Dead Like You

slot. He was about to press the Play button when the solicitor spoke.
    ‘DS Potting, before you waste too much of my client’s time, and my own, I think you should take a look at these, which were recovered from my client’s home on the Tom Newbound houseboat during the night.’
    He pushed a large brown envelope across the table to the Detective Sergeant.
    Hesitantly, Potting opened it and pulled out the contents.
    ‘Take your time,’ Acott said with an assurance that made Potting feel uneasy.
    The first item was an A4 printout, which he stared at. It was a receipt from an eBay transaction for a pair of Gucci high-heeled shoes.
    During the next twenty minutes, Norman Potting read, with increasing gloom, the receipts from second-hand clothes shops and eBay auctions for eighty-three of the eighty-seven pairs of shoes they had seized from the houseboat.
    ‘Can your client account for the last four pairs?’ Potting asked, sensing he was clutching at straws.
    ‘I am told that they were left in his taxi,’ Ken Acott said. ‘But as none of these, or any of the others, fit the descriptions of the ones in the recent series of attacks, I would respectfully ask that my client be released from custody immediately, so he does not suffer further loss of earnings.’
    Potting insisted on proceeding with the interview. But Acott made his client reply No comment to every question. After an hour and a half, Potting left to speak to Roy Grace. Then he returned and conceded defeat.
    ‘I’ll accept bailing him 47(3), to come back in two months while our enquiries are continuing,’ Potting suggested as a compromise.
    ‘He also wants his property returned to him,’ Ken Acott said. ‘Any reason why he shouldn’t have back the shoes and newspaper cuttings that were seized, his computer and his mobile phone?’
    Despite a tantrum from Kerridge, Potting insisted on retaining the shoes and the cuttings. The phone and the laptop were not a problem, as the High-Tech Crime Unit had extracted all they needed from the phone, and they had cloned the hard drive of the computer, which they would continue to analyse.
    Acott gave in on the shoes and cuttings, and twenty minutes later Yac was released. The solicitor drove him home with his computer and phone.

80
    Thursday 15 January
    It was a rush to get here and he had misjudged how heavy the seafront traffic would be. Unless he was imagining it, there seemed to be more police out than usual.
    He drove into the car park behind the Grand Hotel shortly after 3 p.m., worried she might have already left. In her new blue satin Manolos. Then, to his relief, he saw her black VW Touareg.
    It was in such a good place for his purposes. She could not have picked a better bay. Bless. It was one of the few areas on this level that was out of sight of any of the CCTV cameras in here.
    Even better, the space beside her was empty.
    And he had her car keys in his pocket. The spare set that he had found where he hoped he would, in a drawer in her hall table.
    Reversing the van in, he left enough space behind him to be able to open the rear doors. Then he hurriedly climbed out to check, aware he did not have much time, then looked around carefully. The car park was deserted.
    Dee Burchmore would be coming soon from her ladies’ luncheon, because she had to get home – she was hosting a meeting of the West Pier Trust there at 4 p.m. Then she was due back into the city centre for drinks in the Mayor’s Parlour at Brighton Town Hall at 7 p.m., where she was attending a Crimestoppers fund-raising event at the Police Museum. She was a model citizen, supporting lots of different causes in Brighton. And its shops.
    And she was such a good girl, posting all her schedules up on Facebook.
    He hoped she had not changed her mind and that she was wearing those blue satin Manolo Blahniks with the diamanté buckles. Women had a habit of changing their minds, which was one of the many things he did not like about them. He’d be very angry if she had different shoes on and would have to teach her a lesson about not disappointing people.
    Of course, he would punish her even more if she was wearing them.
    He pressed the door unlock button on the key fob. The indicators flashed and there was a quiet clunk . Then the interior light came on.
    He pulled the solid-feeling driver’s door open and climbed in, noticing the rich smell of the car’s leather upholstery and traces of her perfume, Armani Code.
    Glancing through