Dead Like You (16 page)

41

Saturday 10 January

Every time she bought a pair of shoes, Dee Burchmore got a guilty thrill. There was no need to feel guilty, of course. Rudy encouraged her to dress smart, to look great! As a senior executive of American & Oriental Banking, over here at its lavish new Brighton headquarters on a five-year posting to establish a foothold for the company in Europe, money was no object at all to her husband.

She was proud of Rudy and she loved him. She loved his ambitions to show the world that, in the wake of the financial scandals that had dogged US banking in recent years, it was possible to show a caring face. Rudy was attacking the UK mortgage market with zeal, offering deals to first-time buyers that none of the British lenders, still smarting from the financial meltdown, was prepared to consider. And she had an important role in this, in public relations.

In the time Dee had in between taking their two children, Josh, aged eight, and Chase, aged six, to school and then collecting them, Rudy had tasked her with networking as hard as she could within the city. He wanted her to find charities to which American & Oriental could make significant contributions – and, of course, gain significant publicity as benefactors to the city. It was a role she relished.

A respectable golfer, she had joined the ladies’ section of the city’s most expensive golf club, the North Brighton. She had become a member of what she had gleaned was the most influential of Brighton’s numerous Rotary Clubs and she had volunteered for the committees of several of the city’s major charitable institutions, including the Martlet’s Hospice. Her most recent appointment was to the fund-raising committee of Brighton and Hove’s principal hostel for the homeless, St Patrick’s, where they had a unique facility, offering Japanese-style pods to homeless people, including prisoners out on licence who were actively involved in retraining.

She stood in the small shop, watching the assistant wrap her beautiful blue Manolos in tissue, then carefully lay them in the box. She could not wait to get home and try her dress on with these shoes and bag. She knew they were going to look sensational. Just the thing to give her confidence next week.

Then she glanced at her watch: 3.30. Shit! It had taken longer than she thought. She was late for her appointment at the Nail Studio in Hove, on the other side of the city. She hurried out of the stop, barely clocking the weird-looking woman with lopsided blonde hair who was staring at something on display in the shop window.

She never once looked behind her all the way to the car park.

If she had, she might just have noticed this same woman following her.

1998

42

Tuesday 6 January

It was shortly after 10 p.m. when Roy Grace flicked the right-turn indicator. Driving faster than was sensible in the pelting rain because he was so late, he nearly lost the back end of the car on the slippery tarmac as he swung off wide, quiet New Church Road into the even quieter residential street that led down to Hove seafront, where he and Sandy lived.

The elderly 3-Series BMW creaked and groaned, and the brakes made a scraping noise in protest. The car was months overdue for a service, but he was even more broke than ever, thanks in part to an insanely expensive diamanté tennis bracelet he had bought Sandy for a surprise for Christmas, and the service was going to have to wait a few more months yet.

Out of habit, he clocked each of the vehicles parked in the driveways and on the street, but there was nothing that seemed out of place. As he neared his home, he carefully checked those isolated patches of darkness where the orange haze of the street lighting did not quite reach.

One thing about being a copper, arresting villains and usually facing them in court months later, you never knew who might harbour a grudge against you. It was rare that revenge attacks happened, but Grace knew a couple of colleagues who had received anonymous hate mail, and one whose wife had found a death threat against her carved on a tree in her local park. It was not a worry you lost sleep over, but it was an occupational hazard. You tried to keep your address a secret, but villains had ways of finding out such things. You could never, ever totally let your guard down, and that was something Sandy resented about him.

It particularly irked her that Roy always picked a pub or restaurant table that gave him the best possible view of the room and the door, and that he always tried to sit with his back against the wall.

He smiled as he saw the downstairs lights of his house were on, which meant Sandy was still up, although he was a little sad to see the Christmas lights were now gone. He turned right on to the driveway and stopped in front of the integral garage door. Sandy’s even more clapped-out little black Golf would be parked inside, in the dry.

This house was Sandy’s dream. Shortly before she had found it, she had missed a period and their hopes had risen, only to be dashed a few weeks later. It had plunged her into a deep depression – so much so that he had become seriously worried about her. Then she rang him at the office, to say she had found a house. It was beyond their budget, she’d told him, but it had such great potential. He would love it!

