Dead Man's Footsteps (42 page)

NOVEMBER 2007

It was one of those all too rare autumn days when England looked at its very best. Abby stared out of the window at the clear blue sky and the morning sun that was low but warm on her face.

Two floors below in the manicured gardens, a gardener was at work with some kind of outdoor vacuum cleaner, hoovering up leaves. An elderly man in a crisp mackintosh walked slowly and jerkily around the perimeter of the ornamental pond, which was stocked with koi carp, prodding the ground ahead of him with his Zimmer frame as if wary of landmines. A little white-haired lady sat on a bench on the highest part of the terraced lawns, parcelled up in a quilted coat, studying a page of the Daily Telegraph intently.

The Bexhill Lawns Rest Home was more expensive than the home she had originally budgeted for, but it was able to accommodate her mother right away and, hey, who was counting the cost now?

Besides, it was a joy to see her mother looking so happy here and so well. It was hard to believe that two weeks ago today, Abby had entered that van and looked down at her bewildered face sticking out of the rolled-up carpet. She seemed a new person now, with a new lease of life. As if, somehow, all she had been through had strengthened her.

Abby turned to look at her. She had the same lump in her throat that was always there when she was saying goodbye to her mother. Always scared it would be the last time she saw her.

Mary Dawson sat on the two-seater sofa in the large, well-appointed room, filling in a form in one of her competition magazines. Abby walked across, laid a hand tenderly on her shoulder and looked down.

‘What are you trying to win?’ she asked, her voice choked as their last, precious minutes together were ticking away. Her taxi would be here soon.

‘A fortnight for two in a luxury hotel in Mauritius!’

‘But Mum, you don’t even have a passport!’ Abby chided her good-humouredly.

‘I know, dear, but you could easily get me one if I needed one, couldn’t you?’ She gave her daughter a strange look.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Smiling like an impish child, she replied, ‘You know exactly what I mean, dear.’

Abby blushed. Her mother had always been sharp as a tack. She’d never been able to hide anything from her for long, right from earliest childhood.

‘Don’t worry,’ her mother added. ‘I’m not going anywhere. There’s a cash prize as an alternative.’

‘I’d love you to get a passport,’ Abby said, sitting on the sofa, putting an arm around her frail shoulders and kissing her on the cheek. ‘I’d love you to join me.’

‘Where?’

Abby shrugged. ‘When I get settled somewhere.’

‘And have me turn up and cramp your style?’

Abby gave a wistful laugh. ‘You wouldn’t ever cramp my style.’

‘Your dad and I, we were never much ones for travelling. When your late aunt, Anne, moved to Sydney all those years ago, she kept telling us how wonderful it was and that we should move out there. But your dad always felt his roots were here. And mine are too. But I’m proud of you, Abby. My mother used to say that one mother could support seven children, but seven children could never support one mother. You’ve proved her wrong.’

Abby fought back her tears.

‘I’m really proud of you. There’s not much more a mother could ask of a daughter. Except maybe one thing.’ She gave her a quizzical look.

‘What?’ Abby smiled at her, knowing what was coming.

‘Babies?’

‘Maybe one day. Who knows. Then you’d have to get a passport and come and be with me.’

Her mother looked down at her entry form again for some moments. ‘No,’ she said, and shook her head firmly. Then she put down her pen, took her daughter’s hand with her own bony, liver-spotted fingers and squeezed it tightly.

Abby was surprised by her strength.

‘Always remember one thing, Abby dear, if you ever decide to become a parent. First you give your children roots. Then you give them wings.’

NOVEMBER 2007

An hour and a half after leaving her mother, Abby pulled the suitcase containing almost everything she was taking with her from Brighton along the platform of Gatwick Station, and up the escalator into the arrivals area. Then she deposited it at the left-luggage baggage storage.

Carrying with her only the Jiffy bag that Detective Sergeant Branson had returned to her on Saturday, which was inside a carrier bag, and her handbag, she walked up to the easyJet ticket counter and joined a short queue. It was midday.

*

In his office, Roy Grace was reading through a wodge of faxed reports that had been sent from Australia during the past twenty-four hours by Norman Potting and Nick Nicholl. He felt a little guilty about keeping Nicholl out there so long, but the list of contacts that Lorraine Wilson’s friend had given them had been too good to be ignored.

However, despite everything, they still had no positive lead on where Ronnie Wilson was.

He looked at his watch: 1.20. His lunch, which Eleanor had picked up for him from ASDA, lay on his desk in its carrier bag. A Healthy Option crayfish and rocket sandwich and an apple. He was gradually yielding, day by day, to the pressure Cleo was putting on him to improve his diet. Not that it made him feel any different. Just as he reached into the bag, his phone rang.

