Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

She thanked God for the sheer luck she hadn’t yet transferred them to her newly acquired safe-deposit box.

She should have realized, from all she knew about Ricky, that he was a wizard with electronics. He’d boasted to her one night that he had front desk staff at half the top hotels in Melbourne and Sydney working for him, passing him the returned plastic room keys of guests who had checked out. Those keys contained their credit card details and their home addresses. He had a willing buyer for the information, he’d told her, and the scam, or rather, data service , as he liked to call it, netted him far more than his legitimate business.

She let herself in the front entrance and walked along the corridor to her mother’s flat. She had rung her mother twice to check she was OK. The first time had been at about 10.30, when her mother told her the locksmith had rung to say he would be there by 11. And the second time was an hour ago, when she said the man was there.

Abby was dismayed to discover that her key still unlocked the door. More worryingly, she saw no sign of any workman having been there at all. She called out anxiously, then hurried across the hallway and into the sitting room.

To her astonishment, the carpet had been removed. The red carpet she remembered from her childhood, that she had cleaned the spilt rice pudding off yesterday, was gone. All that remained were some patches of worn-out underlay on top of bare, rough boards.

For a moment her whole world skewed as she tried to make a connection between having new door locks and the need to take up a carpet. Something felt totally wrong.

‘Mum! Mum!!!!’ she called out, in case her mother was in the kitchen, or the loo, or the bedroom.

Where was Doris? Hadn’t she promised to stay in her mother’s flat with her?

She ran, in growing panic, into each room in turn. Then she rushed out of the flat, tore up the staircase two steps at a time and rang the bell of Doris’s flat. Then she knocked on the door with her fist as well.

After what felt like an eternity, she heard the familiar rattle of the safety chain and, as before, the door opened a few inches. Doris, in her massive dark glasses, peered out warily, then gave her a welcoming smile and opened the door wider.

‘Hello, my dear!’

Abby was instantly relieved by the cheeriness of the greeting and for an instant felt sure that Doris was going to say her mother was up here in her flat.

‘Oh, hi, I just wondered if you knew what was going on downstairs.’

‘With the locksmith?’

So he had arrived. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s getting on with the work, dear. He seems a very charming young man. Is anything wrong?’

‘You checked his ID, like I told you?’

‘Yes, dear, he had a card from the company. I had my magnifying lens with me to make sure I could read it. Lockworks, wasn’t it?’

At that moment, Abby’s phone started ringing. She looked down at the display and saw it was her mother’s new number. She looked back at Doris.

‘It’s OK, thanks.’

Doris raised a finger. ‘There’s something burning on the stove, dear. Pop back up if you need me.’

Abby took the call as Doris closed the door.

It was her mother’s voice. But it was all trembling and wrong, and breathless, as if she was reading from a script.

‘Abby,’ she said. ‘Ricky wants to speak to you. I’m going to put him on. Please do exactly what he tells you.’

Then the line went dead.

Abby frantically redialled. It went straight to voicemail. Then almost instantly she had another incoming call. The display read: Private number calling.

It was Ricky.

‘Where’s my mother?’ Abby yelled into the phone before Ricky had a chance to speak. ‘Where is she, you bastard? WHERE IS SHE?’

A door behind her opened and an elderly man peered out, then closed it again loudly.

Distraught now, in retrospect, that she had been so stupid as to leave her mother with this old woman, Abby hurried to the relative privacy of the stairwell.

‘I want to speak to her now. Where is she?’

‘Your mother is fine, Abby,’ he said. ‘She’s as snug as a bug in a rug – in case you were wondering where it had gone.’

With the phone clamped to her ears, she tripped back downstairs and into her mother’s flat, closing the door behind her. She walked through into the sitting room, staring at the bare boards showing through the underlay again. Tears were streaming down her face. She was shaking, starting to feel disassociated, the first signs of a panic attack coming on.

‘I’m calling the police, Ricky,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about anything else any more. OK? I’m going to call the police right now.’

‘I don’t think so, Abby,’ he said calmly. ‘I think you are too smart to do that. What are you going to say to them? I stole everything this man had and now he’s caught up with me and he’s taken my mother as hostage. You have to be able to account for things, Abby. In the western world today, with all the money-laundering regulations, you have to be able to account for substantial possessions and amounts of money. How are you going to account for what you’ve got, on the earnings of a Melbourne bar waitress?’

She screamed back down the phone, ‘I don’t care any more, Ricky. OK?’

There was a brief silence. Then he said, ‘Oh, I think you do. You didn’t do what you did to me on a sudden impulse. You planned this long and hard, you and Dave, didn’t you? Any position he didn’t tell you to shag me in, or was it just me who got fucked?’

‘This has nothing to do with my mother. Bring her back. Bring her here and we’ll talk.’

‘No, you bring me everything you’ve taken and then we’ll talk.’

The panic attack was worsening. She was taking deep gulps of air. Her head was burning. She felt as if she was half floating out of her body, that her body was going to die on her. She tripped sideways, hit the end of the sofa, clung desperately to one of the arms, then swung herself down on to it and sat there giddily.

‘I’m hanging up now,’ she gasped, ‘and I’m calling the police.’

But even as she said the words she could feel that some of the conviction had gone from her voice, and that he could feel it too.

‘Yeah, and then what?’

‘I don’t care. I don’t bloody care!’ Like a child having a tantrum, she repeated several times, louder each time, ‘I don’t bloody care!’

‘You should. Because they’re going to find a chronically ill woman who has committed suicide, and her daughter a thief, with a cock-and-bull story about the man she stole from, and the man who put her up for it isn’t exactly in a position to enter any witness box to back her up. So think your way out of that one, smart bitch. I’m going to leave you to calm down now and I’m going to brew your mum a nice cup of tea, and then I’ll call you back.’

‘No – wait-’ she shouted.

But he had hung up.

Then, suddenly, she remembered the taxi waiting outside, with the meter running.

Roy Grace sent Cleo a brief text telling her he had arrived as he stood waiting for the baggage carousel to start up. By his calculation, it would be 6.15 p.m. in the UK. Fifteen minutes before the start of the evening briefing meeting on Operation Dingo.

He called DI Lizzie Mantle to get an update, but both her direct landline and mobile numbers went to voicemail. Next he tried Glenn Branson, who answered on the second ring.

‘Got your shoes back on?’

‘Yeah, I phoned to tell you that. Thought you might be pleased.’