Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

They looked at her the same way as the two men she had seen drive past in the blue car, before she had gone into Hawkes. Her time on the run had sharpened her awareness of everything around her. Something just felt wrong about these two cars.

Each with the passenger on his phone.

Each looking in her direction as they drove past.

Had Hugo Hegarty phoned the police? Was she under surveillance?

Both cars were in heavy traffic southbound. Were there any others? Northbound? On foot?

She stared wildly in every direction, then sprinted north, ducking left down an alley and easing past a row of stinking dustbins. Across the next street she saw an alley running up between two houses. She shot a glance over her shoulder but could see no one following, so dashed into that narrow space. The rain was easing a little. Her brain was racing. She knew this area like the back of her hand, because for a time, in her previous incarnation, she had lived in a flat near the Seven Dials.

She ran fast, checking every few steps that the package was still firmly at her midriff and that the money was safely wedged in her pockets, then checking over her shoulder. She sped up a tree-lined street of terraced houses, with few people out and about in this horrible weather to notice her. The exercise and the pattering of rain on her face helped to clear her head a little.

Helped her to think.

Abby headed uphill, towards the Dials, then turned right, along another residential street, and emerged above the station. Standing back, out of sight from the road, she watched several cars and commercial vehicles go past, then dashed across Buckingham Road and into another street directly above the station. She ran down that, and again, being careful to wait, crossed another main road, New England Street, and ran on uphill again, through a maze of terraced residential streets and forests of estate agents’ boards.

She got a stitch and stopped for some moments, then carried on at walking pace, gulping down air, perspiring heavily. The rain had stopped almost completely now and there was a strong breeze, which felt good and cooling on her face.

She was thinking clearly now, more clearly than for some hours, as if the shock of what she had seen in the Argus had rebooted her clogged hard drive. Striding purposefully, she kept to the back streets, checking behind her constantly for any sign of a blue or a brown car, or any other car with two people in, but she saw nothing that bothered her.

Had Ricky seen the Argus ? Would the story be in other papers also? He would see it, for sure. Wherever he was, he would have papers, radio, television.

She went into a newsagent’s and flicked quickly through some of the national dailies. None of them were carrying the story yet. She bought a copy of the Argus , and stood outside the shop, staring for a long time at the face of the man on the front page. Her emotions were in complete turmoil.

Then, still rooted to her spot in the street, she re-read the entire story. It filled in the gaps in Dave’s past. The silences, the evasive answers, the rapid changing of the subject every time she brought it up. And the remarks Ricky made, testing her on how much she knew about Dave.

How much did Ricky know about him?

She walked along a few paces, then sat down on a damp doorstep, head in her hands. She felt more scared than she had ever been in her life. Scared not just for her mother, but for the whole future.

Life’s a game , Dave liked to tell her. Liked to remind her. A game. This had all started as a game.

Some game.

Life’s not about victims, Abby. It’s about winners and losers.

Tears were misting her eyes again. Her mother’s pitiful voice was ringing in her ears, in her heart. She dialled her mother’s number, then Ricky’s, to no avail.

Ring back. Please ring back. I’ll make a deal.

After some minutes she stood up and walked down a hill, then along a street with the railway track of the London-Brighton line visible through railings beyond. She continued down stone steps, along a short tunnel and up to the ticket office of Preston Park Station.

It was a small commuter station, busy in the rush hour, deserted at most other times of the day. If the police were following her, if they had seen her downtown, near Brighton Station, that was where they might watch out for her. They were less likely to be here, she decided.

Life’s a game.

She studied the timetable, working out a route that would get her to Eastbourne, avoiding Brighton Station, and then to Gatwick Airport, which was now part of the new plan crystallizing in her head.

Her phone suddenly beeped. She pulled it out, hoping desperately it was a message from Ricky, but it wasn’t. It said:

Silence is golden? X

She suddenly realized she hadn’t responded to his last text. She thought for some moments, then replied:

Problemo. x

A few minutes later, as she was stepping on to the train, her phone beeped again, with a reply.

Love, like a river, will cut a new path

whenever it meets an obstacle.

She settled in her seat, too shaken up to think of a quote back. Instead she replied with a single x.

Then she stared bleakly out of the window at the chalk escarpment rising on either side of her as the train pulled out of the station. She was engulfed in icy, dark fear.

The interior of the Marriott Financial Center hotel had a cool, slightly Zen aura, Roy Grace thought, as he left the checkout desk and carried his bag across the foyer. And it all felt very fresh. Table lamps that looked like inverted opaque Martini glasses. Slim white vases on black tables, from which sprouted tall stems so elegant, so perfect, they seemed to have been designed rather than to have grown.

He found it hard to believe that this place, right on the edge of Ground Zero, had been badly damaged in 9/11. It felt important, solid, indestructible, as if it had always been here and always would be.

He walked past a cluster of businessmen in dark suits and ties, talking earnestly. Pat Lynch was waiting for him, standing on a red rug in the middle of the cream marble floor. He was dressed casually, in a sleeveless green flak jacket, over a black T-shirt, blue jeans and stout black shoes. Roy could see the bulge where his gun was.

Pat raised his hands. ‘All done and dusted? Dennis is parked up outside. We’re all set.’

Grace followed him into the revolving door. The world changed abruptly as he stepped out the other side into the damp, October morning. Traffic several lines deep trundled past. A cement mixer chuntered in front of him. A doorman, his elegance marred by a plastic shower cap over his peaked uniform cap, held open the door of a yellow cab for three Japanese businessmen.

As they walked a short distance along the pavement to the Crown Victoria, Dennis pointed up at a wide expanse of sky. It was bounded by a thin scattering of skyscrapers on one side and the much denser mass of downtown New York on the other. Steam or smoke poured from a low-rise green building that was shaped like a vent. Almost directly in front of them was what looked like a makeshift bridge across the street.

‘See that space, buddy?’ Pat said, pointing at the sky.

Grace nodded.

‘That’s where our towers were.’ He shot a glance at his watch. ‘Half an hour earlier than this, on the morning of 9/11, you’d have been looking at the World Trade Center. You wouldn’t have sky, you’d have seen those beautiful buildings.’

Then he walked Roy past the car to a street corner and pointed to the blackened hulk of a high-rise to his right, from which hung massive strips of some dark material covering the outside like giant black vertical Venetian blinds.