It was Bill Warner, who was now in charge of Gatwick Airport CID.

They were old enough friends to be able to dispense with pleasantries and the Gatwick DI cut straight to the chase.

‘Roy, there’s a woman you have an alert out on, Abby Dawson, also known as Katherine Jennings?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re pretty sure she’s just checked in on an easyJet flight to Nice which leaves at 3.45. We’ve checked her image on our CCTV and it matches the photographs you’ve circulated.’

They were photographs that had been pulled off the Interview Suite CCTV cameras. Strictly speaking, under the terms of the Data Protection Act, Grace should not have used them without her consent. But he didn’t care.

‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘Absolutely bloody brilliant!’

‘What do you want us to do?’

‘Just have her tracked, Bill. It’s vital she doesn’t know she’s being followed. I want her to get on the flight, but I’m going to need some officers there with her – and some support in Nice. Can you find out if the flight’s full – and if we could get two officers on? If they’re full, maybe you could persuade them to bump a couple of passengers?’

‘Leave it with me. I already know that the plane is only half full. I’ll get on to the French police. I take it we are interested in who she might meet?’

‘Spot on. Thanks, Bill. Keep me informed.’

Grace clenched his fist for joy, then he called Glenn Branson.

NOVEMBER 2007

‘So when do I see you again? Tell me. When?’

‘Soon!’

‘How soon is soon?’

She lay on top of him, their naked skin running with perspiration from their exertions in the morning heat. His spent penis nestled in her hairs. Her small round breasts pressed into his chest and her eyes gazed into his, nut-brown eyes, filled with laughter and mischief. And hardness. For sure.

She was savyy, streetwise. She was a piece of work.

A very rich piece of work.

And she liked this goddamned humidity. This cloying heat which made him perspire constantly. She insisted on making love with the terrace doors of her house wide open and it was about a hundred fucking degrees in the room. And now she was pummelling his chest with her tiny fists.

‘How soon? How soon?’

He brushed her jet-black hair away from his face and kissed her rosebud lips. She was so pretty and she had a great body. He’d come to appreciate slender Thai girls during his month holed up in Pattaya Beach, waiting for Abby to give him the signal that she was on her way.

And oh wow! He had lucked out big time with this one. Totally unexpected! Because she was everything he had fantasized about, but with a whole lot more. About twenty-five million US dollars more! Give or take a few percentage points on the Thai Baht conversion rate.

He’d met her in a stamp dealer’s shop in Bangkok and just got chatting. Turned out her husband had a chain of nightclubs, which she’d inherited when he died in a scuba-diving accident – a tourist on a jet-ski had chopped his head off at the neck. She had been trying to flog his very serious stamp collection and Ronnie had given her guidance, stopped her being ripped off, got her treble what she’d originally been told they were worth.

And had been banging her once and sometimes twice a day ever since.

Which left him with a problem. Although it wasn’t too big a problem. He’d already started tiring of Abby. He couldn’t say exactly when that had begun to happen. Perhaps it was the way she had behaved – or looked – after her assignments with Ricky. Like, certainly after the first two occasions, she had really enjoyed them.

Which had made him realize what she was capable of.

A woman who had no limits. She would do anything to get rich and was, for sure, just using him as a stepping stone.

Luckily, he was one step ahead. He’d screwed up twice before. Water had not served him well. Something had gone wrong with the damned storm drain in Brighton. And who the hell could have predicted the drought continuing in Melbourne?

Fortunately there were plenty of boats for hire in Koh Samui. And they were cheap. And the South China Sea was deep.

Ten miles out and there was no chance a body was going to fetch up back on the shore. He already had the boat moored and waiting. Abby would love it. It was fuck-off stunning. And cost peanuts. Relatively. And, hey, you had to speculate to accumulate.

He kissed Phara.

‘Not long at all,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

NOVEMBER 2007

Instead of following the signs for Departures when she stepped away from the easyJet check-in desk, Abby headed back into the main concourse and made her way to the toilets.

Having locked herself in a cubicle, she removed the Jiffy bag from her carrier bag, ripped it open and shook out the contents – a cellophane bag containing an assortment of stamps, some loose, some in sheets.

Most of the sheets were just replicas of the ones Ricky had wanted so badly, but several of the other sheets and individual stamps were genuine, and looked old enough to excite someone who knew nothing about philately.

She also took out the receipt from the stamp dealer South-East Philatelic, which she had visited two weeks ago. It was for one hundred and forty-two pounds. Probably more than she had needed to spend, strictly speaking, but the assortment did look impressive to the layman, and she had rightly placed Detective Sergeant Branson in that category.

