Dead Man's Footsteps (16 page)

OCTOBER 2007

At 6.45 Abby was beginning to worry that the courier company had forgotten her. She had been ready and waiting since 5.30, her suitcase by the door, coat slung over it, Jiffy bag addressed and sealed.

It was completely dark outside now and, with the rain still torrenting down, she could see very little. She was watching for a Global Express van to come down the street. For the umpteenth time she removed the Mace pepper spray canister from the hip pocket of her jeans and examined it.

The small red cylinder with its finger-grip indents, key chain and belt clip was reassuringly heavy. She repeatedly flipped open the safety lid and practised aiming the nozzle. The guy who had sold it to her in Los Angeles, on her way back to England, told her it contained ten one-second bursts and would blind a human for ten seconds. She had smuggled it into England inside her make-up bag in her suitcase.

She put it back in her pocket, stood up and took her mobile phone out of her handbag. She was about to dial Global Express when the intercom finally buzzed.

She hurried down the hall to the front door. On the small black and white monitor she could see a motorcycle helmet. Her heart sank. That twerp assistant, Jonathan, had told her it would be a van. She had been banking on a van.

Shit.

She pressed the intercom button. ‘Come up, eighth floor,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the lift’s not working.’

Her brain was racing again, trying to do a fast rethink. She picked up the Jiffy bag. Have to revert to her original plan, she decided, thinking it through in the two long minutes that passed before the sharp rap on the door.

Vigilant as ever, she peered through the spyhole and saw a motorcyclist, clad in leather, in a black helmet, with a dark visor that was down, holding some kind of clipboard.

She unlocked the door, removed the safety chains and opened it.

‘I – I thought you were coming in a van,’ she said.

He dropped the clipboard, which fell to the ground with a clank, then punched Abby hard in the stomach. It caught her totally off guard, doubling her up in winded pain. She stumbled sideways into the wall.

‘Nice to see you, Abby,’ he said. ‘Not crazy about your new look.’

Then he punched her again.

OCTOBER 2007

Shortly before 7 o’clock, Cassian Pewe drove his dark green Vaux-hall Astra through the buffeting wind and neon-lit darkness of the cliff-top coast road. He crossed two mini-roundabouts into Peace-haven, then continued for the next mile past endless parades of shops, half of them seemingly estate agents, the rest garish fast-food places. It reminded him of the outskirts of small American towns he had seen in films.

Unfamiliar with this area a few miles east of Brighton, he was being bossed through it by the female voice of his plug-in sat nav. Now, past Peacehaven, he was following a crawling camper van down the winding hill into Newhaven. The sat-nav woman instructed him to keep straight on for half a mile. Then his mobile phone, in the hands-free cradle, rang.

He peered at the display, saw it was from Lucy, his girlfriend, and reached forward to answer it.

‘Hello, darling,’ he cooed. ‘How is my precious angel?’

‘Are you on your hands-free?’ she asked. ‘You sound like a Dalek.’

‘I’m sorry, my precious. I’m driving.’

‘You didn’t call,’ she said, sounding hurt and a tad angry. ‘You were going to call me this morning, about tonight.’

Lucy, who lived and worked in London as a PA for a hedge-fund manager, had not been impressed by his recent move to Brighton. Most probably, he thought, because he hadn’t invited her to move with him. He always kept his women at a distance, rarely rang them when he said he would and frequently cancelled dates at the last moment. Experience had taught him that was the best way to keep them where he wanted them.

‘My angel, I have been soooooo busy,’ he cooed again. ‘I

just didn’t have a moment. I’ve been in wall-to-wall meetings all day.’

‘In one hundred and fifty yards turn left,’ the sat-nav lady instructed him.

‘Who’s that?’ Lucy demanded suspiciously. ‘Who’s that in the car with you?’

‘Only the sat nav, sweetheart.’

‘So are we meeting tonight?’

‘I don’t think it’s going to work tonight, angel. I’ve been dispatched on an urgent case. Could be the start of a major murder inquiry, with some rather ugly consequences within the local police here. They thought I was the right man for it, with my Met experience.’

‘So what about afterwards?’

‘Well – if you were to jump on a train, we could maybe have a late dinner down here. How does that sound?’

‘No way, Cassian! I’ve got to be in the office at 6.45 in the morning.’

‘’Yes, well, just a thought,’ he replied.

He was driving over the Newhaven bridge. A barrage of signs lay ahead: one to the cross-Channel ferry, another to Lewes. Then, to his relief, his saw a sign pointing to Seaford, his destination.

‘Take the second left turn,’ the sat nav dictated.

Pewe frowned. Surely the Seaford sign had indicated straight on.

‘Who was that?’ Lucy asked.

