You Are Dead

73

Thursday 18 December

Roy Grace drove away from the police HQ in his official unmarked Ford and headed back to Brighton, feeling relieved that the press conference was over. Although he’d had some difficult questions, he felt he had managed to field them well, with the support of the Chief and the ACC. But it was not an experience he was looking to repeat any time soon.

Nor was he looking forward to his next task, as he turned off the A27 into the dark streets of Patcham. It was 8.20 p.m. The words of Paul Sweetman were ringing, deafeningly, in his ears.

I think he may strike again, within hours, possibly... I’d bet the ranch on it.

He looked at the houses he passed, many of them with Christmas lights in the windows, and some with outside displays as well. Sometimes he saw the flicker of televisions. There were people hurrying along the streets, no doubt to pubs, or to meet friends, or on their way home from work, huddled against the pelting rain.

Was the Brander lurking outside one of these houses now?

Was he already inside one?

Had he already taken his next victim?

He slowed each time he saw a male walking alone, and watched him. The forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, who had helped him brilliantly in the past, had generated a profile from the footprint in the oil sludge in Logan Somerville’s garage. Kelly had showed the team a video representation of a man who walked almost exaggeratedly upright, with his feet splayed out widely. The image had been circulated to the Sussex Police CCTV team who monitored the city’s 350 cameras. But none of the bedraggled figures he saw, so far, matched that peculiar gait, if indeed the footprint actually belonged to the offender.

He turned into Mackie Avenue, and began peering through the misted side window at the house numbers. His first call was going to be to Emma Johnson’s mother, to see how she was, and to give her what reassurance he could that his team were doing everything possible to find her daughter’s killer. His next call would be to Ashleigh Stanford’s parents. He’d been informed that her boyfriend was currently with them.

Liaising with the family of a murder victim was one of the toughest parts of his job, yet at the same time, the most important. As the father of a child himself, he shuddered to think how he would feel to learn his son, however far in the future, had been murdered. He knew that it would destroy him, that his life could never be the same again. That’s what he understood, all too grimly, as he approached Emma Johnson’s mother’s front door, almost oblivious to the rain. He composed himself on the doorstep, took a deep breath, then rang the bell.