Dead Man's Footsteps

by Peter James

  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.’

  99

  2 NOVEMBER 2001

  Lorraine lay in bed, wide awake. The sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for her were about as effective as a double espresso.

  The television was on in the room, the shitty little portable that had been in the guest bedroom, the only one that hadn’t been repossessed by the bailiffs, as there wasn’t any money owing on it. There was an old film playing. She hadn’t caught the title, but she kept the set on all the time, as if the screen was wallpaper. She liked the light from it, the noises, the company.

  Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway were playing chess in a swish pad with moody lighting. There was a seriously erotic, charged atmosphere between them, with all kinds of nuances.

  She and Ronnie used to play games together. She recalled those early years, when they had been crazy about each other and did wild things sometimes. They played strip chess, and Ronnie always wiped her out, leaving her naked and himself fully clothed. And strip Scrabble.

  Never again. She sniffed.

  She found it hard to focus on anything clearly. Hard to get her head around anything. She just kept thinking about Ronnie. Missing him. Dreaming of him on the rare occasions she slept long enough to dream. And in the dreams he was alive, smiling, telling her she was a silly cow for thinking he was dead.

  She was still shaking from the contents of the FedEx envelope that had arrived at the end of September, containing photographs of Ronnie’s wallet and his mobile phone. It was the picture of the singed wallet that was the worst. Had he been burned to death?

  A massive wave of grief flooded through her suddenly. She started crying. Clinging to the pillow, she sobbed her heart out. ‘Ronnie,’ she murmured. ‘Ronnie, my darling Ronnie. I loved you so much. So much.’

  After some minutes she calmed down and lay back, watching the movie flickering on the screen. And then, to her complete and utter terror, she suddenly saw her bedroom door opening. A figure was coming in. A tall, black shadow. A man, his face almost in total darkness inside a cagoule hood. He was striding towards her.

  She scrambled back in the bed in terror, reaching out to her bedside table for something to use as a weapon. Her glass of water went crashing to the floor. She tried to scream, but only the faintest sound blurted out before a hand clamped over her mouth.

  And she heard Ronnie’s voice. Sharp and hushed.

  ‘It’s me!’ he said. ‘It’s me! Lorraine, babe, it’s me. I’m OK!’

  He took his hand away and tossed back the cagoule hood.

  She snapped on the be
dside light. Stared at him in utter disbelief. Stared at a ghost who had grown a beard and shaved his head. A ghost who smelled of Ronnie’s skin, of Ronnie’s hair, of Ronnie’s cologne. Who was cupping her face with hands that felt like Ronnie’s hands.

  She stared at him with complete and utter bewilderment, joy steadily catching fire inside her. ‘Ronnie? It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Course it’s me!’

  She stared back. Open-mouthed. Stared. And stared. Then she shook her head, silent for some moments.

  ‘They all said – they said you were dead.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I am.’

  He kissed her. His breath smelled of cigarettes, alcohol and something slightly garlicky. At this moment it was the most beautiful smell in all the world.

  ‘They sent me pictures of your wallet and your phone.’

  His eyes lit up like a child. ‘Fuck! Brilliant! They found them! That is so fucking great!’

  His reaction confused her. Was he joking? Everything at this moment was confusing her. She touched his face, tears starting to roll down her cheeks.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, caressing his cheeks, touching his nose, his ears, stroking his forehead. ‘It’s you. It’s really you.’

  ‘Yes, you daft cow!’

  ‘How – how did you – how did you survive?’

  ‘Because I thought about you and I wasn’t ready to leave you.’

  ‘Why – why didn’t you call? Were you hurt?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  She pulled him towards her and kissed him. Kissed him as if she was discovering his mouth for the first time, exploring every part of it. Then she pulled back her face for a moment, grinning almost breathlessly.

  ‘It really is you!’

  His hands had found their way inside her nightdress and were exploring her breasts. When she’d first had her boob job, they had driven him wild for a time, then he seemed to lose interest in them, the way he had lost interest in just about everything. But tonight this apparition, this Ronnie in her bedroom, was a totally different man. The old Ronnie she remembered from happier times. Ronnie who had died and come back?

  He was undressing. Unlacing his trainers. Dropping his trousers. He had a massive erection. He pulled off his cagoule, his black polo-neck sweater, peeled off his socks. Now he pulled back the bedclothes and roughly pushed her nightdress up over her thighs.

  Then he knelt over her and began to make her wet with his fingers, finding her sweet spot the way he used to, so brilliantly, finding it, working it, moistening his finger from his lips and from herself, setting the fire raging in her now. He leaned forward, untying the front of her nightdress, freeing her breasts, then kissing each of them for a long time, in turn, still working on her with his fingers.

  Then his cock, bigger, harder than it had felt in years, hard as a stone, was pushing deep up inside her.

  She screamed out in joy. ‘RONNIE!’

  Instantly he pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Ssshhh!’ he said. ‘I’m not here. I’m just a ghost.’

  She wrapped her arms around his head, pulled his face as close to hers as she could, feeling the bristles of his beard on her skin and loving it, and pushed against him, pushed and pushed and pushed, feeling him further, deeper, then deeper still inside her.

  ‘Ronnie!’ she panted into his ear, breathing faster and faster, climaxing now, and feeling him exploding inside her.

  They both lay very still, gulping down air. The film was still playing on the television. The fan heater was steadily blowing out air, with an intermittent rattle.

  ‘I never realized ghosts got horny,’ she whispered. ‘Can I summon you up every night?’