They’d bought the four-bedroom semi just over a year ago. It was a big jump up the property ladder from the small flat in Hangleton where they had first lived after their marriage, and a financial stretch for both of them. But Sandy had set her heart on the house, and she’d convinced Roy they should go for it. He’d agreed against his better judgement, and knew the real reason he had said yes. It was because he could see how desperately unhappy Sandy was because of her inability to conceive and he wanted so much to please her, somehow.

Now he switched off the engine and climbed out into the freezing, pelting rain, feeling exhausted. He leaned in again, lifted the bulging attaché case containing a ton of files he needed to read through tonight off the passenger seat, hurried up to the front door and let himself in.

‘Hi, darling!’ he called out as he entered the hallway. It looked strangely bare without the Christmas decorations.

He heard the sound of voices from the television. There was a tantalizing aroma of cooking meat. Ravenous, he shrugged off his mackintosh, hung it on an antique coat rack they’d bought from a stall on the Kensington Street market, plonked his case down and walked into the living room.

Sandy, in a thick dressing gown and covered in a blanket, was lying on the sofa, cradling a glass of red wine and watching the news. A reporter was standing, holding a microphone, in a gutted, torched village.

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said.

He smiled at her. She looked so beautiful, with her damp hair carelessly hanging around her face, and no make-up. That was one of the things he loved most of all about her, that she looked just as good without make-up as with it. Always an early riser, he loved some mornings to lie awake in bed for a few minutes, just watching her face.

‘Sorry about what’s happening in Kosovo?’ she retorted.

He bent down and kissed her. She smelt of soap and shampoo.

‘No, for being so late. I was going to help you with the decorations.’

‘Why aren’t you sorry about Kosovo?’

‘I am sorry about Kosovo,’ he said. ‘I’m also sorry about Rachael Ryan, who’s still missing, and I’m sorry for her parents and her sister.’

‘Are they more important to you than Kosovo?’

‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘And I’m starving.’

‘I’ve already eaten, I couldn’t wait any longer.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m sorry about Kosovo. I’m sorry about every damned problem in the world that I can’t deal with.’

He knelt and pulled a bottle of Glenfiddich from the drinks cabinet, then, as he carried it out to the kitchen, she called after him, ‘I’ve left you a plate of lasagne in the microwave and there’s salad in the fridge.’

‘Thanks,’ he called back.

In the kitchen he poured himself four fingers of whisky, popped in some ice cubes, retrieved his favourite glass ashtray from the dishwasher and went back into the living room. He pulled off his jacket, then removed his tie and plonked himself down in his armchair as she was taking up the whole sofa. He lit a Silk Cut cigarette.

Almost instantly, like a Pavlovian reaction, Sandy batted away imaginary smoke.

‘So, how was your day?’ he asked. Then he reached down and picked a pine needle off the floor.

A young, attractive woman with spiky black hair and wearing battle fatigues appeared on the screen, against a background of burnt buildings. She was holding a microphone and talking to camera about the terrible human cost of the war in Bosnia.

‘That’s the Angel of Mostar,’ Sandy said, nodding at the screen. ‘Sally Becker – she’s from Brighton. She’s doing something about the war there. What are you doing about it, Detective Sergeant, hoping soon to be
Detective Inspector
, Grace?’

‘I’ll start dealing with the war in Bosnia, and all the other problems of the world, when we’ve won the war in Brighton, which is the one I’m paid to fight.’ He put the pine needle in the ashtray.

Sandy shook her head. ‘You don’t get it, do you, my love? That young woman, Sally Becker, is a hero – rather, a
heroine
.’

He nodded. ‘She is, yes. The world needs people like her. But—’

‘But what?’

He dragged on his cigarette and then sipped his whisky, feeling the burning, warming sensation deep in his gullet.

‘No one person can solve all the problems in the world.’

She turned towards him. ‘OK, so talk me through the one you’ve been solving.’ She turned the volume on the television down.

He shrugged.

‘Come on, I want to hear. You never tell me about your work. You always ask me about my day and I tell you about all the weirdo people I have to deal with who come into the medical centre. But every time I ask you, I get some crap about confidentiality. So,
soon-to-be Detective Inspector
, tell me about
your
day for a change. Tell me why for ten nights running you’ve left me to eat on my own, yet again. Tell me. Remember our wedding vows. Wasn’t there something about not having secrets?’

