Dead Like You

down his spine as he stared around him.
    There was a tea chest on the floor. Almost every inch of the walls was covered in old, yellowing newspaper cuttings. Most of them were from the Argus , but some were from national papers. He stepped forward and read the headlines of one. It was dated 14 December 1997:
    SHOE MAN’S LATEST VICTIM CONFIRMED BY POLICE
    Everywhere that he pointed his torch, more headlines shouted out at him from the walls. More articles, some showing photographs of the victims. There were photographs of Jack Skerritt, the Senior Investigating Officer. And then, prominently displayed, a large photograph of Rachael Ryan stared out from beneath a front-page headline from the Argus from January 1998:
    IS MISSING RACHAEL SHOE MAN’S VICTIM NO. 6?
    Grace stared at the photograph, then at the headline. He could remember when he had first seen this page of the paper. This chilling headline. It had been the shoutline on every news-stand in the city.
    He tested the lid of the tea chest. It was loose. He lifted it up and stood, his eyes boggling, at what was inside.
    It was crammed with women’s high-heeled shoes, each wrapped and sealed in cellophane. He rummaged through them. Some packages contained a single shoe and a pair of panties. Others, a pair of shoes. All of the shoes looked as if they’d barely been worn.
    Shaking with excitement, he needed to know how many. Mindful of not wanting to damage any forensic evidence, he counted them out and laid them on the floor in their wrapping. Twenty-two packages.
    Also bundled together in one taped-up sheet of cellophane were a woman’s dress, tights, panties and bra. The Shoe Man’s drag gear, maybe. He wondered. Or were these the clothes taken from Nicola Taylor at the Metropole?
    He knelt, staring at the shoes for some moments. Then he returned to the cuttings on the wall, wanting to ensure he did not miss anything significant that might lead him to his quarry.
    He looked at each one in turn, focusing on the ones on Rachael Ryan, big and small, which covered a large section of one wall. Then his eyes fell on an A4 sheet of paper that was different. This wasn’t a newspaper cutting; it was a printed form, partly filled out in ballpoint pen. It was headed:
    J. BUND & SONS, FUNERAL DIRECTORS
    He walked across so that he could read the small printing on it. Beneath the name it said:
    Registration Form
    Ref. D5678
    Mrs Molly Winifred Glossop
    D. 2 January 1998. Aged 81.
    He read every word of the form. It was a detailed list:
    Church fee
    Doctor’s fee
    Removal of pacemaker fee
    Cremation fee
    Gravedigger’s fee
    Printed service sheets fees
    Flowers
    Memorial cards
    Obituary notices
    Coffin
    Casket for remains
    Organist’s fee
    Cemetery fee
    Churchyard burial fee
    Clergy’s fee
    Church fee
    Funeral on: 12 January 1998, 11 a.m. Lawn Memorial Cemetery, Woodingdean.
    He read the sheet again. Then again, transfixed.
    His mind was racing back to twelve years ago. To a charred body on a post-mortem table at Brighton and Hove Borough Mortuary. A little old lady, whose remains had been found, incinerated, in the burnt-out shell of a Ford Transit van, and who had never been identified. As was customary, she had been kept for two years and then buried in Woodvale cemetery, her funeral paid for out of public funds.
    During his career with the police to date, he’d seen many horrendous sights, but most of them he had been able to put out of his mind. There were just a few, and he could count them on the fingers of one hand, that he knew he would carry to his grave. This old lady, and the mystery accompanying her, he had long thought would be one of them.
    But now, standing in the back of this shabby old lock-up garage, something was starting, finally, to make sense.
    He had a growing certainty that he now knew who she was.
    Molly Winifred Glossop.
    But then who had been buried at 11 a.m. on Monday 12 January 1998 in the Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Woodingdean?
    He was pretty damned sure he knew the answer.

103
    Sunday 18 January
    Jessie heard the vibrating sound of her phone, yet again, in the half-darkness. She was parched and she had no idea of the time. She could detect the faintest grey light. Was it dawn? Once in a while she drifted into a fitful doze, then woke again in stark panic, unable to breathe through her bunged-up nose and fighting for air.
    She had agonizing pains in her shoulders, from her arms being stretched out in front of her. There were noises