Dead Man's Footsteps (15 page)

11 SEPTEMBER 2001

Ronnie stood in the sunshine on the empty boardwalk and checked once again that his mobile phone was switched off. Very definitely switched off. He stared ahead, past the benches and the beachfront railing, beyong the deserted golden sand, out across the expanse of rippling ocean, at the distant pall of black and grey and orange smoke that was steadily staining the sky, turning it the colour of rust.

He barely took any of it in. He had just realized that he had left his passport in the room safe back at his hotel. But perhaps that could be helpful. He was thinking. Thinking. Thinking. His brain was all jammed up with thoughts. Somehow he needed to clear his head. Some exercise might do it. Or a stiff drink.

To his left the boardwalk stretched out as far as he could see. In the distance, to his right, he could see the silhouettes of the rides in the amusement park at Coney Island. Nearer, there was a messy-looking apartment building, covered in scaffolding, about six storeys high. A black dude in a leather jacket was engaged in a discussion with an Oriental-looking guy in a bomber jacket. They kept turning their heads, as if checking they weren’t being watched, and they kept looking at him. Maybe they were doing a drugs deal and thought he might be a cop. Maybe they were talking about football, or baseball, or the fucking weather. Maybe they were the only people on the fucking planet who didn’t know something had happened to the World Trade Center this morning.

Ronnie didn’t give a shit about them. So long as they didn’t mug him they could stand there all day and talk. They could stand there until the world ended, which might be pretty damned soon, judging by the events of today so far.

Shit. Fuck. What a day this was. What a fuck of a day to pick to be here. And he didn’t even have Donald Hatcook’s mobile phone number.

And. And. And. He tried to shut that thought out, but it kept knocking on his door until he had to open up and let it in.

Donald Hatcook might be dead.

An awful lot of people might be fucking dead.

There was a parade of shops, all with Russian signs on them, to his right, lining the boardwalk. He began walking towards them, towing his bag behind him, and then stopped when he reached a large sign in a green metal frame with an arched top, framing one of those  YOU ARE HERE!  maps. It was headed:

RIEGELMANN WALKWAY. BRIGHTON BEACH. BRIGHTON 2ND STREET.

Despite all that was going through his mind, he stopped and smiled wryly. Home from home. Sort of! It would have been fun to have someone take his photograph beside it. Lorraine would be amused. On another day, under different circumstances.

He sat down on the bench beside the sign and leaned back in the seat, unfastened his tie, coiled it and put in his pocket. Then he opened the top button of his shirt. The air felt good on his neck. He needed it. He was shaking. Palpitating. His heart was thumping. He looked at his watch. Nearly midday. He began patting dust out of his hair and clothes and felt in need of a drink. He never normally drank in the daytime, well, not until lunchtime anyhow – most days. But a stiff whisky would slip down nicely. Or a brandy. Or even, he thought, thinking about those Russian signs, a vodka.

He stood up, gripped the handle of his bag and carried on pulling it along behind him, listening to the steady bump-bump-bump of the wheels on the planks. He saw a sign on a shop ahead. The first shop in the parade. In blue, red and white were the words: moscow and bar. Beyond was a green awning on which was a name in yellow letters:  TATIANA.

He went into the Moscow bar. It was almost empty and felt gloomy. There was a long wooden counter to his right, with round, red leather bar stools on chromium feet, and to the left, red leather banquette seats and metal tables. A couple of men who looked like heavies from a Bond movie sat on bar stools. Their heads were shaven, they wore black, short-sleeve T-shirts and they were silently glued to a wide-screen television on the wall. Mesmerized by it.

Shot glasses sat in front of them on the counter, along with a bottle of vodka wedged into a bed of ice in a bucket. Both held cigarettes and an ashtray filled with butts sat beside the ice bucket. The other occupants, two young hunks, both wearing expensive-looking leather jackets and sporting large rings, were seated at one banquette. They were both drinking coffee and one was smoking.

It was a good smell, Ronnie thought. Coffee and cigarettes. Strong, Russian cigarettes. There were signs around the bar written in Cyrillic, banners and flags from football clubs, mostly English. He recognized Newcastle, Manchester United and Chelsea.

On the screen was an image of hell on earth. No one in the bar spoke. Ronnie began watching as well; it was impossible not to. Two planes, one after the other, flying into the Twin Towers. Then each of the towers coming down. Didn’t matter how many times he saw it, each time was different. Worse.

‘Sir, yes?’

Broken English. The barman was a shrimp with a fuzz of cropped black hair brushed forward, wearing a grungy apron over a denim shirt that needed ironing.

‘Do you have Kalashnikov vodka?’

He looked blank. ‘Krashakov?’

