Dead Man's Footsteps (32 page)

‘I think we should put surveillance on her, Glenn. And we have the advantage of knowing where she lives.’

‘She may have done a runner from there,’ Branson replied. ‘But she’s made an appointment to go to Hegarty’s house tomorrow morning. And she’s bringing him the stamps.’

‘Perfect,’ Grace said. ‘Get on to Lizzie. Tell her we’ve had this conversation and I’m suggesting trying to get a surveillance team to pick her up at Hegarty’s house.’ He looked at this watch. ‘There’s plenty of time to get that in place.’

Glenn Branson looked at his watch too. It wasn’t going to be a simple matter of a two-minute call to Lizzie Mantle. He was going to have to write out a report detailing the reasons for requesting a surveillance unit and its potential value to Operation Dingo. And he was going to have to prepare the briefing. He wasn’t going to make it home for hours yet. It would mean another bollocking from Ari.

Nothing new there.

When Roy Grace ended the call, he leaned forward. ‘Guys,’ he said, ‘do you have someone who can put together a list of stamp dealers here?’

‘Starting a new hobby, are you?’ quipped Dennis.

‘Just stamping out crime,’ Grace retorted.

‘Shit, man!’ Pat said, turning to face him. ‘Your jokes don’t get any better, do they?’

Grace smiled sardonically. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

OCTOBER 2007

The air stewardess was going through the safety demonstration. Norman Potting leaned over to Nick Nicholl, seated next to him near the rear of the 747, and said, ‘It’s all a load of rubbish, this safety stuff.’

The young Detective Constable, who was terrified of flying but hadn’t wanted to admit that to his boss, was hanging on to every word that was coming out through the speakers. Turning his face away to avoid the full blast of Potting’s bad breath, he peered upwards, working out exactly where his oxygen mask would be dropping from.

‘The brace position – you know what they don’t tell you?’ Potting went on, undeterred by Nicholl’s lack of reaction.

Nicholl shook his head, now watching and memorizing the correct way to tie the tapes on the life jacket.

‘It might save you in some situations, I grant you. But the thing they don’t tell you,’ Potting said, ‘is the brace position helps preserve your jawbone intact. Makes identifying all the victims from their dental records much easier.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ Nicholl muttered, observing the stewardess now pointing out where he would find his whistle.

‘As for the life jacket, that’s a laugh, that is,’ Potting carried on. ‘Do you know how many passenger airliners in the entire history of aviation have ever successfully made an emergency landing on water?’

Nick Nicholl was thinking about his wife, Julie, and his small son, Liam. He might never see either of them again.

‘How many?’ he gulped.

Potting touched the tip of his own thumb with his index finger, forming a circle. ‘Zero. Zilch. Nada. Not one.’

There’s always a first time, Nicholl thought, clinging tightly to the thought; clinging to it as if it were a liferaft.

Potting starting reading a men’s magazine he had bought in the airport. Nicholl studied the laminated safety card, checking the position of the nearest exits, glad to see that they were only two rows behind him. He was glad too that he was near the rear of the plane; he remembered a newspaper account of an air disaster in which the tail section broke off and all the passengers inside it survived.

‘Phoaaaawwww!’ Potting said.

Nicholl looked down. His colleague had the magazine open at a nude centre-spread. A blonde with pneumatic breasts was lying spread-eagled on a four-poster bed, her wrists and ankles secured by lengths of black velvet to the posts. Her pubic hair was a tidily shaved Brazilian and the pink lips of her vulva were prominently exposed, as if they were the buds of a flower placed between her legs.

A stewardess walked past, checking passengers had their seat belts on. She stopped to peer down at Nicholl and Norman Potting, then moved smartly on.

Nick felt his face burning with embarrassment. ‘Norman,’ he whispered, ‘I think you should put that away.’

‘Hope we find a few like her in Melbourne!’ Potting said. ‘We could have a bit of sport, you and me. I fancy that Bondi Beach.’

‘Bondi Beach is in Sydney, not Melbourne. And I think you embarrassed the stewardess with that.’

Unabashed, Potting traced his fingers over her curves. ‘She’s a bit of all right, she is!’

