Peter James - Dead Man’s Footsteps

She answered it on the in-car speaker plugged into the cigarette lighter which the police had given her so they could hear any conversation.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Where the fuck are you? You’re late.’

‘I’m only a few minutes away, Ricky. It’s not 10.30 yet.’ Then she added nervously, ‘Is it?’

‘I told you, she goes over the fucking edge at 10.30.’

‘Ricky, please, I’m coming. I’ll be there.’

‘You’d fucking better.’

Suddenly, to her relief, the Alfa’s left-turn signal started flashing and it pulled over into a lay-by. She increased her speed to more than she was comfortable with.

Inside the Alfa, Roy Grace watched the black Honda accelerate off up the winding road. Cassian Pewe, in the front passenger seat, said into his secure phone, ‘Target One has just gone past. Two miles from zone.’

The voice of the local Silver commander – the senior officer running the operation – replied, ‘Target Two just made contact with her. Proceed to Position Four.’

‘Proceeding to Position Four,’ Pewe confirmed back. He looked down at the Ordnance Survey map on his knees. ‘OK,’ he said to Grace. ‘Move on as soon as she is out of sight.’

Grace put the car in gear. As the Honda crested a hill and vanished, he accelerated.

Pewe checked the transmit button was off, then turned to his colleague. ‘Roy, you know, it is true what the Chief Super said. I was only doing it to protect you.’

‘From what?’ Grace said acidly.

‘Innuendo is corrosive. There is nothing worse than suspicion in a police force.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘If that’s what you believe, then I’m sorry. I don’t want to fall out over this.’

‘Oh, really? I don’t know what your agenda is, to be frank. For some reason, you think I murdered my wife, don’t you? Do you honestly think I would have buried her in my back garden? That’s why you were having it scanned, wasn’t it? For her remains?’

‘I was having it scanned to prove she wasn’t there. To end the speculation.’

‘I don’t think so, Cassian.’

Abby drove up the headland. To her right was open grassland, with a few clusters of bushes and one dense copse of short trees, ending in chalk cliffs and a vertical drop to the English Channel. One of the sheerest, highest and most certain drops in the whole of the British Isles. To her left, there was an almost uninterrupted view over miles of open farmland. She could see the road threading through it into the distance. The tarmac was an intense black, with crisp broken white lines down the centre. It looked as if it had all been freshly painted for her today.

Detective Sergeant Branson had told her earlier that Ricky had made a mistake choosing this location, but at this moment she could not see how. It struck her as a clever choice. From wherever he was, Ricky would be able to see anything that moved in any direction.

Maybe the detective had just said it to reassure her. And she sure as hell needed that at this moment.

She could see a building about half a mile away on her left, at almost the highest point of the headland, with what looked like a pub or hotel sign on a pole. As she got nearer she saw the red-tiled roof and flint walls. Then she could read the sign.

BEACHY HEAD HOTEL.

Drive into the car park of the Beachy Head Hotel and wait for me to contact you, were his instructions. At exactly 10.30.

The place looked deserted. There was a glass bus shelter with a blue and white sign in front of it, on which was written in large lettering: THE SAMARITANS. ALWAYS THERE DAY OR NIGHT, with two phone numbers beneath. Just beyond was an orange and yellow ice-cream van, which had its sales window open, and a short distance further on there was a British Telecom truck, with two men in hard hats and high-visibility jackets carrying out work on a radio mast. Two small cars were parked by the rear entrance to the hotel; she assumed these belonged to staff.

She turned left and pulled up at the far end of the car park, then switched off the engine. Moments later, her phone rang.

‘Good,’ Ricky said. ‘Well done! Scenic route, isn’t it?’

The car was rocking in the wind.

‘Where are you?’ she said, looking around in every direction. ‘Where’s my mother?’

‘Where are my stamps?’

‘I have them.’

‘I have your mother. She’s enjoying the view.’

‘I want to see her.’

‘I want to see the stamps.’

‘Not until I know my mother is all right.’

‘I’ll put her on the phone.’

There was a silence. She heard the wind blowing. Then her mother’s voice, as weak and quavering as a ghost’s.

‘Abby?’

‘Mum!’

‘Is that you, Abby?’ Her mother started crying. ‘Please, please, Abby. Please.’

‘I’m coming to get you, Mum. I love you.’

‘Please let me have my pills. I must have my pills. Please, Abby, why won’t you let me have them?’

It hurt Abby almost too much to listen to her. Then Ricky spoke again.

‘Start your engine. I’m going to stay on the line.’

She started the car.

‘Accelerate, I want to hear the engine running.’

She did what he said. The diesel clattered loudly.

‘Now drive out of the car park and turn right. In fifty yards you’ll see a track off to the left, up to the headland itself. Turn on to it.’

She made the sharp left turn, the car lurching on the bumpy surface. The wheels spun for an instant as they lost traction on the loose gravel and mud, then they were up on the grass. Now she realized why Ricky had been so specific in instructing her to rent an off-roader. Although she did not understand why he had been so concerned it should be diesel. Fuel economy could scarcely have been something on his mind at this moment. To her right she saw a warning sign that said CLIFF EDGE.

‘You see a clump of trees and bushes ahead of you?’

There was a dense copse about a hundred yards in front of her, right on a downward slope at the cliff edge. The bushes and trees had been bent by the wind.

‘Yes.’

‘Stop the car.’

She stopped.

‘Put the handbrake on. Leave the engine running. Just keep looking. We are in here. I have the rear wheels right on the edge of the cliff. If you do anything I don’t like, I’m throwing her straight back in the van and releasing the handbrake. Do you understand that?’

Abby’s throat was so tight it was a struggle to get her voice out. ‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t hear you.’

‘I said, yes. ’

She heard a roar, like wind blowing on a phone. A dull thud. Then there was movement in the copse. Ricky appeared first, in his baseball cap and beard, wearing a heavy fleece jacket. Then Abby’s heart was in her mouth as she saw the tiny, frail figure of her bewildered-looking mother, still in the pink dressing gown she had been wearing when Abby had last seen her.

The wind rippled the gown, blew all her wispy grey and white hair up in the air so it trailed from her head like ribbons of cigarette smoke. She was rocking on her feet, with Ricky gripping her arm, holding her upright.

Abby stared through the windscreen, through a mist of tears. She would do anything, anything, anything at all, to get her mother back in her arms at this moment.

And to kill Ricky.

She wanted to floor the accelerator and drive straight at him now, smash him to pulp.

They were disappearing back into the trees. He was jerking her mother along roughly, as she half walked, half tripped into the copse. The shrubbery was closing like fog around them.

Abby gripped the door handle, almost unable to stop herself from getting out of the car and running across to them. But she hung on, scared of his threat and now even more convinced that he would kill her mother, and enjoy doing so.