Dead Like You (44 page)

117

Monday 19 January

Glenn Branson was already waiting for Roy Grace in an unmarked car at the entrance to the industrial estate. He had the signed search warrants in his pocket.

The map they had studied earlier, in their hasty plan for this operation, showed there were only two possible routes in or out for vehicles visiting Garry Starling’s headquarters here for his two companies, Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services. Tucked discreetly out of sight, at this moment, were the vehicles of the team he had organized to carry out the arrest – when and if Starling turned up.

He already had four covert officers in place on the estate, in casual clothes. Parked up a side street, and ready to move in the moment Starling returned, were two dog-handler units to cover the exits to his office building. He had one of the Local Support Team vans, with six officers in body armour waiting inside it, plus four plain cars covering access to the network of roads linking into the industrial estate should Starling try to make a run for it.

Grace left his unmarked car parked in the next street along and climbed into Glenn Branson’s. He felt tense. Relieved, yet hurting from the confirmation of Rachael Ryan’s death. Thinking through the plan now. Plenty worried him.

‘Rock ’n’ roll?’

Grace nodded distractedly. The Shoe Man had never left DNA traces. His victims reported he had been unable to maintain an erection. Did this mean Garry Starling was not the Shoe Man? Or that killing Rachael Ryan – assuming he was the killer – had turned him on enough to ejaculate?

Why was he not in his office this morning?

If he had sex with a woman twelve years ago who was then found dead, how were they going to prove Starling was the killer? If indeed he was. What view would the Crown Prosecution Service take?

A million unanswered questions.

Just a growing certainty in his mind that the man who had murdered Rachael Ryan was the man who had abducted Jessie Sheldon. He desperately hoped he could do a better job of finding her alive – if there was still a chance – than he had done of finding Rachael Ryan. And that he would not be disinterring her from a grave in another twelve years’ time.

As they drove up to the smart front entrance of Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, he noticed the cars parked in allotted bays, and the empty one marked CEO. But what he was looking at more was the row of white vans bearing the companies’ joint logo.

It had been a white van that had driven off at speed from the car park on Thursday after the failed attack on Dee Burchmore. And a white van in which Rachael Ryan had been abducted twelve years ago.

They climbed out of the car and walked in through the front door. A middle-aged receptionist sat behind a curved desk with the two logos emblazoned on the front. To their right was a small seating area, with copies of
Sussex Life
and several of today’s papers, including the
Argus
, laid out.

Grace thought grimly that they probably wouldn’t be laying out tomorrow’s
Argus
, with the kind of headline it was likely to contain.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

Grace showed his warrant card. ‘Has Mr Starling come in yet?’

‘No – er, no, not yet,’ she said, looking flustered.

‘Would you say that’s unusual?’

‘Well, normally, on a normal Monday morning, he’s the first one in.’

Grace held the search warrant up and gave her a few seconds to read it. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises. I’d be grateful if you could find someone to show us around.’

‘I’ll – I’ll get the manager, sir.’

‘Fine. We’ll start. Tell him to find us.’

‘Yes – right – yes, I will. When Mr Starling turns up, shall I let you know?’

‘It’s OK,’ Grace replied. ‘We’ll know.’

She looked lost for an answer.

‘Where do we find your CCTV monitoring section?’ Grace asked.

‘That’s on the first floor. I’ll page Mr Addenberry and he can take you along.’

Glenn pointed at the door to the stairs. ‘First floor.’

‘Yes, you turn right. Keep going down the corridor, into the accounts department and then the call-handling and you’ll come to it.’

Both detectives loped up the stairs. Just as they reached the end of a corridor, with offices on either side, a short, nervous-looking and balding man in his early forties, in a grey suit with a row of pens in the top pocket, scuttled up to them.

‘Hello, gentlemen. How can I help you? I’m John Addenberry, the General Manager.’ He had a slightly smarmy voice.

When Grace explained who they were and about the search warrant, Addenberry started to look as if he was standing on a live electrical wire.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. Of course. We do a lot of work for Sussex Police. CID HQ are important customers. Very.’

He led the way through into the CCTV control room. Seated at a chair in front of a bank of twenty television monitors was a enormously overweight character, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform and greasy hair, and looking far too old to be sporting bum-fluff on his lip, Grace thought. A large Coca-Cola and a giant-size packet of Doritos sat on a table in front of him, next to a microphone and a small control panel, and a computer keyboard.

‘This is Dunstan Christmas,’ Addenberry said. ‘He’s the duty controller.’

