Dead Like You

calm. The roar of traffic made it hard to hear him distinctly.
    ‘I want you to give a message to Detective Superintendent Grace ,’ the man said.
    Then they could hear Nick Nicholl’s voice replying. ‘ Yes, sir. May I say who’s calling? ’
    Nothing for some moments, except the almost deafening wail of a passing siren, then the man’s voice again, this time louder: ‘ Tell him it’s not small, actually. ’
    It was followed by a loud clattering sound, a sharp click and the line went dead.
    No one smiled.
    ‘Is this real or a hoax?’ Norman Potting asked.
    After a few moments Dr Julius Proudfoot said, ‘I’d put my money on that being real, from the way he spoke.’
    ‘Can we hear it again, boss?’ Michael Foreman asked.
    Grace replayed the tape. When it finished, he turned to Proudfoot. ‘Anything you can tell us from that?’
    The forensic psychologist nodded. ‘Well, yes, quite a bit. The first thing, assuming it is him, is that you’ve clearly succeeded in rattling his cage. That’s why I think it’s real, not a hoax. There’s genuine anger in the voice. Full of emotion.’
    ‘That was my intention, to rattle his cage.’
    ‘You can hear it in his voice, in the way the cadence rises,’ the forensic psychologist went on. ‘He’s all bottled up with anger. And the fact that it sounded like he fumbled replacing the receiver – probably shaking so much with rage. I can tell also that he’s nervous, feeling under pressure – and that you’ve struck a chord. Is that information about him true? Something that’s been obtained from statements by the victims?’
    ‘Not in so many words, but yes, reading between the lines of the witness statements from back in 1997 and now.’
    ‘What’s your reasoning for giving that to the Argus , Roy?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.
    ‘Because I suspect this creep thinks he’s very clever. He got away with his attacks before and now he’s confident he’s going to get away with these new ones too. If Dr Proudfoot is right and he committed the ghost train rape as well, then he’s clearly stepping up both the speed and the brazenness of his attacks. I wanted to lance his ego a little and hopefully get him into a strop. People who are angry are more likely to make mistakes.’
    ‘Or be more brutal to their victims,’ Bella Moy said. ‘Isn’t that a risk?’
    ‘If he killed last time, Bella, which I think is likely,’ Grace replied, ‘there’s a high risk he’ll kill again, strop or no strop. When someone has taken a life once, they’ve crossed a personal Rubicon. It’s far easier the second time. Particularly if they found they enjoyed it the first time. We’re dealing with a nasty, warped freak here – and someone who’s not stupid. We need to find ways to trip him up. I don’t just want him not being more brutal to a victim – I want him not to have another victim, full stop. We have to catch him before he attacks again.’
    ‘Anyone figure out his accent?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
    ‘Sounds local to me,’ DC Foreman said, ‘but difficult with that background noise. Can we get the recording enhanced?’
    ‘That’s being worked on now,’ Grace replied. Then he turned to Proudfoot. ‘Can you estimate the man’s age from this?’
    ‘That’s a hard one – anywhere between thirty and fifty, I’d guess,’ he said. ‘I think you need to run this through a lab, somewhere like J. P. French, which specializes in speaker profiling. There’s quite a bit of information they could get us from a call like this. Probably the man’s regional and ethnic background, for a start.’
    Grace nodded. He’d used the specialist firm before and the results had been helpful. He could also get a voiceprint from the lab that would be as unique as a fingerprint or DNA. But could they do it in the short amount of time he believed he had?
    ‘There have been mass DNA screenings in communities,’ Bella Moy said. ‘What about trying something like that in Brighton with the voiceprint?’
    ‘So all we’d have to do, Bella,’ Norman Potting said, ‘is get every bloke in Brighton and Hove to say the same words. There’s only a hundred and forty thousand or so males in the city. Shouldn’t take us more than about ten years.’
    ‘Could you play it again, boss, please,’ said Glenn Branson, who’d been very quiet. ‘Wasn’t it that movie, The Conversation , with Gene Hackman, where they worked out where someone was from the traffic noise in the