Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

He shook his head. ‘Not what I’ve heard.’

‘Three and a quarter million quid!’ she said again dreamily and rolled the ash off her cigarette into the saucer.

‘That’ll buy you a lot of new frocks.’

‘We’d need to invest it.’

‘I’ve got plans. The first thing we have to do is get it out of the country – and you.’

He jumped up, went into the hall and returned with a small knapsack. From it he removed a brown envelope, which he put on the table and pushed towards her.

‘I’m not Ronnie Wilson any more. You’re going to have to get used to that. I’m now David Nelson. And in a year’s time you won’t be Lorraine Wilson any more.’

Inside the envelope were two passports. One was Australian. The photograph was a barely recognizable one of herself. Her hair had been changed to dark brown, cut short, and she’d been given a pair of glasses. The name inside said Margaret Nelson.

‘There’s a visa stamp in there for permanent residence in Australia. Valid for five years.’

‘ Margaret?’ she said. ‘Why Margaret?’

‘Or Maggie!’

She shook her head. ‘I have to be Margaret – Maggie?’

‘Yes.’

‘For how long?’

‘For ever.’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘I don’t even get a choice in my own name?’

‘You didn’t when you was born, you stupid cow!’

She said the name aloud, dubiously, ‘Margaret Nelson.’

‘Nelson’s a good name, classy!’

She shook a second passport out of the bag. ‘What’s this?’

‘It’s for when you leave England.’

Inside was a photograph of her again, but in this one she had grey hair and looked twenty years older. The name said Anita Marsh.

She looked at him in bewilderment.

‘I worked it out. The best way to disappear. People remember good-looking women, blokes in particular. They don’t remember little old ladies, they’re almost invisible. When the time comes you’re going to buy two tickets in advance on the Newhaven- Dieppe ferry for a night-time crossing. One ticket in your name, one in Anita Marsh’s name. And you’re going to book a cabin in Anita Marsh’s name. OK?’

‘Want me to write this down?’

‘No. You’re going to have to memorize it. I’ll be contacting you. I’ll go through it all plenty of times more with you before then. What you’re going to do is leave a suicide note – you’re going to write that you can’t bear life without me, you’re miserable being back at work at Gatwick, life sucks – and the doctor’ll be able to back it up that you were on antidepressants, all that stuff.’

‘Yeah, well, he won’t be lying about that.’

‘So you get on the ferry as Lorraine Wilson, looking as beautiful as you can, and make sure plenty of people see you. You dump your bag, with a change of clothes, in the cabin booked in Anita Marsh’s name. Then you go to the bar and you start giving the impression that you are sad, and drinking heavily, and not in any mood to talk to anyone. The crossing’s four and a quarter hours, so you have plenty of time. When you are out in mid-Channel, leave the bar and tell the barman that you are going out on the deck. Instead, you go down to the cabin and transform yourself into Anita Marsh, with a wig and old-lady clothes. Then you take your clothes, your passport and your mobile phone and you drop them over the side.’

Lorraine stared at him in utter astonishment.

‘In Dieppe you take a train to Paris. There you rip up your Anita Marsh passport and buy a plane ticket to Melbourne as Margaret Nelson. I’ll be waiting for you at the other end.’

‘You’ve thought of bloody everything, haven’t you?’

He could not immediately tell whether she was pleased or angry.

‘Yeah, well, I haven’t exactly had much else to do.’

‘Promise me one thing – all this money – you’re not planning to sink it into a scheme, are you?’

‘No way. I’ve learned my lesson, babe. I been giving it a lot of thought. The problem is, once you get into debt, you’re on a spiral. Now we’re free, we can start again. Start in Australia and then maybe go off somewhere else, live life in the sun. Sounds good to me! We can eventually put the money in the bank, live off the interest.’

She looked at Ronnie dubiously.

He pointed at the envelope. ‘There’s something else in there for you.’

She pulled out a slim cellophane bag. Inside was an assortment of loose stamps.

‘To help tide you over,’ he said. ‘Expenses. And give yourself a couple of treats to cheer yourself up. There’s a 1911 Somerset House One Pound – that’s worth about fifteen hundred quid. There’s an 1881 One Penny that you should get about five hundred quid for. There’s about five grand’s value in total. Take them to this guy I know – he’ll give you the best price. And when the big money comes through, he’s the guy you get to convert it into stamps. He’s straight. We’ll get the best value from him.’

‘And he knows nothing?’

‘God, no.’ He tore off a blank strip from the back of Hello! magazine on the kitchen table and wrote down the name Hugo Hegarty , with the man’s phone number and address on it. ‘He should be sorry when you tell him about me. I was a good customer.’

‘We’ve had a few letters of sympathy and cards over the past weeks.’

‘I’d like to see those, read what everyone says about me.’

‘Nice things.’ She gave a sad laugh. ‘Sue was saying I needed to start thinking about a funeral. Wouldn’t have needed a very big coffin, would we? For a wallet and a mobile phone.’

They both giggled. Then she dabbed away more tears that had started rolling down her face.

‘At least we can laugh about it,’ she said. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

He walked around the table to her and hugged her hard. ‘Yep. That’s good.’

‘Why Australia?’

‘It’s far enough away. We can be anonymous there. Also, I’ve got an old mate who went out there years ago. I can trust him – he’ll convert the stamps back into cash, no questions asked.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Chad Skeggs.’

She looked at him with a startled expression, as if she had just been shot. ‘ Ricky Skeggs?’

‘Yeah. You went out with him before me, didn’t you? He used to have all his birds call him Ricky . Like it was a special privilege. Chad in business, Chad to his mates, but Ricky to his birds. He was always very particular about things.’

‘It’s the same name,’ she said. ‘They’re both versions of Richard.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘No, it’s not actually whatever , Ronnie. And I didn’t go out with him. I went on just one date. He tried to rape me, remember? I told you all about it.’

‘Yeah – rape used to be his idea of foreplay.’

‘I’m serious. Surely I told you the story. Back in the early 1990s, he had a Porsche. Took me out one night-’

‘I remember that Porsche. A 911 Targa. Black. I worked for Brighton Connoisseur Cars – we rebuilt it after it had been written off – wrapped around a tree. We spliced the rear end together with the front end of another one. Flogged it to him cheap. It was a fucking death trap!’

‘You sold that to your friend?’

‘He knew it was dodgy and not to drive it too fast. He just used it for posing – and pulling dolly birds like you.’

‘Yes, well, after a few drinks at the bar I thought he was taking me to eat something. Instead he drove me up on the Downs, told me he allowed the girls he screwed to call him Ricky, then he unzipped himself and told me to suck him off. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘Crude bastard.’