Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

Then they headed towards a single-storey, modern building with tiny slit-like windows that gave it the air of a fortress. Which is what it was.

Ricky parked in a bay marked VISITORS and switched off the engine. Then he turned to Abby.

‘Try anything clever and your mother’s dead. You understand that?’

She choked out a terrified, ‘Yes.’

And all the time she was thinking. Trying to plan in her mind how she was going to play this. Trying to visualize the next few minutes. Doing her best to think it through, to remind herself of her strengths.

So long as she had what he wanted, he was going to have to negotiate. It didn’t matter how much he blustered, that was the truth of the matter. That had kept her alive and intact until now, no question about it. With luck, it was what would keep her mother alive. She hoped.

She did have a plan, but she hadn’t thought it through, and it all started coming unstitched inside her head as she climbed out of the car. She suddenly became a jelly, a bag of quivering nerves, and had to grip the roof of the car for a moment, almost certain she was going to throw up.

After a couple of minutes, when she felt a bit better, Ricky took her arm and they walked to the entrance, like any couple coming to make a deposit, or a withdrawal, or just to check out the family silver. But as she shot him a sideways stony glance, she felt revulsion, wondering how she had ever stooped to do all she done with him.

She pressed the entryphone buzzer beneath the imperious gaze of two CCTV cameras and gave her name. Moments later the door clicked open and they passed through two sets of security doors into an austere foyer that gave the impression it had been hewn from granite.

Two burly, unsmiling uniformed security guards stood just inside the door, and two more manned the counter behind a glass shield. She walked up to one of them and spoke through the perforations, wondering, suddenly, whether to try to signal distress to him, then thinking better of it.

‘Katherine Jennings,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I want to access my safe-deposit box.’

He pushed a register under the bottom of the shield. ‘Please fill this in. Are both of you going in?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll need both of you to fill it in, please.’

Abby filled in her name, the date and the time, then handed the register to Ricky, who did the same. When he had finished, he pushed it back under the shield and the guard typed into a terminal. Some moments later, he pushed printed name tags, encased in plastic and with lapel clips, across the counter.

‘You know what to do?’ he asked Abby.

She nodded and walked to the security door to the right of the counter. Then she put her right eye up close to the biometric retinal scanner and pressed the green button.

After some moments the lock clicked. She pushed the heavy door open, held it for Ricky and they both went through. There was a cement staircase in front of them. She went down, hearing Rick’s steps close behind her. At the bottom there was a massive steel door with a second biometric scanner. She placed her right eye up close and again pressed the green button. There was a sharp click and she pushed this door open.

They entered a long, narrow, icily cold vault. It was a good hundred feet long and twenty feet wide, lined floor-to-ceiling on both sides and at the far end with steel safe-deposit boxes, each bearing a number.

The ones on the right were six inches deep, the ones on the left were two feet deep and the ones at the far end were six feet high. She wondered again, as she had the last time she came here, just what exactly might be in those, and indeed what treasures, legally obtained or otherwise, might be behind any of these locked doors.

Holding the key, Ricky greedily scanned the numbers on the boxes. ‘Four-two-six?’ he said.

She pointed, down towards the far end, on the left, and watched as he almost ran the last few yards.

Then he slipped the thin, flat key into the vertical slot and gave it a tentative twist. He could feel the cam of the well-oiled lock revolving smoothly. He turned the key through one complete revolution, listening for each of the pins moving in turn. He liked locks, always had, and understood how most of them worked. He gave the key a pull, but the door did not move. It had a more complex mechanism inside than he’d imagined, he realized, turning the key another complete revolution and sensing more pins moving. He pulled again.

Now the heavy metal door swung open and he peered inside. To his utter astonishment, it was empty.

He spun around, swearing loudly at Abby. And found himself swearing at an empty room.

Abby sprinted. She had run most mornings in Melbourne and, despite having done little exercise in the past couple of months, she was still in reasonable shape.

She ran flat out without looking back, across the tarmac parking area of Southern Deposit Security, past the vans and trucks, out through the gates and up the hill. Then, just before she turned right through the shrubbery lining the car park by the row of stores, she shot a glance over her shoulder.

Ricky had not appeared yet.

She trampled through the bushes, only to narrowly avoid being struck by a people carrier driven by a harassed-looking woman as she dashed across the lanes of the car park towards the front entrance of an MFI store. She stopped when she reached it and looked back.

Still no sign of him.

She entered the building, briefly aware of the distinct, rich smell of new furniture, and raced through it, dodging around customers as she passed showroom displays of office furniture, living-room furniture, bedroom furniture. She found herself, almost at the rear of the store, in the bathroom section. There were showers all around her. A classy looking walk-in one to her right.

She looked back down the aisle. No Ricky.

Her heart was crashing around as if it had broken loose inside her chest. She was still holding the plastic Southern Deposit Security identity tag in her hand. Ricky had not allowed her to take her handbag with her from the flat, but she had managed to conceal her mobile phone, by stuffing it down her front, with some cash and her credit card, as well as a key to her mother’s flat. She’d switched the phone off just in case, by a billion to one chance, it rang. Now she retrieved it and switched it back on. As soon as it powered up, she rang her mother’s number.

No answer. She had begged her mother for months to get voicemail, but she still had not done anything about it. After numerous rings, the tone turned to a flat whine. She tried again.

There was a slatted wooden bench in one of the walk-in showers, flipped up against the wall. She went into it, pulled the bench down and sat holding the phone to her ear, listening to the unanswered ringing. Thinking. Thinking.

She was in total panic.

All her stalling tactics were now exhausted. She had not thought this through. She wasn’t capable of thinking anything through at the moment. All she could do was run on autopilot, dealing with one minute at a time.

Ricky had threatened to harm her mother. A sick, elderly lady. Her bargaining power was that she still had in her possession the riches Ricky desperately wanted. She needed to keep reminding herself that she held all the nuts.

Ricky could bluster all he wanted.

I hold everything he wants.

Except…

She sank her face into her hands. She wasn’t dealing with someone normal. Ricky was more like a machine.

The voice almost made her jump out of her skin.

‘Are you OK? Can I help you, madam?’

A young assistant in a suit and tie, with a lapel badge giving his name as Jason, was standing at the entrance to the shower. She looked up at him.