Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

Nothing new there.

When Roy Grace ended the call, he leaned forward. ‘Guys,’ he said, ‘do you have someone who can put together a list of stamp dealers here?’

‘Starting a new hobby, are you?’ quipped Dennis.

‘Just stamping out crime,’ Grace retorted.

‘Shit, man!’ Pat said, turning to face him. ‘Your jokes don’t get any better, do they?’

Grace smiled sardonically. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

The air stewardess was going through the safety demonstration. Norman Potting leaned over to Nick Nicholl, seated next to him near the rear of the 747, and said, ‘It’s all a load of rubbish, this safety stuff.’

The young Detective Constable, who was terrified of flying but hadn’t wanted to admit that to his boss, was hanging on to every word that was coming out through the speakers. Turning his face away to avoid the full blast of Potting’s bad breath, he peered upwards, working out exactly where his oxygen mask would be dropping from.

‘The brace position – you know what they don’t tell you?’ Potting went on, undeterred by Nicholl’s lack of reaction.

Nicholl shook his head, now watching and memorizing the correct way to tie the tapes on the life jacket.

‘It might save you in some situations, I grant you. But the thing they don’t tell you,’ Potting said, ‘is the brace position helps preserve your jawbone intact. Makes identifying all the victims from their dental records much easier.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ Nicholl muttered, observing the stewardess now pointing out where he would find his whistle.

‘As for the life jacket, that’s a laugh, that is,’ Potting carried on. ‘Do you know how many passenger airliners in the entire history of aviation have ever successfully made an emergency landing on water?’

Nick Nicholl was thinking about his wife, Julie, and his small son, Liam. He might never see either of them again.

‘How many?’ he gulped.

Potting touched the tip of his own thumb with his index finger, forming a circle. ‘Zero. Zilch. Nada. Not one.’

There’s always a first time, Nicholl thought, clinging tightly to the thought; clinging to it as if it were a liferaft.

Potting starting reading a men’s magazine he had bought in the airport. Nicholl studied the laminated safety card, checking the position of the nearest exits, glad to see that they were only two rows behind him. He was glad too that he was near the rear of the plane; he remembered a newspaper account of an air disaster in which the tail section broke off and all the passengers inside it survived.

‘Phoaaaawwww!’ Potting said.

Nicholl looked down. His colleague had the magazine open at a nude centre-spread. A blonde with pneumatic breasts was lying spread-eagled on a four-poster bed, her wrists and ankles secured by lengths of black velvet to the posts. Her pubic hair was a tidily shaved Brazilian and the pink lips of her vulva were prominently exposed, as if they were the buds of a flower placed between her legs.

A stewardess walked past, checking passengers had their seat belts on. She stopped to peer down at Nicholl and Norman Potting, then moved smartly on.

Nick felt his face burning with embarrassment. ‘Norman,’ he whispered, ‘I think you should put that away.’

‘Hope we find a few like her in Melbourne!’ Potting said. ‘We could have a bit of sport, you and me. I fancy that Bondi Beach.’

‘Bondi Beach is in Sydney, not Melbourne. And I think you embarrassed the stewardess with that.’

Unabashed, Potting traced his fingers over her curves. ‘She’s a bit of all right, she is!’

The stewardess was coming back. She gave both of them a cursory, rather frosty glance and hurried past.

‘I thought you were a happily married man, Norman,’ Nicholl said.

‘The day I stop looking, lad,’ he said, ‘that’s the day I want someone to take me out into a field and shoot me.’ He grinned and, to Nicholl’s relief, he turned the page. But the DC’s relief was only fleeting.

The next page was much worse.

Abby was on the train heading to Brighton, a lump deep in her throat. Her stomach was knotted. She was trembling, trying to stop herself crying, struggling to hold it all together.

Where was her mother? Where had the bastard taken her?

Her watch said 8.30. Almost two hours since she’d put the phone down on Ricky. She dialled her mother’s number yet again. Once more it went to voicemail.

She wasn’t sure exactly what medication her mother was on – there were antidepressants, plus pills for muscle spasm, constipation, anti-reflux – but she doubted very much that Ricky would care about that. Without them, her mother’s condition would deteriorate rapidly, and she would start to have mood swings, from euphoria one second to a deeply distressed state the next.

Abby cursed her stupidity for leaving her mother so exposed. She should have just bloody well taken her.

Call me, Ricky. Please call me.

She was bitterly regretting hanging up on him, realizing she hadn’t thought it through properly. Ricky knew she would be the first to panic, not him. But he would have to call her, he would have to make contact. A frail, sick old lady was not the prize he wanted.

She took a taxi from the station and got out at a convenience store close to her flat, where she bought a small torch. Keeping to the shadows, she turned into her street and saw, under the glare of a street light, Ricky’s rental Ford Focus. It was clamped. Large police stickers were fixed to the windscreen and driver’s-side window, warning that the owner should not attempt to move it.

She walked warily to the car. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she removed the parking ticket from beneath the windscreen wiper and, using her torch, read the time it had been issued: 10.03 a.m. So the car had been here all day. Which meant he hadn’t used it to transport her mother. Of course not – he had the van.

But presumably he was intending to return. Maybe he was already there. Somehow she doubted that. She was sure he had a place in the city, if only a lock-up.

The windows of her flat were all dark. She crossed the street to the entrance and pressed the bell of Hassan, hoping he was home. She was in luck. There was a crackle followed by his voice.

‘Hi, it’s Katherine Jennings from Flat 82. Sorry to bother you, but I’ve forgotten my front door key. Could you let me in?’

‘No problem!’

Moments later there was a sharp buzz and she pushed the door open. As she entered, she saw a stack of junk mail crammed in her letter box. Better not to touch it, she decided, not wanting to leave any indications that she had been here.

The lift had a large OUT OF ORDER sign taped across the doors. She began climbing the dimly lit stairs, stopping on each floor to listen for any movement, wishing she had her Mace spray with her. On the third floor she started to smell freshly sawn wood, from the builders in the flat above. She climbed one more floor, then her nerve began failing her, so she was tempted for a moment to knock on Hassan’s door and ask him to come up with her.

Finally, she reached the top. She stopped to listen for any noise. There were two other flats on this floor, but she had never met anyone coming or going in the brief time she had been here. She could hear nothing. Total silence. She went over to the fire reel that was fixed to the wall and began to unwind the hose. After five loops, she saw the set of spare keys lying where she had hidden them. She rewound the hose, pushed open the fire door and went through onto her landing.

Then stood still, feeling very scared now. What if he was in there?