Dead Man's Footsteps (28 page)

The DC nodded.

‘You OK about going?’

He nodded again, more vigorously this time.

‘Either of you been there before?’

‘No, but I’ve got a cousin in Perth,’ Nick Nicholl said.

‘That’s almost as far from Melbourne as Brighton is,’ Bella said.

‘So I wouldn’t have time to go and see him?’

‘You’re not going on a vacation. You’re going to get a job done,’ Grace chided.

Nick Nicholl nodded.

‘Following a dead woman’s footsteps,’ Norman Potting said.

And, Grace had a hunch, maybe following a dead man’s too.

OCTOBER 2007

Roy Grace went straight from the briefing meeting to his office and phoned Cleo, telling her he would be later than planned as he needed to finish off here, then go home and pack a bag.

He had been to New York on several previous occasions. A couple of them were with Sandy – once for Christmas shopping and once for their fifth wedding anniversary – but the rest of the times were for work, and he always enjoyed visiting the city. He was particularly looking forward to seeing his two police friends there, Dennis Baker and Pat Lynch.

He’d met them seven years ago when, as a Detective Inspector, he’d gone to New York on a murder inquiry. That had been the year before 9/11. Dennis and Pat were then officers in the NYPD, working in Brooklyn, and had been among the first police officers on the scene at 9/11. He doubted there were two men better qualified in the whole of New York City to help him find the truth about whether or not Ronnie Wilson had perished on that dreadful day.

Cleo was fine, all sweetness and light, just get here when you can. And, she assured him, she had a very, very, very sexy treat awaiting him. Knowing from past experience just how good her sexy treats were, he decided it would be well worth the dry-cleaning bill from little Humphrey’s dog training and projectile-vomitingsession.

He turned his attention first to his emails. He replied to a couple of urgent ones and decided to leave the rest for his plane journey in the morning.

Then, just as he was making a start on his paperwork, there was a rap on the door and, without waiting for an answer, Cassian Pewe came in with a pained expression on his face. He stood in front of Grace’s desk, suit jacket slung over his shoulder, top button of his shirt open, expensive-looking tie at half mast.

‘Roy, excuse me, sorry to bounce in on you, but I’m rather hurt.’

Grace raised a finger, finished reading through a memo, then looked up at him. ‘Hurt? I’m sorry. Why?’

‘I just heard you are sending DS Potting and DC Nicholl to Melbourne tomorrow. Is that right?’

‘Yes, absolutely right.’

Pewe tapped his own chest. ‘What about me? I started this. Surely I should be one of those going?’

‘I’m sorry – what do you mean, you started it? I thought all you did was take a call from Interpol?’

‘Roy,’ he said, in an imploring tone that suggested Grace was his very, very best friend ever, ‘it was my initiative that got everything moving so fast.’

Grace nodded, irritated by the man’s attitude and the interruption. ‘Yes, and I appreciate that. But you have to understand we operate on teamwork here in Sussex, Cassian. You’re in charge of cold cases – I’m running a live inquiry. The information you’ve given me may be very helpful and your swift action has been noted.’

Now fuck off and let me get on with my work, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

‘I appreciate that. I just think that I should be one of the team going to Australia.’

‘You are better off being deployed here,’ Grace said. ‘That’s my call.’

Pewe glared at him and, in a fit of sudden pique, snapped back, ‘I think you might regret that, Roy.’

Then he stormed out of Grace’s office.

OCTOBER 2007

Tuesday evening, 8 o’clock. Ricky sat in his van in darkness, back at the same cross-street vantage point opposite Abby’s mother’s flat where he had waited earlier. From here he could see both the front entrance and the street she would have to use if she tried sneaking out of the rear fire-escape door.

The chill was really seeping into his bones. He just wanted to get everything back, get Abby out of his face and get the fuck out of this godforsaken damp, freezing country and into some sunshine.

He’d hardly seen a soul in the past three hours. He seemed to remember Eastbourne had a reputation as a retirement town where the average age was either dead or nearly dead. Tonight it felt as if everyone was dead. Street-lighting fell on empty pavements. Fucking waste, he thought. Someone should talk to this place about its carbon footprint.

Abby was inside, in the warm with her mother. He had a feeling she would be staying there tonight, but he did not dare leave his post and go to find a pub and have a drink or three until he was sure.

About two hours ago he’d picked up the signal from her new mobile phone when she’d made a call to her mother’s new phone to test its ring tone and volume, and to give it her number. Now, thanks to that call, he had both of their numbers logged.

