Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James
Ronnie hesitated. ‘Canada. Toronto.’
‘Toronto,’ the Russian repeated. ‘Canada. OK. Good.’ He felt silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Cheap room?’
Ronnie realized he could not use any cards – even if they had any credit left on them. He had just under four hundred dollars in his wallet, which would have to tide him over until he could convert some of the other currency he had in his bag – if he could find a buyer who would pay him the right money. And not ask questions.
‘Yes, a cheap room,’ he replied. ‘Cheaper the better.’
‘You’re in the right place. You want SRO. That’s what you want.’
‘SRO?’
‘Single Room Occupancy. That’s what you want. You pay cash, they no ask you questions. My cousin has SRO house. Ten minutes’ walk. You want I give you the address?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ Ronnie replied.
The Russian showed him his teeth again. ‘Plan? You have plan? Good plan?’
‘Carpe diem!’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s an expression.’
‘Carpe diem?’ The Russian pronounced it slowly, clumsily.
Ronnie grinned, then bought him another drink.
45
OCTOBER 2007
Major Incident Room One was the larger of two airy rooms in the Major Incident Suite of Sussex House, which housed the inquiry teams working on serious crime investigations. Roy Grace entered it shortly before 6.30, carrying a mug of coffee.
An open, modern-feeling L-shaped room, it was divided up by three principal work stations, each comprising a long, curved, light-coloured wooden desk with space for up to eight people to sit, and massive whiteboards, most of which at the moment were blank, apart from one marked Operation Dingo, and another on which were several close-up photographs of the Unknown Female in the storm drain and some exterior shots of the New England Quarter development. On one, a red circle drawn in marker pen indicated the position of the body in the drain.
A large inquiry might have used up all the space in here, but because of the relative lack of urgency in this case – and therefore the need to budget manpower and resources accordingly – Grace’s team occupied only one of the work stations. At the moment the others were vacant, but that could change at any time.
Unlike the work stations throughout the rest of the building, there were few signs of anything personal on the desks or the walls here: no pictures of families, football fixture lists, jokey cartoons. Almost every single object in this room – apart from the furniture and the business hardware – was related to the matters under investigation. There wasn’t a lot of banter either. Just the silence of fierce concentration, the muted warble of phones, the clack-clack-clack of paper shuffling from printers.
Seated at the work station were the team Grace had selected for Operation Dingo. An ardent believer in keeping the same people together whenever possible, he had worked with all of them during the previous months. His only hesitant choice had been Norman Potting, who constantly upset people, but the man was an extremely capable detective.
Acting as his deputy SIO was Detective Inspector Lizzie Mantle. Grace liked her a lot and in truth had long had a sneaking fancy for her. In her late thirties, she was attractive, with neat, shoulder-length fair hair, and exuded a femininity that belied a surprisingly tough personality. She tended to favour trouser suits and she was wearing one today, in grey pinstripe, that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a stockbroker, over a white man’s shirt.
Her fair good looks were something Lizzie shared with another DI at Sussex House, Kim Murphy, and there had been some sour-grape rumblings that if you wanted to get ahead in this force, having the looks of a bimbo was your best asset. It was totally untrue, of course, Grace knew. Both women had achieved their ranks, at relatively young ages, because they thoroughly deserved it.
Roy’s promotion would undoubtedly result in new demands on his time, so he was going to have to rely heavily on Lizzie’s support in running this investigation.
Along with her, he had selected Detective Sergeants Glenn Branson, Norman Potting and Bella Moy. Thirty-five years old and cheery-faced beneath a tangle of hennaed brown hair, Bella was sitting, as ever, with an open box of Maltesers inches from her keyboard. Roy crossed the room, watching as she typed in deep concentration. Every so often her right hand would suddenly stray from the keyboard, like some creature with a life of its own, pluck a chocolate, deliver it to her mouth and return to the keyboard. She was a slim woman, yet she ate more chocolate than anyone Grace had ever come across.
Next to her sat, gangly, tousle-haired Detective Constable Nick Nicholl, who was twenty-seven and beanpole tall. A zealous detective and once a handy centre forward, he had been encouraged by Grace to take up rugby and was now a useful member of the Sussex Police team – though not as useful at the moment as Grace had hoped, because he was a recent father and appeared to be suffering from constant sleep deprivation.
Opposite him, reading her way through a thick wodge of computer printouts, was young, feisty DC Emma-Jane Boutwood. A few months earlier she had been badly injured on a case when she was crushed against a wall by a stolen van in a pursuit. By rights she should still be convalescing, but she had begged Grace to let her come back and do light duties.
The team was completed by an analyst, an indexer, a typist and the system supervisor.
Glenn Branson, dressed in a black suit, a violent blue shirt and a scarlet tie, looked up as Grace entered. ‘Yo, old-timer,’ he said, but more flatly than usual. ‘Any chance of a quiet chat later?’
Grace nodded at his friend. ‘Of course.’
Branson’s greeting prompted a few other heads to be raised as well.
‘Well, here comes God!’ said Norman Potting, doffing a nonexistent hat. ‘May I be the first to proffer my congratulations on your elevation to the brass!’ he said.
