Dead Man's Footsteps

by Peter James

  After a few moments the door opened a few inches and a woman – in her early sixties, he guessed – stared out at him suspiciously from behind rather stern glasses. Twenty years ago, with a better hairdo and the thick worry creases airbrushed from her face, she might have been quite attractive, he thought. Now, with her short, iron-grey hair, a baggy orange jumper that swamped her, brown polyester trousers and plimsolls, she looked to Pewe like one of those doughty, backbone-of-England ladies you find manning stalls at the church bazaar.

  ‘Mrs Margot Balkwill?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes?’ she said hesitantly and a little suspiciously.

  He showed her his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Pewe of Sussex CID. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I could have a word with you and your husband about your daughter, Sandy?’

  Her small, round mouth fell open, revealing neat teeth that were yellow with age. ‘Sandy?’ she echoed, shocked.

  ‘Is your husband in?’

  She considered the question for a moment, like a schoolmistress who had just been thrown a curve by a pupil. ‘Well, he is, yes.’ She hesitated for a moment, then indicated for him to come in.

  Pewe stepped on to a mat which said WELCOME, and into a tiny, bare hall which smelled faintly of a roast dinner and more strongly of cats. He heard the sound of a television soap opera.

  She closed the door behind him, then called out, a little timidly, ‘Derek! We have a visitor. A police officer. A detective.’

  Tidying his hair again, Pewe followed her through into a small, spotlessly clean living room. There was a brown velour three-piece suite with a glass-topped coffee table in front, arranged around an elderly, square-screened television on which two vaguely familiar-looking actors were arguing in a pub. On top of the set was a framed photograph of an attractive blonde girl of about seventeen, unmistakably Sandy from the pictures Pewe had studied this afternoon in the files.

  At the far end of the small room, next to what Pewe considered to be a rather ugly Victorian cabinet full of blue and white willow-pattern plates, a man was sitting at a small table covered in carefully folded sheets of newspaper, in the process of assembling a model aircraft. Strips of balsa wood, wheels and pieces of undercarriage, a gun turret and other small objects Pewe could not immediately identify were laid out on either side of the plane, which rested at an angle, as if climbing after take-off, on a small raised base. The room smelled of glue and paint.

  Pewe made a quick scan of the rest of the room. A fake-coal electric fire, which was on. A music centre that looked like it played vinyl rather than CDs. And photographs everywhere of Sandy at different ages, from just a few years old through to her twenties. One, in pride of place on the mantelpiece above the fire, was a wedding photograph of Roy Grace and Sandy. She was in a long white dress, holding a bouquet. Grace, younger and with much longer hair than he had now, wore a dark grey suit and a silver tie.

  Mr Balkwill was a big, broad-shouldered man who looked as if he’d once had a powerful physique before he let it go to seed. He had thin grey hair swept back on either side of a bald head and a flabby double chin that disappeared in the folds of a multicoloured roll-neck sweater that was similar to his wife’s – as if she had knitted both of them. He stood up, round-shouldered and stooping, like someone who had been defeated by life, and ambled to the front of the table. Below the sweater, which came almost to his knees, he wore baggy grey trousers and black sandals.

  An overweight tabby cat, which looked as old as both of them, wandered out from under the table, took one look at Pewe, arched its back and stalked out of the room.

  ‘Derek Balkwill,’ he said, with a quiet, almost shy voice that seemed much smaller than his frame. He held out a big hand and gave Pewe a crushing shake that surprised and hurt him.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Pewe,’ he replied with a wince. ‘I wondered if I could have a word with you and your wife about Sandy?’

  The man froze. What little colour he had drained from his already pallid face and Pewe saw a slight tremor in his hands. He wondered for a horrible moment if the man was having a heart attack.

  ‘I’ll just turn the oven down,’ Margot Balkwill said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Tea would be perfect,’ Pewe said. ‘Lemon, if you have it.’

  ‘Working with Roy, are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’ He continued to stare, concerned, at her husband.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Fine. Busy on a murder inquiry.’

  ‘He’s always busy,’ Derek Balkwill said, seeming to calm down a little. ‘He’s a hard worker.’

