Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

One downside of this location for Inspector Stephen Curry was that every morning he needed to be in two places at once. He had to be here for his daily briefing with the duty Neighbourhood Policing Team inspector, which ended just after 9 o’clock, and then he had a mad dash through the Brighton rush hour to be at Brighton Police Station in John Street for the daily 9.30 review meeting chaired by the Superintendent Crime and Operations for Brighton and Hove Division.

A strong-framed man of thirty-nine with hard-set good looks and a youthful air of enthusiasm about him, Curry was in even more of a rush than usual today, looking anxiously at his watch. It was 10.45. He had just returned to his office at Sussex House from John Street, to deal with a couple of urgent matters, and was about to fly back out of the door when Roy Grace phoned him.

He carefully wrote down the name Katherine Jennings and the address in his notebook, then told Grace he would get someone from his Neighbourhood Specialist Team to stop by the place.

As the matter didn’t sound urgent, he decided it could wait till later. Then he jumped up, grabbed his cap off the door, and hurried out.

Lorraine was sitting once again at the kitchen table in her white towelling dressing gown, a cigarette in her mouth and a cup of tea in front of her. Her head was pounding and she was bleary-eyed, not fully with it, from an almost sleepless night. Her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest and she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She tapped the cigarette on the ashtray, sending a quarter-inch of ash tumbling in to join the four fresh butts already there this morning. The Daily Mirror lay beside her and the news was on television, but for the first time since yesterday afternoon, her mind was on something else.

In front of her lay the post that had arrived that morning, as well as yesterday’s and Monday’s. Plus more opened post she had found in Ronnie’s bureau in the small spare room upstairs he used as his office.

The letter she was looking at now was from a debt-collection agency called EndCol Financial Recovery. It was acknowledging an agreement Ronnie appeared to have entered into to pay off the hire-purchase payments on the large-screen television in the living room. The next one was from another debt-collection agency. It informed Ronnie that the phone line to the house was going to be disconnected if the outstanding balance of over six hundred pounds was not paid within seven days.

Then there was the letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, demanding that nearly eleven and a half thousand pounds be paid within three weeks or a distraint order would be made.

Lorraine shook her head in disbelief. Half the letters were demands for payment on overdue bills. And one, from his bank manager, told him that his request for a further loan had been rejected.

The worst letter of all was from the building society. She had found it in his bureau and it informed Ronnie that they were foreclosing on the mortgage and commencing court proceedings to repossess the house.

Lorraine crushed out the cigarette, buried her face in her hands and sobbed. All the time thinking, Why didn’t you tell me this, Ronnie darling? Why didn’t you tell me the mess you – we – are in? I could have helped, gone out and got a job. I might not have earned much, but it would have helped. It would have been better than nothing.

She shook another cigarette out and stared numbly at the screen. At the people in New York walking around with their placards, their photographs of lost loved ones. That’s what she needed to do, she knew. She had to get over there and find him. Maybe he’d been injured and was lying in a hospital somewhere…

He was alive, she felt it in her bones. He was a survivor. All these debts, he would deal with them. If Ronnie had been here last night, he’d never have let them take the car. He’d have cut a deal, or found some cash, or torn the fuckers’ throats out.

For the millionth time, she dialled his number. And it went straight to his voicemail. Not his voice, just an impersonal one telling her sorry, the person she had called was not available and inviting her to leave a message.

She hung up, sipped her tea, then lit the cigarette and coughed. A deep, hacking cough which made her eyes water. They were now showing the smouldering rubble, the skeletal walls, the whole apocalyptic scene of what had been, until yesterday morning, the World Trade Center. She tried to work out from the images now on the screen – first a tight shot of a fireman in the foreground wearing a face mask, stumbling across a hillock of shifting, smoking masonry, then a much wider shot showing a slab maybe a hundred feet high and a flattened cop car – where the South Tower had been. What was left of it. When had Ronnie got out of it and how?

Her front doorbell rang. She froze. Then there was a sharp rap.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

She slunk upstairs and into the front bedroom, the one that Ronnie used, and peered down. There was a blue van outside in the street, blocking her drive, and two burly men were standing outside her front door. One had a shaven head and was wearing a parka and jeans; the other, with close-cropped hair and a large gold earring, was holding a document.

She lay still, almost holding her breath. There were more raps on the door. The bell rang again, twice. Then, finally, she heard the van drive off.

Tosser!

Cassian Pewe had been in Sussex House for a couple of days, but it had taken about three minutes for Tony Case, the Senior Support Officer, to sum him up.

Case, a former police officer himself, ran the administration for this building and the three other buildings that housed between them all the Major Incident Suites in Sussex – at Littlehampton, Horsham and Eastbourne. Among his duties were performing risk assessments for raids, budgeting forensic requirements and new equipment, and general compliance, as well as ensuring that the people who worked here had everything they needed.

Such as picture hooks.

‘Look,’ Pewe said, as if he were addressing a flunky, ‘I want that picture hook moved three inches to the right and six inches higher. OK? And I want this one moved exactly eight inches higher. Understand? You don’t seem to be writing any of this down.’

‘Perhaps you’d like me to get you a supply of hooks, a hammer and a ruler, then you could put them up yourself?’ Case suggested. It was what every other officer did, including the Chief Superintendent.

Pewe, who had removed his suit jacket and hung it over his chair, was wearing red braces over his white shirt. He strutted around the room now, twanging them. ‘I don’t do DIY,’hesaid. ‘And I don’t have time. You must have someone here to do stuff like this.’

‘Yes,’ Tony Case said. ‘Me.’

Pewe was looking out of the window at the grim custody block. The rain was stopping. ‘Not much of a view,’ he moaned.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace was quite happy with it.’

Pewe went a strange colour, as if he had swallowed something to which he was allergic. ‘This was his office?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s really a lousy view.’

‘Perhaps if you call ACC Vosper, she’ll have the custody block demolished for you.’

‘That’s not funny,’ Pewe said.

‘Funny?’ Tony Case said. ‘I’m not being funny. I’m at work. We don’t do humour here. Just serious police work. I’ll go and get you a hammer – if no one’s nicked it.’

‘And what about my assistants? I’ve requested two DCs. Where will they be seated?’