‘Sandy,’ he said. ‘Come on! I don’t need this!’

‘No, you
come on
for a change. Tell me about your day. Tell me how the search for Rachael Ryan is going.’

He took another deep drag on his cigarette. ‘It’s going bloody nowhere,’ he said.

Sandy smiled. ‘Well, there’s a first! Don’t think I’ve ever heard you be so honest in all the years we’ve been married. Thank you,
soon-to-be Detective Inspector
!’

He grinned. ‘Shut up about that. I might not get through.’

‘You will. You’re the force’s blue-eyed boy. You’ll get the promotion. You know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because it means more to you than your marriage.’

‘Sandy! Come on, that’s—’

He laid his cigarette in the ashtray, jumped up from his chair, sat on the edge of the sofa and tried to put an arm around her, but she resisted.

‘Go on. Tell me about your day,’ she said. ‘I want every detail. If you truly love me, that is. I’ve never actually heard a minute-by-minute account of your day before. Not once.’

He stood up again and crushed the cigarette out, then moved the ashtray to the table beside the sofa and sat back down.

‘I’ve spent the whole day looking for this young woman, all right? Just as I’ve been doing for the past week.’

‘Yeah, fine, but what did that entail?’

‘You really want to know the details?’

‘Yes, I do. I really want to know the details. You have a problem with that?’

He lit another cigarette and inhaled. Then, with the smoke jetting from his mouth, he said, ‘I went round with a detective sergeant – a guy called Norman Potting, he’s not the most tactful officer in the force – to see the missing woman’s parents again. They’re in a terrible state, as you can imagine. We tried to reassure them about all we were doing, and took down every detail they could give us about their daughter that they might not already have done. Potting managed to upset them both.’

‘How?’

‘By asking a lot of awkward questions about her sex life. They needed to be asked – but there are ways of doing it …’

He took another sip of his drink and another drag, then laid the cigarette down in the ashtray. She was looking at him inquisitively.

‘And then?’

‘You really want to hear everything else?’

‘I do, I really want to hear everything else.’

‘OK, so we’ve been trying to prise out of them everything about Rachael’s life. Did she have any friends or close work colleagues we haven’t already talked to? Had anything like this ever happened before? We tried to build up a picture of her habits.’

‘What were her habits?’

‘Phoning her parents every day, without fail. That’s the most significant one.’

‘And now she hasn’t phoned them for ten days?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is she dead, do you think?’

‘We’ve checked her bank accounts to see if any money’s been withdrawn and it hasn’t. She has a credit card and debit card, and no transactions have taken place since the day before Christmas Eve.’

He drank some more whisky and was surprised to find that he’d emptied the glass. Ice cubes tumbled against his lips as he drained the last drops.

‘She’s either being held against her will or she’s dead,’ Sandy said flatly. ‘People don’t just vanish off the face of the earth.’

‘They do,’ he said. ‘Every day. Thousands of people every year.’

‘But if she had that close connection to her parents, she wouldn’t want to hurt them deliberately, like this, surely?’

He shrugged.

‘What does your copper’s nose tell you?’

‘That it doesn’t smell good.’

‘What happens next?’

‘We’re widening the search, the house-to-house enquiries are expanding to cover a bigger area, we’re drafting in more officers. We’re searching the parks, the waste dumps, the surrounding countryside. CCTV footage is being examined. Checks are being made at all stations, harbours and airports. Her friends are being questioned and her ex-fiancé. And we’re using a criminal psychologist – a profiler – to help.’

After some moments Sandy asked, ‘Is this the shoe rapist again, do you think? The Shoe Man?’

‘She’s mad about shoes, apparently. But this is not his MO. He’s never taken one of his victims.’

‘Didn’t you once tell me that criminals get bolder and more violent – that it’s an escalating thing?’

‘That’s true. The guy who starts out as a harmless flasher can turn into a violent rapist. So can a burglar, as he gets bolder.’

Sandy sipped her wine. ‘I hope you find her quickly and that she’s OK.’

Grace nodded. ‘Yup,’ he said quietly. ‘I hope so too.’

‘Will you?’

He had no answer. Not, at least, the one she wanted to hear.