‘The sat nav again,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how my day was? My first day at Sussex CID?’

‘How was your day?’ she asked grudgingly.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I got a bit of a promotion!’

‘Already? I thought moving from the Met was a promotion. Going from a Detective Chief Inspector to a Detective Superintendent.’

‘It’s even better now. They’ve put me in charge of all cold cases – and that includes all unaccounted-for missing persons.’

She was silent.

He made the left turn.

The sat-nav display of the road ahead disappeared from the screen. Then the voice commanded, ‘Make a U-turn.’

‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘What’s going on?’ Lucy asked.

‘My sat nav doesn’t know where the hell I am.’

‘I have some sympathy with her,’ Lucy said.

‘I’ll have to call you back, my angel.’

‘Was that you or your sat nav speaking?’

‘Oh, very droll!’

‘I suggest you have a nice romantic dinner with her.’ Lucy hung up.

*

Ten minutes later, the sat nav had found its bearings again and delivered him to the address he was seeking in Seaford, a quiet, residential coastal town a few miles on from Newhaven. Peering through the darkness at the numbers on the front doors, he pulled up outside a small, nondescript pebbledashed semi. A Nissan Micra was parked on the drive.

He switched on the interior light, checked the knot of his tie, tidied his hair, climbed out of the car and locked it. A gust of wind immediately blew his hair into disarray as he hurried up the path of the neat garden to the front door, found the bell and pressed it, cursing that there was no porch. There was a single, rather funereal chime.

After a few moments the door opened a few inches and a woman – in her early sixties, he guessed – stared out at him suspiciously from behind rather stern glasses. Twenty years ago, with a better hairdo and the thick worry creases airbrushed from her face, she might have been quite attractive, he thought. Now, with her short, iron-grey hair, a baggy orange jumper that swamped her, brown polyester trousers and plimsolls, she looked to Pewe like one of those doughty, backbone-of-England ladies you find manning stalls at the church bazaar.

‘Mrs Margot Balkwill?’ he asked.

‘Yes?’ she said hesitantly and a little suspiciously.

He showed her his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Pewe of Sussex CID. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I could have a word with you and your husband about your daughter, Sandy?’

Her small, round mouth fell open, revealing neat teeth that were yellow with age. ‘Sandy?’ she echoed, shocked.

‘Is your husband in?’

She considered the question for a moment, like a schoolmistress who had just been thrown a curve by a pupil. ‘Well, he is, yes.’ She hesitated for a moment, then indicated for him to come in.

Pewe stepped on to a mat which said  WELCOME, and into a tiny, bare hall which smelled faintly of a roast dinner and more strongly of cats. He heard the sound of a television soap opera.

She closed the door behind him, then called out, a little timidly, ‘Derek! We have a visitor. A police officer. A detective.’

Tidying his hair again, Pewe followed her through into a small, spotlessly clean living room. There was a brown velour three-piece suite with a glass-topped coffee table in front, arranged around an elderly, square-screened television on which two vaguely familiar-looking actors were arguing in a pub. On top of the set was a framed photograph of an attractive blonde girl of about seventeen, unmistakably Sandy from the pictures Pewe had studied this afternoon in the files.

At the far end of the small room, next to what Pewe considered to be a rather ugly Victorian cabinet full of blue and white willow-pattern plates, a man was sitting at a small table covered in carefully folded sheets of newspaper, in the process of assembling a model aircraft. Strips of balsa wood, wheels and pieces of undercarriage, a gun turret and other small objects Pewe could not immediately identify were laid out on either side of the plane, which rested at an angle, as if climbing after take-off, on a small raised base. The room smelled of glue and paint.

Pewe made a quick scan of the rest of the room. A fake-coal electric fire, which was on. A music centre that looked like it played vinyl rather than CDs. And photographs everywhere of Sandy at different ages, from just a few years old through to her twenties. One, in pride of place on the mantelpiece above the fire, was a wedding photograph of Roy Grace and Sandy. She was in a long white dress, holding a bouquet. Grace, younger and with much longer hair than he had now, wore a dark grey suit and a silver tie.

Mr Balkwill was a big, broad-shouldered man who looked as if he’d once had a powerful physique before he let it go to seed. He had thin grey hair swept back on either side of a bald head and a flabby double chin that disappeared in the folds of a multicoloured roll-neck sweater that was similar to his wife’s – as if she had knitted both of them. He stood up, round-shouldered and stooping, like someone who had been defeated by life, and ambled to the front of the table. Below the sweater, which came almost to his knees, he wore baggy grey trousers and black sandals.

An overweight tabby cat, which looked as old as both of them, wandered out from under the table, took one look at Pewe, arched its back and stalked out of the room.

