Dead Man's Footsteps (31 page)

OCTOBER 2007

Abby heard a phone ringing somewhere, close and insistent. Then she realized, with a start, that it was her own. She sat up, confused, trying to work out where she was. The phone continued to ring.

There was chill air on her face, but she was perspiring heavily. She was in darkness, just shadows all around her in a ghostly orange haze. A spring creaked beneath her as she moved. She was sitting on a sofa in her mother’s flat, she realized. Christ, how long had she been asleep?

She looked around, fearful that Ricky had come back and was in here. She could see the glow of the phone’s display and reached for it. The coils of fear rising in her stomach worsened when she saw the words: Private number. The time on the display read 18.30.

She brought the phone to her ear. ‘Yes?’

‘Had a good think about it, have you?’ Ricky said.

Panic raced through her brain. Where the hell was he? She had to get away from here quickly. She was a sitting duck in this place. Did he know where she was at this moment? Was he outside somewhere?

She waited a moment before replying, trying to collect her thoughts. She decided to keep the lights off, not wanting to show him she was here, in case he was out in the street watching. There was enough glow penetrating the net curtains, from the street light outside the window, to see all she needed in here at the moment.

‘How is my mother?’ she demanded, and heard the tremble in her voice.

‘She’s fine.’

‘She’s got no resistance. If you let her get cold, she could get pneumonia—’

Interrupting, Ricky replied, ‘Like I told you, she’s snug as a bug in a rug.’

Abby did not like the way he said those words. ‘I want to speak to her.’

‘Of course you do. And I want what you’ve stolen from me. So it’s very simple. You bring it back, or you tell me where it is, and your mum can go home with you.’

‘How do I know I can trust you?’

‘That’s rich, coming from you!’ he sneered. ‘I don’t think you know the meaning of that word.’

‘Look, what happened happened,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you back what I’ve got left.’

The pitch of his voice changed to alarm. ‘What do you mean what you’ve got left? I want it all. Everything. That’s the deal.’

‘You can’t have it. I can only give you what I’ve got.’

‘That’s why it wasn’t in the safe-deposit box, right? You spent it?’

‘Not all of it,’ she gambled.

‘You callous bitch. You’d let me kill your mother, wouldn’t you? You’d let me kill her rather than give it back to me! That’s how much money means to you.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right, Ricky. I would.’

Then she hung up on him.

OCTOBER 2007

Abby ran across the dark room, stumbling over a leather pouffe, and groped her way into the bathroom. She found the sink and threw up into it, her stomach jangling, her nerves shot to pieces.

She rinsed the vomit away, washed her mouth and switched on the light, breathing deeply. Please don’t let me have another panic attack. She stood clutching the sides of the sink, her eyes watering, terrified that Ricky was going to smash his way in here at any moment.

She had to get away from here, and she had to remember why she was doing this. Quality of life for her mother. That’s what it was all about. Without the money, her mother’s last years were going to be unimaginably grim. She had to keep hold of that.

And to think about what lay beyond for her: Dave waiting for the text to say they were good to go.

She was just one transaction away from giving her mother a future worth living. One plane ride away from the life she had always promised herself.

Ricky was nasty. A sadist. A bully. But a killer? She didn’t think so.

She knew she had to stand up to him, show strength back. That was the only language a bully understood. And he wasn’t a stupid man. He wanted everything back. There was no value to him in harming an elderly, sick lady.

Please God.

Abby went back to the sitting room waiting for him to ring. Ready to kill the call when he did. Then, heart in her mouth, terrified she was making a big mistake, she crept out of the apartment into the even darker corridor and up the fire exit stairs to the first floor.

*

A few minutes later, from the phone in Doris’s flat, she was dialling a different number. The call was answered by a well-spoken male voice.

‘Is it possible to speak to Hugo Hegarty?’ she asked.

‘Indeed, you are speaking to him.’

‘I apologize for calling you in the evening, Mr Hegarty,’ Abby said. ‘I have a collection of stamps that I want to sell.’

