looking at Roxy. He had been observing her discreetly from the moment she’d asked to try on those shoes.

‘Jimmy Choo just has it!’ the assistant said. ‘He really knows what works.’

‘And you really do think these look good on me? They’re not very easy to walk in.’

Roxy was nervous. Well, £485 was a lot of money, particularly at the moment, when her husband’s software solutions business was in near meltdown and her own small PR agency was barely washing its face.

But she had to have them!

OK, £485 could buy an awful lot of things.

But none would give her the pleasure of these shoes!

She wanted to show them off to her friends. But more than anything she wanted to wear them for Iannis, her crazily sexy lover of just six weeks. OK, not the first lover she’d had in twelve years of marriage, but the best, oh yes. Oh yes!

Just thinking about him brought a big grin to her face. Then a twist of pain in her heart. She had been through it all twice before and knew she should have learned from experience. Christmas was the worst time for lovers having an affair. It was when workplaces shut down and most people got drawn into family stuff. Although they had no kids of their own – neither she nor Dermot had ever wanted any – she’d been forced to accompany her husband to his family in Londonderry for four whole days over Christmas, and then another four, following straight on, with her parents –
the ageing Ps
, as Dermot called them – in the remote wilds of Norfolk.

On the one day they had planned to meet, before the end of the year, Iannis, who owned two Greek restaurants in Brighton and a couple more in Worthing and Eastbourne, had had to fly unexpectedly to Athens to visit his father, who’d had a heart attack.

This afternoon they were going to be seeing each other for the first time since the day before Christmas Eve – and it felt more like a month. Two months. A year. Forever! She longed for him. Yearned for him. Craved him.

And, she had now decided, she wanted to wear these shoes for him!

Iannis was into feet. He loved to take off her shoes, breathe in their scents, smell them all over, then inhale, as if he was tasting a fine wine in front of a proud sommelier. Maybe he’d like her to keep her Jimmy Choos on today! The thought was turning her on so much she was feeling dangerously moist.

‘You know the great thing with these shoes is you can dress up or down with them,’ the assistant continued. ‘They look terrific with your jeans.’

‘You think so?’

It was a stupid question. Of
course
the assistant thought so. She was going to say they looked good on her if she came in wrapped in a bin liner full of sardine heads.

Roxy was wearing these leg-hugging, ripped DKNYs because Iannis said she had a great arse in jeans. He liked to unzip them and pull them slowly down, telling her in that rich, deep accent of his that it was like unpeeling beautiful ripe fruit. She liked all the romantic tosh he spoke. Dermot never did anything sexy these days. His idea of foreplay was to walk across the bedroom in his socks and Y-fronts and fart twice.

‘I do!’ the assistant said earnestly.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any discount on these? Not part of the sale or anything?’

‘I’m afraid not, no. I’m sorry. They are new stock, only just in.’

‘That’s my luck!’

‘Would you like to see the handbag that goes with them?’

‘I’d better not,’ she said. ‘I daren’t.’

But the assistant showed it to her anyway. And it was gorgeous. Roxy rapidly reached the conclusion that, having seen the two together, the shoes now looked quite naked without the bag. If she didn’t buy that bag, she would regret it later, she knew.

Because the shop was so busy, and because her thoughts were totally on how she could keep the receipt concealed from Dermot, she took no notice at all of any of the other customers, including the one in the roll-neck jumper, who was examining a pair of shoes a short distance behind her. Roxy was thinking she’d have to grab her credit card statement when it came in and burn it. And anyway, it was her own money, wasn’t it?

‘Are you on our mailing list, madam?’ the assistant asked.

‘Yes.’

‘If you could let me have your postcode I’ll bring your details up.’

She gave it to the assistant, who tapped it into the computer beside the till.

Behind Roxy, the man jotted something down quickly on a small electronic notepad. Moments later her address appeared. But the man didn’t need to read the screen.

‘Mrs Pearce, 76 The Droveway?’

‘That’s right,’ Roxy said.

‘Right. That’s a total of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-three pounds. How would you like to pay?’

Roxy handed over her credit card.

