Dead Like You

his office building. He had one of the Local Support Team vans, with six officers in body armour waiting inside it, plus four plain cars covering access to the network of roads linking into the industrial estate should Starling try to make a run for it.
    Grace left his unmarked car parked in the next street along and climbed into Glenn Branson’s. He felt tense. Relieved, yet hurting from the confirmation of Rachael Ryan’s death. Thinking through the plan now. Plenty worried him.
    ‘Rock ’n’ roll?’
    Grace nodded distractedly. The Shoe Man had never left DNA traces. His victims reported he had been unable to maintain an erection. Did this mean Garry Starling was not the Shoe Man? Or that killing Rachael Ryan – assuming he was the killer – had turned him on enough to ejaculate?
    Why was he not in his office this morning?
    If he had sex with a woman twelve years ago who was then found dead, how were they going to prove Starling was the killer? If indeed he was. What view would the Crown Prosecution Service take?
    A million unanswered questions.
    Just a growing certainty in his mind that the man who had murdered Rachael Ryan was the man who had abducted Jessie Sheldon. He desperately hoped he could do a better job of finding her alive – if there was still a chance – than he had done of finding Rachael Ryan. And that he would not be disinterring her from a grave in another twelve years’ time.
    As they drove up to the smart front entrance of Sussex Security Systems and Sussex Remote Monitoring Services, he noticed the cars parked in allotted bays, and the empty one marked CEO. But what he was looking at more was the row of white vans bearing the companies’ joint logo.
    It had been a white van that had driven off at speed from the car park on Thursday after the failed attack on Dee Burchmore. And a white van in which Rachael Ryan had been abducted twelve years ago.
    They climbed out of the car and walked in through the front door. A middle-aged receptionist sat behind a curved desk with the two logos emblazoned on the front. To their right was a small seating area, with copies of Sussex Life and several of today’s papers, including the Argus , laid out.
    Grace thought grimly that they probably wouldn’t be laying out tomorrow’s Argus , with the kind of headline it was likely to contain.
    ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’
    Grace showed his warrant card. ‘Has Mr Starling come in yet?’
    ‘No – er, no, not yet,’ she said, looking flustered.
    ‘Would you say that’s unusual?’
    ‘Well, normally, on a normal Monday morning, he’s the first one in.’
    Grace held the search warrant up and gave her a few seconds to read it. ‘We have a warrant to search these premises. I’d be grateful if you could find someone to show us around.’
    ‘I’ll – I’ll get the manager, sir.’
    ‘Fine. We’ll start. Tell him to find us.’
    ‘Yes – right – yes, I will. When Mr Starling turns up, shall I let you know?’
    ‘It’s OK,’ Grace replied. ‘We’ll know.’
    She looked lost for an answer.
    ‘Where do we find your CCTV monitoring section?’ Grace asked.
    ‘That’s on the first floor. I’ll page Mr Addenberry and he can take you along.’
    Glenn pointed at the door to the stairs. ‘First floor.’
    ‘Yes, you turn right. Keep going down the corridor, into the accounts department and then the call-handling and you’ll come to it.’
    Both detectives loped up the stairs. Just as they reached the end of a corridor, with offices on either side, a short, nervous-looking and balding man in his early forties, in a grey suit with a row of pens in the top pocket, scuttled up to them.
    ‘Hello, gentlemen. How can I help you? I’m John Addenberry, the General Manager.’ He had a slightly smarmy voice.
    When Grace explained who they were and about the search warrant, Addenberry started to look as if he was standing on a live electrical wire.
    ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. Of course. We do a lot of work for Sussex Police. CID HQ are important customers. Very.’
    He led the way through into the CCTV control room. Seated at a chair in front of a bank of twenty television monitors was a enormously overweight character, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform and greasy hair, and looking far too old to be sporting bum-fluff on his lip, Grace thought. A large Coca-Cola and a giant-size packet of Doritos sat on a table in front of him, next to a microphone and a small control panel, and a