The stewardess was coming back. She gave both of them a cursory, rather frosty glance and hurried past.

‘I thought you were a happily married man, Norman,’ Nicholl said.

‘The day I stop looking, lad,’ he said, ‘that’s the day I want someone to take me out into a field and shoot me.’ He grinned and, to Nicholl’s relief, he turned the page. But the DC’s relief was only fleeting.

The next page was much worse.

OCTOBER 2007

Abby was on the train heading to Brighton, a lump deep in her throat. Her stomach was knotted. She was trembling, trying to stop herself crying, struggling to hold it all together.

Where was her mother? Where had the bastard taken her?

Her watch said 8.30. Almost two hours since she’d put the phone down on Ricky. She dialled her mother’s number yet again. Once more it went to voicemail.

She wasn’t sure exactly what medication her mother was on – there were antidepressants, plus pills for muscle spasm, constipation, anti-reflux – but she doubted very much that Ricky would care about that. Without them, her mother’s condition would deteriorate rapidly, and she would start to have mood swings, from euphoria one second to a deeply distressed state the next.

Abby cursed her stupidity for leaving her mother so exposed. She should have just bloody well taken her.

Call me, Ricky. Please call me.

She was bitterly regretting hanging up on him, realizing she hadn’t thought it through properly. Ricky knew she would be the first to panic, not him. But he would have to call her, he would have to make contact. A frail, sick old lady was not the prize he wanted.

She took a taxi from the station and got out at a convenience store close to her flat, where she bought a small torch. Keeping to the shadows, she turned into her street and saw, under the glare of a street light, Ricky’s rental Ford Focus. It was clamped. Large police stickers were fixed to the windscreen and driver’s-side window, warning that the owner should not attempt to move it.

She walked warily to the car. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she removed the parking ticket from beneath the windscreen wiper and, using her torch, read the time it had been issued: 10.03 a.m. So the car had been here all day. Which meant he hadn’t used it to transport her mother. Of course not – he had the van.

But presumably he was intending to return. Maybe he was already there. Somehow she doubted that. She was sure he had a place in the city, if only a lock-up.

The windows of her flat were all dark. She crossed the street to the entrance and pressed the bell of Hassan, hoping he was home. She was in luck. There was a crackle followed by his voice.

‘Hi, it’s Katherine Jennings from Flat 82. Sorry to bother you, but I’ve forgotten my front door key. Could you let me in?’

‘No problem!’

Moments later there was a sharp buzz and she pushed the door open. As she entered, she saw a stack of junk mail crammed in her letter box. Better not to touch it, she decided, not wanting to leave any indications that she had been here.

The lift had a large OUT OF ORDER sign taped across the doors. She began climbing the dimly lit stairs, stopping on each floor to listen for any movement, wishing she had her Mace spray with her. On the third floor she started to smell freshly sawn wood, from the builders in the flat above. She climbed one more floor, then her nerve began failing her, so she was tempted for a moment to knock on Hassan’s door and ask him to come up with her.

Finally, she reached the top. She stopped to listen for any noise. There were two other flats on this floor, but she had never met anyone coming or going in the brief time she had been here. She could hear nothing. Total silence. She went over to the fire reel that was fixed to the wall and began to unwind the hose. After five loops, she saw the set of spare keys lying where she had hidden them. She rewound the hose, pushed open the fire door and went through onto her landing.

Then stood still, feeling very scared now. What if he was in there?

Of course he wasn’t. He was with her mother in whatever lair he had imprisoned her. All the same, she slipped in each key as silently as possible, turning the locks and opening the door quietly, not wanting to announce her presence.

Shadows jumped at her as she stepped inside. She left the door ajar behind her and the lights off. Then she slammed the front door hard, to flush him out if he was in here and had maybe fallen asleep, and immediately opened it again. She slammed it and opened it a second time. Total silence.

She shone the torch beam along the corridor. The plastic bag of tools Ricky had brought to threaten her with – probably nicked from the builders downstairs – was still lying on the floor outside the guest shower room.

