Dead Like You

them.
    The Outside Inquiry Team’s questioning of the managers and working girls at all thirty-two of the city’s known brothels was now complete and had produced nothing tangible so far. Several of their regular punters had shoe or feet fetishes, but as none of the managers kept names and addresses of their clientele, all they could do was promise to phone when any of them next made an appointment.
    It was looking more and more as if whatever the Shoe Man might have been up to during these past twelve years, he’d done a damned good job of keeping it quiet.
    Last night had also been quiet. The whole city had felt like a graveyard. Having partied hard over the Christmas holidays, it seemed that now its inhabitants, last night at least, were well and truly homebodies in recovery mode and feeling the bite of the recession. And despite his team’s long vigil, there had been no further sighting of taxi driver John Kerridge – Yac – since his earlier, brief appearance in the area.
    One positive was that Grace now had the full surveillance complement of thirty-five officers he needed to blanket cover the Eastern Road vicinity tonight. If the Shoe Man showed up, his team was going to be ready for him.
    Dr Julius Proudfoot remained confident that he would.
    As the meeting ended, an internal phone began ringing. Glenn Branson made his way towards the exit of the packed Conference Room to call Ari – he’d blocked one from her during the briefing. He knew why she was calling, which was to ask him to take the kids today. No chance, he thought sadly. Much though he would have given anything to have been able to.
    But just as he stepped out through the doorway, Michael Foreman called out to him, ‘Glenn! For you!’
    He squeezed back through the crowd of people leaving and picked up the receiver, which Foreman had laid on the table.
    ‘DS Branson,’ he answered.
    ‘Oh, yeah. Er, hello, Sergeant Branson.’
    He frowned as he recognized the rough-sounding voice.
    ‘It’s Detective Sergeant Branson,’ he corrected.
    ‘Darren Spicer here. We met, at the—’
    ‘I know who you are.’
    ‘Look, I have – er – what you might call a delicate situation here.’
    ‘Lucky you.’
    Branson was anxious to get him off the line and call Ari. She always hated it when he killed her incoming calls. He’d also found another unwelcome letter from her solicitor awaiting him at Roy Grace’s house, when he’d finally got home last night, or rather earlier this morning, and he wanted to talk to her about it.
    Spicer gave him a half-hearted, uncertain laugh. ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a problem. I need to ask you a question.’
    ‘Fine, ask it.’
    ‘Yeah, well, you see – I got this problem.’
    ‘You just told me that. What’s your question?’
    ‘Well, it’s like – if I said to you that I was, like – like, I saw something, right? Like – someone I know saw something, like, when they were somewhere that they shouldn’t ought to be? Yeah? If they, like, gave you information that you really needed, would you still prosecute them because they were somewhere they shouldn’t have been?’
    ‘Are you trying to tell me you were somewhere you shouldn’t have been and saw something?’
    ‘It wasn’t like I breached my licence restrictions or anything. It wasn’t like that.’
    ‘Do you want to come to the point?’
    Spicer was silent for a moment, then said, ‘If I saw something that might help you catch your Shoe Man, would that give me immunity? You know, from prosecution.’
    ‘I haven’t got that power. Calling to collect the reward, are you?’
    There was a sudden silence at the other end, then Spicer said, ‘ Reward? ’
    ‘That’s what I said.’
    ‘Reward for what?’
    ‘The reward for information leading to the arrest of the man who attacked Mrs Dee Burchmore on Thursday afternoon. It’s been put up by her husband. Fifty thousand pounds.’
    Another silence, then, ‘I didn’t know about that.’
    ‘No one does yet, he only informed us this morning. We’re about to pass it on to the local media, so you’ve got a head start. So, anything you’d like to tell me?’
    ‘I don’t want to go back inside. I want to stay out, you know, try to make a go of it,’ Spicer said.
    ‘If you’ve got information, you could call Crimestoppers anonymously and give it to them. They’ll pass it on to us.’
    ‘I wouldn’t get the reward then, would I, if it was anonymous?’
    ‘Actually, I believe you