Dead Man's Footsteps (10 page)
Read Dead Man's Footsteps Online
Authors: Peter James
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Police, #Mystery & Detective, #Crime & Thriller, #England, #Crime & mystery, #Police Procedural, #Grace; Roy (Fictitious character), #Brighton
OCTOBER 2007
Grey was the default colour of death, Roy Grace thought. Grey bones. Grey ash when you were cremated. Grey tombstones. Grey X-rayed dental records. Grey mortuary walls. Whether you rotted away in a coffin or in a storm drain, all that was eventually left of you would be grey.
Grey bones lying on a grey steel post-mortem table. Being probed by grey steel instruments. Even the light in here was grey, strangely diffused ethereal light that seeped in through the large opaque windows. Ghosts were grey too. Grey ladies, grey men. There were plenty of them in the post-mortem room of the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary. The ghosts of thousands of unfortunate people whose remains had ended up here, inside this grim bungalow with its grey, pebbledash-rendered walls, residing behind one of its grey steel freezer locker doors before their penultimate journey to an undertaker’s premises, then burial or cremation.
He shuddered. He couldn’t help it. Despite the fact that he minded coming here less these days, because the woman he loved was in charge, it still gave him the creeps.
Gave him the creeps to see the skeleton, with its artificial fingernails and fronds of winter wheat-coloured hair still attached to the skull.
And it gave him the creeps to see all the green-gowned figures in the room. Frazer Theobald, Joan Major, Barry Heath – the latest addition to the team of Coroner’s Officers for the area, a short, neatly dressed, poker-faced man, recently retired from the police force, whose grim job it was to attend not only all murder scenes but also sudden-death scenes, such as traffic accident fatalities and suicides, and then the post-mortems. There was also the SOCO photographer, recording every step of the process. Plus Darren, Cleo’s assistant, a sharp, good-looking and pleasant-natured lad of twenty with fashionably spiky black hair, who had started life as a butcher’s apprentice. And Christopher Ghent, the tall, studious forensic odontist, who was occupied taking soft-clay impressions of the skeleton’s teeth.
And finally Cleo. She hadn’t been on duty, but had decided that, as he was working, she might as well too.
Sometimes Roy found it hard to believe that he really was dating this goddess.
He watched her now, tall and leggy and almost impossibly beautiful in her green gown and white wellies, long blonde hair clipped up, moving around this room, her room, her domain, with such ease and grace, sensitive but at the same time impervious to all its horrors.
But all the time he was wondering if, in some terrible irony, he was witnessing the woman he loved laying out the remains of the woman he had once loved.
The room smelled strongly of disinfectant. It was furnished with two steel post-mortem tables, one fixed and the other, on which the remains of the woman now lay, on castors. There was a blue hydraulic hoist by a row of fridges with floor-to-ceiling doors. The walls were tiled in grey and a drainage gully ran all the way around. Along one wall was a row of sinks, with a coiled yellow hose. Along another were a wide work surface, a metal cutting board and a glass-fronted display cabinet filled with instruments, some packs of Duracell batteries and grisly souvenirs that no one else wanted – mostly pacemakers – removed from victims.
Next to the cabinet was a wall chart listing the name of the deceased, with columns for the weight of their brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys and spleen. All that was written on it so far was ‘
ANON. WOMAN
’.
It was a sizeable room but it felt crowded this afternoon, as it always did during a post-mortem by a Home Office pathologist.
‘There are four fillings,’ Christopher Ghent said, to no one in particular. ‘Three white composite and one gold inlay. An all-porcelain bridge from upper right six to four, not cheap. No amalgams. All high-quality stuff.’
Grace listened, trying to remember what dental work Sandy had had. She had been fastidious about her teeth. But the description was too technical for him.
Joan Major was unpacking, from a large case, a series of plaster of Paris models. They sat there on square black plastic plinths like broken archaeological fragments from an important dig. He had seen them before, but he always found it hard to get his head around the subtle differences they illustrated.
When Christopher Ghent finished reciting his dental analysis, Joan began to explain how each model showed the comparison of different stages of bone development. She concluded by stating that the remains were female, around thirty years old, give or take three years.
