Dead Man's Footsteps

by Peter James

  The warden, a lanky youth with a sullen face and his cap at a jaunty angle, was not impressed. ‘You’ve been here half an hour.’

  ‘She’s driving me nuts,’ Ricky said. ‘She’s suffering dementia – first stages.’ He tapped his watch. ‘Got to get her to the hospital. Just give me a couple more minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ the warden said, and swaggered off. He then stopped by the car in front and began tapping out a ticket on his machine.

  Ricky watched his altercation moments later with the returning owner, an irate-looking woman, and continued to watch his slow progress into the distance. He realized, with a shock, that another twenty minutes had passed.

  Jesus, how long do you need to buy a fucking phone?

  Another five minutes went by. Followed by another. Suddenly the taxi drove off and was swallowed by the traffic.

  Ricky did a double-take. Had he missed her? Had the warden moved the taxi on?

  He started the car and followed. Several vehicles in front, the taxi headed down to the sea, then turned right. Keeping his distance, staying several vehicles back, he followed the imbecilic, moronic, geriatric, dithering fool of a driver at a pace where he was likely to be overtaken by a tortoise. They went along the seafront, then up the winding hill into wide, open national park and farmland, and along towards the cliff-top beauty and favoured suicide spot of Beachy Head.

  A double-decker bus was on his tail, pushing for him to speed up. ‘Come on, fuckwit!’ he shouted through the windscreen at the cab. ‘Put your fucking foot down!’

  Still at the same speed, he passed the Beachy Head pub, following the winding road towards Birling Gap, then up through East Dean village. The agony continued through more open countryside, winding past the Seven Sisters and into Seaford. Then on, past the Newhaven ferry port, and up the hill into Peacehaven. A long-haired young man and a girl stood on a street corner in the distance waving and, to Ricky’s astonishment, the for hire light suddenly came on and the taxi pulled over.

  He pulled over too and a line of traffic that had built up behind him shot past.

  He watched the couple get into the back.

  The taxi had been empty.

  He’d been following an empty taxi.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Oh, you little bitch, now you’ve really fucking done it.

  76

  OCTOBER 2007

  A scarlet-haired bimbo dressed in skimpy purple, with legs up to her neck and massive boobs spilling out of her bra, winked at Roy Grace.

  He took hold of the card and, as the angle changed, the other eye winked at him. He grinned and opened it. A cheesy voice, which was a bad imitation of some female vocalist he could not immediately place, began singing ‘Happy Birthday’.

  ‘This is wonderful!’ he said. ‘Who did you say it was for?’

  With her tall, leggy good looks, DC Esther Mitchell was, no contest, currently the best-looking detective in the whole of Sussex House. She was also one of the cheeriest.

  ‘It’s for DI Willis,’ she said breezily. ‘His fortieth.’

  Grace grinned. Baz Willis, an overweight slug who should never, in anyone’s opinion, have been promoted to the rank of Detective Inspector, was a renowned groper. The card was therefore eminently fitting. He found a space between the dozen or so other signatures, scrawled his name on it and handed it back to her.

  ‘He’s having a party. Open bar at the Black Lion tonight.’

  Grace grimaced. The Black Lion in Patcham, Sussex House’s local, was one of his least favourite pubs and the thought of two consecutive nights there was more than his constitution could handle – besides he had a far, far better offer.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll swing by if I can,’ he said.

  ‘Someone’s organizing a minibus – if you want to book on that—’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he said, and shot a glance at his watch. He needed to leave in five minutes, to get sodding little Humphrey to his dog-training class. Then he gave her a smile. She had a nice energy about her and had managed to make herself popular – and not just for her looks – in the short while she had been here.

  ‘Oh, and Detective Superintendent Pewe asked me to check with you about travel arrangements for Australia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry – I’ve been seconded to work with him, along with DC Robinson, on his cold-case files.’

  ‘Did you say Australia?’

