Dead Like You

it.
    ‘It’s New Year’s Day,’ Cleo said, raising her glass of water and taking a tiny sip. ‘I think you should stop working now and relax! We’ll all be back in the fray on Monday.’
    ‘Right, like the example you’re setting, working on your degree. Is that relaxing?’
    ‘Yes, it is! I love doing this. It’s not work for me. What you’re doing is work.’
    ‘Someone should tell criminals they’re not permitted to offend during public holidays,’ he said with a grin.
    ‘Yep, and someone should tell old people they shouldn’t die over the Christmas break. It’s very antisocial! Morticians are entitled to holidays too!’
    ‘How many today?’
    ‘Five,’ she said. ‘Poor sods. Well, actually three of them were yesterday.’
    ‘So they had the decency to wait for Christmas.’
    ‘But couldn’t face the prospect of another year.’
    ‘I hope I never get like that,’ he said. ‘To the point where I can’t face the prospect of another year.’
    ‘Did you ever read Ernest Hemingway?’ she asked.
    Grace shook his head, acutely aware of how ignorant he was compared to Cleo. He’d read so little in his life.
    ‘He’s one of my favourite writers. I’m going to make you read him one day! He wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” That’s you. You’re stronger, aren’t you?’
    ‘I hope so – but I sometimes wonder.’
    ‘You have to be stronger than ever now, Detective Superintendent.’ She patted her stomach. ‘There are two of us who need you.’
    ‘And all the dead people who need you!’ he retorted.
    ‘And the dead who need you too.’
    That was true, he thought ruefully, glancing at the file again. All those blue boxes and green crates on his office floor. Most of them representing victims who were waiting from beyond the grave for him to bring their assailants to justice.
    Would today’s rape victim, Nicola Taylor, get to see the man who did this brought to justice? Or would she end up one day as just a name on a plastic tag on one of those cold-case files?
    ‘I’m reading about a Greek statesman called Pericles,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t really a philosopher, but he said something very true. “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” That’s one of the many reasons I love you, Detective Superintendent Grace. You’re going to leave good things woven into the lives of others.’
    ‘I try,’ he said, and looked back down at the files on the Shoe Man.
    ‘You poor love, your mind really is somewhere else tonight.’
    He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I hate rapists. It was pretty harrowing today up in Crawley.’
    ‘You haven’t really talked about it.’
    ‘Do you want to hear about it?’
    ‘Yes, I do. I really do want to hear about it. I want to know everything you learn about the world that our child is going to be born into. What did this man to do her?’
    Grace picked up his bottle of Peroni from the floor, took a long pull on it, draining it, and could have done with another. But instead he put it down and thought back to this morning.
    ‘He made her masturbate with the heel of her shoe. It was some expensive designer shoe. Marc Joseph or something.’
    ‘Marc Jacobs?’ she asked.
    He nodded. ‘Yes. That was the name. Are they expensive?’
    ‘One of the top designers. He made her masturbate? You mean using the heel like a dildo?’
    ‘Yes. So, do you know much about shoes?’ he asked, a little surprised.
    He loved the way Cleo dressed, but when they were out together she rarely looked in shoe-shop or fashion-shop windows. Whereas Sandy used to all the time, sometimes driving him to distraction.
    ‘Roy, darling, all women know about shoes! They’re part of a woman’s femininity. When a woman puts on a great pair of shoes, she feels sexy! So, he just watched her doing this to herself?’
    ‘Six-inch stilettos, she said,’ he replied. ‘He made her push the heel all the way in repeatedly, while he touched himself.’
    ‘That’s horrible. Sick bastard.’
    ‘It gets worse.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘He made her turn over, face down, then he pushed the heel right up her back passage. OK? Enough?’
    ‘So he didn’t actually rape her? In the sense that I understand it?’
    ‘Yes, he did, but that was later. And he had problems getting an erection.’
    After some moments’ silent thought she said, ‘Why, Roy? What makes someone