Keeping all the lights off just in case he was outside somewhere, watching, she went through the whole flat, room by room. She came across her Mace on the coffee table in the sitting room and jammed it in her pocket. Then she hurried back to the front door and put the safety chain across.

Thirsty and hungry, she gulped down a Coke and a peach yoghurt from the fridge, then went through into the guest shower room, closed the door and switched on the light. There was no exterior window in this room, so it was safe.

Stepping past the lavatory and the huge glass shower wall, she opened the door to the tiny utility room, crammed with the washing machine and tumble dryer. Up on the shelf to the left were her own tools. She pulled down a hammer and chisel and carried them back into the shower room.

Then she took one brief, proud last look at her fine handiwork, placed the blade of the chisel against the grout between two tiles halfway up the wall and hit it hard. Then again.

Within a few minutes she had removed enough of the tiles and could reach into the false wall behind them. She felt deep relief as her fingers touched the waterproof protective bubble wrap, which she had carefully wound around the A4 Jiffy bag before putting it here the day she had moved in.

The landlord wouldn’t be too impressed with the damage to the bathroom wall. If she’d had the time, thanks to the skills she had learned from her father, she could have fixed it so perfectly he would never have seen the joins. But at this moment a few damaged tiles was the least of her problems.

She changed her underwear, packed her suitcase for the second time this week with everything she thought she might need, then logged on to the internet and looked up cheap hotels in Brighton and Hove.

When she had made her choice, she phoned for another taxi.

OCTOBER 2007

The old woman was turning out to be more of a problem than Ricky had imagined. He stood in the tiny kitchenette area of the wooden building that served as the tennis club pavilion, toilet and shower facility for the campsite.

She’d been in the bloody toilet for over fifteen minutes now.

He stepped out of the door, into the pouring rain, beginning to think that killing her might be the best option, and peered across the field, anxiously, at the Dutch camper van. The lights were on behind drawn curtains. He just hoped to hell they didn’t decide to come and use these facilities while she was in here. Although he was confident she was scared enough of his threats not to say anything to anyone, or do anything stupid.

Another five minutes passed. He glanced at his watch again. It was 9.30. Three hours since Abby had hung up on him. Three hours in which she would have been thinking about what had happened. Coming to her senses?

Now would be a good moment, he decided.

He flipped open the lid of his phone and texted Abby the photograph he had taken a little earlier, of her mother’s head poking out of the top of the carpet roll.

He sent the words with it:

Snug as a bug in rug.

OCTOBER 2007

Roy sat with Pat and Dennis at a wooden table in the restaurant area of the huge, open-plan Chelsea Brewing Company, which was owned by Pat’s cousin. To his right was a long wooden bar, and behind him were rows of gleaming copper vats as tall as houses, and miles of stainless-steel and aluminium piping and tubing. With its acres of wooden flooring and immaculate cleanliness, it had the feel more of a museum than a busy working enterprise.

Visiting had become a ritual, a compulsory watering-hole stop during every trip Roy made to New York. Pat was clearly proud of his cousin’s success and enjoyed giving an Englishman a run for his money with American-brewed beer.

There were six different varieties in sampler glasses in front of each of the three police officers. The glasses were positioned on a round blue spot on the specially designed table mat that gave the names of the beers. Pat’s cousin, also called Patrick, a stocky, bespectacled and intense man in his forties, was talking Roy through the different brewing processes for each one.

Roy was only half listening. He was tired; it was late according to UK time now. Today had yielded nothing – just one blank after another. Apart from the successful purchase of a precocious-looking Bratz for his god-daughter. In his view the doll looked like a Barbie that was working in the sex trade. But, as he reflected, what did he know about the tastes of nine-year-olds?

The hotel manager of the W had little to add to what Grace already knew other than, for what it was worth, Ronnie had watched a pay-per-view porn movie at 11 o’clock that last night.

And no one at any of the seven stamp dealers they had visited this afternoon had recognized either Wilson’s name or his photograph.

As Pat’s cousin intoned on about the science behind the beer Roy liked best, Checker Cab Blonde Ale, he stared out of the window into the night. He could see the rigging of yachts in the marina and further, beyond the darkness of the Hudson, the lights of New Jersey. It was so vast, this city. So many people coming and going. Live here, like any big city, and you’d see thousands of faces every day. How likely was it that he could find anyone who would remember one face from six years back?

