Dead Like You

you. Could be a good opportunity to get noticed for promotion, or screw up your career permanently.’
    There were a few uncomfortable smiles in the room.
    ‘Perhaps I can recommend our master of tact, Norman Potting,’ Bella Moy said.
    There was a titter of laughter.
    ‘I’d be happy to take that on,’ Potting said.
    Grace, deciding that Potting was the last person in this room he would allocate that task to, scribbled a note in his Policy Book, then studied his briefing notes for a moment.
    ‘We have two stranger rapes within eight days, with enough similarity in the MO to assume for the moment it is the same offender,’ he went on. ‘This charmer made both his victims perform sexual acts on themselves with their shoes, then penetrated them anally with the heels of their shoes, then raped them himself. From what we have been able to establish – and the second victim has so far only given us a little information – he was unable to maintain an erection. This may have been due to premature ejaculation or because he is sexually dysfunctional. There is one significant difference in his MO. Back in 1997, the Shoe Man took only one shoe, and his victim’s panties. In the Metropole rape of Nicola Taylor he took all her clothes, including both her shoes. With Roxy Pearce, he took just her shoes.’
    He paused to look down at his notes again, while several members of his team made notes also.
    ‘Our offender appears to be forensically aware. In each case he wore a black hood and surgical gloves and used a condom. He either shaved his bodily hair or naturally had none. He is described as being of medium to small height, thin and softly spoken, with a neutral accent.’
    Potting put up his hand and Grace nodded.
    ‘Chief, you and I were both involved with Operation Sundown , the disappearance of a woman back in 1997 which may or may not have been connected to a similar case then, the Shoe Man – Operation Houdini . Do you think there’s a possible link?’
    ‘Apart from the differences in the trophies he took, the Shoe Man’s MO is remarkably similar to the current offender’s.’ Grace nodded at the Analyst. ‘This is one reason I’ve brought Ellen in.’
    Sussex CID employed forty analysts. All but two of them were female, most of them with social sciences backgrounds. Male analysts were so rare that they were nicknamed manolysts. Ellen Zoratti was a very bright woman of twenty-eight, with dark hair just off her shoulders, cut in a sharp, modern style, and was elegantly dressed in a white blouse, black skirt and zebra-striped tights.
    She would alternate round-the-clock twelve-hour shifts with another analyst and could play a crucial role over the coming days. Between them they would carry out subject profiles on the two victims, providing the team with information on their family back-grounds, their lifestyles, their friends. They would be researching them with the same depth of detail as if they were offenders.
    Additional and possibly crucial information would be provided by the High-Tech Crime Unit, down on the ground floor, which had begun the process of analysing the mobile phones and computers of the two victims. They would be studying all the calls and texts made and received by the two women, from information on their phones and from their phone companies. They would look at their emails and at any chatlines either of them might have engaged with. Their address files. The websites they visited. If they had any electronic secrets, Grace’s investigation team would soon know of them.
    In addition, the High-Tech Crime Unit had deployed a Covert Internet Investigator to log into shoe- and foot-fetish chat rooms and build up relationships with other visitors, in the hope of finding some with extreme views.
    ‘Do you think it could be a copycat, Ellen?’ Michael Foreman asked her. ‘Or the same offender from 1997 again?’
    ‘I’ve started work on a comparative case analysis,’ she replied. ‘One of the crucial pieces of information withheld from the press and the public in Operation Houdini was the MO of the offender. It’s too early to give you anything definitive, but from what I have so far – and it is very early days – it’s looking possible that it’s the same offender.’
    ‘Do we have any information on why the Shoe Man stopped offending, sir?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.
    ‘All we do know from Operation Houdini ,’ Grace said, ‘is that he stopped offending at the same