Which continued to cover the age Sandy had been when she disappeared.
He knew he should put that from his mind, that it was unprofessional to be influenced by any personal agenda. But how could he?
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
The floor was shaking. Key blanks, dozens of them hanging in rows on hooks along one wall of the store, were clinking. Several cans of paint fell from a shelf. The lid came off one as it hit the floor and magnolia emulsion poured out. A cardboard box tumbled, sending brass screws wriggling like maggots across the linoleum.
It was dark in the deep, narrow hardware store just a few hundred yards from the World Trade Center, where Ronnie had taken refuge, following the tall cop in here. Some minutes earlier the power had gone off. Just one battery-powered emergency light was on. A raging dust tornado twisted past the window, blacker some moments than night.
A shoeless woman in an expensive suit, who didn’t look like she had been in a hardware store before in her life, was sobbing. A gaunt figure in brown overalls, grey hair bunched in a ponytail, stood behind the counter that ran the full length down one side, presiding over the gloom in grim, helpless silence.
Ronnie still held tightly on to the handle of his suitcase. Miraculously, his briefcase was still resting on top.
Outside, a police car spun past on its roof, like a top, and stopped. Its doors were open and its dome light was on. The interior was empty, a radio mike dangling from its twisted cord.
A crack suddenly appeared in the wall to his left and an entire stack of shelves, laden with boxes of different-sized paintbrushes, crashed to the floor. The sobbing woman screamed.
Ronnie took a step back, pressing against the counter, thinking. He had been in a restaurant in Los Angeles once during a minor quake. His companion then had told him the doorway was the strongest structure. If the building came down, your best chance of survival was to be in the doorway.
He moved towards the door.
The cop said, ‘I wouldn’t go out right now, buddy.’
Then a massive avalanche of masonry and glass and rubble came down right in front of the window, burying the cop car. The store’s burglar alarm went off, a piercing banshee howl. The ponytailed guy disappeared for a moment and the sound stopped, as did the clinking of the keys.
The floor wasn’t shaking any more.
There was a very long silence. Outside, quite quickly, the dust storm began to lighten. As if dawn was breaking.
Ronnie opened the door.
‘I wouldn’t go out there – know what I’m saying?’ the cop repeated.
Ronnie looked at him, hesitating. Then he pushed the door open and stepped out, towing his bag behind him.
Stepped out into total silence. The silence of a dawn snowfall. Grey snow lay everywhere.
Grey silence.
Then he started to hear the sounds. Fire alarms. Burglar alarms. Car alarms. Human screams. Emergency vehicle sirens. Helicopters.
Grey figures stumbling silently past him. An endless line of women and men with hollow, blank faces. Some walking, some running. Some stabbing buttons on phones. He followed them.
Stumbling blindly through the grey fog that stung his eyes and choked his mouth and nostrils.
He just followed them. Towing his bag. Following. Keeping pace. The girders of a bridge rose on either side of him. The Brooklyn Bridge, he thought it was, from his scant knowledge of New York. Running, stumbling, across the river. Across an endless bridge through an endless swirling, choking grey hell.
Ronnie lost track of time. Lost track of direction. Just followed the grey ghosts. Suddenly, for one fleeting instant, he smelled the tang of salt, then the burning smells again – aviation fuel, paint, rubber. At any moment there might be another plane.
The reality of what had happened was starting to hit him.
Hopefully Donald Hatcook was OK. But what if he wasn’t? The business plan he had created was awesome. They stood to make millions in the next five years. Fucking millions! But if Donald was dead, what then?
There were silhouettes in the distance. Jagged high-rise silhouettes. Brooklyn. He had never been to Brooklyn before in his life, just seen it across the river. It was getting nearer with every step forward. The air was getting better too. More prolonged patches of salty sea air. Thinning mist.
And suddenly he was going down an incline towards the far end of the bridge. He stopped and turned back. Something biblical came into his mind, some memory about Lot’s wife. Turning her head. Becoming a pillar of salt. That’s what the endless line of people passing him looked like. Pillars of salt.