  Margot Balkwill scurried out of the room.

  Derek pointed at the aircraft. ‘Lancaster.’

  ‘Second World War?’ Pewe responded, trying to sound knowledgeable.

  ‘Got more upstairs.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He gave a shy smile. ‘Got a Mustang P45. A Spit. A Hurricane. Mosquito. Wellington.’

  There was an awkward silence. Two women were discussing a wedding dress on the television screen now. Then Derek pointed at the Lancaster. ‘My dad flew ’em. Seventy-five sorties. Know about the Dambusters? Ever see the film?’

  Pewe nodded.

  ‘He was one of ’em. One of the ones that came back. One of the Few.’

  ‘Was he a pilot?’

  ‘Tail gunner. Tail End Charlie, they called ’em.’

  ‘Brave guy,’ Pewe said politely.

  ‘Not really. Just did his duty. He was a bitter man after the war.’ Then after some moments he added, ‘War buggers you up, you know that?’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Derek Balkwill shook his head. ‘No. No one can imagine. Been a police officer long?’

  ‘Nineteen years next January.’

  ‘Same as Roy.’

  *

  When his wife returned with a tray of tea and biscuits, Derek Balkwill fumbled with the remote control, then silenced the television but left the picture on. The three of them settled down, Pewe in one armchair, the Balkwills on the settee.

  Pewe picked his cup up, holding the dainty handle in his manicured fingers, blew on the tea, sipped and then set it down. ‘I’ve very recently moved to Sussex CID from the Met, in London,’ he said. ‘I’ve been brought in to review cold cases. I don’t know how to put this delicately, but I’ve been going through the missing-persons files and I really don’t think that your daughter’s disappearance has been investigated adequately.’

  He sat back and opened his arms expansively. ‘By that I mean – without casting any aspersions on Roy, of course …’ He hesitated, until their joint nods gave him the assurance to continue. ‘As a completely impartial outsider, it seems to me that Roy Grace is really too emotionally involved to be able do conduct an impartial review of the original investigation into his wife’s disappearance.’ He paused and took another sip of his tea. ‘I just wondered if either of you might have any views on this?’

  ‘Does Roy know you are here?’ Derek Balkwill asked.

  ‘I’m conducting an independent inquiry,’ Pewe said evasively.

  Sandy’s mother frowned but said nothing.

  ‘Can’t see it would do any harm,’ her husband eventually said.

  48

  11 SEPTEMBER 2001

  Ronnie was drunk. He walked unsteadily past low-rise red-brick apartment buildings, pulling his bags behind him along the sidewalk, which was pitch-poling like the deck of a boat. His mouth was dry and his head felt as if it was clamped in a steadily tightening vice. He should have eaten something, he knew. He would get some food later, after he had checked in and stored his luggage.

  In his left hand he held a crumpled bar receipt, on the back of which his new best friend – whose name he had already forgotten – had written an address and drawn a map. It was five in the afternoon. A helicopter flew low overhead. There was an unpleasant smell of burning in the air. Was there a fire somewhere?

  Th
en he realized it was the same smell as earlier, when he had been in Manhattan. Dense and cloying, it seeped into his clothes and into the pores of his skin. He was breathing it in, deep lungfuls of it.

  At the end of the road he squinted at the map. It appeared to be telling him to turn right at the next crossing. He passed several shops with signs in Cyrillic, then Federal Savings, which had a hole-in-the-wall cash machine. He stopped, tempted for a moment to draw out whatever his cards would allow, but that would not be smart, he realized. The machine would record the time of the transaction. He walked on. Past more storefronts. On the far side of the street a limp banner hung, screen-printed with the words, KEEP BRIGHTON BEACH CLEAN.

  It began to dawn on him just how deserted the street was. There were cars parked on either side, but now there were no people. The shops were almost entirely empty too. It was as if the entire suburb was at a party to which he had not been invited.

  But he knew they were all at home, glued to their television sets. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone in the bar had said.

  He passed a dimly lit store with a sign outside, MAIL BOX CITY, and stopped.