  ‘Yes, he wanted me to ask you which airlines Sussex Police has business-class deals with.’

  ‘Business-class deals?’ he said. ‘Where does he think he is? A law firm?’

  She grinned, looking embarrassed. ‘I – er – I assumed you knew about this.’

  ‘I’m just dashing out,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll stop by his office.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Thanks, Esther.’

  She gave him a look as she left his office. It was an I-don’t-like-him-either acknowledgement.

  *

  Five minutes later, Grace entered his old office with its crappy view of the custody block. Cassian Pewe was sitting there, in his shirtsleeves, making what was clearly a personal call. Grace didn’t give a toss about his privacy. He pulled one of the four chairs away from the tiny, round conference table and plonked it directly in front of Pewe’s desk, then sat down.

  ‘I’ll call you back, my angel,’ Pewe said, looking warily at Grace’s glowering face. He hung up and beamed. ‘Roy! Good to see you!’

  Grace cut to the chase. ‘What’s this about Australia?’

  ‘Ah, I was just going to come and tell you. There’s something I’m looking into today for the Victoria police in Melbourne – well, the Melbourne area – that I’ve just learned has a connection to your Operation Dingo. Bit of a coincidence, the name, Dingo – that’s an Australian wild dog, isn’t it?’

  ‘What connection? And what are you doing getting a DC

  running round asking about travel policy? That’s what MSAs are for.’

  ‘I think someone’s going to have to go to Australia, Roy – thought I might do it myself—’

  ‘I don’t know what happens in the Met, but just so you know for future reference, Cassian, in Sussex we spend our money on policing, not turning police officers into fat cats on ratepayers’ money. We fly economy, OK?’

  ‘Of course, Roy,’ Pewe said, giving him an oily smile. ‘It’s just a long journey if someone’s got to do a day’s work at the end of it.’

  ‘Yep, well, that’s tough. We’re not operating a holiday company here.’

  And the only way you’re going to Australia, Detective Superintendent Pewe, if I have anything to do with it, is by digging your way there with a spade! Grace thought. ‘Do you want to tell me what the connection with my case is?’

  Pewe said, ‘I’ve got information about Lorraine Wilson, Ronnie Wilson’s second wife, that I think you will find interesting. It has a bearing on Ronnie Wilson. Could lead you to him.’

  ‘Yes, well, you’re clearly not up to speed on Ronnie Wilson. He died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.’

  ‘Actually,’ Cassian Pewe said, ‘I have evidence that might suggest otherwise.’

  77

  OCTOBER 2007

  Ricky followed the taxi along the main drag of Peacehaven. He was tempted to grab the driver by the throat next time he stopped and grill him about Abby.

  But what would the man know? The smart little bitch had probably given him a big tip to sit there and sod off after an hour, that’s all he would know, and the last thing Ricky needed right now was every cop in Brighton looking out for his face, to bring him in on an assault charge. He had something much more important to think about at this moment. Several things, in fact.

  The first was that Abby knew he had recorded her phone conversation with her mother. But she would not have known how he did it. Probably she would suspect he had somehow bugged her mother’s phone.

  Now the penny dropped!

  That was why s
he had gone to a phone shop, to get her mother a new phone!

  He had been realizing for some time now just how dangerously thorough Abby was. What about her own phone? He dialled the number.

  After two rings it was answered. A tentative young male voice.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Who the fuck’s that?’ Ricky demanded.

  The connection was terminated. He dialled again. The connection was terminated again the moment it began to ring. As he suspected, the bitch had ditched her phone. Which meant she now had a new one.

  You are really trying my patience.

  And where are you?

  A speed camera flashed at him, but he didn’t give a toss. Where had she gone in that hour? What had she used the time for?

  A few miles on, the taxi turned off, but he barely noticed. He was driving along Marine Parade now, passing the elegant Regency fac¸ades of Sussex Square. In a minute he would be approaching Abby’s street. He pulled over to the side, stopped the car and killed the engine, needing to think this through carefully.

