Dead Like You Read Free Page A

with the knowledge, struggling to cope, to hold down their revulsion, their anger and their fear.
    It was a harsh fact that most people were raped by someone they knew. Rapes by total strangers were exceedingly rare, but they did happen. And it was not uncommon for these so-called ‘stranger rapists’ to take a souvenir – a trophy. Like the Shoe Man had.
    Grace turned some of the pages of the thick file, glancing through comparisons with other rapes around the country. In particular, there was one case further north, from the same time period, that bore striking similarities. But that suspect had been eliminated, as evidence had established that it definitely could not have been the same person.
    So , Shoe Man , Grace wondered, are you still alive? If so, where are you now?

4
    Wednesday 31 December
    Nicola Taylor was wondering when this night of hell would end, little knowing that the hell had not yet even begun.
    ‘Hell is other people’, Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, and she was with him on that. And right now hell was the drunken man with the wonky bow tie on her right who was crushing every bone in her hand, and the even drunker man on her left, in a green tuxedo jacket, whose sweaty hand felt as slimy as pre-packed bacon.
    And all the other 350 noisy, drunken people around her.
    Both men were jerking her arms up and down, damned nearly pulling them out of their sockets as the band in the Metropole Hotel function room struck up ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the stroke of midnight. The man on her right had a plastic Groucho Marx moustache clipped to the inside of his nostrils and the one on her left, whose slimy hand had spent much of the evening trying to work its way up her thigh, kept blowing a whistle that sounded like a duck farting.
    She so totally did not want to be here. So wished to hell she had stuck to her guns and stayed home, in her comfort zone, with a bottle of wine and the television – the way she had most evenings this past year, since her husband had dumped her in favour of his twenty-four-year-old secretary.
    But oh no, her friends Olivia and Becky and Deanne had all insisted there was no way they were going to allow her to get away with spending New Year’s Eve moping at home on her own. Nigel was not coming back, they assured her. The slapper was pregnant. Forget him, kiddo. There were plenty more fish in the sea. Time to get a life.
    This was getting a life?
    Both her arms were jerked up in the air at the same time. Then she was dragged forward in a huge surge, her feet almost falling out of her insanely expensive Marc Jacobs heels. Moments later she found herself being dragged, tripping, backwards.
    Should auld acquaintance be forgot … the band played.
    Yes, they bloody well should. And current ones too!
    Except she could not forget. Not all those midnights on New Year’s Eve when she had stared into Nigel’s eyes and told him she loved him, and he’d told her he loved her as well. Her heart was heavy, too damned heavy. She wasn’t ready for this. Not now, not yet.
    The song finally ended and Mr Pre-packed Bacon now spat his whistle out, gripped both her cheeks and planted a slobbery, lingering kiss on her lips. ‘Happy New Year!’ he burbled.
    Then balloons fell from the ceiling. Paper streamers rained down on her. Jolly smiling faces surrounded her. She was hugged, kissed, fondled from every direction she turned. It went on and on and on.
    Nobody would notice, she thought, if she escaped now.
    She struggled across the room, weaving through the sea of people, and slipped out into the corridor. She felt a cold draught of air and smelt sweet cigarette smoke. God, how she could do with a fag right now!
    She headed along the corridor, which was almost deserted, turned right and walked along into the hotel foyer, then crossed over to the lifts. She pressed the button and, when the door opened, stepped in and pressed the button for the fifth floor.
    Hopefully, they’d all be too drunk to notice