When they were testing the phones he heard the television in the background. It sounded like some soap opera, with a man and a woman bickering in a car. So the bitch and her mother were settled in for a cosy evening in front of the telly, in a warm flat, charging two new mobile phones that had been bought with his money.

The Intercept beeped busily. Abby was phoning rest homes, looking for somewhere that would take her mother in immediately for four weeks, until a room in the place she had chosen came available.

She was interrogating them about nursing care, doctors, mealtimes, ingredients of the food, exercise, about whether there was a pool, a sauna, whether they were near a main road or somewhere quiet, gardens with wheelchair access, were there private bathrooms? Her list went on and on. Thorough. As he had learned to his bitter cost. She was a thorough bitch.

And whose money would be paying for it?

He listened to Abby making appointments to go and see three places in the morning. He presumed she would leave her mother behind. That she had not forgotten the locksmith was coming.

By the time he had finished with her, it wouldn’t be a rest home she was needing. It would be a chapel of rest.

OCTOBER 2007

At 8.20 the next morning, Inspector Stephen Curry, accompanied by Sergeant Ian Brown, entered the small conference room in the custody block behind Sussex House. He was clutching today’s morning briefing notes, which comprised a comprehensive review of all priority crimes that had occurred in the district over the last twenty-four hours.

They were joined by Sergeant Morley and the second early-shift sergeant, a short, stocky officer with a fierce crew cut and even fiercer enthusiasm for her work called Mary Gregson.

They immediately got down to the job in hand. Curry started to go through all the critical serials. There had had been an ugly racist incident, with a young Muslim student badly beaten up outside a late-night takeaway in Park Road, Coldean, on his way back to the university; a traffic fatality involving a motorcyclist and a pedestrian on Lewes Road; a violent mugging on the Broadway in Whitehawk; and a young man beaten up in Preston Park in a homophobic incident.

He went through all of them with a toothcomb, working out areas of threat, making sure, in his terminology, that he didn’t drop a bollock which could be kicked into touch by the Superintendent at the 9.30 review.

Then they moved on to the current district mis-pers and agreed lines of enquiry. Mary brought up the details of a bail returning to be charged later that day, and reminded Curry that he had an 11 a.m. with a Crown Prosecution Service solicitor, about a suspect they had arrested after a spate of handbag thefts the previous set of shifts.

Then the Inspector suddenly remembered something else. ‘John – I spoke to you yesterday about visiting a lady down in Kemp Town. I didn’t see that on the list – what was her name? – Katherine Jennings. Any follow-up?’

Morley suddenly blushed. ‘Oh, God, sorry, boss. I haven’t done anything about it. That Gemma Buxton incident came in and – I’m sorry – I gave that priority over everything. I’ll put it on the serial and get someone down there this morning.’

‘Good man,’ Curry said, then looked at his watch again. Shit. Nearly 9.05. He jumped up. ‘See you later.’

‘Have a nice time with the headmaster,’ Mary said with a cheeky grin.

‘Yeah, you might be teacher’s pet today!’ Morley said.

‘With someone whose memory’s as crap as yours on the team?’ he retorted. ‘I don’t think so.’

OCTOBER 2007

Ricky slept fitfully, dozing off after the several pints of beer he had treated himself to in a busy seafront pub and waking with a start every time he saw headlights or heard a vehicle, or footsteps, or a door close. He sat in the passenger seat just so he didn’t look like a drunk driver, should an inquisitive policeman come by, only leaving the van a couple of times to urinate in an alley.

He drove off again in the darkness, at 6 a.m., in search of a workmen’s café, where he had some breakfast, and was back at his observation post again within the hour.

How the hell had he got himself into this situation? he asked himself repeatedly. How had he let himself be duped by this bitch? Oh, she’d played it so cutely, coming on to him, playing the horny little slut to perfection. Letting him do everything he wanted with her and pretending to enjoy it. Maybe she was really enjoying it. But all the time she was pumping him so subtly for information. Women were smart. They knew how to manipulate men.

He’d made the damned mistake of telling her, because he wanted to show off. He thought it would impress her.

Instead, one night when he was coked out of his tree and rat-arsed drunk, she cleaned him out and ran. He needed it back desperately. His finances were shot to hell, he was up to his ears in debt and the business was not working out. This was his one chance. It had fallen into his lap, then she had snatched it and run.

There was one thing in his favour, though: the world in which she was running was smaller than she thought. Anyone she went to, with what she had, would ask questions. A lot of questions. He suspected she had already begun to find that out, which was why she was still around, and now her problems had been further complicated by his arrival in Brighton.