  Where had she hidden the stash? She didn’t need much space. Just enough room to conceal an A4 envelope. The package she’d tried to send via the courier was a decoy. Why? To get him to follow the courier? So she could retrieve it and disappear? He’d made a big error, he realized, sending her that text. His intention had been to flush her out, but he had not reckoned on her being so devious.

  But the fact she had tried to send the decoy package told him something, when he added that together with the empty deposit box. Had she been hoping that he would follow the decoy, leaving her free to run with the package and put it in the safe-deposit box at Southern Deposit Security? Why else would it be empty? The only possible reason, surely, was that she hadn’t been able to get the package to the place yet. Or that she had recently withdrawn it.

  Unless she had another deposit box somewhere else, it was most likely still somewhere in her flat.

  He’d spent the night going through her belongings, including all her clothes that he had removed. He’d also taken her passport, which would at least stop the bitch from getting out of the country in a hurry.

  Surely if there was another deposit box somewhere he’d have found the key or a receipt? He’d searched every damn inch of the flat, moved all the furniture, levered up every loose floorboard. He’d even taken the backs off the televisions, ripped open the soft furnishings, unscrewed the ventilation grilles, dismantled the light fittings. From his days of dealing in drugs, he knew just how thoroughly police would take a place apart, and all the kinds of hiding places a smart dealer would use.

  Another possible option was that she had left it with a friend. But the name on the package she’d given to the courier was a dummy, he’d checked that one out. He suspected she had been avoiding contacting anyone here. If she hadn’t even told her mother she was back, he doubted she would want word to get out among her friends.

  No, he was becoming increasingly convinced that she still had it all in the flat.

  Despite all her clever ploys, as Ricky well knew, everyone has an Achilles heel. Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link. An army can only march as fast as its slowest soldier.

  Abby’s mother was both her weak link and her slowest soldier.

  Now he knew exactly what he had to do.

  *

  The Renault van outside Abby’s flat, which had not been driven in a while, was reluctant to start. Then, just as the battery started fading and he was beginning to think this was not going to work, it fired and spluttered into oily, smoky life.

  He drove it out of the parking space and replaced it with the rental Ford. Now, when Abby came back here, she would spot the car and think he was in there. He smiled. For the immediate future she would not be entering the flat. There was no residents’ parking sticker on the rental car, so it would probably be given a ticket at some point, and maybe get clamped, but what the hell did that matter?

  He removed the GSM 3060 Intercept from the Ford and put it in the van. Then he drove off back towards Eastbourne, stopping only to pick up a takeaway burger and a Coke. He felt happier now. Confident that he was close to having the situation back under control.

  78

  OCTOBER 2007

  At 6.30 p.m. the fourth briefing meeting of Operation Dingo commenced. But as Roy Grace began reading his summary to his assembled team, he hesitated, noticing that Glenn Branson was staring at him a bit strangely and twitching his nostrils, as if he was trying to send him a signal.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Grace asked him.

  Then he noticed several of the others gathered around the work station seemed to be looking at him strangely too.

  ‘You smell a bit fruity, boss,’ Glenn said. ‘If you don’t mind me being personal. Not your usual brand of cologne, if you get my drift. Have you stood or sat in something?’

  Grace realized to his horror what the DS was driving at. ‘Oh, right, I apologize. I – just got back from a dog-training class. The little bugger threw up all over me in the car. I thought I’d managed to wash it off.’

  Bella Moy delved into her handbag and handed Grace a perfume spray. ‘This’ll drown it,’ she said.

  Grace hesitantly sprayed his trousers, shirt and jacket.

  ‘Now you smell like a bordello,’ Norman Potting commented.

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ Bella said, glaring at him indignantly.

  ‘Not that I would know, of course,’ Potting mumbled, in a feeble attempt at retrieving the situation. Then he added, ‘I read recently that Koreans eat dogs.’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Norman,’ Roy Grace said sternly, returning to his typed agenda. ‘OK, Bella, first can you report on your findings so far about Joanna Wilson ever going to America? My guy hasn’t come up with anything.’