‘Yes?’ He drew the word out so it sounded deeply pensive. ‘What can you tell me about them?’

She itemized each stamp, describing it in detail. She was so familiar with them, they had become as clear as a photograph in her memory. He interrupted her a couple of times, asking for specific information.

When she had finished, Hugo Hegarty fell strangely silent.

OCTOBER 2007

Sitting in his van at the remote campsite he had found on the internet, Ricky was deep in thought. The rain drumming down on the roof was good cover. No one was going to go traipsing around in the darkness in a muddy field, poking their nose into things that didn’t concern them.

This place was perfect. Just a few miles along the Downs from Eastbourne, on the outskirts of a picture postcard village called Alfriston. A campsite in a large, wooded field half a mile up a deserted farm track, behind a rain-lashed tennis club.

This wasn’t the time of the year or the weather for tennis or camping, which meant no prying eyes. The owner didn’t look the prying type either. He’d driven up with two small boys who were squabbling in the car, taken his payment of fifteen pounds for three nights in advance and shown Ricky where the toilets and shower were. He’d given him a mobile phone number and said he might be back some time tomorrow in case anyone else showed up.

There was only one other vehicle on the site, a large camper van with Dutch plates, and Ricky was parked well away from it.

He had food, water, milk – stuff he’d picked up from a petrol station shop – enough to keep them going for a while. He popped the lid of a can of lager and downed half the contents in one long draught, wanting some alcohol to calm his nerves. Then he lit a cigarette and took three long puffs in quick succession. He wound down the window a fraction and tried to flick the ash out, but the wind blew it straight back in on his face. He closed the window and, as he did so, his nose twitched. Some unpleasant smell had come in from outside.

He took another drag on the cigarette and another swig of the lager. He was deeply disturbed by the call with Abby just now. By the way she had hung up on him. By the way he kept misreading the bitch.

He was scared that she meant what she had said. The words were replaying over and over in his head.

I’ll give you back what I’ve got left.

How much had she spent? Blown? She must be bluffing. It was impossible that she had got through more than a few thousand during the time she had been on the run. She was bluffing.

He would have to raise the stakes. Call her bluff. She might think she was tough, but he had his doubts.

He finished the cigarette and tossed the butt outside. Then, as he closed the window, his nostrils twitched again. The smell was getting stronger, more insistent. It was coming from inside the van, very definitely. The distinct sour reek of urine.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, no!

The old woman had wet herself.

He snapped on the interior light, scrambled out of his seat and into the rear of the van. The woman looked ridiculous, her head poking out of the top of the rolled-up carpet like some ugly, hatching chrysalis.

He pulled the gaffer tape away from her mouth as gently as possible, not wanting to hurt her more than was necessary; she was already in a high state of distress and he was scared that she might die on him.

‘Have you wet yourself?’

Two small, frightened, eyes peered at him. ‘I’m ill,’ she said, in a weak voice. ‘I’m incontinent. I’m sorry.’

Sudden panic gripped him. ‘Does that mean you’re going to do the other thing too?’

She hesitated, then nodded apologetically.

‘Oh, that’s great,’ he said. ‘That’s just great.’

OCTOBER 2007

As Glenn Branson was walking back to his desk after the 6.30 p.m. briefing onOperation Dingo, his mobile phone rang. The caller ID showed an unfamiliar Brighton number.

‘DS Branson,’ he answered. Then immediately recognized the rather smart voice at the other end.

‘Oh, Detective Sergeant, apologies for calling you a bit late.’

‘No problem at all, Mr Hegarty. What can I do for you?’ Glenn continued walking.

‘Is this a good moment?’

‘Absolutely fine.’

‘Well, the damnedest thing just happened,’ Hugo Hegarty said. ‘You remember when you and your very charming colleague came back this afternoon, I gave you a list? A list and description of all the stamps I purchased for Lorraine Wilson back in 2002?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well – look – this could just be one of those strange coincidences, but I’ve been in this game for too long and I really don’t think it is.’

Glenn reached the doorway of Major Incident Room One, and stepped inside. ‘Uh huh.’