  Inside, to the left, he could see a long counter. To the right were rows and rows of metal boxes. At the far end of the store a young man with long black hair sat hunched over an internet terminal. At the counter, an elderly, grizzled man in cheap clothes was carrying out some kind of transaction.

  Ronnie was starting to sober up, he realized. Thinking more clearly. Thinking that this place might be useful for his plans. He walked on, counting the streets to his left. Then, following his directions, he turned left, into a run-down residential street. The houses here looked as if they had been constructed from broken bits of Lego. They were two- and three-storey, semi-detached, no two halves the same. There were steps up to front doors, awnings and doors where there should have been garages; pantiles, crazy brickwork and shabby plasterwork facings, and mismatching windows that looked as if they had been bought in assorted job lots.

  At the first intersection the map told him to turn left into a narrow street called Brighton Path 2. He walked past two white Chevy Suburbans parked outside a double garage with both doors covered in graffiti, and a row of single-storey dwellings, then made a right into an even more run-down street of semis. He reached No. 29. Both halves of the house were the colour of pre-cast concrete. A torn poster was wrapped around a telegraph pole outside. But he barely noticed. He looked up the grimy steps and saw, in red letters on a small white board nailed to the door lintel, SRO.

  He climbed the steps, hefting his bags, and rang the bell. Moments later a blurred figure appeared behind the frosted glass and the door opened. A flat-chested waif of a girl, dressed in a grubby smock dress and flip-flops, stared out at him. She had dirty, straggly fair hair like tendrils of seaweed and a wide, doll-like face with large, round, black-rimmed eyes. She said nothing.

  ‘I’m looking for a room,’ Ronnie said. ‘I was told you have a room.’

  He noticed a payphone on the wall beside her and a strong smell of damp and old carpet. Somewhere in the building he could hear the news on television. Today’s events.

  She said something that he did not understand. It sounded like Russian but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Do you speak English?’

  She raised a hand, indicating that he should wait, then disappeared back into the house. After a little while a huge shaven-headed man of about fifty appeared. He was wearing a collarless white shirt, grubby black chinos held up with braces, and trainers, and he stared at Ronnie as if he was a turd blocking a lavatory.

  ‘Room?’ he said in a guttural accent.

  ‘Boris,’ Ronnie said, suddenly remembering his new best friend’s name. ‘He told me to come here.’

  ‘How long?’

  Ronnie shrugged. ‘A few days.’

  The man stared at him. Assessing him. Maybe checking out that he wasn’t some kind of terrorist.

  ‘Thirty dollars a day. OK?’

  ‘Fine. Grim day, today.’

  ‘Bad day. Most bad day. Whole world crazy. From 12 o’clock to 12 o’clock. OK? Understood. You pay each day in advance. You stay after midday, you pay another day.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Yep, fine.’

  The house was bigger than it had looked from the outside. Ronnie followed the man through the hall and along a corridor, past walls the colour of nicotine with a couple of cheap, framed prints of stark landscapes. The man stopped, disappeared into a room for a moment, then emerged with a key with a wooden tag. He unlocked the door opposite.

  Ronnie followed him into a gloomy room which stank of stale cigarette smoke. It had a window looking on to the wall of the next house along. There was a small double bed with a pink candlewick spread that had several stains on it and two cigarette burn holes. In one corner there was a washbasin, next to a shower with a cracked plastic yellow curtain. A beat-up armchair, a chest of drawers, a couple of cheap-looking wooden tables, an old television set with an even older-looking remote and a carpet the colour of pea soup completed the furnishing.

  ‘Perfect,’ Ronnie said. And at this moment, for him, it was.

  The man folded his arms and looked at him expectantly. Ronnie pulled out his wallet and paid for three days in advance. He was handed the key, then the man departed, closing the door behind him.

  Ronnie checked the room out. There was a half-used bar of soap in the shower with what looked suspiciously like a brown pubic hair nestling on it. The image on the television was fuzzy. He switched on all the lights, drew the curtain and sat down on the bed, which sagged and clanked. Then he mustered a smile. He could put up with this for a few days. No worries.