He held on to a metal railing with one hand and stared back. Sunlight dappled the water below him. A million brilliant specks of white dancing on the ripples. Then beyond it the whole of Manhattan looked as if it was on fire. The high-rises all partially shrouded in a pall of grey, brown, white and black smoke clouds billowing up into the deep blue sky.
He was shaking uncontrollably and badly needed to collect his thoughts. Fumbling in his pockets, he pulled out his Marlboros and lit one. He took four deep puffs in quick succession, but it didn’t taste good, not with all the stuff in his throat, and he dropped it into the water below, feeling giddy, his throat even drier.
He rejoined the procession of ghosts, following them on to a road where they seemed to disperse in different directions. He stopped again as a thought struck him, and as it took hold he suddenly wanted some peace and quiet. Turning off, he walked along a deserted side street, past a row of office buildings, the wheels of his bag still bump-bump-bumping along behind him.
Totally absorbed, he walked through almost empty urban streets for a long time, before finding himself at the entrance ramp to a highway. A short distance in front of him was a tall, girdered advertising hoarding rising into the sky, emblazoned with the word kentile in red. Then he heard the rumble of an engine and the next moment, a blue four-door pick-up truck stopped alongside him.
The window slid down and a man in a chequered shirt and a New York Yankees baseball cap peered out of the window. ‘You wanna a ride, buddy?’
Ronnie stopped, startled and confused by the question, and sweating like a hog. A ride? Did he want a ride? Where to?
He wasn’t sure. Did he?
He could see figures inside. Ghosts huddled together.
‘Got room for one more.’
‘Where are you going?’ he asked lamely, as if he had all kinds of options.
The man spoke in a nasal voice, as if the bass on his vocal cords was turned up to max. ‘There’s more planes. There’s more planes any moment. Gotta get away. Ten more planes. Maybe more. Shit, man, it’s just friggin’ started.’
‘I – ah – I have to meet—’ Ronnie stopped. Stared at the open door, at the blue seats, at the man’s dungarees. He was an old guy with a bobbing Adam’s apple and a neck like a turkey. His face was wizened and kind.
‘Jump in. I’ll give you a ride.’
Ronnie walked around and climbed into the front, next to the man. The news was on, loudly. A woman was saying that the Wall Street area of Manhattan and Battery Park were impassable.
As Ronnie fumbled for his seat belt, the driver handed him a bottle of water. Ronnie, suddenly realizing how parched he was, drained it gratefully.
‘I clean the windows, right? The Center, yeah?’
‘Right,’ Ronnie said distantly.
‘All my fuggin’ cleaning stuff’s in the South Tower – know what I’m saying?’
Ronnie didn’t, not exactly, because he was only half listening. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘I guess I’ll have to go back later.’
‘Later,’ Ronnie echoed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
‘You OK?’
‘Me?’
The truck moved forward. The interior smelled of dog hair and coffee.
‘Gotta get away. They hit the Pentagon. There’s ten fucking planes up there right now, coming at us. This is yuge. Yuge!’
Ronnie turned his head. Stared at the four huddled figures behind him. None of them met his eyes.
‘A-rabs,’ the driver said. ‘A-rabs done this.’
Ronnie stared at a plastic Starbucks beaker with a coffee-stained paper towel wrapped around it in the cup holder. A bottle of water was jammed in next to it.
‘This thing, it’s just the beginning,’ the driver said. ‘Lucky we got a strong president. Lucky we got George Dubya.’
Ronnie said nothing.
‘You OK? Not hurt or nothing?’
They were heading along a freeway. Only a handful of vehicles were coming in the opposite direction, on an elevated section. Ahead of them was a wide green road sign divided into two. On the left was written EXIT 24 EAST 27 PROSPECT EXPWY. On the right it said 278 WEST VERRAZANO BR, STATEN IS.
Ronnie did not reply, because he did not hear him. He was deep in thought again.
Working through the idea. It was a crazy idea. Just a product of his shaken state. But it wouldn’t go away. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to wonder if it might have legs. A back-up plan to Donald Hatcook.
Maybe an even better plan.
