Dead Man's Footsteps

  Don’t look down, he thought to himself.

  He kicked his toe into the side of the hill and got a small, slippery purchase. Then he found another branch. He was level with the grimy, partly buckled chassis of his car now. The wheels had stopped spinning and the car was rocking like a see-saw.

  ‘Cassian, where the hell are you?’ he shouted, trying not to look down below the car.

  The wind instantly ripped his words away.

  Pewe’s voice was muffled with terror. ‘Underneath. I can see you. Please hurry!’

  Suddenly, to Roy’s shock, the branch he was holding on to gave way. For one terrible moment he thought he was going to tumble backwards. Frantically he lunged out for another branch and grabbed it, but it snapped. He was falling, sliding down past the car. Sliding towards the grassy lip and the sheer drop. He grabbed another branch, which was covered in sharp leaves that slid through the palm of his hand, burning it, but it was young, springy and tough. It held, almost jerking his arm off. Then he found another one with his left hand and clung to it for dear life. To his relief, it was sturdier.

  He heard Pewe screaming again.

  Saw a massive shadow above him. It was his car. Perched twenty feet above him, like a platform. Rocking precariously. And Pewe was suspended upside down from the passenger door, his feet entangled in the webbing of his seat belt, which was all that prevented him from falling.

  Grace glanced down and immediately wished he hadn’t. He was right on the edge of the sheer drop. He stared for an instant at the water pounding the rocks. Felt the deadweight pull of gravity on his arms and the savage, relentless wind tearing at him. One slip. Just one slip.

  Panting, terrified, he started to kick out a toehold with his right foot. The branch in his right hand suddenly moved a fraction. He kicked harder at the wet, chalky soil and after some moments he had made a space big enough to jam his foot in and take his weight.

  Pewe screamed again.

  He would try to help him in a moment. But first he had to try to save his own life. He wasn’t going to be of any help to either of them dead.

  ‘Royyyyyyyyyyyyyy!’

  He kicked with his left foot, digging that in too. After a short while, with both feet planted, he felt a little better, though not exactly secure.

  ‘I’m falling. Royyyyyyyy! Oh, God, get me out of here. Please don’t let me fall. Don’t let me die.’

  Roy craned his neck up, taking his time on every movement, until he could see Pewe’s face about ten feet above him.

  ‘Keep calm!’ he called out. ‘Try not to move.’

  He heard a loud crack as a branch gave way. His eyes shot up and he saw the car lurch. It dropped several inches, swaying even more precariously now. Shit. The whole fucking thing was going to crash down on top of him.

  Gingerly, inch by careful inch, he pulled his radio out, terrified of dropping it, and called for assistance. He was given reassurance that it was already on its way, that a rescue helicopter was being crewed up.

  Jesus. That will take an age.

  ‘Please don’t let me die!’ Pewe sobbed.

  He looked up again, carefully studying the webbing as best he could. It appeared well tangled around his colleague’s feet. The wind held the buckled passenger door open. Then he looked at the way the car was rocking. It was too much. The branches were straining, cracking, breaking. It was a terrible sound. How much longer would they hold? When they gave, the car would toboggan on its roof down the slope, which was as steep as a ski-jump ramp, and straight over the sheer drop.

  Pewe was making it worse by bending his body every few moments, trying to reach upwards, but he had no chance.

  ‘Cassian, stop wriggling,’ he yelled, his voice nearly hoarse. ‘Try to keep still. I need help to lift you. I daren’t do it myself. I don’t want to risk dislodging the car.’

  ‘Please don’t let me die, Roy!’ Pewe cried, squirming like a hooked fish.

  Another fierce gust blew. Grace clung to the branches, his jacket filling with wind, pulling like a sail, making it even harder for him. For several moments, until the gust eased, he didn’t dare move a muscle.

  ‘You won’t let me die, will you, Roy?’ Pewe pleaded.

  ‘You know what, Cassian?’ Grace shouted back. ‘I’m actually more concerned about my bloody car.’

  120

  OCTOBER 2007

  Grace sipped some coffee. It was 8.30 on Monday morning and they had just begun the fifteenth briefing of Operation Dingo. He had a sticking plaster on his forehead, covering a gash which had required five stitches, blister pads on the palms of both hands, and there wasn’t a bone in his body that wasn’t hurting.

  ‘Someone said you’re going to be tackling Everest next, Roy,’ quipped one of the DCs present.

