Dead Man's Footsteps (3 page)

OCTOBER 2007

Abby, on the hard carpeted floor, stared at the small sign beside the panel of buttons on the grey wall. In red capital letters on a white background it read:

WHEN BROKE DOWN

CALL 013 228 7828

OR DIAL 999

The grammar did not exactly fill her with confidence. Below the button panel was a narrow, cracked glass door. Slowly, one inch at a time, she crawled across the floor. It was only a few feet away but, with the lift rocking wildly at every movement, it might as well have been on the far side of the world.

Finally she reached it, prised it open and removed the handset, which was attached to a coiled wire.

It was dead.

She tapped the cradle and the lift swayed wildly again, but there was no sound from the handset. She dialled the numbers, just in case. Still nothing.

Great, she thought. Terrific. Then she eased her mobile from her handbag and dialled 999.

The phone beeped sharply at her. On the display the message appeared:

No network coverage.

‘Jesus, no, don’t do this to me.’

Breathing fast, she switched the phone off, then a few seconds later switched it back on again, watching, waiting for just one signal blob to appear. But none did.

She dialled 999 again and got the same sharp beep and message. She tried again, then again, jabbing the buttons harder each time.

‘Come on, come on. Please, please.’

She stared at the display again. Sometimes signal strength came and went. Maybe if she waited …

Then she called out, tentatively at first, ‘Hello? Help me!’

Her voice sound small, bottled.

Taking a deep lungful of air, she bellowed at the top of her voice, ‘HELLO? HELP ME PLEASE! HELP ME! I’M TRAPPED IN THE LIFT!’

She waited. Silence.

Silence so loud she could hear it. The hum of one of the lights in the panel above her. The thudding of her own heart. The sound of her blood coursing through her veins. The rapid hiss-puff of her own breathing.

She could see the walls shrinking in around her.

She breathed in slowly, then out. She stared at the display of her phone again. Her hand was shaking so much it was almost impossible to read it. The figures were just a blur. She breathed in deeply again, and again. Dialled 999 once more. Nothing. Then, putting the phone down, she pounded hard on the wall.

There was a reverberating  boom  and the lift swayed alarmingly, clanging into one side of the shaft and dropping a few more inches.

‘HELP ME!’ she screamed.

Even that caused the lift to rock and bang again. She lay still. The lift settled.

Then, through her terror, she felt a flash of hysterical anger at her predicament. Hauling herself a few feet forward, she began pounding on the metal doors and yelling at the same time – yelling until her ears hurt from the din, and her throat was too sore to go on, and she began coughing, as if she had swallowed a whole lungful of dust.

‘LET ME OUT!’

Then she felt the lift move, suddenly, as if someone had pushed down on the roof. Her eyes shot up. She held her breath, listening.

But all she could hear was the silence.

11 SEPTEMBER 2001

Lorraine Wilson was topless on a deckchair in her garden, soaking up the last of the summer, trying to prolong her tan. Through large oval sunglasses she looked at her watch – the gold Rolex Ronnie had bought her for her birthday, in June, and which he had insisted was genuine. But she didn’t believe that. She knew Ronnie too well. He would not have spent ten thousand pounds when he could have bought something that looked the same for fifty. And certainly not at the moment, with his financial worries.

Not that he ever shared his problems with her, but she could tell from the way he had recently tightened up on everything, checking her grocery bills, complaining about the money she spent on clothes, her hair and even her lunches out with her friends. Parts of the house were looking embarrassingly shabby, but Ronnie refused to let her call in the decorators, telling her they would have to economize.

She loved him deeply, but there was a part of him that she could never reach, as if he had a secret internal compartment where he kept and fought his private demon, all alone. She knew a little of what that demon was – his determination to show the world, and in particular everyone who knew him, that he was a success.