He switched his phone off.
OCTOBER 2007
Abby watched the tip of the iron crowbar in terror. It was jerking sharply, blindly, left then right, levering the doors apart, just a couple of inches each time before they sprang shut again, clamping tight on the tip.
There was another huge crash on the roof and this time it really did feel as if someone had jumped on to it. The lift swayed, thumping the side of the shaft, throwing her off balance, the small canister of pepper spray dropping with a thud from her hand as she tried to stop herself smashing into the wall.
With a loud metallic screech of protest, the doors were opening.
Cold terror flooded through her.
Not just opening a couple of inches now, but wider, much wider.
She ducked down, desperately scrabbling on the floor for the spray. Light spilled in. She saw the canister and grabbed it, panic-stricken. Then, without even wasting time to look up, she launched herself forward, pressing down on the trigger, aiming straight into the widening gap between the doors.
Straight into powerful arms that grabbed her, yanking her up out of the lift and on to the landing.
She screamed, wriggling desperately, trying to break free. When she pressed down on the trigger again, nothing came out.
‘Fuck you,’ she cried. ‘Fuck you!’
‘Darlin’, it’s all right. It’s OK, darlin’.’
Not any voice she recognized. Not his.
‘Lemme go!’ she screamed, lashing out with her bare feet.
He was holding her in a grip like a vice. ‘Darlin’? Miss? Calm down. You’re safe. It’s OK. You are safe!’
A face beneath a yellow helmet smiled at her. A fireman’s helmet. Green overalls with fluorescent stripes. She heard the crackle of a two-way radio and what sounded like a control-room voice saying, ‘Hotel 04.’
Two firemen in helmets stood on the stairs above her. Another waited a few stairs down.
The man holding her smiled again, reassuringly. ‘You’re all right, love. You’re safe,’ he said.
She was shivering. Were they real? Was this a trap?
They seemed genuine, but she continued gripping the pepper spray tightly. She would put nothing past Ricky.
Then she noticed the surly face of the elderly Polish caretaker, who was puffing up the stairs in his grubby sweatshirt and brown trousers.
‘I not paid to work weekends,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s the managing agents. I speak to them about this lift for months! Months.’ He looked at Abby and frowned. Jerked a finger with a blackened nail upwards. ‘Flat 82, right?’
‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘The managing agents,’ he wheezed in his guttural accent. ‘They no good. I tell them, every day I tell them.’
‘How long you been in there, darlin’?’ her rescuer said.
He was in his thirties, good-looking in a boy-band sort of way, with black eyebrows almost too neat to be real. She looked at him warily, as if he was too handsome to be a fireman, as if he was all part of Ricky’s elaborate deception. Then she found she was shaking almost too much to speak.
‘Do you have any water?’
Moments later a water bottle was put in her hand. She drank in greedy gulps, spilling some so that it ran down her chin and trickled down her neck. She drained it before she spoke.
‘Thank you.’
She held out the empty bottle, and an unseen hand took it.
‘Last night,’ she said. ‘I’ve been – since – I think – in this sodding thing – last night. It’s Saturday now?’
‘Yes. It’s 5.20, Saturday afternoon.’
‘Since yesterday. Since just after 6.30 yesterday evening.’ She looked in fury at the caretaker. ‘Don’t you check the bloody alarm’s working? Or the bloody phone in the thing?’
‘The managing agents.’ He shrugged, as if every problem in the universe could be blamed on them.
‘If you don’t feel well you should go to A and E at the hospital for a check-up,’ the good-looking fire officer said.
That panicked her. ‘No – no – I’m really fine, thank you. I – I just—’
‘If you’re really bad, we can call you an ambulance.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No. I don’t need hospital.’
She looked at her fallen-over boots, which were still in the lift, and at the damp stain on the floor. She couldn’t smell anything but she knew it must reek in there.
His radio crackled again and she heard another call sign.
‘I – I thought it was going to plunge. You know? At any moment. I thought it was going to plunge – and I was going to be—’
‘Na, no danger. Got a back-up centrifugal locking mechanism, even if it did. But it wouldn’t have fallen.’ His voice tailed away and he seemed pensive for a moment, his eyes darting to the ceiling of the lift. ‘You live here?’
