Dead Like You

could visualize it now, the way he could visualize every street and every dwelling in Brighton and Hove. Roedean Crescent sat high up above the cliffs to the east of the city. All the houses were big, detached and individual, with views out across the Marina and the Channel. Rich people’s homes.
    The sort of people who could afford nice shoes.
    He hit the acknowledge button, confirming that he would make the pick-up, then continued to sip his tea and read the newspaper that had been left in his taxi.
    They’d be finishing their meal still. When people ordered a taxi in a restaurant, they expected to wait a while, certainly a quarter of an hour or so on a Saturday night in downtown Brighton. And besides, he could not stop reading and then re-reading the story about the rape of the woman in the Metropole on New Year’s Eve. He was riveted.
    In his mirrors he could see the twinkly lights of the pier. He knew all about those lights. He used to work on the pier as an electrical engineer, part of the team maintaining and repairing the rides. But he got the sack. It was for the same reason he usually got the sack, because he lost his temper with someone. He hadn’t yet lost his temper with anyone in his taxi, but he had once got out and shouted at another driver who’d pulled on to a rank in front of him.
    He finished his tea, reluctantly folded the newspaper and put the mug back in the plastic bag alongside his Thermos, then placed the bag on the front seat.
    ‘Vocabulary!’ he said aloud. Then he began his checks.
    First check the tyres. Next start the engine, then switch on the lights. Never the other way around, because if the battery was low, the lights might drain the energy that the starter motor needed. The owner of the taxi had taught him that. Especially in winter, when there were heavy loads on the battery. It was winter now.
    As the engine idled, he checked the fuel gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. Then the oil pressure. Then the temperature gauge. The interior temperature was set to twenty degrees, as he had been instructed. Outside, a digital display told him, it was two degrees Celsius. Cold night.
    Uh-huh.
    He looked in his mirror, checked his seat belt was on, indicated, pulled out into the road and drove up to the junction, where the lights were red. When they changed to green he turned right into Preston Street and almost immediately pulled over to the kerb, halting outside the front door of the restaurant.
    Two very drunk yobs staggered down the hill towards him, then knocked on his window and asked if he was free to take them to Coldean. He wasn’t free, he was waiting for passengers, he told them. As they walked away he wondered whether they had high-flush or low-flush toilets in their homes. It suddenly became very important to him to know. He was about to get out and hurry after them, to ask them, when finally the restaurant door opened.
    Two people emerged. A slim man in a dark coat, with a scarf wound around his neck, and a woman who was clinging to him, teetering on her heels; she looked like she’d fall over if she let go. And from the height of the stilettos she was wearing, that would be a long fall.
    They were nice heels. Nice shoes.
    And he had their address! He always liked to know where women who had nice shoes lived.
    Uh-huh.
    Yac lowered his window. He didn’t want the man knocking on it. He didn’t like people knocking on his window.
    ‘Taxi for Starling?’ the man said.
    ‘Roedean Crescent?’ Yac replied.
    ‘That’s us!’
    They climbed in the back.
    ‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ the man said.
    ‘Sixty-seven Roedean Crescent,’ Yac repeated. He had been told always to repeat the address clearly.
    The car filled with smells of alcohol and perfume. Shalimar , he recognized instantly. The perfume of his childhood. The one his mother always wore. Then he turned to the woman.
    ‘Nice shoes,’ he said. ‘Bruno Magli.’
    ‘Yesh,’ she slurred.
    ‘Size four,’ he added.
    ‘An expert on shoes, are you?’ the woman asked him sourly.
    Yac looked at the woman’s face in the mirror. She was all uptight. She did not have the face of a woman who had had a good time. Or who was very nice. The man’s eyes were closed.
    ‘Shoes,’ Yac said. ‘Uh-huh.’

1997

21
    Saturday 27 December
    Rachael woke with a start. Her head was throbbing. Disoriented, for a cruel, fleeting instant she thought she was at home in bed with a mighty hangover. Then she felt the hard metal