Which was why he had bought this house, just off Shirley Drive, that they really could not afford. It wasn’t big, but it was in one of the most expensive residential districts of Brighton and Hove, a tranquil, hilly area of detached houses with sizeable gardens along tree-lined streets. And because the house was modern, on split levels, it looked different from most of the more conventional Edwardian mock-Tudor houses that were the mainstay of the area; people did not realize it was actually quite small. The teak decking and bijou outdoor pool added a touch of Beverly Hills glamour.

It was 1.50 p.m. Nice that he had just called. Time zones always confused her; strange that he was having his breakfast and she was having her cottage cheese and berries lunch. She was happy that he was flying back tonight. She always missed him when he was away – and, knowing he was a womanizer, she always wondered what he got up to when he was on his own. But this was a short trip – just three days, not too bad.

This part of the garden was completely private, shielded from their neighbours by a tall trellis interwoven with mature ivy and a huge out-of-control rhododendron bush that seemed to have ambitions to be a tree. She watched the electronic pool sweeper cruising up and down the blue water, sending out ripples. Alfie, their tabby cat, seemed to have found something interesting at the back of the rhododendron and was walking slowly past, staring, then turning, walking slowly past again and staring some more.

You never knew what cats were thinking, she thought suddenly. Alfie was a bit like Ronnie, really.

She put her plate down on the ground and picked up the  Daily Mail. She had an hour and a half before she needed to leave for the hairdresser. She was going to have highlights put in and then go to the nail studio. She always wanted to look nice for him.

Luxuriating in the warm rays of sun, she turned the pages. In a few minutes she would get up and iron his shirts. He might buy fake watches, but he always bought the real thing in shirts, and always from Jermyn Street, in London. He was obsessive about them being ironed properly. Now that the cleaning lady had gone, as part of their economy drive, she was having to do all the housework herself.

Smiling, she thought back to those early days with Ronnie, when she had actually liked doing his washing and ironing. Ten years ago, when they’d first met, when she’d been working as a sales demonstrator in duty free at Gatwick Airport, Ronnie had been putting back together the broken pieces of his life after his beautiful but brainless wife had run off to Los Angeles, to shack up with someone she’d met on a girls’ night out in London, a film director who was going to make her a star.

She remembered their first holiday, in a small rented flat outside Marbella, overlooking the yacht basin of Puerto Banus. Ronnie had drunk beer on the balcony, looking enviously down at the yachts, promising her that one day they’d own the biggest yacht in the harbour. And he knew how to romance a woman, all right. He was a master at it.

She had loved nothing better than to wash his clothes. To feel his T-shirts, swimming trunks, underwear, socks and handkerchiefs in her hands. To breathe in his manly smells on them. It was intensely satisfying to iron those beautiful shirts and then watch him wearing them, as if he was wearing part of herself.

Now it was a chore, and she found herself resenting his meanness.

She went back to the article on HRT she had been reading. The ongoing debate about whether the reduction of menopause symptoms – and the retention of youthful looks – outweighed the extra risks of breast cancer and other nasties. A wasp buzzed around her head and she flapped it away, then paused to stare down at her own chest. Two years away from forty and everything was starting to go south, except for her expensive breasts.

Lorraine was not a flawless, striking beauty, but she had always been, in Ronnie’s parlance, a  looker. She owed her blonde hair to her Norwegian grandmother. Not that many years back, like a trillion other blondes around the globe, she had copied the now classic hairstyle of Diana, Princess of Wales, and on a couple of occasions she’d actually been asked if she was the Princess of Wales.

Now, she thought gloomily,  I’m going to have to do something about the rest of my body.

Lying back in the chair, her stomach resembled a kangaroo’s pouch. It was like the stomach of women who had had several children, where the muscles had gone or the skin had been permanently stretched. And there were cellulite dimples all over the tops of her thighs.

All that disaster happening to her body  despite  (and to Ronnie’s chagrin at the cost) going to her personal trainer three times a week.

The wasp returned, buzzing around her head. ‘Fuck off,’ she said, flapping her hand at it again. ‘Go away.’

Then her phone rang. She leaned down and picked up the cordless handset. It was her sister, Mo, and her normally calm, cheerful voice sounded strangely agitated. ‘Have you got your telly on?’