The man in drag slipped out of the shop, swinging his hips. He actually had developed, with much practice, quite a sexy walk, he thought. He was absorbed into the teeming mass of shoppers in the Brighton Lanes within moments, his heels clicking on the dry, cold pavement.

15

Saturday 3 January

It was always quiet in these anticlimactic days following New Year’s Eve. It was the end of the holidays, people were back to work, and more broke this year than usual. It was hardly surprising, thought PC Ian Upperton of the Brighton and Hove Road Policing Unit, that there weren’t many people out and about on this freezing January Saturday afternoon, despite the sales being in full swing.

His colleague, PC Tony Omotoso, was behind the wheel of the BMW estate, heading south in the falling darkness, past Rotting-dean pond and then on down towards the seafront, where he turned right at the lights. The south-westerly wind, straight off the Channel, buffeted the car. It was 4.30 p.m. One final cruise along above the cliffs, past St Dunstan’s home for blind servicemen and Roedean school for posh girls, then along the seafront and back up to their base for a cup of tea, and wait there on the radio for the remainder of their shift.

There were some days, Upperton felt, when you could almost feel electricity in the air and you knew things were going to happen. But he felt nothing this afternoon. He looked forward to getting home, seeing his wife and kids, taking the dogs for a walk, then a quiet evening in front of the telly. And to the next three days, which he had off.

As they drove up the hill, where the 30-mph limit gave way to a 50-mph one, a little Mazda MX-2 sports car roared past them in the outside lane, way too fast.

‘Is the driver effing blind?’ Tony Omotoso said.

Drivers usually braked when they saw a police patrol car, and not many dared to pass a police car, even when it was being driven at several miles per hour under the limit. The Mazda driver had either stolen it, was a headcase or had simply not seen them. It was pretty hard not to see them, even in the gloom, with the luminous Battenberg markings and
POLICE
in high-visibility lettering covering every panel of the car.

The tail lights were rapidly pulling away into the distance.

Omotoso floored the accelerator. Upperton leaned forward, switched on the flashing lights, siren and onboard speed camera, then tugged on his shoulder strap, to take the slack out of it. His colleague’s pursuit-driving always made him nervous.

They caught up with the Mazda rapidly, clocking it at 75 mph before it slowed going down the dip towards the roundabout. Then, to their astonishment, it accelerated away again, hard, as it left the roundabout. The ANPR fixed to the dashboard, which automatically read all number plates in front of it and fed the information into the government-licensing computer, remained silent, indicating that the car had not been reported stolen and that its paperwork was in order.

This time the speed camera dial showed 81 mph.

‘Time for a chat,’ said Upperton.

Omotoso accelerated directly behind the Mazda, flashing his headlights. This was a moment when they always wondered whether a car would try to do a runner, or be sensible and stop.

Brake lights came on sharply. The left-hand indicator began winking, then the car pulled over. From the silhouette they could see through the rear window, there appeared to be just one occupant, a female driver. She was looking over her shoulder anxiously at them.

Upperton switched the siren off, left the blue lights flashing and switched on the emergency red hazard flashers. Then he got out of the car and, pushing against the wind, walked around to the driver’s door, keeping a wary eye out for cars coming along the road behind them.

The woman wound down the window part-way and peered out at him nervously. She was in her early forties, he guessed, with a mass of frizzed hair around a rather severe, but not unattractive, face. Her lipstick seemed to have been put on clumsily and her mascara had run, as if she had been crying.

‘I’m sorry, Officer,’ she said, her voice sounding edgy and slurred. ‘I think I might have been going a bit fast.’

Upperton knelt to get as close to her face as possible, in order to smell her breath. But he didn’t need to. If he’d lit a match at this moment, flames would have probably shot out of her mouth. There was also a strong smell of cigarette smoke in the car.

‘Got bad eyesight, have you, madam?’

‘No – er – no. I had my eyes tested quite recently. My vision’s near perfect.’

‘So you always overtake police cars at high speed, do you?’

‘Oh, bugger, did I? I didn’t see you! I’m sorry. I’ve just had a row with my ex-husband – we’ve got a business together, you see. And I—’

‘Have you been drinking, madam?’