But he had to try. Knocking on doors. The good old-fashioned-policing way. The chances of Ronnie being here were slim. More likely he was in Australia – certainly the latest evidence pointed that way. He tried to do a quick calculation of the time zones in his head, while Patrick moved on to explaining how the subtle caramel flavours of Sunset Red Ale were achieved.

It was 7 o’clock in the evening. Melbourne was ten hours ahead of the UK, so how many did that make it ahead of New York, which was five hours ahead – no – behind the UK? Christ, the calculation was doing his head in.

And all the time he kept nodding politely at Patrick.

It was fifteen hours ahead, he worked out. Mid-morning. Hopefully, ahead of Norman and Nick’s visit, the Melbourne police would make a start on checking whether Ronnie Wilson had entered Australia at any point since September 2001.

There was something else, he suddenly remembered, surreptitiously pulling out his notebook and flicking back a couple of pages to the notes he had taken at his meeting with Terry Biglow, the list of Ronnie Wilson’s acquaintances and friends. Chad Skeggs, he had written down. Emigrated to Oz. As a result of what Branson had told him, and the likelihood that Ronnie Wilson was in Australia, he was going to making finding Chad Skeggs a priority for Potting and Nicholl.

Patrick finally finished and went off to get Roy his own personal jug of Checker Cab. The three detectives each raised a glass.

‘Thanks for your time, guys, I appreciate it,’ Grace said. ‘And I’m buying.’

‘You’re in my cousin’s place,’ Pat said. ‘You don’t pay a dime.’

‘When you’re with us in New York, you’re our guest,’ Dennis said. ‘But shit, buddy, when we come to England you’d better take out a second mortgage!’

They laughed.

Then Pat looked sad suddenly. ‘You know, did I ever tell you that thing about 9/11, about the feelgood dogs?’

Grace shook his head.

‘They had people bring dogs along – to the pile, you know, the Belly of the Beast. They were just for the workers there to stroke.’

Dennis nodded, concurring. ‘That’s what they called ’em – feelgood dogs.’

‘Kind of like therapy,’ Pat said. ‘We were all finding such horrible things. They figured, we stroke the dogs, it’s a good feeling, contact with something living, something happy.’

‘You know, I think it worked,’ Dennis said. ‘That whole thing, 9/11, you know, it brought a lot of good out in people in this city.’

‘And it brought the scumbags out too,’ Pat reminded him. ‘At Pier 92 we were giving cash handouts between fifteen hundred and two and a half thousand bucks, depending on their needs, to help people in immediate hardship.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t take the scumbags long to hear about this. We had several came and scammed us, telling us they had lost family, when they hadn’t.’

‘But we got them,’ Dennis said with grim satisfaction. ‘We got ’em after. Took a while, but we got every damned one of them.’

‘But there was good that came out of it,’ Pat said. ‘It brought some heart and soul back to this city. I think people are a little kinder here now.’

‘And some people are a lot richer,’ Dennis said.

Pat nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’

Dennis chuckled suddenly. ‘Rachel, my wife, she’s got an uncle over in the Garment District. He has an embroidery business, makes stuff for the souvenir shops. I stopped by to see him a couple of weeks after 9/11. He’s this little Jewish guy, right, Hymie. He’s eighty-two years old, still works a fourteen-hour day. The nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. His family escaped the Holocaust, came out here. There isn’t anybody he wouldn’t help. Anyhow, I walk in there and I never saw the place so busy. Workers everywhere. T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, all piled up, people stitching, ironing, machining, bagging.’

He sipped some beer and shook his head.

‘My uncle had had to take on extra staff. Couldn’t cope with all the orders. It was all Twin Towers commemorative stuff he was making. I asked him how it was going. He sat there in the middle of all this chaos and he looked at me with this little smile on his face and he said business was good, it had never been better.’ Dennis nodded, then gave a wry shrug, ‘You know what? There’s always a buck in tragedy.’