Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

Grace popped the gum from his mouth and dropped it in a bin close to his feet. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘But we need to know more about him and his wife, understand their life together. See if we can find a motive. Did he have a lover? Did she? See what we can eliminate.’

‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,’ Norman Potting cut in.

There was a brief moment of silence. Potting looked as pleased as hell with himself.

Then Bella Moy looked at him and said acidly, ‘Sherlock Holmes. Very good, Norman. You and he are about the same generation.’

Grace shot her a warning glance, but she shrugged and ate another Malteser. He turned to Emma-Jane Boutwood. ‘E-J, I also want you to take charge of drawing the family tree on the Wilsons.’

‘Actually, I have something to report,’ Norman Potting said. ‘I did my homework last night on the PNC. Ronnie Wilson had form.’

‘Previous?’ Grace said.

‘Yes. He was a frequent flyer with Sussex Police. First time on the radar was 1987. He worked for a dodgy second-hand car dealership that was clocking cars, bunging written-off ones back together.’

‘What happened?’ Grace asked.

‘Twelve months, pope on a rope. Then he popped up again.’

Bella Moy interrupted him. ‘Excuse me – did you say pope on a rope ?’

‘Yes, gorgeous.’ Potting mimed being hung from a rope around his neck. ‘Suspended sentence.’

‘Any chance you could speak in a language we all understand?’ she retorted.

Potting blinked. ‘I thought we did all understand cockney rhyming slang. That’s what villains speak.’

‘In movies from the 1950s,’ she said. ‘Your generation of villains.’

‘Bella,’ Grace cautioned gently.

She shrugged and said nothing.

Norman Potting continued. ‘In 1991, Terry Biglow went down for four years. Knocker boy, ripping off old ladies.’ He paused and looked at Bella. ‘ Knocker boy. All right with that? I’m not talking about boobies.’

‘I know what knocker boys are,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he continued. ‘Ronnie Wilson worked for him. Got charged as his accomplice, but a smart brief got him off on a technicality. I spoke to Dave Gaylor, who was the case officer.’

‘Worked with Terry Biglow?’ Grace said.

Everyone in the room knew the name Biglow. They were one of the city’s long-established crime families. Several generations into everything from drug dealing, stolen antiques and call girls to witness intimidation, they were just plain trouble in all its forms.

Grace looked at DI Mantle. ‘Seems you could be right, Lizzie. There’s enough there at least to announce we have a suspect.’

Alison Vosper would like that, he thought. She always liked that phrase, We have a suspect . It made her in turn look good to her boss, the Chief Constable. And if her boss was happy, then she was happy.

And if she was happy, she tended to stay out of his face.

Refreshed after a shower, which had washed the grey dust out of his hair and helped him to partly sober up, Ronnie lounged on the pink candlewick bedspread with the two cigarette burn holes. His thirty-dollar-a-night room did not run to a headboard, so he lay back against the bare wall, studying the news on the fuzzy screen of the clapped-out television and smoking a cigarette.

He watched the two planes repeatedly crash into the Twin Towers. The burning Pentagon. The solemn face of Mayor Giuliani praising the NYPD and the fire officers. The solemn face of President Bush declaring his War on Terrorism. The solemn faces of all the grey ghosts.

The dim, low-wattage bulbs added to the gloominess of this room. He had drawn the drab curtains over his view across the alleyway to the wall of the next-door house. At this moment the whole world beyond his little room seemed solemn and gloomy.

However, despite the raging headache from all the vodka he had drunk, he did not feel gloomy. Shocked at all that he had seen today, at all that had happened to his plans, yes. But here in this room he felt safe. Cocooned in his thoughts. The realization that the opportunity of a lifetime had presented itself to him.

He realized, also, that he had left more stuff behind in his room at the W. His plane tickets, as well as his passport, and some of his underwear. But instead of being concerned, he was rather pleased.

He looked down at his mobile phone, checking for the thousandth time that it was switched off. Getting paranoid that it might, somehow, of its own volition, have switched itself back on. That suddenly Lorraine’s voice would be on the other end, screaming with joy or, more likely, cursing him for not having called her.

He saw something scurrying across the carpet. It was a dark brown roach, about half an inch long. He knew that cockroaches were among the few creatures that could survive a nuclear war. They had reached perfection through evolution. Survival of the fittest.

Yep, well, he was pretty fit too. And now that his plan was taking shape, he knew exactly what his first step was going to be.

He walked over to the waste bin and removed the plastic bag that lined it. Then he took the red folder from his briefcase and dropped it in, figuring he was unlikely to be mugged for the contents of a plastic bag. He was well aware of the risk he had run towing his briefcase and suitcase all this way. He stopped and listened. The item of news he was most interested in was now coming up on the television. The repeated information that all non-military flights in and out of America were grounded. Indefinitely.

Perfect.

He pulled on his jacket and left the room.

It was 6.45. Dusk was beginning to fall, but it was still broad daylight as the walked along, swinging the carrier bag at his side, retracing his steps to the busy main street with the L-Train overpass.

He still hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, but he wasn’t hungry. He had a job to do first.

To his relief, Mail Box City was still open. He crossed the street and went in. To his right was the floor-to-ceiling wall of metal safe-deposit boxes. At the far end, the same long-haired man he had seen earlier was busy on one of several internet terminals. Two empty phone booths were beyond him. To Ronnie’s left, three people were queuing at the counter. The first, a man in a white hard hat and dungarees, held out a strange-looking passbook and was receiving a wad of banknotes. Behind him stood a grim-faced old woman in a denim skirt, and behind her was a strung-out girl with long orange hair who kept looking around with blank, glazed eyes, rotating her hands every few moments.

Ronnie joined the queue behind her. Five minutes later the grizzled man behind the counter handed him a key as thin as a razor blade, and a slip of paper, in exchange for fifty dollars. ‘Thirty-one,’ he said in guttural English, and jerked a finger. ‘One week. You come back, otherwise open box. Take. Understand?’

Ronnie nodded and looked at the slip of paper. The date and time, down to the minute, were printed on it. Along with the expiry date.

‘No drugs.’

‘Understood.’

The man gave him a long, sad stare, his demeanour softening suddenly. ‘You OK?’

‘Yep, I’m OK.’

The man nodded. ‘Crazy. Crazy today. Why they do this to us? It’s crazy, yes?’

‘Crazy.’

Ronnie turned away, found his deposit box and unlocked it. It was deeper than he had imagined. He slid his package in, then glanced around to make sure no one was observing him, closed the door and locked it. He had a sudden thought and went back to the counter. Having paid for thirty minutes’ internet connection time, he sat down at a terminal and logged on to Hotmail.