Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

No, no, no.

‘Very clever. Biometrics. Iris recognition. You think that’s very smart, don’t you? Lock it all away in a safe-deposit box that requires iris recognition to access. Well, how about I just cut your fucking eye out and take that with me, see if it recognizes it? If not, I’ll come back for the other one.’

Again she signalled frantically. No, no, no.

‘Of course, if that doesn’t work we’re both fucked, because you’ll be blind and I’ll be no better off. And you know that, don’t you?’

Suddenly he removed the blade. Then, in one sudden movement, he ripped the tape away from her mouth.

She cried out in agony. It felt as he had torn off half the skin on her face. She gulped air down her parched throat. Her face was on fire.

‘Talk to me, bitch.’

Her voice came out as a croak. ‘Please can I have some water? Please, Ricky.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ he said. ‘That’s rich! You steal everything I have, make me chase you halfway around the world, and what’s the first thing you have to say to me?’ He mimicked her voice. ‘“Oh, please, Ricky, can I have a glass of water?”’ He shook his head. ‘What would you like? Sparkling or plain? Tap or bottled? How about the toilet water you keep pissing in? Would that be OK? Would you like some ice and lemon in it?’

‘Anything,’ she croaked.

‘I’ll get you some in a minute,’ he said. ‘What you should have done is fill in the room service breakfast menu and hung it on the door last night. Then you’d have had everything you wanted this morning. But I guess you were a bit tied up, ripping your old love Ricky off.’ He grinned. ‘ Tied up. That’s quite funny, isn’t it?’

She said nothing, trying hard to think clearly, to make sure she said the right thing when she spoke and didn’t antagonize him further. It was good, she thought, that he was letting her speak finally. She knew how desperately he wanted back what she had taken.

And he wasn’t a fool.

He needed her. In his mind that was the only way he was going to get it. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to cut a deal with her.

Then he held up his mobile phone to her ear and pressed a button. A recording began to play. It lasted just a few seconds, but they were enough.

It was herself and her mother speaking. A phone conversation they had had on Sunday, she remembered clearly. She could hear her own voice talking.

‘Listen, Mum, it won’t be long now. I’ve been in touch with Cuckmere House. They’ve got a beautiful room with a view of the river coming free in a few weeks’ time and I’ve reserved it. I’ve looked it up on the internet and it really does look lovely. And of course I’ll come over and check it out and help you move in.’

Then Abby heard her mother replying. Mary Dawson, her brain sharp despite her crippling illness, retorted, ‘And where are you going to get the money from, Abs? I’ve heard these places cost a fortune. Two hundred quid a day, some of them. More even.’

‘Don’t worry about the money, Mum, I’m taking care of it. I-’

The recording stopped abruptly.

‘That’s what I like about you, Abby,’ Ricky said, pressing his glaring face up close to her own. ‘You’re all heart.’

The interior of the café was a fug of frying grease. Taking his seat opposite the two men, Grace reckoned that just breathing in here could raise anyone’s cholesterol up to heart-attack levels. But he went ahead and ordered egg, bacon, sausage and chips, fried bread and a Coke, glad that neither Glenn Branson nor Cleo was around to chide him about his diet.

Terry Biglow ordered egg and chips, while his vacant friend, Jimmy, just ordered a cup of tea and kept giving Grace imploring looks, as if the Detective Superintendent was the only man on the planet who could save him from something that he didn’t seem very clear about. Himself, most likely, Roy thought, watching him slip a half-bottle of Bells from his coat pocket and take a long swig, and clocking the prison tattoos on his knuckles. One dot for each year inside. He counted seven.

‘I’m on the straight and narrow now, Mr Grace,’ Terry Biglow suddenly said.

He had dots on his knuckles too, and the tail of a serpent on the back of his hand, its body disappearing up his sleeve.

‘So you told me. Good.’

‘Me brother’s very ill. Pancreas cancer. Do you remember me uncle, Eddie, Mr Grace? Sorry, Inspector Grace?’

Grace did indeed, more clearly than he cared to. He had never forgotten taking a statement from one of Eddie Biglow’s victims. His face had been ripped open in jagged lines by broken glass, down both sides from the hairline to the chin, because he had complained when Biglow barged in front of him at the bar of a pub.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember him.’

‘Actually,’ Biglow went on, ‘I’ve got a bit of cancer myself.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Grace said.

‘Me tummy, you know?’

‘Bad?’ Grace asked.

Biglow shrugged, as if it was only minor. But there was fear in his eyes.

Jimmy nodded sagely and took another swig. ‘I dunno who’ll look after me when he’s gone,’ he whined to Grace. ‘I need protecting.’

Grace gave him a cursory shrug with his eyebrows, then took his Coke from the waitress and immediately drank some. ‘You and Ronnie Wilson were mates, weren’t you, Terry?’

‘Yeah, we was once, yeah.’

‘Before you went to jail?’

‘Yeah, before then. I took the rap for him, you know.’ He stirred sugar into his tea wistfully. ‘I did an’ all.’

‘You knew his wife?’

‘Both his wives.’

‘ Both? ’ Grace said, surprised.

‘Yeah. Joanna and then Lorraine.’

‘When did he remarry?’

He scratched the back of his head. ‘Cor, that was a few years after Joanna left him. She was a looker, Joanna was, a stonker! But I didn’t like her much. Gold-digger, she was. Latched on to Ronnie cos he was flash – but she didn’t realize he didn’t have much money.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Not a good businessman, Ronnie. Always talked big, always had big schemes. But he didn’t have – what’s it called – the nose , the Midas touch. So when Joanna sussed that out, she legged it.’

‘To where?’

‘Los Angeles. Her mum died and she inherited a bit from the house. Ronnie woke up one morning and she was gone. Just left a note. Gone to try to make it in the movies as an actress.’

Their food arrived. Terry smothered his chips in vinegar, then shook out half the contents of the salt cellar on to them. Grace poured some brown sauce on to his plate, then picked up the tomato-shaped ketchup container. ‘Who did she keep in touch with after she went to LA?’

Biglow shrugged and speared a chip with his fork. ‘No one, I don’t think. Wasn’t no one down here liked her. None of us. My old lady couldn’t stick her. And she didn’t have no interest in making friends with us.’

‘Was she from down here?’

‘Nah, London. I think he met her at a lap-dancing place in London.’

Another chip met the same fate.

‘What about his second wife?’

‘Lorraine. She was all right. She was a good looker too. Took him a while to marry her – had to wait two years, I think, to get a divorce through from Joanna, cos of her desertion.’

Very difficult to get someone who is rotting in a storm drain to sign divorce papers, Grace thought.

‘Where can I find Lorraine?’

Biglow gave him a strange look.

‘I do need looking after, Mr Grace,’ whined Jimmy again.

Biglow turned to his friend and pointed at his own face. ‘See the lips moving? Means I’m still talking, so give it a rest, all right.’ He turned to Grace. ‘Lorraine. Yeah, well, if you want to find her you’ll have to get yerself a boat and a deep-sea diving suit. She topped herself. Went overboard the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry one night.’