‘Forget it,’ Ronnie said. ‘Any vodka, neat, and an espresso. You have espresso?’

‘Russian coffee.’

‘Fine.’

The shrimp nodded. ‘One Russian coffee. Vodka.’ He walked with a stoop as if his back was hurting.

A man was hurting on the screen. He was a bald, black guy covered in grey powder, with a clear breathing mask over his face, attached to an inflated bag. A man in a red helmet with a visor, a red face mask and a black T-shirt was urging him forward through grey snow.

‘So much shit!’ the shrimp said in broken English. ‘Manhattan. Unbelievable. You know about this? You know what happening?’

‘I was there,’ Ronnie said.

‘Yes? You was there?’

‘Get me a drink. I need that drink,’ he snapped.

‘I get you a drink. Don’t worry. You was there?’

‘Some part of that you don’t understand?’ Ronnie said.

The barman turned away huffily and produced a vodka bottle. One of the Bond heavies turned to Ronnie and raised his glass. He was drunk and slurring his speech. ‘You know what? Thirty years ago I’d have said  comrade  to you. Now I say  buddy. Know what I mean?’

Ronnie raised his glass seconds after the barman put it down. ‘Not exactly, no.’

‘You gay or something?’ the man asked.

‘No, I’m not gay.’

The man put his glass down and windmilled his arms. ‘I don’t have no problem with gays. Not that. No.’

‘Good,’ Ronnie said. ‘I don’t either.’

The man broke into a grin. His teeth were terrible, Ronnie thought. It looked like he had a mouthful of rubble. The man raised his glass and Ronnie clinked it. ‘Cheers.’

George Bush was on the screen now. He was wearing a dark suit with an orange tie, sitting at the back of a school classroom, in front of a small blackboard, and there were pictures stuck to the wall behind them. One depicted a bear with a striped scarf riding a bicycle. A man in a suit was standing over George Bush, whispering into his ear. Then the image changed to wreckage of a plane on the ground.

‘You’re OK,’ the man said to Ronnie. ‘I like you. You’re OK.’ He poured more vodka into his own glass, then held the bottle over Ronnie’s for a moment. He squinted, saw it was still full and set the bottle back down in the ice. ‘You should drink.’ He drained his glass. ‘Today we need to drink.’ He turned back to the screen. ‘This not real. Not possible.’

Ronnie took a sip. The vodka burned his throat. Then, moments later, he tipped the glass back and drained it. The effect was almost instant, burning deep inside him. He poured another for himself and for his new best friend.

They fell silent. Just watching the screen.

After several more vodkas, Ronnie was starting to feel rather drunk. At some point he staggered off his stool, stumbled over to one of the empty booths and fell asleep.

When he woke up, he had a blinding headache and a raging thirst. Then a sudden moment of panic.

My bags.

Shit, shit, shit.

Then, to his relief, he saw them, still standing where he had left them, by his vacated bar stool.

It was 2 o’clock.

The same people were still in the bar. The same images were still repeating on the screen. He hauled himself back on to the bar stool and nodded at his friend.

‘What about the father?’ the Bond heavy said.

‘Yeah, why they don’t mention him?’ the other heavy said.

‘Father?’ the barman said.

‘All we hear is this  Son of Bin Laden.  What about the father?’

Mayor Giuliani was now on the screen, talking earnestly. He looked calm. He looked caring. He looked like a man who had things under control.

Ronnie’s new best friend turned to him. ‘You know Sam Colt?’

Ronnie, who was trying to listen to Giuliani, shook his head. ‘No.’

‘The guy invented the revolver, right?’

‘Ah, OK, him.’

‘Know what this man said?’

‘No.’

‘Sam Colt said,  Now I’ve made all men equal!’ The Russian grinned, baring his revolting teeth again. ‘Yeah? OK? Understand?’

Ronnie nodded and ordered sparkling mineral water and coffee. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, he realized, but he had no appetite.

Giuliani was replaced by stumbling grey ghosts. They looked like the grey ghosts he had seen earlier. A poem from way back at school suddenly came into his head. From one of his favourite writers, Rudyard Kipling. Yeah. He was  the Man.

Kipling understood about power, control, empire-building.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs …

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same …

On the screen he saw a fireman weeping. His helmet was covered in grey snow and he was sitting, visor up, cradling his face in his hands.

Ronnie leaned forward and tapped the shoulder of the barman. He turned from the screen. ‘Uh huh?’

‘Do you have rooms here? I need a room.’

His new best friend turned to him. ‘No flights. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Where you from anyway?’

Ronnie hesitated. ‘Canada. Toronto.’

‘Toronto,’ the Russian repeated. ‘Canada. OK. Good.’ He felt silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Cheap room?’