She tore the stamps and the receipt into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then she removed her jeans, boots and fleece jacket. She wouldn’t need those where she was going. She pulled out of the carrier bag a long, blonde wig, cut and styled much how her hair used to look, and pulled it on, adjusting it a little clumsily with the help of her make-up mirror. Then she put on the sundress she had bought a couple of days ago and the cream linen jacket that went so well with it, together with a rather nice pair of white, open-toed shoes. She completed her new look with a pair of lightly tinted Marc Jacobs sunglasses.

She crammed the clothes she had discarded into the plastic bag, then went out of the cubicle, adjusted her hair in the mirror, put the Jiffy bag into a bin and checked her watch. It was 1.35. She was making good time.

Suddenly, her phone beeped with a text.

Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. Just a few

hours now. XX

She smiled. Just a few hours. Yes, yes, yes!

She walked, with a spring in her step, back to the left-luggage area and checked out the suitcase she had deposited just over two weeks ago. She wheeled it over to a corner, unlocked and opened it, then removed a bubble-wrapped Jiffy bag. Then she shoved the carrier bag with her old clothes inside, closed it and locked it.

She returned to the check-in area, found the British Airways section and walked up to a business-class desk. An extravagance, but she had decided she would celebrate the start of her new life today in the style in which she planned to continue it.

Handing her passport and ticket to the woman behind the desk, she said, ‘Sarah Smith. I’m on Flight 309, connecting through to Rio de Janeiro.’

‘Thank you, madam,’ the woman said, and checked the details on her terminal.

She asked Abby the usual security questions and tagged her suitcase. Then the bag jerked forward, fell over on the conveyor and disappeared from view.

‘Is the flight on time?’ Abby asked.

The woman looked at her screen. ‘At the moment, yes, it looks fine. Leaves at 3.15. The boarding gate opens at 2.40. It will be Gate 54. You’ll find the signs to the lounge after you’ve gone through security into the duty-free area.’

Abby thanked her, then checked her watch again. Butterflies were going bonkers in her stomach. There were still two more things she had to do, but she wanted to wait until closer to the time for both of them.

She went through into the BA lounge, helped herself to a glass of white wine to steady her nerves, craving a cigarette. But that would have to wait. She ate a couple of finger-sized sandwiches, then sat down in front of a television screen, with the news on, and went carefully through her mental checklist. She was satisfied she had not forgotten anything. But to be doubly sure she checked that her phone was set to withhold her number from anyone she rang.

Shortly after 2.40 she saw on the screen that boarding had commenced, but the flight had not yet been called in here. She walked over to a quiet section, by the entrance to the toilets, where there was no one nearby to overhear her, then dialled the number of the Incident Room that DS Branson had told her to use if she couldn’t reach him on his mobile.

As the phone rang, she kept her ears pricked for the ding-dong warning that preceded any tannoy announcement, not wanting to reveal her whereabouts.

‘Incident room, DC Boutwood,’ a young female voice answered.

Abby disguised her voice as best she could, putting on her best shot at an Australian accent. ‘I have information for you on Ronnie Wilson,’ she said. ‘He will be at Koh Samui Airport, waiting to meet someone off Bangkok Airways Flight 271, which is due in at 11 a.m. local time tomorrow. Have you got that?’

‘Bangkok Airways, Flight 271, Koh Samui at 11 a.m. local time tomorrow. Who is that calling, please?’

Abby hung up. She was clammy with perspiration and shaking. Shaking so much she found it hard to tap out the reply to the text she had received earlier, and had to backspace several times to correct errors before she finished. Then she read it through one more time before she sent it.

True love doesn’t have a happy ending,

because true love never ends. Letting go is one

way of saying I love you. xx

And she did love him. She loved him loads. But just not four million quid loads.

And not with this bad habit he had of killing the women who delivered money to him.

Sometime after take-off, she sat well back in her seat, having drunk a Bloody Mary and an extra miniature of vodka, and opened the bubble-wrapped Jiffy bag. The seat beside her was empty, so she didn’t have to worry about prying eyes. She checked over her shoulder to make sure none of the cabin crew were around either, then very gently eased one of the cellophane envelopes out.

It contained a block of Penny Black stamps. She stared at Queen Victoria’s stern profile. At the word POSTAGE printed in not terribly even letters. At the faded colour. They were exquisite, but they weren’t really perfect at all. As Dave had once explained, sometimes it was their imperfections that made them all the more special.

That applied to a lot of other things in life too, she thought, through her pleasant haze of booze. And besides, who wanted to be perfect?

She gazed at them again, realizing it was the first time she had ever truly looked at them properly. They really were special. Magical. She smiled at them, whispering, ‘Goodbye, my little beauties. See you later.’

Then she put them carefully away.