But Grace had turned his attention away to the bank of monitors. And he frowned as he stared at one in particular. The front of a smart, ultra-modern house. Then he pointed. ‘No. 7 – is that 76 The Droveway, the home of Mr and Mrs Pearce?’

‘Yep,’ Christmas said. ‘She was raped, wasn’t she?’

‘I didn’t see any cameras when I was there.’

Christmas chewed a nail as he spoke. ‘No, you wouldn’t. I think in that house they’re all hidden.’

‘Why’s no one told me? There might be evidence on this from her attack,’ Grace said angrily.

Christmas shook his head. ‘No, wasn’t working that night. It was down from mid-afternoon. Didn’t go back up until the next morning.’

Grace stared at him hard and saw Branson doing the same thing. Was he hiding something? Or guileless? Then he stared back at the screen. The image had changed to the rear garden.

Down on the night she was attacked. The company was owned by their new prime suspect.

The coincidence was too much.

‘Do these often go down?’

Christmas shook his head and chewed on his nail again. ‘No. Very rarely. It’s a good system and there’s normally backup.’

‘But the backup wasn’t working on the night Mrs Pearce was attacked?’

‘That’s what I was told.’

‘What about that one there?’ Glenn Branson said, pointing at the blank screen numbered 20.

Grace nodded his head. ‘Yes, I was going to ask the same.’

‘Yep, that’s down at the moment.’

‘What’s the property that’s being covered?’

‘The old cement works at Shoreham,’ Christmas replied.

118

Monday 19 January

Jessie knew what she had to do, but as the moment approached her body went into panic mode and froze on her.

He was getting closer. Each clang of the rung slow, steady, determined. She could hear his breathing now. Getting closer. Closer. Nearing the top.

Above her she could hear a sound, like the clatter of that helicopter again. But she ignored it, not daring to be distracted. She turned, holding the knife in her hand, then finally dared to look down. And nearly dropped the knife in terror. He was only a few feet below her.

His right eyeball was at a grotesque angle, almost as if it was peering back into its own socket, half sunken in a gunge of coagulated blood and grey fluid, the whole socket encircled inside a livid purple bruise. The massive spanner protruded from the top pocket of his anorak and he was holding the rung with one hand, the carving knife with the other, staring up at her with an expression of utter hatred.

It was a long way down. Her brain was spinning. Trying to think clearly, to remember her instructions, but she’d never been taught how to kick in a situation like this. If she could plant both feet hard on his face she could dislodge him, she knew. It was her one chance.

In a swift moment, she squatted, fighting off the vertigo as she stared down, trying to concentrate on him and not the long drop below. She took all her weight on her hands, braced herself, bent her knees, then kicked as hard as she could, clinging to the slats of the grid with her fingers.

Instantly she felt a searing pain in the ball of her right foot.

Then, crying out in pain, she felt a vice-like clamp around her left ankle. He was pulling her. Pulling her. Trying to dislodge her. And she realized in this instant she had made a terrible mistake. He had jammed his knife into her right foot, let go of the rung and was now holding both her ankles. He was much stronger than he had looked. He was pulling her. Trying to dislodge her. He was being suicidal, she suddenly understood. Taking a gamble. Either he dislodged her and they both plunged together, or she was going to have to pull him up.

Then she felt another searing pain in the ball of her right foot, followed by an agonizing one in her right shin. And another. He was holding on with his left hand and slashing at her foot with the knife. Suddenly there was a terrible, terrible pain in the back of her right ankle and her foot felt powerless.

He had sawn through her Achilles tendon, she realized.

In desperation she jerked sharply backwards. And fell on to her back. He had let go.

She scrambled to her feet and promptly fell over again. She heard a clatter as her knife skidded away from her and then, to her horror, it plunged through the railings. Moments later she heard a
ping
a long way below her. Her right foot, in terrible agony, would not longer support her.

Oh, Jesus. Please help me.

He was hauling himself up over the edge, on to the grid, the carving knife still in his hand.

Trying desperately to think clearly despite her agony, she struggled to remember her training. This was a better position. Her left leg was still working.

He was on the gridded platform now, only feet away from her, on his knees and getting to his feet.

She lay still, watching him.

Watching the leer on his face. He was smiling again. Back in control. Coming after her.

Upright now, he towered over her, holding the knife, with blood on the blade, in his right hand and taking out the spanner from his top pocket with his left. He took a lurching step towards her, then raised the spanner.

In less than a second, she calculated, he would bring that spanner down on her head.

She bent her left knee, then kicked forward with every ounce of strength that remained in her body, visualizing a point a yard behind his right kneecap, heard the snap as she connected, driving her foot into the kneecap, just as she had driven that hockey stick all those years before into the knee of the school bully.