*

At 9.30 a local Eastbourne taxi pulled up outside the front door of the block of flats. The driver got out and rang the bell. A couple of minutes later, Abby appeared. On her own.

Good.

Perfect.

She was going to the first of the three appointments at rest homes she had made for this morning. Leaving Mummy alone, under strict instructions no doubt not to answer the door to anyone but the locksmith.

He watched Abby climb in and the taxi drive off. He didn’t move. He knew how unpredictable women could be and that she might easily be back in five minutes for something she had forgotten. He had plenty of time. She’d be gone an hour and a half, minimum, and more likely three or more. He just had to be patient for a little while longer to ensure the coast was clear.

Then he would not need very long at all.

OCTOBER 2007

Glenn Branson pressed the bell and stood back a couple of feet, so that the security camera could get a good look at him. The wrought-iron gates jerked a few times, then began silently to swing open. The DS climbed back into the pool car and drove through two impressive brick pillars on to the circular in-and-out drive, the tyres crunching on the gravel. He pulled up behind a silver Mercedes sports and a silver S-class saloon, parked side by side.

‘It’s all right, this place, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘Matching his and hers Mercs and all.’

Bella Moy nodded, some of the colour just starting to return to her face. Glenn’s driving totally terrified her. She liked Glenn and didn’t want to offend him, but if she could have taken a bus back to the office, or walked barefoot on burning coals there, she would.

The palatial house was partly faux-Georgian, and partly faux-Greek temple, with a columned portico running along the entire width of the front. Ari would die for this place, Glenn thought. Funny, when they’d first got married she hadn’t seemed interested in money at all. That had all changed around the time Sammy, who was now eight, started going to school. No doubt talking with the other mums, seeing some of their fancy cars, going to some of their flash houses.

But houses like this fascinated him too. It seemed to Glenn that houses gave off auras. There were plenty of others in this area, and elsewhere in the city, that were every bit as large and swanky, but they gave the impression of being lived in by ordinary, decent citizens. Just occasionally you saw a place like this one now, which seemed somehow too flash, and sent out signals, wittingly or unwittingly, that it had not been acquired by honest money.

‘Would you like to live here, Bella?’ he asked.

‘I could get used to it.’ She smiled, then looked a tad wistful.

He shot her a sideways glance. She was a nice-looking woman, with a cheery face beneath a tangle of brown hair and no ring on her wedding finger. She always dressed in slightly dowdy clothes, as if not interested in making the best of herself, and he longed to give her a makeover. Today she was wearing a white blouse under a plain navy V-neck sweater, black woollen trousers, solid black shoes and a short green duffel coat.

She never talked about her private life and he often wondered what she went home to. A guy, a woman, a group of flatmates? One of his colleagues had once said that Bella looked after her elderly mum, but Bella never mentioned this.

‘I can’t remember where it is you live,’ he said as they climbed out of the car. A gust of wind lifted the tails of his camel coat.

‘Hangleton,’ she said.

‘Right.’

That sort of fitted. Hangleton was a pleasant, quiet residential sprawl on the east of the city, bisected by a motorway and a golf course. Lots of small houses and bungalows and neatly tended gardens. It was exactly the kind of quiet, safe area a woman might live in with her elderly mother. He suddenly had an image in his mind of a sad-looking Bella at home, caring for a sick, frail lady, munching away on her Maltesers as a substitute for any other kind of a life. Like a forlorn, caged pet.

He rang the bell and they were ushered in by a Filipino maid, who led them through into a high-ceilinged orangery, with a view down across terraced lawns containing an infinity swimming pool and a tennis court.

They were ushered into armchairs arranged around a marble coffee table and offered drinks. Then Stephen and Sue Klinger came in.

Stephen was a tall, lean, rather cold-looking man in his late forties, with greying wavy hair brushed harshly back, and his cheeks were a patchwork of purple drinker’s veins. He was wearing a pinstriped suit and expensive-looking loafers, and glanced at his watch the moment after he shook Branson’s hand.

‘I’m afraid I have to be away in ten minutes,’ he said, his voice hard and bland, very different to the Stephen Klinger they had interviewed yesterday in his office after what had clearly been a very heavy lunch.

‘No problem, sir, we just have a few more quick questions for you and some for Mrs Klinger. We appreciate your taking the time to see us again.’