‘I’ve just had a phone call from a woman – sounded like a young woman, and rather nervous. She asked me if I would be able to sell a collection of high-value stamps that she has. I asked her to give me the details and what she described is exactly – and I mean  exactly  – what I purchased for Lorraine Wilson. Less just a few, which may have been sold off along the way.’

Still holding the phone to his ear, Branson went over to his work station and sat down, absorbing the significance of this. ‘Are you really sure it’s not just coincidence, sir?’ he asked.

‘Well, they are mostly rare plates of mint stamps, desirable for all collections, plus some individual stamps. I doubt I would be able to remember from five years ago whether the postage marks on these are the same. But to give you a bit of a steer, there are two Plate 77 Penny Reds – I believe the last sale price fetched one hundred and sixty thousand pounds. There were several Plate 10 and Plate 11 Penny Blacks – they’re worth between twelve and thirteen thousand pounds each – very easily tradable. Then quite a substantial quantity of Tuppenny Blues, plus a whole raft of other rarer stamps. It might be coincidence if she had just one or two of these, but the same items, the same quantities?’

‘It does sound a little strange, sir, yes.’

‘To be honest,’ Hegarty said, ‘if I hadn’t gone through the files today to compile the list for you, I doubt I would have remembered it was such an exact match.’

‘Sounds like that might have been a stroke of good fortune. I appreciate your telling us. Did you ask her where she obtained them?’

Hegarty dropped his voice, as if nervous of being overheard. ‘She said she’d inherited them from an aunt in Australia and that someone she’d met at a party in Melbourne told her I was one of the dealers she should talk to.’

‘You, rather than anyone in Australia, sir?’

‘She said she was told that she would get a better price in the UK or in the States. As she was moving back here to look after her elderly mother, she thought she would try me first. She’s coming over tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock to show me them. I thought I would ask her a few discreet questions then.’

Branson looked at his notes. ‘Do you have an interest in buying them?’

He could almost feel the twinkle in Hegarty’s eyes as the man replied.

‘Well, she said she was in a hurry to sell – and that’s usually the best time to buy. Not many dealers would have the kind of ready cash needed to buy this lot in one go – it would be more usual to break it up into auction lots. But I’d want to ensure they were all certificated. I’d hate to part with all that money and get a knock on my front door from you boys a few hours later. That’s why I rang you.’

Of course. This isn’t about Hugo Hegarty being a dutiful citizen. It’s about him protecting his own backside, Glenn Branson thought. Still, such was human nature, so he could hardly blame the man.

‘Roughly what value would you put on these, sir?’

‘As a buyer or a seller?’ Now he was sounding even more wily.

‘As both.’

‘Well, total catalogue value at today’s prices, we’re looking around four – four and a half million. So, as a seller, that’s what I would be aiming to achieve.’

‘Pounds?’

‘Oh yes, pounds.’

Branson was astonished. The original three and a quarter million pounds Lorraine Wilson had come into had gone up by around thirty per cent – and that was after a substantial number of them, probably, had been sold off.

‘And as a buyer, sir?’

Suddenly Hegarty sounded reticent. ‘The price I’d be willing to pay would depend on their provenance. I’d need more information.’

Branson’s brain was whirring. ‘She’s coming to you at 10 tomorrow morning? That’s definite?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Katherine Jennings.’

‘Did she give you an address or phone number?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

The DS wrote the name down, thanked him and hung up. Then he pulled his keyboard closer, tapped the keys to call up the serials log and entered the nameKatherine Jennings.

Within a few seconds a match came up.94

OCTOBER 2007

Roy Grace sat in the back of the unmarked grey Ford Crown Victoria. As they headed into the Lincoln Tunnel he wondered whether, if you were a seasoned enough traveller, you could identify any city in the world just from the sound of the traffic.

In London the constant petrol roar and diesel rattle of engines and the whine-swoosh of the new generation of Volvo buses dominated. New York was completely different, mostly the steady tramp-tramp-tramp of tyres on the ribbed or cracked and lumpy road surfaces, and the honking of horns.