  Hell, this was the first day of the rest of his life!

  Leaning forward, he lifted his briefcase off the top of his overnight bag. He removed all the folders containing the proposal and supporting data he had spent weeks preparing for Donald Hatcook. Finally, he reached the clear plastic wallet, closed with a pop stud, at the very bottom. He extricated the red folder that he had not risked leaving in his room at the W, not even in the safe. And opened it.

  His eyes lit up.

  ‘Hello, my beauties,’ he said.

  49

  OCTOBER 2007

  ‘What’s wrong with liking Guinness?’ Glenn Branson asked.

  ‘Did I say there was anything wrong?’

  Roy Grace set Glenn’s pint and his own large Glenfiddich on the rocks down on the table, along with two packets of bacon-flavoured crisps, then sat facing his friend. Monday night at 8 o’clock and the Black Lion was almost empty. Even so they had chosen to sit in the far corner, far enough from the bar not to be overheard by anyone. The piped music also helped to mask their voices and give them privacy.

  ‘It’s the way you look at me every time I order Guinness,’ Branson said. ‘Like it’s the wrong kind of drink or something.’

  Your wife is turning you from a confident man into a paranoid one, Grace thought but didn’t say. Instead he quoted, ‘To the man who is afraid, everything rustles.’

  Branson frowned. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Sophocles.’

  ‘What movie was that in?’

  Grace shook his head, grinning. ‘God, you’re an ignoramus sometimes! Don’t you know anything that isn’t in a movie?’

  ‘Thanks, Einstein. You really know where to hit a man when he’s down.’

  Grace raised his glass. ‘Cheer up.’

  Branson raised his, with no enthusiasm, and clinked it against Grace’s.

  They both took a sip, then Grace said, ‘Sophocles was a philosopher.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘He died in 406 BC.’

  ‘Before I was born, old-timer. I suppose you went to his funeral?’

  ‘Very witty.’

  ‘I remember, when I stayed with you, all those philosophy books you had lying around.’

  Grace took another pull of
his whisky and smiled at him. ‘You have a problem with someone trying to educate themselves?’

  ‘Trying to keep up with their bird, you mean?’

  Grace blushed. Branson was quite right, of course. Cleo was doing an Open University course in philosophy and he was trying hard in his free time to get his head around the subject.

  ‘Hit a nerve, did I?’ Branson gave him a wan smile.

  Grace said nothing.

  ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ was playing. They both listened to it for a while. Grace mouthed the words and swayed his head to the music.

  ‘Jesus, man! Don’t tell me you like Glen Campbell?’

  ‘I do, actually, yes.’

  ‘The more I get to know you, the more sad I realize you are!’

  ‘He’s a real musician. Better than that rap crap you like.’

  Branson tapped his chest. ‘That’s my music, man. That’s my people speaking to me.’

  ‘Does Ari like it?’

  Branson suddenly looked deflated. He peered into his beer. ‘She used to. Dunno what she likes any more.’

  Grace took another sip. The whisky felt good, giving him a warm buzz. ‘So tell me? You wanted to talk about her?’ He tore open his packet of crisps and dug his fingers in, pulled out several crisps in one go and crammed them into his mouth. He crunched as he spoke. ‘You look like shit, you know that. You’ve looked terrible for the last two months, since you went back to her. I thought everything was better, that you bought her the horse and she was fine. No?’ He ate another fistful of crisps hungrily.

  Branson drank some more of his Guinness.

  The pub had a pristine smell of carpet cleaner and polish. Grace missed the smell of cigarettes, the fug of cigar and pipe smoke. For him, pubs didn’t have any atmosphere any more now the smoking ban had come into force. And he could have done with a cigarette right now.

  Cleo hadn’t invited him over later because she had a paper to write for her course. He was going to have to grab something to eat, either here or from the freezer at home.

  Cookery had never been his strong point and he was getting dependent on her, he realized. These last couple of months she had cooked for him most nights, healthy food mostly, steamed or stir-fried fish and vegetables. She was appalled at the junk-food diet most police officers existed on much of the time.