He gave Sue Klinger an appreciative second glance and she smirked slyly, as if noticing. She was a serious looker, he thought. Early forties, in great shape, dressed in a brown brushed-cotton designer tracksuit and trainers that looked like they were fresh out of their box.

And she had real come-to-bed eyes. Which he caught twice in fast succession and then did his best to ignore, opening his notebook, deciding to focus on Stephen Klinger’s eyes, which might be easier to read.

The maid came in with coffee and water.

‘Can I just recap, sir? How long had you and Ronnie Wilson been friends?’ Branson asked.

Klinger’s eyes moved to his left, a fraction. ‘We go – went – back to our late teens,’ he said. ‘Twenty-seven – no – thirty years. Roughly.’

As a double check, Glenn said, ‘And you told us yesterday that his relationship with his first wife, Joanna, had been difficult, but it was better with Lorraine?’

Again the eyes moved to the left a fraction before he spoke.

This was a neurolinguistic experiment Glenn had learned about from Roy Grace, and he sometimes found it of great assistance in assessing whether someone was telling the truth in an interview. Human brains were divided into left and right hemispheres. One was for long-term memory storage, while in the other the creative processes took place. When asked a question, people’s eyes almost invariably moved to the hemisphere they were using. In some people the memory storage was in the right hemisphere and in some the left; the creative hemisphere would be the opposite one.

So now he knew that when Stephen Klinger’s eyes moved to the left in response to a question they were moving to his memory side, which meant he was likely to be telling the truth. So if his eyes moved right, then that meant he was likely to be lying. It wasn’t a failsafe technique but it could be a good indicator.

Leaning forward, as the maid put down his cup and saucer, and a china jug of milk, Branson said, ‘In your opinion, sir, do you think Ronnie Wilson would have been capable of murdering either of his wives?’

The look of shock on Klinger’s face was genuine. As was the double-take on his wife’s. His eyes stayed dead centre as he replied. ‘Not Ronnie, no. He had a temper on him, but …’ He shrugged, shaking his head.

‘He had a kind heart,’ Sue added. ‘He liked to look after his friends. I don’t think – no, definitely, I don’t think so.’

‘We have some information we’d like to share with you, in confidence at this stage, although we will be making a statement to the press in the next few days.’

Branson glanced at Bella, as if offering her the opportunity to speak, but she signalled back she was happy for him to continue.

He poured some milk into his coffee, then said, ‘It doesn’t seem that Joanna Wilson ever made it to America. Her body was found in a storm drain in the centre of Brighton on Friday. She’d been there for a long time and she appears to have been strangled.’

Now both of them looked genuinely shocked.

‘Shit!’ Sue said.

‘Is that the one that was in the Argus on Monday?’ Stephen wondered.

Bella nodded at him.

‘Are you saying that – that – Ronnie had something to do with it?’ he asked.

‘If I may continue for a moment, sir,’ Branson pressed, ‘we learned yesterday that Lorraine Wilson’s body has also been found.’

Sue Klinger blanched. ‘In the Channel?’

‘No, in a river outside Melbourne, in Australia.’

Both Klingers sat looking at him in stunned silence. Somewhere in the house a phone started ringing. No one made any move to answer it. Glenn drank some of his coffee.

‘Melbourne?’ Sue Klinger said eventually. ‘Australia?’

‘How on earth did she get there from the English Channel?’ Stephen asked, looking totally astonished.

The ringing stopped. ‘The post-mortem has shown that she has only been dead for two years, sir – so it doesn’t look as if she did commit suicide by jumping into the Channel back in 2002.’

‘So she did it by jumping into a river in Australia instead?’ Stephen said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Glenn replied. ‘Her neck was broken and she was in the boot of a car.’ He held back the rest of the information he had.

Both the Klingers sat very still, absorbing the impact of what they had just heard. Finally Stephen broke the silence. ‘By whom? Why? Are you saying the same person killed Joanna and Lorraine?’

‘We can’t tell at this stage. But there are some similarities in the way they both appear to have been killed.’

‘Who – who would have killed Joanna – and then Lorraine?’ Sue asked. She began twisting a gold bracelet on her wrist round and round nervously.

‘Were either of you aware that Joanna Wilson inherited a house from her mother, which she sold shortly before her death?’ Glenn asked. ‘It netted an amount of approximately one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. We are now trying to track down what happened to that money.’

‘Probably went to pay off Ronnie’s debts the moment it came into her account,’ Stephen said. ‘I liked the old bugger but he wasn’t too clever with money, if you know what I mean. Always wheeling and dealing, but never getting it quite right. He wanted to be a much bigger player than he had the ability for.’