‘No, I’m out in the garden,’ Lorraine replied.

‘Ronnie’s in New York, isn’t he?’

‘Yes – I just spoke to him. Why?’

‘Something terrible’s happened. It’s all over the news. A plane’s just crashed into the World Trade Center.’

OCTOBER 2007

The rain worsened, rattling down on the steel roof of the SOCO Scientific Support Branch van, sounding as hard as hailstones. The windows were opaque, to allow in light but keep out prying eyes. There was little light outside now, however, just the bleakness of wet dusk, stained the colour of rust from ten thousand city street lights.

Despite the large external dimensions of the long-wheelbase Transit, the seating area inside was cramped. Roy Grace, finishing a call on his mobile, chaired the meeting, the policy book he had retrieved from his go-bag open in front of him.

Squeezed around the table with him, in addition to Glenn Branson, were the Crime Scene Manager, a Police Search Adviser, an experienced SOCO, one of the two uniform scene guards and Joan Major, the forensic archaeologist Sussex Police regularly called in to help with identification of skeletons – and also to tell them whether the occasional bone found on building sites, or by children in woods, or dug up by gardeners, was human or animal.

It was chilly and damp inside the van and the air smelled strongly of synthetic vapours. Reels of plastic crime-scene tape were packed in one section of the fitted metal shelving, body bags in another, plus tenting materials and ground sheets, rope, flexes, hammers, saws, axes and plastic bottles of chemicals. There was something grim about these vehicles, Grace always felt. They were like caravans, but they never went to campsites, only to scenes of death or violent crimes.

It was 6.30 p.m.

‘Nadiuska isn’t available,’ he informed the newly assembled team, putting his mobile down.

‘Does that mean we’ve got Frazer?’ Glenn responded glumly.

‘Yes.’

Grace saw everyone’s faces fall. Nadiuska De Sancha was the Home Office pathologist everyone in Sussex CID preferred to work with. She was quick, interesting and fun – and good-looking, as an added bonus. By contrast, Frazer Theobald was dour and slow, although his work was meticulous.

‘But the real problem is that Frazer is finishing a PM up in Esher at the moment. The earliest he could get here is about 9 p.m.’

He caught Glenn’s eye. They both knew what that meant – an all-nighter.

Grace headed the first page of his policy book:  PRE-SCENE BRIEFING. Friday 19 October. 6.30 p.m. On site. New England Quarter development.

‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Joan Major said.

The forensic archaeologist was a pleasant-looking woman in her early forties, with long brown hair and square, modern glasses, dressed in a roll-neck black pullover, brown trousers and sturdy boots.

Grace gestured with his hand.

‘I suggest we go and do a brief assessment now, but it may not be necessary to start work tonight – especially as it’s dark. These things are always a lot easier in daylight. It sounds as if the skeleton has been there a while, so another day won’t make much difference.’

‘It’s a good thought,’ Grace said. ‘One thing we need to consider, though, is the construction work going on here.’ He looked directly at the Police Search Adviser, a tall, bearded man with an outdoors complexion, whose name was Ned Morgan. ‘You’ll need to liaise with the foreman, Ned. We’ll have to stop the work directly around the storm drain.’

‘I spoke to him on my way in. He’s worried because they’re on a time penalty,’ Morgan explained. ‘He nearly had a fit when I told him we could be here a week.’

‘It’s a big site,’ Grace said. ‘We don’t need to shut the whole of it down. You’d better decide where you want work stopped as part of your search plan.’ Then he turned back to the forensic archaeologist. ‘But you are right, Joan, tomorrow would be better, in daylight.’

He put a call through to Steve Curry, the District Inspector responsible for coordinating uniform police in this area of the city, and advised him that a scene guard would need to be kept on until further notice, which didn’t thrill the inspector. Scene guards were an expensive drain on resources.