‘Derek Balkwill,’ he said, with a quiet, almost shy voice that seemed much smaller than his frame. He held out a big hand and gave Pewe a crushing shake that surprised and hurt him.

‘Detective Superintendent Pewe,’ he replied with a wince. ‘I wondered if I could have a word with you and your wife about Sandy?’

The man froze. What little colour he had drained from his already pallid face and Pewe saw a slight tremor in his hands. He wondered for a horrible moment if the man was having a heart attack.

‘I’ll just turn the oven down,’ Margot Balkwill said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Tea would be perfect,’ Pewe said. ‘Lemon, if you have it.’

‘Working with Roy, are you?’ she asked.

‘Yes, absolutely.’ He continued to stare, concerned, at her husband.

‘How is he?’

‘Fine. Busy on a murder inquiry.’

‘He’s always busy,’ Derek Balkwill said, seeming to calm down a little. ‘He’s a hard worker.’

Margot Balkwill scurried out of the room.

Derek pointed at the aircraft. ‘Lancaster.’

‘Second World War?’ Pewe responded, trying to sound knowledgeable.

‘Got more upstairs.’

‘Yes?’

He gave a shy smile. ‘Got a Mustang P45. A Spit. A Hurricane. Mosquito. Wellington.’

There was an awkward silence. Two women were discussing a wedding dress on the television screen now. Then Derek pointed at the Lancaster. ‘My dad flew ’em. Seventy-five sorties. Know about the Dambusters? Ever see the film?’

Pewe nodded.

‘He was one of ’em. One of the ones that came back. One of the Few.’

‘Was he a pilot?’

‘Tail gunner. Tail End Charlie, they called ’em.’

‘Brave guy,’ Pewe said politely.

‘Not really. Just did his duty. He was a bitter man after the war.’ Then after some moments he added, ‘War buggers you up, you know that?’

‘I can imagine.’

Derek Balkwill shook his head. ‘No. No one can imagine. Been a police officer long?’

‘Nineteen years next January.’

‘Same as Roy.’

*

When his wife returned with a tray of tea and biscuits, Derek Balkwill fumbled with the remote control, then silenced the television but left the picture on. The three of them settled down, Pewe in one armchair, the Balkwills on the settee.

Pewe picked his cup up, holding the dainty handle in his manicured fingers, blew on the tea, sipped and then set it down. ‘I’ve very recently moved to Sussex CID from the Met, in London,’ he said. ‘I’ve been brought in to review cold cases. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but I’ve been going through the missing-persons files and I really don’t think that your daughter’s disappearance has been investigated adequately.’

He sat back and opened his arms expansively. ‘By that I mean – without casting any aspersions on Roy, of course …’ He hesitated, until their joint nods gave him the assurance to continue. ‘As a completely impartial outsider, it seems to me that Roy Grace is really too emotionally involved to be able do conduct an impartial review of the original investigation into his wife’s disappearance.’ He paused and took another sip of his tea. ‘I just wondered if either of you might have any views on this?’

‘Does Roy know you are here?’ Derek Balkwill asked.

‘I’m conducting an independent inquiry,’ Pewe said evasively.

Sandy’s mother frowned but said nothing.

‘Can’t see it would do any harm,’ her husband eventually said.

11 SEPTEMBER 2001

Ronnie was drunk. He walked unsteadily past low-rise red-brick apartment buildings, pulling his bags behind him along the sidewalk, which was pitch-poling like the deck of a boat. His mouth was dry and his head felt as if it was clamped in a steadily tightening vice. He should have eaten something, he knew. He would get some food later, after he had checked in and stored his luggage.

In his left hand he held a crumpled bar receipt, on the back of which his new best friend – whose name he had already forgotten – had written an address and drawn a map. It was five in the afternoon. A helicopter flew low overhead. There was an unpleasant smell of burning in the air. Was there a fire somewhere?

Then he realized it was the same smell as earlier, when he had been in Manhattan. Dense and cloying, it seeped into his clothes and into the pores of his skin. He was breathing it in, deep lungfuls of it.

At the end of the road he squinted at the map. It appeared to be telling him to turn right at the next crossing. He passed several shops with signs in Cyrillic, then Federal Savings, which had a hole-in-the-wall cash machine. He stopped, tempted for a moment to draw out whatever his cards would allow, but that would not be smart, he realized. The machine would record the time of the transaction. He walked on. Past more storefronts. On the far side of the street a limp banner hung, screen-printed with the words,  KEEP BRIGHTON BEACH CLEAN.

It began to dawn on him just how deserted the street was. There were cars parked on either side, but now there were no people. The shops were almost entirely empty too. It was as if the entire suburb was at a party to which he had not been invited.