Saw the momentary shock in his face. Heard his hideous howl of pain as he fell over backwards, with an echoing clang, on to the grid. Then, hauling herself up with the help of the railings and holding on, began to hop, dragging her right foot, away from him.

‘Owwww! My knee! Owwwwww, you fucking, fucking, fucking bitch.’

There was a vertical ladder she’d seen earlier at the far end of this walkway. She lunged at it, not looking down, ignoring the height. Gripping the edge with both hands she half-hopped, half-slipped, down, down, down, down.

He still had not appeared above her.

Then, as she reached the bottom, a pair of hands gripped her waist.

She screamed in terror.

A calm, gentle, unfamiliar voice said, ‘Jessie Sheldon?’

She turned, quaking. And found herself staring at a tall man with silver wisps of hair either side of a black baseball cap. On the front of the cap was written the word police.

She fell into his arms, sobbing.

119

Friday 23 January

‘You’re unbelievable! You know that? You are un-fucking-believable! You know how much evidence there is against you? It’s un-fucking-believable! You filthy pervert! You – you monster!’

‘Keep your voice down,’ he replied, in a subdued tone.

Denise Starling stared at her husband, in his shapeless blue prison tracksuit, with the black patch over his right eye, sitting opposite her in the large, garishly furnished, open-plan visiting room. A camera watched them from the ceiling and a microphone was silently recording them. A blue plastic table separated them.

Either side of them, other prisoners talked with their loved ones and their relatives.

‘Have you read the papers?’ she demanded. ‘They’re linking you with the Shoe Man rapes back in 1997. You did those too, didn’t you?’

‘Keep your bloody voice down.’

‘Why? Are you afraid of what they might do to you in the remand wing? They don’t like perverts, do they? Do they bugger you with ladies’ shoes in the showers? You’d probably enjoy that.’

‘Be quiet, woman. We’ve got things to discuss.’

‘I’ve got nothing to discuss with you, Garry Starling. You’ve destroyed us. I always knew you were a sodding pervert. But I didn’t know you were a rapist and a murderer. Had a good time on the ghost train with her, did you? You took me on the ghost train on one of our first dates and jammed your finger up my fanny. Remember? Get your rocks off on the ghost train, do you?’

‘I didn’t go on any ghost train. It wasn’t me. Believe me!’

‘Yeah, right, believe you. Ha! Ha fucking ha!’

‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.’

‘Sure, right, and it wasn’t you at the cement works, was it? Just someone who looked like you.’

He said nothing.

‘All that tying me up shit. Making me do things with shoes while you watched and played with yourself.’

‘Denise!’

‘I don’t care. Let them all hear! You’ve ruined my life. Taken my best years. All that not wanting to have children because you had such an unhappy childhood shit. You’re a monster and you’re where you deserve to be. I hope you rot in hell. And you’d better get yourself a good solicitor, because I’m not standing by you. I’m going to take you for every penny I can.’

Then she began to sob.

He sat in silence. He had nothing to say. If it had been possible, he would have liked to lean over the table and strangle this bitch with his bare hands.

‘I thought you loved me,’ she sobbed. ‘I thought we could make a life together. I knew you were damaged, but I thought that if I loved you enough maybe I could change you. That I could offer you something that you never had.’

‘Give over!’

‘It’s true. You were honest with me once. Twelve years ago, when we married, you told me I was the only person who had given you peace in your life. Who understood you. You told me your mother made you screw her, because your father was impotent. That after that you were disgusted by women’s private parts, even my own. We went through all that psychology shit together.’

‘Denise, shut it!’

‘No, I won’t shut it. When we got to together I understood that shoes were the only things that turned you on. I accepted that because I loved you.’

‘Denise! Bitch! Shut it!’

‘We had so many good years. I didn’t realize I was marrying a monster.’

‘We had good times,’ he said suddenly. ‘Good times until recently. Then you changed.’

‘Changed? What do you mean changed? You mean I got fed up fucking myself with shoes? Is that what you mean by
changed
?’

He was silent again.

‘What’s my future?’ she said. ‘I’m now Mrs Shoe Man. Are you proud of that? That you’ve destroyed my life? You know our good friends, Maurice and Ulla? The ones we have dinner with every Saturday night at the China Garden? They’re not returning my calls.’

‘Maybe they never liked you,’ he replied. ‘Maybe it was me they liked and they just put up with you as my whingeing hag wife.’

Sobbing again, she said, ‘Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go home and kill myself. Will you care?’

‘Just do it properly,’ he said.