You Are Dead

77

Friday 19 December

Roy Grace finally got home at a few minutes past midnight. Humphrey sat amid a forest of packing boxes, with one eye open, looking very unsettled and, unusually, did not jump up to greet him. Both Noah and Cleo were fast asleep.

Utterly exhausted, he set his alarm for 3 a.m., and backed it up with his phone alarm, brushed his teeth, then stripped and crawled into bed, slipping an arm under Cleo’s pillow. She stirred, momentarily, then was still again. He kissed her naked shoulder.

It seemed only moments later that the alarm was buzzing. Following almost instantly was the ching-ching-ching of his phone alarm.

He snapped awake, leaden with tiredness — and with guilt. They were moving today and he wasn’t going to be around to help.

He sat on the edge of the bed, head bowed, gathering his thoughts. Had the offender struck again last night and failed?

A young woman, with long brown hair, who fitted his target profile exactly, had been attacked in the shower in her house. Several spots of fresh blood had been found at the scene, presumably from the assailant, and with luck they would have DNA results back later today.

Over one hundred people had turned up for the press conference. If there was one small mercy, it was that it was December, well out of the main tourism season. Six months earlier and the financial consequences to the city’s tourist industry would have been even more catastrophic. But that didn’t cut him any slack. Brighton was turning into the modern equivalent of a leper colony. And all eyes were on him to return it to normality.

Which meant having a credible suspect under arrest as a starting point.

He was back at his desk in Sussex House at 4 a.m., with a steaming mug of coffee beside him and a banana which was going to have to suffice as his breakfast. The floor of his office was piled with documents from Operation Yorker, the original investigation into the death of Catherine Jane Marie Westerham.

Later this morning he would be holding yet another press conference, where he would be going through the details of the attack on Freya Northrop, and again asking for the public’s help. He would also need to brief the Gold group with the latest update, and everyone would have to consider the ongoing safety implications for young women in the city. Perhaps the failed attack could be the game-changer he needed — providing a good description of the offender and hopefully DNA.

He reached across the desk and pulled out the summary details of Unknown Female, now identified as Denise Patterson. She had come from a less privileged background than Katy Westerham, and had gone straight to work from school in the Cornelia James glove factory in Brighton.

And was just as dead.

He stared at her photograph, then laid one of Katy Westerham’s beside it. They could have been sisters. Just as Emma Johnson could have been, and Ashleigh Stanford.

He stood up, walked over to his round table, where he had more space, and laid out the photographs of the faces of all the women.

Then he sat down and stared at them. Thinking. Thinking.

Why these women?

Did they have anything in common beyond being young, attractive, and having long brown hair?

What was he missing?

In all the studies he had made of serial killers, and in his conversations with Tony Balazs, there was invariably a trigger. A bullying father. An abusive, alcoholic mother. Or, like Ted Bundy, rejection by a girlfriend.

What had triggered the offender?

Was that where it had all begun? Were they looking in the wrong place?

He yawned, then gulped down some coffee. His body was telling him he needed sleep badly. No chance.

Then he realized what he needed to do.

Moments later there was a knock on his door and Norman Potting came in and sat down in front of him.

‘You’re up early, Norman!’

Potting shook his head. ‘No, chief, I haven’t gone to bed. Can’t sleep. Thought I’d come in and make myself useful.’

Grace smiled at him sympathetically. ‘Your timing is perfect!’ He ushered him to sit at the table with him.

Potting stared down at the photographs. ‘Denise Patterson, Katy Westerham, Emma Johnson, Ashleigh Stanford, Logan Somerville and Freya Northrop,’ he said.

‘And who else?’

‘Who else?’

‘Who else in these past thirty years? Could it be that there is no one else, that the offender has experienced something recently that’s triggered this new spree?’

‘There’s nothing that’s been found so far, boss.’

‘Nothing that’s been found. But there are an awful lot of mispers in this country who’ve not turned up during these past thirty years. We know the offender is smart. And we’ve no idea how many others he has killed that we don’t know about — and may never know about.’

A sharp gust of wind hurtled rain that sounded like pebbles against the window.

‘You look exhausted, boss,’ Potting said. ‘If you don’t mind my saying.’

Grace gave him a thin smile. ‘Thanks, but I’m OK. I’ll look a lot less exhausted when we have a suspect behind bars. Something’s bothering me about one of the people you took a statement from, Norman. I know at the time he asked a lot of questions about the investigation, and he’s contacted you a few times since, asking about how it’s all going.’

‘Who’s that, boss?’

Grace grabbed a sheet of paper from his desk, wrote the man’s name down and handed it to the Detective Sergeant.