Not Dead Yet

we have some development regarding the suit fabric.’ He looked at Glenn.
    ‘I had a long conversation with a very helpful woman at Dormeuil, the cloth manufacturer. They’ve confirmed it is their fabric, and, no surprise, that it is not one of their major sellers. One problem we have – but it could be much worse – is that a relatively new specialist manufacturer of men’s fashion suits, called Savile Style, bought a large quantity of the material three years ago, making over nine hundred suits from it, which they’ve supplied mostly to individual men’s clothing stores around the country – as well as some overseas. They’re putting together a list of all stockists – definitely one or two in Brighton – who bought the suits. Dormeuil are also letting me have a list of all tailors who’ve bought bolts of this cloth too, which would have been for made-to-measure suits – tailors like Gresham Blake.’
    ‘What we need to do,’ Grace said, ‘is to get the names of everyindividual we can who bought a suit in this fabric and then, Annalise, check against the visitor list to Stonery Farm and see if that throws up anything.’ He turned to Bella Moy. ‘Did we get any more leads from Crimewatch ?’
    ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘A steady volume of calls – forty-eight in the last two days – but nothing else of significance, so far.’
    ‘Right, the footprint.’ He turned to the Crime Scene Manager. ‘David, what have you got for us so far?’
    ‘We have actually got five matching footprints from the scene, boss. Three of them correspond to the sections of the lake where limbs were recovered, which is a good indication they might be the perp’s. The tread is over an inch deep, which means almost certainly a boot of some kind. Hard to be precise about the size – often shoe and boot manufacturers use the same sole over several sizes and the fit is in the uppers. But this appears to be smallish – probably a man’s size eight.’
    ‘Can you give us an indication of the perpetrator’s height from that, Haydn?’ Grace said. He looked quizzically at the forensic podiatrist.
    ‘Not really, there are too many variables. Some leading experts say the normal height range for this size would be from five foot five inches to five foot nine. But that is making a number of assumptions, including that he was wearing footwear correctly sized for him. People often wear gum boots a size larger than their normal shoe size – and if he’s a smart crim, it’s possible he wore padded-out boots to deceive us about his true size. If he’s really forensically aware, he may have even bought a new insole, to wear a bigger size boot in an attempt to also mask his footprint.’
    ‘So,’ Glenn said, ‘assuming the scrote’s not a size nine or ten squeezed into these boots, which would be pretty difficult to walk with, would it be a reasonable assumption we are looking at someone no taller than five-eight?’
    ‘Reasonable but not certain,’ Kelly replied. ‘I would not be comfortable telling you that you could eliminate taller people than that from this enquiry.’
    ‘Haydn,’ Grace said, ‘I’d like you to explain one of your particular skills, which could become relevant at a later stage in this enquiry.Am I correct that you would be able to recognize whoever left these footprints, from watching him walk and studying his gait?’
    ‘A human gait is as distinctive as a fingerprint,’ Kelly said. ‘Gait is a person’s style or manner of walking and divided into two phases: Stance and Swing. In the stance phase, the person’s heel contacts the ground, body weight is transferred through the foot to when the toes leave the ground – technically this is called heel contact, midstance and propulsion. The swing phase begins immediately after the toes leave the ground, the whole of the lower limb swings forward, and ends at the point when the heel re-strikes the ground. This is unquestionable. How the foot, lower limb and the rest of the body behave in achieving this is distinctive to each individual. Equally that same lower limb can have a posture – or shape – that contributes to its individuality. In some cases this is quite pronounced.’
    Grace’s phone, on silent, vibrated. On the display it read, INTERNATIONAL .
    Excusing himself he stepped away from the table and out of the room into the corridor, answering it as he walked, ‘Detective Superintendent Grace.’
    From the other end he heard an