But he knew they were all at home, glued to their television sets.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone in the bar had said.

He passed a dimly lit store with a sign outside,  MAIL BOX CITY, and stopped.

Inside, to the left, he could see a long counter. To the right were rows and rows of metal boxes. At the far end of the store a young man with long black hair sat hunched over an internet terminal. At the counter, an elderly, grizzled man in cheap clothes was carrying out some kind of transaction.

Ronnie was starting to sober up, he realized. Thinking more clearly. Thinking that this place might be useful for his plans. He walked on, counting the streets to his left. Then, following his directions, he turned left, into a run-down residential street. The houses here looked as if they had been constructed from broken bits of Lego. They were two- and three-storey, semi-detached, no two halves the same. There were steps up to front doors, awnings and doors where there should have been garages; pantiles, crazy brickwork and shabby plasterwork facings, and mismatching windows that looked as if they had been bought in assorted job lots.

At the first intersection the map told him to turn left into a narrow street called Brighton Path 2. He walked past two white Chevy Suburbans parked outside a double garage with both doors covered in graffiti, and a row of single-storey dwellings, then made a right into an even more run-down street of semis. He reached No. 29. Both halves of the house were the colour of pre-cast concrete. A torn poster was wrapped around a telegraph pole outside. But he barely noticed. He looked up the grimy steps and saw, in red letters on a small white board nailed to the door lintel, SRO.

He climbed the steps, hefting his bags, and rang the bell. Moments later a blurred figure appeared behind the frosted glass and the door opened. A flat-chested waif of a girl, dressed in a grubby smock dress and flip-flops, stared out at him. She had dirty, straggly fair hair like tendrils of seaweed and a wide, doll-like face with large, round, black-rimmed eyes. She said nothing.

‘I’m looking for a room,’ Ronnie said. ‘I was told you have a room.’

He noticed a payphone on the wall beside her and a strong smell of damp and old carpet. Somewhere in the building he could hear the news on television. Today’s events.

She said something that he did not understand. It sounded like Russian but he wasn’t sure.

‘Do you speak English?’

She raised a hand, indicating that he should wait, then disappeared back into the house. After a little while a huge shaven-headed man of about fifty appeared. He was wearing a collarless white shirt, grubby black chinos held up with braces, and trainers, and he stared at Ronnie as if he was a turd blocking a lavatory.

‘Room?’ he said in a guttural accent.

‘Boris,’ Ronnie said, suddenly remembering his new best friend’s name. ‘He told me to come here.’

‘How long?’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘A few days.’

The man stared at him. Assessing him. Maybe checking out that he wasn’t some kind of terrorist.

‘Thirty dollars a day. OK?’

‘Fine. Grim day, today.’

‘Bad day. Most bad day. Whole world crazy. From 12 o’clock to 12 o’clock. OK? Understood. You pay each day in advance. You stay after midday, you pay another day.’

‘Understood.’

‘Cash?’

‘Yep, fine.’

The house was bigger than it had looked from the outside. Ronnie followed the man through the hall and along a corridor, past walls the colour of nicotine with a couple of cheap, framed prints of stark landscapes. The man stopped, disappeared into a room for a moment, then emerged with a key with a wooden tag. He unlocked the door opposite.

Ronnie followed him into a gloomy room which stank of stale cigarette smoke. It had a window looking on to the wall of the next house along. There was a small double bed with a pink candlewick spread that had several stains on it and two cigarette burn holes. In one corner there was a washbasin, next to a shower with a cracked plastic yellow curtain. A beat-up armchair, a chest of drawers, a couple of cheap-looking wooden tables, an old television set with an even older-looking remote and a carpet the colour of pea soup completed the furnishing.

‘Perfect,’ Ronnie said. And at this moment, for him, it was.

The man folded his arms and looked at him expectantly. Ronnie pulled out his wallet and paid for three days in advance. He was handed the key, then the man departed, closing the door behind him.

Ronnie checked the room out. There was a half-used bar of soap in the shower with what looked suspiciously like a brown pubic hair nestling on it. The image on the television was fuzzy. He switched on all the lights, drew the curtain and sat down on the bed, which sagged and clanked. Then he mustered a smile. He could put up with this for a few days. No worries.

Hell, this was the first day of the rest of his life!

Leaning forward, he lifted his briefcase off the top of his overnight bag. He removed all the folders containing the proposal and supporting data he had spent weeks preparing for Donald Hatcook. Finally, he reached the clear plastic wallet, closed with a pop stud, at the very bottom. He extricated the red folder that he had not risked leaving in his room at the W, not even in the safe. And opened it.

His eyes lit up.

‘Hello, my beauties,’ he said.