Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

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.

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?

Then 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.