‘That’s a bit harsh, Steve,’ Sue commented, turning to face her husband. ‘Ronnie had good ideas.’ She looked at the two detectives and tapped her head. ‘He had an inventive mind. He once invented a gizmo for extracting air from wine bottles that had been opened. He was in the process of patenting it when that – what’s it called? – Vacu Vin came out and cleaned up in the market.’

‘Yeah, but the Vacu Vin was plastic,’ Stephen said. ‘Ronnie made his out of brass, the stupid sod. Anybody could have told him that metals react with wine.’

‘You said yourself at the time you thought it was smart, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t invest in any business Ronnie was running. Done it twice before and both went down the toilet.’ He shrugged. ‘You need more than a good idea to make a business work.’ He glanced at his watch and looked a little agitated.

‘Mr and Mrs Klinger,’ Bella said, ‘did you have any idea that Lorraine had come into a substantial amount of money in the months before she – seemingly – ended her life?’

Sue shook her head vigorously. ‘No way. I’d have been the first to know. Ronnie left her in a terrible mess, poor thing. She had to go back to work at Gatwick. She couldn’t get any credit because of all the judgements against Ronnie. She couldn’t even scrape enough cash together to buy a car. I even lent her a few hundred quid to tide her over at one point.’

‘Well, this may come as a surprise to you both,’ Glenn said, ‘but Ronnie Wilson had a life insurance policy with the Norwich Union which paid out just over one and a half million pounds to Lorraine Wilson in March 2002.’

Their shock was palpable. Then he added to it.

‘Further, in July 2002, Mrs Wilson received a payment of nearly two and a half million dollars from the 9/11 compensation fund. About one and three-quarter million pounds at the exchange rate at that time.’

There was a long silence.

‘I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe—’ Sue shook her head. ‘I know at the time she disappeared the police officers we spoke to didn’t seem entirely convinced that she had committed suicide by jumping off the boat. They didn’t say why. Perhaps they knew something then that we didn’t. But Stephen and I, and all her friends, were convinced she was dead, and none of us has heard a single word from her since.’

‘If what you are saying is true, that’s—’ Stephen Klinger broke off in mid-sentence.

‘She withdrew all of it, in cash, in different amounts, between the time she received the money and her disappearance in November 2002,’ Bella said.

‘Cash?’ Stephen Klinger echoed.

‘Would either of you have any idea if the Wilsons – or more likely Ronnie – was being blackmailed by anyone?’ Glenn asked.

‘Lorraine and I were very close,’ Sue said. ‘I think she’d have told me – you know – confided in me.’

The way she confided in you about the three and a quarter million quid! Glenn thought.

Stephen Klinger suddenly stabbed a finger in the air. ‘There’s one thing – could be that Ronnie had taught her this. He liked to trade stamps.’

‘Stamps?’ Glenn said. ‘Like postage stamps, you mean?’

He nodded. ‘Big-ticket ones. He always traded them for cash. Reckoned it was harder for the Revenue to keep tabs on him.’

‘Three million plus pounds would be an awful lot of stamps,’ Bella said.

Stephen shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. I remember Ronnie opening his wallet one night in a pub and showing me this one stamp, all in tissue paper, just one stamp he’d paid fifty grand for. Reckoned he had a buyer who would pay sixty for it. But knowing his luck, he probably ended up getting forty.’

‘Would you have any idea where Mr Wilson did his stamp trading?’

‘There’s a few local dealers he told me he used, for smaller stuff. I know he dealt with a place called Hawkes down Queen’s Road sometimes. And with one or two places in London, and in New York, as well. Oh yeah, and he used to talk about some big player who deals from home – can’t remember his name – he’s just around the corner in Dyke Road. Someone at Hawkes would be able to tell you.’

Glenn noted the name down.

‘He did say that at the top end of the market it’s a very small world. If any dealer made a large sale, everyone in the business would know about it. So if she spent that kind of money on stamps, someone’s going to remember.’

‘And presumably,’ Bella said, ‘someone would also remember if she sold them.’

84

OCTOBER 2007

It was Duncan Troutt’s first day on patrol as a fully fledged police officer. He felt rather proud, rather self-conscious and, in truth, a little nervous of screwing up.

At five feet nine inches tall and just under ten stone, he cut a slight figure, but he knew how to look after himself. A long-time fan of martial arts, he had attained a whole raft of certificates in kickboxing, taekwondo and kung fu.