Dead Like You

it had been made by a parked vehicle dripping oil. Roy Grace detected a faint, car-park smell of warm vehicle. On the right-hand side of the far end wall was floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving. An old, bald-looking vehicle tyre was propped against the left-hand side. A couple of spanners and an old claw hammer hung from hooks on the wall to their left. But nothing else.
    Glenn stared gloomily into the void. ‘Having a laugh on us, is he?’
    Grace said nothing as he shone his torch around the walls, then the ceiling.
    ‘I’ll tear fucking Spicer’s head off!’ Glenn said.
    Then they both saw it at the same time, as the beam fell on the two plain, flat strips of plastic on the floor. They strode forward. Grace snapped on a pair of latex gloves, then knelt and picked the up first strip.
    It was a vehicle front registration plate, black lettering on a reflective white surface.
    He recognized the index instantly. It was the cloned registration on the van which had shot away from the Grand Hotel car park on Thursday afternoon, almost certainly driven by the Shoe Man.
    The second plastic strip was the rear plate.
    Had they found the Shoe Man’s lair?
    Grace walked across to the end wall. On one shelf was a row of grey duct-tape rolls. The rest of the shelves were bare.
    Glenn Branson started walking across to the left wall. Grace stopped him. ‘Don’t trample everywhere, mate. Let’s try to retrace our steps, leave it as clean as we can for SOCO – I want to get them in here right away.’
    He looked around carefully, thinking. ‘Do you think that’s what Spicer saw? These licence plates?’
    ‘I don’t think he’s smart enough to have put two and two together from just licence plates. I think he saw something else.’
    ‘Such as?’
    ‘He won’t talk unless we give him immunity. I have to say, at least he was smart relocking the door.’
    ‘I’ll speak to the ACC,’ Grace said, stepping as lightly as he could on the way back out. ‘We need to know what he saw in here. We need to know what might have been here that isn’t here now.’
    ‘You mean he could have nicked something?’
    ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think Spicer nicked what was in here. I think what he probably saw in here was a white van. An engine’s been running in here within the last few hours. If the van’s gone, then where the hell is it? And, more to the point, why’s it gone? Go and talk to him. Twist his arm. Tell him if he wants a crack at that reward, he has to tell us what he saw, otherwise no deal.’
    ‘He’s scared he’ll get banged up again for breaking and entering.’
    Grace looked at his mate. ‘Tell him to lie, to say that the door was open, unlocked. I’m not interested in nicking him for breaking and entering.’
    Branson nodded. ‘OK, I’ll go and talk to him. Just had a thought – if you put SOCO in and the Shoe Man returns and sees them, he’ll do a runner. Aren’t we smarter having someone covert watching it? Get Tunks to lock it up again so he doesn’t know we’ve been here?’
    ‘Assuming he’s not watching us now,’ Grace said.
    Branson glanced around, then up, warily. ‘Yeah, assuming that.’

    Grace’s first action when he arrived at the Ops Control Room at John Street, twenty minutes later, was to inform his Silver and Bronze Commanders that any white Ford Transit van sighted in the vicinity of Eastern Road, for the rest of the day and night, was to be kept under close observation. Then he put out a broader request to all patrols in the city to keep a vigilant eye on all current model white Ford Transit vans.
    Twelve years ago, if he was right, the Shoe Man had used a white van in his attack. It would fit Proudfoot’s theory on his symmetry if he did the same thing again tonight.
    Was that the reason those particular pages had been taken from the file, he wondered? The ones relating to an eyewitness report about a woman abducted in a white van? Did they contain vital clues about his behaviour? His MO? The identity of the van?
    Something that had been bothering him about the lock-up garage was bothering him even more now. If the Shoe Man had driven the van out of the garage, why had he bothered to lock all four locks? There was nothing in there to steal except two useless licence plates.
    That really did not make sense to him.

93
    Saturday 17 January
    The only passengers Yac disliked more than drunks were the ones who were high on drugs. This girl on the back seat was almost