Grace turned next to the Crime Scene Manager, Joe Tindall, who had earlier this year been promoted to the post. Tindall gave a self-satisfied smile. ‘All the same to me, Roy,’ he said in his Midlands accent. ‘Now I’m a manager I get to go home at a decent hour. Gone are the days when you and your fellow SIOs can screw up my weekends. I ruin other people’s weekends for you now.’

Secretly, Grace envied him. What’s more, in reality the remains could easily wait until Monday – but now, as he again regretted, they had been discovered and reported, that was not an option.

*

Ten minutes later, clad in their protective clothing, they entered the storm drain. Grace led the way, followed by Joan Major and Ned Morgan. The Police Search Adviser had advised the other team members to stay in the vehicle, wanting to keep contamination of the scene to a minimum.

All three stopped a short distance from the skeleton, shining their beams on it. Joan Major played hers up and down, then stepped forward until she was close enough to touch it.

Roy Grace, feeling a tight knot in his gullet, stared again at the face. He knew the likelihood of this being Sandy was extremely small. And yet. The teeth were all intact; good teeth. Sandy had good teeth – they had been one of the many things that had attracted him to her. Beautiful, white, even teeth, and a smile that melted him every time.

His voice came out sounding lame, as if it was someone else speaking. ‘Is it male or female, Joan?’

She was peering at the skull. ‘The slope of the forehead is quite upright – men tend to have a much more sloped forehead,’ she said, her voice echoing eerily. Then, holding the torch in her left hand and pointing at the rear of the skull with the forefinger of her gloved right hand, she went on, ‘The nuchal crest is very rounded.’ She tapped it. ‘If you feel the back of your skull, Roy, it’ll be much more pronounced – it normally is in males.’ Then she looked at the left ear cavity. ‘Again, the mastoid process would indicate female – it’s more pronounced in the male.’ Next, she traced the air in front of the eyes. ‘See the skull brow ridges – I’d expect them to be more prominent if this was a male.’

‘So you’re reasonably sure she’s female?’ Grace asked.

‘Yes, I am. When we expose the pelvis I will be able to say one hundred per cent, but I’m pretty sure. I’ll also take some measurements – the male skeleton is generally more robust, the proportions are different.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘There is something of immediate interest – I’d like to know what Frazer thinks.’

‘What’s that?’

She pointed at the base of the skull. ‘The hyoid bone is broken.’

‘Hyoid?’

She pointed again, to a bone suspended from a tiny strip of desiccated skin. ‘Do you see that U-shaped bone? It’s the one that keeps the tongue in place. It’s a possible indicator of the cause of death – the hyoid often gets broken during strangulation.’

Grace absorbed this. He stared at the bone for some moments, then back at those perfect teeth again, trying to remember everything from the last examination of skeletal remains he had attended, at least a couple of years ago.

‘What about her age?’

‘I’ll be able to tell you better tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘On a quick assessment, she looks as if she was in her prime – twenty-five to forty.’

Sandy was twenty-eight when she disappeared, he reflected, continuing to stare at the skull. At the teeth. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ned Morgan shining his torch beam one direction along the drain, then the other.

‘We ought to get an engineer from the council along, Roy,’ the Police Search Adviser said. ‘An expert on the city’s drainage system. Find out what other drains connect with this. Some of her clothing or belongings might have been washed along them.’

‘Do you think this drain floods?’ Grace asked him.

Morgan shone the beam up and down again pensively. ‘Well, it’s raining pretty hard and has been all day – not much water at the moment, but it’s quite possible. This drain would probably have been built to stop water flooding the rail track, so yes. But …’ He hesitated.

Joan cut in. ‘It looks as if she’s been here some years. If the drain flooded, it’s likely she would have been moved up and down and would have broken up. She’s intact. Also, the presence of the desiccated skin would indicate that it has been dry here for some while. But we can’t rule out flooding from time to time altogether.’

Grace stared at the skull, all kinds of emotions raging through him. Suddenly, he did not want to wait until tomorrow – he wanted the team to start now, right away.

It was only with great reluctance that he told the scene guard to seal up the entrance and secure the whole site.