She nodded.
Relaxing his grip on her, he said, ‘You ought to check your service charges. Make sure the lift maintenance is on them.’
The caretaker made a comment, something else about the managing agents, but she barely heard it. Her relief at being freed was only fleeting. Great that she was out of the bloody lift. But that did not remotely mean she was out of danger.
She knelt down, trying to reach her boots without going back in the lift. But they were out of reach. The fireman bent down and hooked them out with the reverse of his axe. He clearly wasn’t stupid enough to go in there himself.
‘Who alerted you?’ she asked.
‘A lady in – ’ he paused to read a note on his pad – ‘flat 47. She tried to call the lift several times this afternoon, then reported she heard someone calling for help.’
Making a mental note to thank her some time, Abby looked warily up the stairs, which were covered in the workmen’s dust sheets and littered with plasterboard and building materials.
‘You should get plenty of fluids down you, and eat something as soon as you can,’ the fireman recommended. ‘Just something light. Soup or something. I’ll come up to your flat with you, make sure you’re all right.’
She thanked him, then looked at her Mace spray, wondering why it hadn’t fired, and realized she had not flipped the safety lock. She dropped it in her bag and, holding her boots, began to climb the stairs, carefully negotiating the builders’ mess. Thinking.
Had Ricky sabotaged the lift? And the phone and the bell? Was it too far-fetched to think he had done that?
All the locks were as she had left them, she was relieved to discover when she reached her front door. Even so, after thanking the fire officer again, she let herself in warily, checking the thread across the hall was intact before locking the door again behind her and securing the safety chains. Then, just to be sure, she checked each room in the flat.
Everything was fine. No one had been here.
She went to the kitchen to make herself some tea and grabbed a KitKat out of the fridge. She had just popped a piece in her mouth when the doorbell rang, followed immediately by a sharp rap.
Chewing, nerves jangling in case this was Ricky, she hurried warily to the front door and peered through the spyhole. A slight, thin-faced man in his early twenties, with short black hair brushed forward, wearing a suit, was standing there.
Who the hell was he? A salesman? A Jehovah’s Witness – but didn’t they normally come in pairs? Or he might be something to do with the fire brigade. Right now, dog tired, very shaken and ravenous, she just wanted to make a cup of tea, have something to eat, then down several glasses of red wine and crash out.
Knowing that the man would have had to pass the caretaker and the firemen to get here eased her fears about him a little. Checking that the two safety chains were properly engaged, she unlocked the door and pushed it open the few inches it would travel.
‘Katherine Jennings?’ he asked in a voice that was sharp and invasive. His breath was warm on her face and smelled of peppermint chewing gum.
Katherine Jennings
was the name under which she had rented the flat.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
‘Kevin Spinella from the Argus newspaper. I wonder if you could spare a couple of moments of your time?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and immediately tried to push the door shut. But it was wedged open by his foot.
‘I’d just like a quick quote I could use.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have nothing to say.’
‘So you are not grateful to the fire brigade for rescuing you?’
‘No, I didn’t say—’
Shit.
He was now writing that down on his pad.
‘Look, Ms – Mrs Jennings?’
She didn’t rise to the bait.
He went on. ‘I understand you’ve just had quite an ordeal – would it be OK for me to send a photographer round?’
‘No, it would not,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow morning? What time wouldbegood for you?’
‘No, thank you. And please remove your foot.’
‘Did you feel your life was in jeopardy?’
‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Right, I understand, you’ve been through a lot. Tell you what, I’ll pop back tomorrow with a photographer. About 10 tomorrow morning suit you? Not too early for you on a Sunday?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t want any publicity.’
‘Good, well, I’ll see you in the morning then.’ He removed his foot.
‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly, then pushed the door shut and locked it very carefully. Shit, that was all she bloody needed, her photo in the paper.
Shaking, her mind a maelstrom of thoughts, she pulled her cigarettes from her bag and lit one. Then she walked through into the kitchen.
