Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

His briefcase sat open on the table, together with his mobile, his dictating machine and a bunch of transcripts relating to the court hearings he was helping to prepare, one of which he had go through this morning, because the CPS lawyer was on his back for it.

What’s more, thanks to his promotion, he now had new stacks of files, growing by the minute, that Eleanor was bringing in and placing on every available flat surface. They contained case summaries of all the major crimes that Sussex CID were currently investigating, which he now had to review.

He made a list of everything he needed to follow up on Operation Dingo , then he went through the transcript, which took him an hour. When he had finished, he pulled out his notebook and, starting at the back, read his most recent jotting. His handwriting was bad, so he took a moment to decipher it and remember.

Katherine Jennings, Flat 82, Arundel Mansions,

29 Lower Arundel Terrace.

He stared at it blankly, for some moments. Waiting for his brain’s synapses to kick in and provide him with some recollection of why he had written that down. Then he remembered Kevin Spinella cornering him after the press briefing yesterday. Telling him something about her being freed from a trapped lift and that she had seemed frightened about something.

Most people trapped in a lift would have been frightened. Mildly claustrophobic and with a fear of heights, he probably would have been too. Scared witless. Still, you never knew. He decided to do the dutiful thing and report it to East Brighton District. He dialled the internal number of the most efficient officer he knew there, Inspector Stephen Curry, gave him the woman’s name and address, and explained the provenance.

‘Don’t make it a priority, Steve. But maybe have one of your beat officers swing by some time, make sure all is OK.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Stephen Curry, who was sounding rushed. ‘Leave it with me.’

‘With the greatest pleasure,’ Grace said.

Having hung up, he looked down at the workload on his desk and decided he would stroll down later this morning, towards lunchtime, to collect his car. Take in a bit of fresh air. Enjoy a rare bit of sunshine and try to clear his head. Then make his way downtown to see if he couldn’t find one or two of Ronnie Wilson’s old acquaintances. He had a good idea where to start looking.

Ronnie spent a restless night lying between unwashed nylon sheets, trying to cope with a foam pillow that felt as if it was filled with rocks and a mattress whose springs bored into him like corkscrews. He had a choice between keeping the window shut and enduring the air-conditioning unit that made a noise like two skeletons fighting in a metal shed, or opening it and being kept awake by the non-stop wailing of distant sirens and the chop of helicopters.

At a few minutes to 6 he lay wide awake, scratching one of several tiny red bites on his leg. He soon discovered more that were itching like fury on his chest and stomach.

He fumbled on the bedside table for the remote and switched the television on. The urgency of the outside world suddenly filled his room. Images of New York were on the screen. There were distraught-looking people, women and men, holdinguphand-made boards, placards, signs, some with photographs, some with just names, in red or black or blue writing, all asking, HAVE YOU SEEN?

A newscaster appeared, giving an estimate of the numbers dead. Emergency phone numbers to call ran along the bottom, as well as more breaking news.

All kinds of bad stuff.

Bad stuff was churning around inside his head too, together with everything else that had been in the mix all night long. Thoughts, ideas, lists. Lorraine. Donald Hatcook. Flames. Screams. Falling bodies.

His plan.

Was Donald OK? If he had survived, was there any guarantee he would agree to back his biodiesel venture? Ronnie had always been a gambling man and he didn’t reckon the odds on that were as good as the odds on his new plan working. So far as he was now concerned, alive or dead, Donald Hatcook was history.

Lorraine would be hurting. But in time she would understand that there was no gain without pain.

One day the silly cow would understand – one day soon, when he showered her in fifty-quid notes, bought her everything she ever wanted and more!

They would be rich!

Just had to suffer some pain now.

And be very, very careful.

He looked at his watch to double-check: 6.02. It took a few moments for his tired, jet-lagged brain to work out whether the UK was ahead in time or behind. Ahead, he finally decided. So it would be just after 11 in the morning in Brighton. He tried to think what Lorraine would be doing. She’d have phoned his mobile, phoned the hotel, phoned Donald Hatcook’s office. She might be round at her sister’s house, or, more likely, her sister would be round at theirs.

A police officer was speaking now, straight at the television. He was saying volunteers were needed to come and help out on the pile . They needed people down in the disaster area to help with the digging, to hand out water. He looked exhausted, as if he had been up all night. He looked like a man stretched to breaking point from tiredness and emotion and just sheer workload.

Volunteers. Ronnie thought about that for some moments. Volunteers.

He climbed out of bed and stood in the puny shower, feeling strangely liberated, but nervous. There were a thousand and one ways he could screw this up. But also there were ways he could be smart. Really smart. Volunteers. Yes, that had something! That had currency!

Drying himself, he focused on the news, watching a New York channel, wanting to see what was predicted for the city today. The other shoe that was going to drop that people were talking about? Meaning more attacks. Or was business going to get back to normal today? At least in some parts of Manhattan?

He needed to know, because he had transactions to make. His new life was going to require funding. You had to speculate to accumulate. Stuff he needed was going to be expensive and, wherever he got it, he would have to pay in cash.

The item he wanted was coming up on the news now. The parts of New York that would be closed off and the parts that were open. What was running on the transit system. It seemed there was a lot, that most of it was operating. The anchor woman was saying, solemnly, that yesterday the world had changed.

She was right, he thought, but for many today it would be business as usual. Ronnie was relieved about that. After his binge in the bar yesterday, his evening meal and his advance on the room, his resources were down to about three hundred and two dollars.

The reality of that was hammering home. Three hundred and two dollars to last him until he could make a transaction. He could pawn his laptop, but that was too risky. He knew, to his own cost, when the computer at the car dealership had been seized a few years back, that it was almost impossible to wipe a computer memory clean. His laptop would always be traceable back to him.

They were talking about volunteers wanted for the pile on the screen again now. Volunteers , he thought. The idea was taking root, exciting him.

Now, thanks to the morning news, he had another piece of his plan in place.

Sussex House had originally been acquired as the headquarters for Sussex CID. But recently, despite the fact that the building was bursting at the seams, a uniformed district, East Brighton, had been squeezed into the premises as well. The Neighbourhood Specialist Team officers, involved in community-orientated problem-solving, occupied a tight space behind double doors leading directly off the reception area.