Dead Like You

to he hearing rather a lot of expressions this afternoon. ‘No?’
    ‘One thousand friends are too few; one enemy is too many.’
    Grace smiled. ‘So I should let it drop with Pewe, even if I suspect he may be our man?’
    ‘No, not at all. I want to start our working relationship on a footing of mutual trust. If you genuinely think he might be our offender, then you should arrest him and I’ll stand by you. But this is a politically sensitive issue and it won’t be too clever if we screw up.’
    ‘You mean if I screw up?’
    Rigg smiled. ‘You’ll be including myself and the Chief Constable in the screw-up, by association. That’s all I’m saying. Make very sure of your facts. There’ll be an awful lot of egg on our faces if you’re wrong.’
    ‘But even more if I’m right and another woman is attacked and we did nothing.’
    ‘Just make sure your evidence against him is as watertight as your logic.’

77
    Wednesday 14 January
    Roy Grace’s rapidly expanding team on Operation Swordfish was now too big to fit comfortably into MIR-1, so he held the 6.30 p.m. briefing in the Conference Room in the Major Incident Suite.
    The room could hold twenty-five people seated on the red chairs around the open-centred rectangular table and another thirty standing. One of its uses was for Major Crime briefings for press conferences, and it was to provide a visual backdrop for these that there stood, at the far end opposite the video screen, a concave, two-tone blue board, six feet high and ten feet wide, boldly carrying the Sussex Police website address and the Crimestoppers legend and phone number.
    The Detective Superintendent sat with his back to this, facing the door, as his team filed in, half of them on their phones. One of the last to enter was Norman Potting, who strutted in, looking very pleased with himself.
    At 6.30 sharp, Roy Grace opened the meeting by announcing, ‘Team, before I start on the agenda, DS Potting has some news for us.’ He gestured to him to begin.
    Potting coughed, then said, ‘I’m pleased to report I’ve arrested a suspect.’
    ‘Brilliant!’ Michael Foreman said.
    ‘He’s in custody now while we continue a search of his home, a houseboat moored on the Adur at Shoreham Beach.’
    ‘Who is he, Norman?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
    ‘John Kerridge, the man I mentioned at this morning’s briefing. A local taxi driver. Calls himself by a nickname, Yac. We conducted a search of his premises and discovered a cache of eighty-seven pairs of ladies’ high-heeled shoes concealed in bags in the bilges.’
    ‘Eighty-seven pairs?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood said, astonished.
    ‘There may be more. The search is continuing,’ he said. ‘I suspect we’re going to find the ones taken from our first two victims – and past ones.’
    ‘You don’t have those yet?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
    ‘No, but we’ll find ’em. He’s got a whole stack of current newspaper cuttings about the Shoe Man that we’ve seized, as well as a wodge of printouts from the Internet on the Shoe Man back in 1997.’
    ‘He lives alone?’ Bella Moy asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Any wife? Separated? Girlfriend, or boyfriend?’
    ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’
    ‘What reason did he give for having these cuttings – and the shoes?’ she asked.
    ‘He didn’t. When I asked him that question he went into a sulk and refused to speak. We also found a large number of toilet chains concealed, as well as the shoes, which he got extremely agitated about.’
    Branson frowned, then made a flushing movement with his arm. ‘Toilet chains? You mean as in bog chains, right?’
    Potting nodded.
    ‘Why?’ Branson continued.
    Potting looked around, a little hesitantly, and then stared at Roy Grace. ‘Dunno if it’s politically correct to say it – um – chief.’
    ‘The suspense is killing us,’ Grace replied, with good humour.
    Potting tapped the side of his head. ‘He’s not got all his lights on.’
    There was a titter of laughter. Potting smiled proudly. Grace watched him, glad for this man to have shown his value to the team. But at the same time, he was thinking hard about Pewe, privately concerned that while this current suspect under arrest ticked a lot of boxes, he left one big unanswered question.
    He turned his attention back to DS Potting’s prisoner in custody. Great they had an arrest, and here was a story the Argus would lead with in the morning. But he was experienced enough to know there was a big gap between