*
A man seated in the rear of an old white van that was parked in the street below also lit a cigarette. Then he popped the tab of a can of Foster’s lager, being careful not to spray the expensive piece of electrical kit he had alongside him, and took a swig. Through the lens inserted in the tiny hole he had drilled in the roof of the van, he normally had a perfect view of her flat, although it was partly obscured at this moment by a parked fire engine blocking the street. Still, he thought, it relieved the monotony of his long vigil.
And he could see to his satisfaction, from the shadow moving back past the window, that she was in there now.
Home sweet home
, he thought to himself, and grinned wryly. That was almost funny.
32
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
Lorraine, still wearing nothing but her bikini bottoms and gold ankle chain, sat on a bar stool in her kitchen, watching the small television mounted above the work surface, waiting for the kettle to boil. The butts from half a dozen cigarettes lay in the ashtray in front of her. She had just lit another and was inhaling deeply as she held the phone to her ear, talking to Sue Klinger, her best friend.
Sue and her husband, Stephen, lived in a house that Lorraine had always coveted, a stunning detached mansion in Tongdean Avenue – considered by many people to be one of the finest residences in Brighton and Hove – with views across the whole city, down to the sea. The Klingers also owned a villa in Portugal. They had four gorgeous children, and, unlike Ronnie, Stephen had the Midas touch. Ronnie had promised Lorraine that if Sue and Stephen ever sold the house, he would find a way to come up with the money to buy it. Yep, sure. In your dreams, my love.
They were replaying the images of the two planes striking the towers again, and then again, over and over. It was as if whoever was producing or directing this programme couldn’t believe it either, and had to keep replaying them to be sure it was real. Or perhaps someone in shock thought that if they repeated these images enough times, eventually the planes would miss the towers and fly past safely, and it would be just a normal Tuesday morning in Manhattan, business as usual. She watched the sudden orange fireball, the dense black clouds, feeling sicker and sicker.
Now they were showing the towers coming down again. First the South, then the North.
The kettle came to the boil but she didn’t move, not wanting to take her eyes off the screen in case she missed Ronnie. Alfie rubbed against her leg, but she ignored him. Sue was saying something to her, but Lorraine didn’t hear because she was peering at the screen intently, scanning every face.
‘Lorraine? Hello? You still there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ronnie’s a survivor. He’ll be OK.’
The kettle switched itself off with a click. Survivor. Her sister had used that word as well.
Survivor.
Shit, Ronnie, you’d better be.
A beeping sound told her there was a call waiting. Barely able to contain herself she shouted excitedly, ‘Sue, that might be him! Call you straight back!’
Oh, God, Ronnie, please be on the phone. Please. Please let this be you!
But it was her sister. ‘Lori, I just heard that all flights in the US have been grounded.’ Mo worked as a stewardess for British Airways long-haul.
‘What – what does that mean?’
‘They’re not letting any planes in or out. I was meant to be flying to Washington tomorrow. Everything’s grounded.’
Lorraine felt a new wave of panic. ‘Until when?’
‘I don’t know – until further notice.’
‘Does that mean Ronnie might not get back tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid so. I’ll find out more later in the day, but they’re making all planes that are heading to the States turn back. Which means the planes will be in the wrong places. It’s going to be chaos.’
‘Great,’ Lorraine said glumly. ‘That’s just bloody great. When do you think he might get back?’
‘I don’t know – I’ll get an update as soon as I can.’
Lorraine heard a child calling, and Mo saying, ‘One minute, darling. Mummy’s on the phone.’
Lorraine crushed out her cigarette. Then she jumped down from the stool, still watching the television screen, pulled out a tea bag and a mug, and poured in the water. Still without taking her eyes from the screen, she stepped back and bumped her hip, painfully, into the corner of the kitchen table.
‘Shit! Fuck!’
She looked down for a moment. Saw the fresh red mark among the uneven line of bruises, some black and fresh, some yellow and almost gone. Ronnie was clever, he always hit her in the body, never her face. Always made bruises she could easily hide.
Always cried and begged forgiveness after one of his – increasingly frequent – drunken rages.