Ronnie realized he could not use any cards – even if they had any credit left on them. He had just under four hundred dollars in his wallet, which would have to tide him over until he could convert some of the other currency he had in his bag – if he could find a buyer who would pay him the right money. And not ask questions.

‘Yes, a cheap room,’ he replied. ‘Cheaper the better.’

‘You’re in the right place. You want SRO. That’s what you want.’

‘SRO?’

‘Single Room Occupancy. That’s what you want. You pay cash, they no ask you questions. My cousin has SRO house. Ten minutes’ walk. You want I give you the address?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Ronnie replied.

The Russian showed him his teeth again. ‘Plan? You have plan? Good plan?’

‘
Carpe diem!
’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s an expression.’

‘
Carpe diem?
’ The Russian pronounced it slowly, clumsily.

Ronnie grinned, then bought him another drink.

OCTOBER 2007

Major Incident Room One was the larger of two airy rooms in the Major Incident Suite of Sussex House, which housed the inquiry teams working on serious crime investigations. Roy Grace entered it shortly before 6.30, carrying a mug of coffee.

An open, modern-feeling L-shaped room, it was divided up by three principal work stations, each comprising a long, curved, light-coloured wooden desk with space for up to eight people to sit, and massive whiteboards, most of which at the moment were blank, apart from one marked  Operation Dingo, and another on which were several close-up photographs of the  Unknown Female  in the storm drain and some exterior shots of the New England Quarter development. On one, a red circle drawn in marker pen indicated the position of the body in the drain.

A large inquiry might have used up all the space in here, but because of the relative lack of urgency in this case – and therefore the need to budget manpower and resources accordingly – Grace’s team occupied only one of the work stations. At the moment the others were vacant, but that could change at any time.

Unlike the work stations throughout the rest of the building, there were few signs of anything personal on the desks or the walls here: no pictures of families, football fixture lists, jokey cartoons. Almost every single object in this room – apart from the furniture and the business hardware – was related to the matters under investigation. There wasn’t a lot of banter either. Just the silence of fierce concentration, the muted warble of phones, the clack-clack-clack of paper shuffling from printers.

Seated at the work station were the team Grace had selected for  Operation Dingo. An ardent believer in keeping the same people together whenever possible, he had worked with all of them during the previous months. His only hesitant choice had been Norman Potting, who constantly upset people, but the man was an extremely capable detective.

Acting as his deputy SIO was Detective Inspector Lizzie Mantle. Grace liked her a lot and in truth had long had a sneaking fancy for her. In her late thirties, she was attractive, with neat, shoulder-length fair hair, and exuded a femininity that belied a surprisingly tough personality. She tended to favour trouser suits and she was wearing one today, in grey pinstripe, that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a stockbroker, over a white man’s shirt.

Her fair good looks were something Lizzie shared with another DI at Sussex House, Kim Murphy, and there had been some sour-grape rumblings that if you wanted to get ahead in this force, having the looks of a bimbo was your best asset. It was totally untrue, of course, Grace knew. Both women had achieved their ranks, at relatively young ages, because they thoroughly deserved it.

Roy’s promotion would undoubtedly result in new demands on his time, so he was going to have to rely heavily on Lizzie’s support in running this investigation.

Along with her, he had selected Detective Sergeants Glenn Branson, Norman Potting and Bella Moy. Thirty-five years old and cheery-faced beneath a tangle of hennaed brown hair, Bella was sitting, as ever, with an open box of Maltesers inches from her keyboard. Roy crossed the room, watching as she typed in deep concentration. Every so often her right hand would suddenly stray from the keyboard, like some creature with a life of its own, pluck a chocolate, deliver it to her mouth and return to the keyboard. She was a slim woman, yet she ate more chocolate than anyone Grace had ever come across.

Next to her sat, gangly, tousle-haired Detective Constable Nick Nicholl, who was twenty-seven and beanpole tall. A zealous detective and once a handy centre forward, he had been encouraged by Grace to take up rugby and was now a useful member of the Sussex Police team – though not as useful at the moment as Grace had hoped, because he was a recent father and appeared to be suffering from constant sleep deprivation.

Opposite him, reading her way through a thick wodge of computer printouts, was young, feisty DC Emma-Jane Boutwood. A few months earlier she had been badly injured on a case when she was crushed against a wall by a stolen van in a pursuit. By rights she should still be convalescing, but she had begged Grace to let her come back and do light duties.

The team was completed by an analyst, an indexer, a typist and the system supervisor.

Glenn Branson, dressed in a black suit, a violent blue shirt and a scarlet tie, looked up as Grace entered. ‘Yo, old-timer,’ he said, but more flatly than usual. ‘Any chance of a quiet chat later?’