‘Thank you, Norman, but there’s nothing very special about brass.’
‘Well, that’s where you are wrong, Roy,’ Potting retorted. ‘A lot of metals rust, you see. But brass doesn’t. It corrodes.’ He beamed with pride as if he had just delivered the complete, final and incontrovertible Theory of Everything.
Bella, who very much disliked Potting, rounded on him, her fingers hovering above the Maltesers like the talons of a bird of prey. ‘That’s just semantics, Norman. Rust, corrosion, what’s the difference?’
‘Quite a lot actually,’ Potting said.
‘Perhaps you should have been a metallurgist instead of a policeman,’ she said, and popped another Malteser in her mouth.
Grace sat down in the one empty seat, at the end of the work station between Potting and Bella, and immediately crinkled his nose at the stale reek of pipe tobacco on the man.
Bella turned to Grace. ‘Congratulations, Roy. Very well deserved.’
The Detective Superintendent spent some moments accepting and acknowledging congratulations from the rest of the team, then laid his policy book and agenda for the meeting out in front of him.
‘Right. This is the second briefing of Operation Dingo, the investigation into the suspected murder of an unidentified female, conducted on day three following the discovery of her remains.’
For some minutes he summarized the report of the forensic archaeologist. Then he read out the key points from Theobald’s lengthy assessment. Death by strangulation, evidenced by the woman’s broken hyoid, was a possibility. Forensic tests for toxins were being carried out from hair samples recovered. There were no other signs of injury to the skeleton, such as breakages, or cuts indicating knife wounds.
Grace paused to drink some water and noticed that Norman Potting was looking very smug.
‘OK, Resourcing. In view of the estimated time period of the incident I am not looking to expand the inquiry team at this stage.’ He went on through the various headings. Meeting cycles: he announced there would be the usual daily 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. briefings. He reported that the HOLM
The young DC produced a list of all missing persons in the county of Sussex who fell into the estimated time period of the victim’s death, but without any conclusion. Grace instructed her to broaden her search to the nationwide missing-persons files for that time.
Nick Nicholl reported that DNA samples from the woman’s hair had been sent to the lab at Huntingdon, along with a bone sample from her thigh for DNA extraction.
Bella Moy reported that she had met with the city’s chief engineer. ‘He showed me through the flow charts of the sewer system and I’m now mapping possible places of entry further up the drain network. I’ll have that complete some time tomorrow.’
‘Good,’ Grace said.
‘There’s one thing that could be quite significant,’ Bella added. ‘The outlet from the sewer network goes far enough out to sea to ensure that all the sewage gets transported offshore by the currents, rather than towards it.’
Grace nodded, guessing where this was heading.
‘So it’s possible that the murderer was aware of this – he might be an engineer, for instance.’
Grace thanked her and turned to Norman Potting, curious to know what the Detective Sergeant was looking so pleased about.
Potting pulled a set of X-rays from a buff envelope and held them up triumphantly. ‘I’ve got a dental records match!’ he said.
There was a moment of total silence. Every ear in the room was tuned to him.
‘I got these from one of the dentists on the list you gave me, Roy,’ he said. ‘The woman had extensive dental work done. Her name is – or rather was – Joanna Wilson.’
‘Nice work,’ Grace said. ‘Was she single or married?’
‘Well, I’ve got good and bad news,’ Potting said, and fell into a smug silence, grinning like an imbecile.
‘We’re all ears,’ Grace prompted him.
‘She had a husband, yes. Stormy relationship – so far as I’ve been able to discover – the dentist, Mr Gebbie, knows a little of the background. I’ll get more on that tomorrow. She was an actress. I don’t know the full story yet, but they split up and she left. Apparently she went to Los Angeles to make her name – that’s what the husband told everyone.’
‘Sounds like we should have a little chat with the husband,’ Grace said.
‘There’s a bit of a problem with that,’ Norman Potting replied. Then he nodded pensively for some moments, pursing his lips, as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘He died in the World Trade Center, on 9/11.’
46
OCTOBER 2007
At 6.45 Abby was beginning to worry that the courier company had forgotten her. She had been ready and waiting since 5.30, her suitcase by the door, coat slung over it, Jiffy bag addressed and sealed.
It was completely dark outside now and, with the rain still torrenting down, she could see very little. She was watching for a Global Express van to come down the street. For the umpteenth time she removed the Mace pepper spray canister from the hip pocket of her jeans and examined it.
The small red cylinder with its finger-grip indents, key chain and belt clip was reassuringly heavy. She repeatedly flipped open the safety lid and practised aiming the nozzle. The guy who had sold it to her in Los Angeles, on her way back to England, told her it contained ten one-second bursts and would blind a human for ten seconds. She had smuggled it into England inside her make-up bag in her suitcase.
She put it back in her pocket, stood up and took her mobile phone out of her handbag. She was about to dial Global Express when the intercom finally buzzed.
She hurried down the hall to the front door. On the small black and white monitor she could see a motorcycle helmet. Her heart sank. That twerp assistant, Jonathan, had told her it would be a van. She had been banking on a van.
