Dead Like You

standby. It would be one of the first things any intelligent police officer would be looking for.
    Perhaps the phone companies were not able to access detailed stuff like that on Sundays?
    But he knew he could not take the risk. He had to move Jessie Sheldon away from here as quickly as possible. Tonight. During darkness.
    Which made it even more imperative to find her and quickly.
    She’d made no sound for over an hour. Playing some clever hiding game. She might think she was clever that she had the knife. But he had two far more valuable tools at this moment. The torch and the binoculars.
    He’d never had much truck with literature and shit. But there was one line he remembered from somewhere, through his pain: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
    That’s what he was now.
    He stepped down out of the van on to the concrete floor and raised his binoculars to his face. Hunting.

113
    Sunday 18 January
    The evening was passing slowly for Roy Grace. He sat in his office, looking at Jessie Sheldon’s family tree, which had been assembled by one of his team members. Her computer and mobile phone records were currently being examined by two members of the overloaded and undermanned High-Tech Crime Unit, who had given up their Sundays for the task.
    The only report he’d received so far was that Jessie was very active on social networking sites – something she had in common with the woman who had nearly become a victim of the Shoe Man on Thursday afternoon, Dee Burchmore.
    Was that how he followed his victims?
    Mandy Thorpe had been active on Facebook and on two other sites as well. But neither Nicola Taylor, who had been raped in the Metropole Hotel, early on New Year’s Day, nor Roxy Pearce, who had been raped in her home in The Droveway, had presences on any social networking sites, not did they Tweet.
    It came back to the same thing linking each of these women. They had all recently bought expensive shoes from shops in Brighton. All except Mandy Thorpe.
    Despite Dr Proudfoot’s insistence to the contrary, the Detective Superintendent continued to believe that Mandy Thorpe had not been raped by the Shoe Man but by someone else. Perhaps by a copycat. Or possibly the timing was coincidental.
    His phone rang. It was DC Michael Foreman from MIR-1.
    ‘Just had a report in from Hotel 900, who are going down to refuel, sir. So far they have nothing to report, except for two possible anomalies in the old cement works.’
    ‘ Anomalies ?’ Grace queried, wondering what the police helicopter crew meant by that.
    He knew they had thermal-imaging equipment on board, which could detect humans in pitch darkness or dense fog just from the body heat they gave off. Unfortunately, while good for following villains who were fleeing from a stolen car and trying to hide in woods, or in alleys, it was easily fooled by animals or by anything that retained warmth.
    ‘Yes, sir. They can’t be sure they’re human – could be foxes or badgers or stray cats or dogs.’
    ‘OK, get a response unit down there to check it out. Keep me posted.’

    Half an hour later, DC Foreman rang Grace back. A patrol car had attended the entrance to the old cement works and reported that the place was secure. There were ten-foot-high locked gates, topped with razor wire, and extensive surveillance.
    ‘What kind of surveillance?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Remote monitoring. A Brighton firm with a good reputation, Sussex Remote Monitoring Services. If there was anything going on in there it would have been picked up by now by them, sir.’
    ‘I know the name,’ Grace said.
    ‘The police use them. I think the Sussex House door pads were all installed by them.’
    ‘Right. OK.’ Like everyone in the city, he knew the cement works. It was one of the big landmarks, heading west, and there were rumours that at some point it was going to be reactivated after nearly two decades in mothballs. It was a vast place, situated in a chalk quarry hewn out of the Downs, comprising a group of buildings, each of them bigger than a football pitch. He wasn’t even sure who the current owners were, but no doubt there would be a sign on the front.
    To do a search he’d either have to get their consent or obtain a search warrant. And for an effective search, he’d have to put a big team in there. It would need to be done in daylight.
    He made a note on his pad for the morning.

114
    Sunday 18 January
    ‘Jessie!’ he shouted. ‘Phone call for you.’
    He