Dead Like You

out of jail several times in the past twelve years, so why had he not offended in the interim? More important, in his view, was the fact that the man had no previous record of sexual assaults. The last offence that had contributed to Spicer’s sentence appeared to be a one-off – although, of course, there was no certainty of that. With the grim statistic that only 6 percent of rape victims ever reported the crimes, it was quite possible he had committed previous such offences and got away with them.
    Next he turned his mind to the copycat theory. One thing that was deeply bothering him was the missing pages from the Rachael Ryan file. Sure, it was possible that they had simply been misfiled somewhere else. But there could be a much darker reason. Could it be that the Shoe Man himself had accessed the file and removed something that might incriminate him? If he had access to that file, he would have had access to all the Shoe Man’s files.
    Or was it someone else altogether who had gained access to them? Someone who had decided, for whatever sick reason, to copy the Shoe Man’s MO.
    Who?
    A member of his trusted team? He didn’t think so, but of course he couldn’t discount that. There were plenty of other people who had access to the Major Crime Suite – other police officers, support staff and cleaning staff. Solving that mystery, he realized, was now a priority for him. ‘Are you nearly ready to eat, darling?’ Cleo called out.
    Cleo was grilling him a tuna steak. Roy took this as a sign that maybe, finally, she was starting to wean herself off curries. The reek of them had gone and there was now a strong smell of wood smoke from the crackling fire that Cleo had lit in the grate some time before he had arrived, and the welcoming aroma of scented candles burning in different parts of the room.
    He took another long sip of the deliciously cold vodka martini she had mixed, enviously, for him. He now had to drink for both of them, she’d told him – and tonight he did not have a problem with that. He felt the welcoming buzz of the alcohol and then, still mechanically stroking the dog, he lapsed back into his thoughts.
    A car had been seen leaving the Pearce house in The Droveway at 9 p.m. on Thursday, which fitted perfectly with the timing of the attack. It had been travelling at speed and nearly ran over a local resident. The man was so angry he tried to take a note of the number plate, but could only be certain of two digits and one letter of the alphabet. Then he did nothing about it until he read of the attack in the Argus , which prompted him to phone the Incident Room this evening.
    According to him, the driver was male, but with the vehicle’s tinted windows he had not been able to get a clear look at his face. Somewhere in his thirties or forties with short hair was the extent of his description. He did much better with the car, asserting it was a light-coloured old-model Mercedes E-Class saloon. Just how many of those Mercedes were there around, Grace wondered? Loads of them. It was going to take a while to sift through all the registered keepers when they didn’t have a full registration number to work from. And he did not have the luxury of time.
    With the rising frenzy in the media after two stranger rapes in the city in a little over a week, the news stories were ramping up fear in the public. The call handlers were being inundated with queries from anxious women about whether it was safe to go out and he was aware that his immediate superiors, Chief Superintendent Jack Skerritt and ACC Peter Rigg, were anxious to see rapid progress with this case.
    The next press conference was scheduled for midday on Monday. It would calm everything down greatly if he could announce they had a suspect and, even better, that they had made an arrest. OK, they had Darren Spicer as a possible. But nothing made the police look more inefficient than having to release a suspect because of lack of evidence, or because it was the wrong person. The Mercedes was more promising. But the driver wasn’t necessarily the offender. There could be an innocent explanation – perhaps a family friend who had popped round for a visit to the Pearce household, or simply someone delivering a package?
    The fact that the car was being driven recklessly was a good indicator that it might have been the suspect. It was a known fact that offenders often drove badly immediately after committing a crime – because they were in a