A massive truck behind them was honking now.

Detective Investigator Dennis Baker, who was driving, raised a hand up to the interior mirror and flipped him the bird. ‘Go fuck yourself, asshole!’

Grace grinned. Dennis hadn’t changed.

‘I mean, for Chrissake, asshole, what you want me to do? Drive over the top of the dickhead in front or what? Jesus!’

Long used to his work buddy’s driving, Detective Investigator Pat Lynch, seated alongside him in the front passenger seat, turned without comment to face Roy. ‘It’s good to see you again, man. Long time. Wayyyyy too long!’

Roy felt that too. He’d liked these guys from the moment they first met. Back in November 2000 he had been sent to New York to question a gay American banker whose partner had been found strangled in a flat in Kemp Town. The banker was never charged, but died from a drugs overdose a couple of years later. Roy had worked with Dennis and Pat for some while on that case and they’d stayed in touch.

Pat wore jeans and a denim jacket over a beige shirt, with a white T-shirt beneath that. With his pockmarked face and lanky, boyish haircut, he had the rugged looks of a movie tough guy, but he had a surprisingly gentle and caring nature. He had started life as a stevedore in the docks and his tall, powerful physique had stood him in good stead for that work.

Dennis wore a heavy black anorak, embossed with the legend Cold Case Homicide Squad and the NYPD shield, over a blue shirt, and also had on jeans. Shorter than Pat, wirier and sharp-eyed, he was heavily into martial arts. Years ago he had achieved tenth dan in shotokan karate, the highest level, and was something of a legend in the NYPD for his street-fighting skills.

Both men had been at the Brooklyn Police Station on Williams-burg East at 8.46 on the morning of 9/11, when the first plane had struck. Being literally one mile away, across the Brooklyn Bridge, they headed over there immediately, with their chief, and arrived just as the second plane struck, crashing into the South Tower. They had spent the following weeks as part of the team sifting through the rubble at Ground Zero, in what they had described as the ‘Belly of the Beast’. Dennis had then transferred to the crime scene tent and Pat to the bereavement centre on Pier 92.

In the ensuing years both men, previously extremely fit, had developed asthma, as well as trauma-related mental health problems, and had transferred from the rough and tumble world of the NYPD to the calmer waters of the Special Investigations Unit at the District Attorney’s Office.

Pat brought Grace up to speed on their current work, which was mostly transporting and interrogating mobsters. They now knew the US underworld as well as anybody. Pat talked about how the Mafia no longer had the juice it used to have. Villains flipped easier today than they used to. Who wouldn’t try to cut a deal, Pat said, when looking at the wrong end of a twenty-year to life sentence?

Hopefully they’d find in the next twenty-four hours someone who’d known Ronnie Wilson, someone who had helped him. If anyone could help him to look for someone who, Grace was becoming increasingly certain, had deliberately disappeared during 9/11 and its aftermath, it was these two.

‘You’re looking younger than ever,’ Pat said, suddenly changing the subject. ‘You must be in love.’

‘That wife of yours, she still never turned up, right?’ Dennis asked.

‘No,’ was his short answer. He’d rather not talk about Sandy.

‘He’s just envious,’ Pat said. ‘Cost him a fortune to get rid of his!’

Grace laughed and at that moment his phone beeped with an incoming text. He looked down.

Glad u there safe. Miss u. Humphrey misses u

too. No one 2 throw up on. XXX

He grinned, instantly feeling a pang of longing for Cleo. Then he remembered something. ‘If we’ve got five minutes, could we go into one of those big Toys R Us places? I’ll get my god-daughter’s Christmas present. She’s into something called Bratz.’

‘Biggest one’s in Times Square, we can swing by there now, then go on to W, where we thought we’d start,’ Pat said.

‘Thanks.’ Grace stared out of the window. They were going up an incline, past precarious-looking scaffolding. Steam rose from a subway vent.