Shit.
She pressed the intercom button. ‘Come up, eighth floor,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the lift’s not working.’
Her brain was racing again, trying to do a fast rethink. She picked up the Jiffy bag. Have to revert to her original plan, she decided, thinking it through in the two long minutes that passed before the sharp rap on the door.
Vigilant as ever, she peered through the spyhole and saw a motorcyclist, clad in leather, in a black helmet, with a dark visor that was down, holding some kind of clipboard.
She unlocked the door, removed the safety chains and opened it.
‘I – I thought you were coming in a van,’ she said.
He dropped the clipboard, which fell to the ground with a clank, then punched Abby hard in the stomach. It caught her totally off guard, doubling her up in winded pain. She stumbled sideways into the wall.
‘Nice to see you, Abby,’ he said. ‘Not crazy about your new look.’
Then he punched her again.
47
OCTOBER 2007
Shortly before 7 o’clock, Cassian Pewe drove his dark green Vaux-hall Astra through the buffeting wind and neon-lit darkness of the cliff-top coast road. He crossed two mini-roundabouts into Peace-haven, then continued for the next mile past endless parades of shops, half of them seemingly estate agents, the rest garish fast-food places. It reminded him of the outskirts of small American towns he had seen in films.
Unfamiliar with this area a few miles east of Brighton, he was being bossed through it by the female voice of his plug-in sat nav. Now, past Peacehaven, he was following a crawling camper van down the winding hill into Newhaven. The sat-nav woman instructed him to keep straight on for half a mile. Then his mobile phone, in the hands-free cradle, rang.
He peered at the display, saw it was from Lucy, his girlfriend, and reached forward to answer it.
‘Hello, darling,’ he cooed. ‘How is my precious angel?’
‘Are you on your hands-free?’ she asked. ‘You sound like a Dalek.’
‘I’m sorry, my precious. I’m driving.’
‘You didn’t call,’ she said, sounding hurt and a tad angry. ‘You were going to call me this morning, about tonight.’
Lucy, who lived and worked in London as a PA for a hedge-fund manager, had not been impressed by his recent move to Brighton. Most probably, he thought, because he hadn’t invited her to move with him. He always kept his women at a distance, rarely rang them when he said he would and frequently cancelled dates at the last moment. Experience had taught him that was the best way to keep them where he wanted them.
‘My angel, I have been soooooo busy,’ he cooed again. ‘I
just didn’t have a moment. I’ve been in wall-to-wall meetings all day.’
‘In one hundred and fifty yards turn left,’ the sat-nav lady instructed him.
‘Who’s that?’ Lucy demanded suspiciously. ‘Who’s that in the car with you?’
‘Only the sat nav, sweetheart.’
‘So are we meeting tonight?’
‘I don’t think it’s going to work tonight, angel. I’ve been dispatched on an urgent case. Could be the start of a major murder inquiry, with some rather ugly consequences within the local police here. They thought I was the right man for it, with my Met experience.’
‘So what about afterwards?’
‘Well – if you were to jump on a train, we could maybe have a late dinner down here. How does that sound?’
‘No way, Cassian! I’ve got to be in the office at 6.45 in the morning.’
‘’Yes, well, just a thought,’ he replied.
He was driving over the Newhaven bridge. A barrage of signs lay ahead: one to the cross-Channel ferry, another to Lewes. Then, to his relief, his saw a sign pointing
‘Take the second left turn,’ the sat nav dictated.
Pewe frowned. Surely the Seaford sign had indicated straight on.
‘Who was that?’ Lucy asked.
‘The sat nav again,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how my day was? My first day at Sussex CID?’
‘How was your day?’ she asked grudgingly.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I got a bit of a promotion!’
‘Already? I thought moving from the Met was a promotion. Going from a Detective Chief Inspector to a Detective Superintendent.’
‘It’s even better now. They’ve put me in charge of all cold cases – and that includes all unaccounted-for missing persons.’
She was silent.
He made the left turn.
The sat-nav display of the road ahead disappeared from the screen. Then the voice commanded, ‘Make a U-turn.’
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘What’s going on?’ Lucy asked.
‘My sat nav doesn’t know where the hell I am.’
‘I have some sympathy with her,’ Lucy said.
‘I’ll have to call you back, my angel.’
‘Was that you or your sat nav speaking?’
‘Oh, very droll!’
‘I suggest you have a nice romantic dinner with her.’ Lucy hung up.
*
Ten minutes later, the sat nav had found its bearings again and delivered him to the address he was seeking in Seaford, a quiet, residential coastal town a few miles on from Newhaven. Peering through the darkness at the numbers on the front doors, he pulled up outside a small, nondescript pebbledashed semi. A Nissan Micra was parked on the drive.
He switched on the interior light, checked the knot of his tie, tidied his hair, climbed out of the car and locked it. A gust of wind immediately blew his hair into disarray as he hurried up the path of the neat garden to the front door, found the bell and pressed it, cursing that there was no porch. There was a single, rather funereal chime.