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  100

  OCTOBER 2007

  PC Duncan Troutt felt a little less self-conscious this morning, his second day as a fully fledged police officer. And he was rather hoping for more action than yesterday, when he had spent most of his time giving directions to foreign students and introducing himself to some of the businesses on his beat, in particular to the manager of an Indian takeaway who had been beaten up recently, in an attack that had been filmed on a mobile phone camera and ended up on YouTube.

  Turning into Lower Arundel Terrace shortly after 9 o’clock, he decided he would pay Katherine Jennings another visit in the hope of catching her in. He’d read on the log before setting out this morning that a fellow officer on the evening shift had tried her twice, at 7 p.m. and again at 10 p.m., with no luck. A call to Directory Enquiries had not yielded any phone number for someone of that name at that address, listed or unlisted.

  As he walked down the pavement, observing each of the houses in turn and checking each of the parked cars for signs of break-ins or vandalism, two seagulls screeched above him. He glanced up at them and then stared for a moment at the dark, threatening sky. The streets were still glossy from last night’s rain and it looked as if it might start again at any moment.

  Shortly before reaching the front entrance of number 29 he noticed, on the opposite side of the road, a grey Ford Focus that had been clamped. The car rang a bell from yesterday. He recalled seeing it there with a ticket on the windscreen. He crossed over, lifted the ticket from under the wiper blade, shook raindrops off its wet cellophane wrapper and read the date and time on it. It had been issued at 10.03 a.m. yesterday. Which meant it had been here for over twenty-four hours.

  There could be all kind of innocent explanations. Someone who hadn’t realized these streets required residents’ parking permits was the most likely. It could possibly be an abandoned stolen car. The biggest significance to him was its location, close to the flat of the woman he had been asked to check up on, who had seemingly disappeared, if only temporarily.

  He radioed in for a PNC check on the car, then crossed back over and rang Katherine Jennings’s doorbell. As before, there was no answer.

  Then, deciding he would try again later, he continued on with his patrol, down to Marine Parade, where he turned left. After a few minutes, his radio crackled into life. The Ford Focus was registered to Avis, the car rental company. He thanked the operator and considered this new information carefully. People who rented cars often flouted traffic regulations. Maybe whoever had rented this one couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of getting it unclam-ped. Or hadn’t had the time.

  But there still just might be a link to Katherine Jennings, however small the odds. As the first spots of rain fell, he radioed his immediate superior, Sergeant Ian Brown from the East Brighton District crime desk, and reported his concerns about the vehicle, asking if someone could contact Avis and find who the renter was.

  ‘It’s probably nothing, sir,’ he added, concerned not to make a fool of himself.

  ‘You’re quite right to check like this,’ the Sergeant reassured him. ‘A lot of good police work comes from the smallest details. No one’s going to chew you out for being over-observant. Miss something that matters and that’s a whole different story!’

  Troutt thanked him and continued on his way. Thirty minutes later the Sergeant radioed him back. ‘The car’s been rented by an Australian called Chad Skeggs. Lives in Melbourne, Australian licence.’

  Troutt ducked into a porch to shelter his notebook from the rain and dutifully wrote the name down on his pad, spelling it back for him.

  ‘Does the name mean anything to you?’ the Sergeant asked him.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  All the same, Sergeant Brown decided to log it on the serial. Just in case.

  101

  OCTOBER 2007

  Abby sat in silence in the back of the taxi in the pouring rain, staring at the display of her mobile phone.

  The bubble-wrapped envelope was sandwiched between her pullover and the T-shirt beneath. She had a belt tucked tightly around her midriff to prevent the package from falling out – and from being visible to anyone. And she felt the reassuring bulge of th
e Mace in the front pocket of her jeans.

  The driver turned right off Hove seafront by the statue of Queen Victoria and headed up the Drive, a wide street lined on both sides with expensive apartment blocks. But she saw nothing outside the windows of the vehicle. In fact, she saw barely anything at all. There was only one image in front of her raw eyes; one image burning in her mind.

  The photograph on her mobile of her mother’s head sticking out of the top of the rolled-up carpet. And the words beneath:

  Snug as a bug in a rug.

  Her emotions were in meltdown. She see-sawed from blind fury at Ricky to the most terrible fear for her mother’s life.

  And the guilt that she had caused this.

  She was so tired, she was finding it hard to think straight. She had been wide awake throughout the night. Wired. Listening to the endless traffic on the seafront, a pebble’s throw from her hotel window. Sirens. Trucks. Buses. A car alarm that kept going off. The early-morning cries of the gulls. She’d ticked off each long hour. Each half-hour. Each quarter-hour.

  Waiting for Ricky to call.

  Or at least to send a text saying something else. But there had been nothing. She knew him. Knew this kind of psychological game was his style. He enjoyed waiting games. She remembered the second time she had gone to his apartment. Their second secret date, or so he thought, and she had been stupid – or näıve – enough to let him try bondage on her. The bastard had tied her up naked, in a cold room, brought her to just short of a climax with a vibrator, then slapped her and left her in the room for six hours, gagged. Then he’d returned and raped her.

  Afterwards he told her it was what she had wanted.

  And she had totally failed on that occasion to get what she – or more accurately Dave – had wanted. It had taken a lot longer.

  Her concern at this moment was that she did not know his limits – she suspected that he had none. She believed that Ricky was quite capable of killing her mother to get everything back. And that he could kill her too.