It was a crisp autumnal afternoon, with a clear blue sky. Some people were wearing coats or heavy jackets, and as they got further into the centre of Manhattan everyone looked as if they were in a hurry. Half the men scurrying past were dressed in suits with tieless shirts and wore worried frowns. Most of them had a mobile clamped to one ear and carried in their other hand a Starbucks coffee with a brown collar around it, as if that was a mandatory totem.

‘So, Pat and I, we worked out a pretty good programme for you,’ Dennis said.

‘Yeah,’ Pat confirmed. ‘Although we’re now working for the DA we’re happy to run you around as a favour for a friend and a fellow cop.’

‘I really appreciate it. I spoke to my FBI guy in London,’ Grace replied. ‘He knows I’m here and what I’m doing. If my hunches work out, we may well have to come back formally to the NYPD.’

Dennis hit the horn at a black Explorer in front of them that had put its flashers on and half pulled over, looking for something. ‘Fuck you! Come on, asshole!’

‘We’ve booked you into the Marriott Financial Center – that’s right down by Ground Zero, in Battery Park City. Figure that’ll be a good base, as we can get to most places you might want to check out easily enough from there.’

‘Give you some atmosphere too,’ Dennis said. ‘It was badly damaged. All brand new now. You’ll be able to see the work going on at Ground Zero.’

‘You know they’re still finding body parts,’ Pat said. ‘Six years on, right? Found some last month on the roof of the Deutsche Bank Building. People don’t realize. They got no fuckin’ idea the force of what happened when those planes hit.’

‘Right opposite the Medical Examiner’s Office they got a tented-off area with eight refrigerated trucks inside,’ Dennis said. ‘They’ve been there for – what – six years now. Twenty thousand unidentified body parts in there. Can you believe that? Twenty thousand?’ He shook his head.

‘My cousin died,’ Pat went on. ‘You knew that, right? He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald.’ He held up his wrist to reveal a silver bracelet. ‘See that, it has his initials. TJH. We all got one, wear it in his memory.’

‘Everyone in New York lost someone that day,’ Dennis said, swerving to avoid a jay-walking woman. ‘Shit, lady, you want to know what the fender of a Crown Victoria feels like? I can tell you, it don’t feel too good.’

‘Anyhow,’ Pat said, ‘we’ve been doing as much as we could before you got here. We checked out the hotel where your Ronnie Wilson stayed. Same manager’s still there, so that’s good. We’ve fixed for you to meet him. He’s happy to talk to you, but there’s no change from what we already know. Some of Wilson’s stuff was still in his room – his passport, tickets, a few underclothes. That’s all now in one of the 9/11 victim storage depots.’

Grace’s phone rang suddenly. Excusing himself, he answered it. ‘Roy Grace?’

‘Yo, old-timer, where are you now? Having an ice cream on top of the Empire State Building?’

‘Very droll. I’m actually in a traffic jam.’

‘OK, well, I have another development for you. We’re working our butts off here while you’re having fun. Does the name Kather-ine Jennings ring a bell?’

Grace thought for a moment, feeling a little weary, his brain less sharp than usual after the flight. Then he remembered. It was the name of the woman in Kemp Town that the Argus reporter, Kevin Spinella, had given him. The name he had passed on to Steve Curry.

‘What about her?’

‘She’s trying to sell a collection of stamps worth around four million pounds. The dealer she’s gone to is Hugo Hegarty and he recognizes them. He hasn’t seen them yet, only spoken to her over the phone, but he’s convinced, all bar a few that are missing, that these are the stamps he purchased for Lorraine Wilson back in 2002.’

‘Did he ask the woman where she got them from?’

Branson repeated what Hegarty had told him, then added, ‘There’s a serial on Katherine Jennings.’

‘Mine,’ Grace said. He fell silent for some moments, thinking back to his conversation on Monday with Spinella. The reporter had said Katherine Jennings seemed agitated. Would having four million pounds’ worth of stamps in your possession make you agitated? Grace reckoned he’d be feeling pretty relaxed, having that kind of loot, so long as it was in a safe place.

So what was she agitated about? Something definitely smelled wrong.