  ‘I contacted the officer in the New York District Attorney’s

  Office you suggested, Roy. He sent me an email an hour ago, saying that prior to 9/11 all immigration was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Agency. It’s different since. They’re merged with US Customs and are now called Immigration Customs Enforcement. He says that unless she had gone in on a visa for an extended stay, there would be no records. He’s checked back through those for the 1990s and she doesn’t show up as having gone in on a visa, but he says there’s no way of finding out whether she ever went there or not.’

  ‘OK, thanks. E-J, how are you progressing with the family tree. Did you track down any of Joanna Wilson’s relatives?’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t seem to have had many. I’ve found a gay stepbrother – who’s a piece of work. He goes under the name of Mitzi Dufors, is nudging sixty, wears studded leather hot-pants and is covered in piercings. He does some kind of a drag act in a Brighton gay club. Didn’t have many flattering words to say about his late stepsister.’

  ‘You can’t trust middle-aged men in leather hot-pants,’ Norman Potting interjected.

  ‘Norman!’ Grace said, firing a warning shot across his bows.

  ‘You’re not exactly a fashion guru yourself, Norman,’ Bella retorted.

  ‘OK, both of you, enough!’ Grace said.

  Potting shrugged like a petulant child.

  ‘Anything else from her stepbrother.’

  ‘He said Joanna inherited a small house in Brentwood from her mother, about a year before she went to America. He reckoned she took the sale proceeds to fund her acting career there.’

  ‘We should try to find how much money was involved and what happened to it. Good work, E-J.’

  Grace made some notes, then moved on to Branson. ‘Glenn, did you and Bella get hold of the Klingers?’

  Branson grinned. ‘I think we got Stephen Klinger at a good time, after lunch – pissed as a fart and well chatty. Told us that no one liked Joanna Wilson much – she sounds like she was a real slapper. She gave Ronnie a right old song and dance, and no one cared too much when she ditched him – or so it seemed – and went off to the States. He confir
med that Ronnie had married again, after dutifully waiting out the legal period for desertion, to Lorraine. When Ronnie died she was inconsolable. What made it worse for her, if that’s possible, is that he left her up shit creek financially.’

  Grace made a note.

  ‘Her car got repossessed, then her house. Sounds like Wilson was a man of straw. Had nothing, no assets at all. His widow ended up getting evicted from her posh house in Hove and moved into a rented flat. Just over a year later, in November 2002, she left a suicide note and jumped off the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry.’ He paused. ‘We went and saw Mrs Klinger as well, but she more or less confirmed what her husband told us.’

  ‘Any of her relatives able to verify her state of mind?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yeah, she’s got a sister who works as a hostess for British Airways. I just spoke to her. She was at work and couldn’t really speak. I’ve got an appointment to see her tomorrow. But she also pretty well confirmed what Klinger said. Oh, yeah, and she said she took Lorraine to New York as soon as flights were running again. They spent a week traipsing around the city with a big photograph of Ronnie. Them and a million others.’

  ‘So she’s convinced Ronnie died in 9/11.’

  ‘No question,’ Glenn said. ‘He was at a meeting in the South Tower with a guy called Donald Hatcook. Everyone on the floor Donald Hatcook was on perished – almost certainly instantly.’ Then he looked at his notes. ‘You asked me about this geezer Chad Skeggs?’

  ‘Yes, what did you find out?’

  ‘He’s wanted for questioning by Brighton CID regarding an allegation of indecent assault on a young woman back in 1990. The girl’s story is that they left the club and went back together, and then she was badly beaten up by him. It could be linked to an S&M scenario. Possible that she initially went along with it and then he wouldn’t stop. It was a very nasty assault, together with an allegation of rape. But it was decided at the time that it wasn’t in the public interest to go to Australia and bring him back. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in England again, not unless he’s very stupid.’