‘Just a glass of wine – at lunchtime. Just one small glass.’

It smelt more like she’d drunk an entire bottle of brandy to him.

‘Could you switch your engine off, madam, and step out of the car. I’m going to ask you to take a breath test.’

‘You’re not going to book me, are you, Officer?’ She slurred even more than before now. ‘You see – I need the car for my business. I’ve already got some points on my licence.’

No surprise there, he thought.

She unclipped her seat belt, then clambered out. Upperton had to put his arm out to stop her staggering further into the road. It was unnecessary to get her to blow into the machine, he thought. All he needed to do was hold it within a twenty-yard radius and the reading would go off the scale.

1979

16

Friday 9 March

‘Johnny!’ his mother bellowed from her bedroom. ‘Shut up! Shut that noise up! Do you hear me?’

Standing on the chair in his bedroom, he removed another of the nails clenched between his lips, held it against the wall and struck it with his claw hammer.
Blam! Blam! Blam!

‘JOHNNY, BLOODY WELL STOP THAT NOISE! NOW! STOP IT!’ She was screaming now.

Lying neatly on the floor, exactly the same distance apart, were each of his prized collection of high-flush lavatory chains. All fifteen of them. He’d found them in skips around Brighton – well, all except two, which he had stolen from toilets.

He took another nail from his mouth. Lined it up. Began hammering.

His mother ran into the room, reeking of Shalimar perfume. She wore a black silk camisole, fish-net stockings with suspenders not yet fastened, harsh make-up and a wig of blonde ringlets that was slightly askew. She was standing on one black stiletto-heeled shoe and holding the other in her hand, raised, like a weapon.

‘DO YOU HEAR ME?’

Ignoring her, he began hammering.

‘ARE YOU BLEEDIN’ DEAF? JOHNNY?’

‘I’m not Johnny,’ he mumbled through the nails, continuing to hammer. ‘I am
Yac
. I have to hang my chains up.’

Holding the shoe by the toe, she slammed the stiletto into his thigh. With a yelp like a whipped dog, he fell sideways and crashed to the floor. Instantly she was kneeling over him, raining down blows on him with the sharp tip of the heel.

‘You are not Yac, you are Johnny! Understand? Johnny Kerridge.’

She hit him again, then again. And again.

‘I am Yac! The doctor said so!’

‘You stupid boy! You’ve driven your father away and now you’re driving me crazy. The doctor did not say so!’

‘The doctor wrote Yac!’

‘The doctor wrote
YAC – Young Autistic Child
– on his sodding notes! That’s what you are. Young,
useless
, sodding pathetic autistic child! You are Johnny Kerridge. Got it?’

‘I am Yac!’

He curled himself up in a protective ball as she brandished the shoe. His cheek was bleeding from where she had struck him. He breathed in her dense, heady perfume. She had a big bottle on her dressing table and she once told him it was the classiest perfume a woman could wear, and that he should appreciate he had such a high-class mother. But she wasn’t being classy now.

Just as she was about to strike him again the front doorbell rang.

‘Oh shit!’ she said. ‘See what you’ve done? You’ve made me late, you stupid child!’ She hit him again on the thigh, so hard it punctured his thin denim trousers. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

She ran out of the room, shouting, ‘Go and let him in. Make him wait downstairs!’

She slammed her bedroom door.

Yac picked himself up, painfully, from the floor and limped out of his room. He walked slowly, deliberately, unhurriedly down the staircase of their terraced two-up, two-down on the edge of the Whitehawk housing estate. As he reached the bottom step, the doorbell rang again.

His mother shouted, ‘Open the door! Let him in! I don’t want him going away. We need it!’

With blood running down his face, seeping through his T-shirt in several places and through his trousers, Yac grumpily limped up to the front door and reluctantly pulled it open.

A plump, perspiring man in an ill-fitting grey suit stood there, looking awkward. Yac stared at him. The man stared back and his face reddened. Yac recognized him. He’d been here before, several times.

He turned and shouted back up the stairs, ‘Mum! It’s that smelly man you don’t like who’s come to fuck you!’