Grace nodded at his friend. ‘Of course.’

Branson’s greeting prompted a few other heads to be raised as well.

‘Well, here comes God!’ said Norman Potting, doffing a nonexistent hat. ‘May I be the first to proffer my congratulations on your elevation to the brass!’ he said.

‘Thank you, Norman, but there’s nothing very special about brass.’

‘Well, that’s where you are wrong, Roy,’ Potting retorted. ‘A lot of metals rust, you see. But brass doesn’t. It corrodes.’ He beamed with pride as if he had just delivered the complete, final and incontrovertible Theory of Everything.

Bella, who very much disliked Potting, rounded on him, her fingers hovering above the Maltesers like the talons of a bird of prey. ‘That’s just semantics, Norman. Rust, corrosion, what’s the difference?’

‘Quite a lot actually,’ Potting said.

‘Perhaps you should have been a metallurgist instead of a policeman,’ she said, and popped another Malteser in her mouth.

Grace sat down in the one empty seat, at the end of the work station between Potting and Bella, and immediately crinkled his nose at the stale reek of pipe tobacco on the man.

Bella turned to Grace. ‘Congratulations, Roy. Very well deserved.’

The Detective Superintendent spent some moments accepting and acknowledging congratulations from the rest of the team, then laid his policy book and agenda for the meeting out in front of him.

‘Right. This is the second briefing of  Operation Dingo, the investigation into the suspected murder of an unidentified female, conducted on day three following the discovery of her remains.’

For some minutes he summarized the report of the forensic archaeologist. Then he read out the key points from Theobald’s lengthy assessment. Death by strangulation, evidenced by the woman’s broken hyoid, was a possibility. Forensic tests for toxins were being carried out from hair samples recovered. There were no other signs of injury to the skeleton, such as breakages, or cuts indicating knife wounds.

Grace paused to drink some water and noticed that Norman Potting was looking very smug.

‘OK,  Resourcing. In view of the estimated time period of the incident I am not looking to expand the inquiry team at this stage.’ He went on through the various headings.  Meeting cycles: he announced there would be the usual daily 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. briefings. He reported that the HOLMES computer team had been up and running since Friday night. He read out the list under the heading  Investigative Strategies, which included  Communications/Media, emphasizing the need for press coverage, and said that they were working on getting this case featured on next week’s  Crimewatch  television programme, although they were struggling because it wasn’t considered
newsworthy 
enough. Then he handed the floor to his team, asking Emma-Jane Boutwood to report first.

The young DC produced a list of all missing persons in the county of Sussex who fell into the estimated time period of the victim’s death, but without any conclusion. Grace instructed her to broaden her search to the nationwide missing-persons files for that time.

Nick Nicholl reported that DNA samples from the woman’s hair had been sent to the lab at Huntingdon, along with a bone sample from her thigh for DNA extraction.

Bella Moy reported that she had met with the city’s chief engineer. ‘He showed me through the flow charts of the sewer system and I’m now mapping possible places of entry further up the drain network. I’ll have that complete some time tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ Grace said.

‘There’s one thing that could be quite significant,’ Bella added. ‘The outlet from the sewer network goes far enough out to sea to ensure that all the sewage gets transported offshore by the currents, rather than towards it.’

Grace nodded, guessing where this was heading.

‘So it’s possible that the murderer was aware of this – he might be an engineer, for instance.’

Grace thanked her and turned to Norman Potting, curious to know what the Detective Sergeant was looking so pleased about.

Potting pulled a set of X-rays from a buff envelope and held them up triumphantly. ‘I’ve got a dental records match!’ he said.

There was a moment of total silence. Every ear in the room was tuned to him.

‘I got these from one of the dentists on the list you gave me, Roy,’ he said. ‘The woman had extensive dental work done. Her name is – or rather was – Joanna Wilson.’

‘Nice work,’ Grace said. ‘Was she single or married?’

‘Well, I’ve got good and bad news,’ Potting said, and fell into a smug silence, grinning like an imbecile.

‘We’re all ears,’ Grace prompted him.

‘She had a husband, yes. Stormy relationship – so far as I’ve been able to discover – the dentist, Mr Gebbie, knows a little of the background. I’ll get more on that tomorrow. She was an actress. I don’t know the full story yet, but they split up and she left. Apparently she went to Los Angeles to make her name – that’s what the husband told everyone.’

‘Sounds like we should have a little chat with the husband,’ Grace said.

‘There’s a bit of a problem with that,’ Norman Potting replied. Then he nodded pensively for some moments, pursing his lips, as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘He died in the World Trade Center, on 9/11.’