  ‘Yes, and Detective Superintendent Pewe’s applying for a job as a circus high-wire act,’ Roy replied, unable to keep the smirk off his face.

  But deep down, he was still very badly shaken. And in truth there wasn’t a lot to smile about. Fine, they had Chad Skeggs banged up in the custody block. Abby Dawson and her mother were safe, and by a miracle no one had been seriously injured on Friday. But that was all a sideshow. They were investigating the murder of two women and their prime suspect could be anywhere. Even if he was still in Australia, he could be using yet another completely different identity by now, and, as he had already demonstrated, new identities did not seem to be a problem for Ronnie Wilson.

  There was just one ray of sunshine.

  ‘We’ve had something of a result in Melbourne,’ he continued. ‘I spoke to Norman earlier this morning. They’ve interviewed a woman today who claims to have been a close friend of Maggie Nelson, the woman we believe to be Lorraine Wilson.’

  ‘How certain are we that Ronnie and Lorraine Wilson became David and Margaret Nelson, Roy?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Melbourne police have dug up a ton of stuff from the drivers’

  licensing offices, the tax office and the immigration services. It all seems to fit together. I’m getting a report faxed over, probably tonight.’

  Bella made a note, then plucked a Malteser from the box in front of her.

  Looking at his notes, Grace went on, ‘This woman’s name is Maxine Porter. Her ex-husband’s a mobster, currently on trial on a whole raft of tax-evasion and money-laundering charges, and looking at a long sentence. She got dumpedby him for ayounger woman just over a year ago, about three months before he was arrested, so she was happy doing the woman scorned bit, and talking. According to her, David Nelson appeared on the scene round about Christmas 2001. It was Chad Skeggs who introduced him to that particular pleasant circle of friends, which seemed to include the whole of the Melbourne A-list crime fraternity. And Nelson apparently carved out a niche for himself dealing stamps with them.’

  ‘How sweet is that?’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Here in England our gangsters knife and shoot each other, while in Australia they swap stamps.’

  Everyone grinned.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Grace said. ‘There’ve been thirty-seven gangland shootings in Melbourne in the past decade. It has a pretty dark underbelly, like a lot of places.’

  Like Brighton and Hove actually, he thought.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he continued, ‘Lorraine – sorry, I mean Maggie Nelson – confided in her new best friend that her husband was having an affair and she didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t happy in Australia, but said she and her husband had burned their bridges in the UK and couldn’t go back. I think it’s significant that she said it was both of them, not just one or the other of them.’

  ‘When was this, Roy?’ Emma-Jane Boutwood asked.

  ‘Some time between June 2004 and April 2005. The two women talked a lot, apparently. Both of them with husbands having affairs, they had plenty in common.’

  He drank some more coffee and looked down at his notes again. ‘Then, in June 2005, Maggie Nelson vanished. She didn’t turn up for a lunch date with Maxine Porter, and when Ma
xine phoned, David Nelson told her his wife had left him. Packed and gone back to England.’

  ‘There seems to be a pattern emerging, doesn’t there?’ Lizzie Mantle said. ‘He tells his friends in England that his first wife, Joanna, has gone off to America. Then he tells his friends in Australia that his second has gone back to England. And all their friends believed him!’

  ‘This one didn’t apparently,’ Grace said.

  ‘So why didn’t she go to the police?’ Bella asked. ‘She must have been suspicious, surely?’

  ‘Because in her world people don’t go to the police,’ Lizzie Mantle said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Grace confirmed with a wry smile at the DI. ‘And the criminal fraternity over there is even more male-dominated than it is here. They’re interviewing her again tomorrow, when she’s going to give a list of all the Nelsons’ friends and acquaintances out there.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Bella said, taking another Malteser. ‘But if he’s legged it abroad—’

  ‘I know,’ Grace said. ‘But we might find out where his favourite haunts abroad are, or if he had any hankering for some particular sunny fleshpot.’

  ‘I’ve got some thoughts on that,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Well, Bella and me have.’

  ‘OK. Tell us.’

  ‘We interviewed Skeggs quite extensively on Friday and on Saturday, and we took a statement from Abby Dawson at her mother’s flat in Eastbourne yesterday morning. We also returned her stamps to her, which we recovered from Skeggs’s vehicle – I took the precaution of copying them first, so we have a record. She also signed the paperwork agreeing to produce the stamps as an exhibit, if necessary, and not dispose of them.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ DI Mantle said.

  ‘Thank you. Now, here’s the thing. Bella and me don’t feel we’re getting the truth from Abby Dawson. We’re getting what she wants us to hear. I’m not happy about her story of where she got the stamps. She’s maintaining she inherited them from an aunt in

  Sydney by the name of – ’ he flipped back through his notes, then found the page – ‘Anne Jennings. We’re getting that checked out. But it doesn’t tally with what Skeggs said.’

  ‘And we know that he is a principled man who always tells the truth,’ Grace said.

  ‘I’d trust him with my last five-pound note,’ Glenn said, returning the sarcasm. ‘Which is probably all anyone would have left after doing business with him. He’s a seriously nasty piece of work. But there’s a connection to Ronnie, that’s what this is all about, I’m certain.’ He looked around.

  Grace nodded for him to go on.

  ‘Hugo Hegarty is certain that these are the stamps he bought for Lorraine Wilson.’

  ‘But not so certain he’d swear on it in a court of law, is he?’ Lizzie Mantle interjected.

  ‘No, and that could be a problem down the line,’ Branson replied. ‘Some of the single ones have postmarks – he can’t swear they are the same as the ones on the stamps he acquired for Lorraine Wilson back in 2002, because he didn’t keep a record of the postmarks. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to get involved.’

  ‘Why not?’ Grace questioned.

  ‘All the dealings were done in cash. I suspect he doesn’t want to raise his head above the parapet and attract the interest of the Inland Revenue, on top of the police.’

  Grace nodded; that made sense. ‘And how strong a claim to them does Skeggs have?’

  ‘Skeggs was effing and blinding about Abby Dawson having stolen his stamps, saying that was the reason he took her mother, it was the only thing he could think of doing that would bring her to her senses,’ Glenn Branson replied.

  ‘He never tried just asking nicely for them back?’

  Branson smiled. ‘I asked him if that was the case, if he wanted to press charges against her for theft. Then he went all quiet. Surprise, surprise. Started muttering about issues, but he was evasive when we tried to push this line. He said he would have problems demonstrating title to them. Then at one point he blurted out that Dave Nelson had put her up to this. But we couldn’t get any more out of him on that. That’s why for now, despite our reservations, we’ve had to let Abby have the stamps back. Until there is evidence that a theft has taken place here or in Australia.’

  ‘Very interesting he said that,’ Grace commented.

  ‘Know what I think?’ Branson said. ‘That there’s some kind of love triangle going on here. That’s what this is about.’

  ‘Do you want to expand on that?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I can’t, not at the moment. But that’s what I reckon.’

  Thinking out aloud, Grace said, ‘If David Nelson – Ronnie Wilson – did put her up to this, it’s very significant.’

  ‘We’ll keep pressing Skeggs, but his brief’s keeping him quite well bottled up,’ Glenn said.

  ‘What about putting more surveillance on her?’ DC Boutwood suggested.

  Grace shook his head. ‘Too costly. I’m thinking that David Nelson may well have left Australia, if he has any sense. He won’t risk showing his face in England. So my bet is that Abby Dawson will go to meet him somewhere. We put out an all-ports on her. If she buys an air ticket or turns up at a passport control, then we’ll follow her.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Glenn Branson said.

  DI Mantle nodded. ‘I agree.’

  121

  NOVEMBER 2007

  It was one of those all too rare autumn days when England looked at its very best. Abby stared out of the window at the clear blue sky and the morning sun that was low but warm on her face.

  Two floors below in the manicured gardens, a gardener was at work with some kind of outdoor vacuum cleaner, hoovering up leaves. An elderly man in a crisp mackintosh walked slowly and jerkily around the perimeter of the ornamental pond, which was stocked with koi carp, prodding the ground ahead of him with his Zimmer frame as if wary of landmines. A little white-haired lady sat on a bench on the highest part of the terraced lawns, parcelled up in a quilted coat, studying a page of the Daily Telegraph intently.

  The Bexhill Lawns Rest Home was more expensive than the home she had originally budgeted for, but it was able to accommodate her mother right away and, hey, who was counting the cost now?

  Besides, it was a joy to see her mother looking so happy here and so well. It was hard to believe that two weeks ago today, Abby had entered that van and looked down at her bewildered face sticking out of the rolled-up carpet. She seemed a new person now, with a new lease of life. As if, somehow, all she had been through had strengthened her.

  Abby turned to look at her. She had the same lump in her throat that was always there when she was saying goodbye to her mother. Always scared it would be the last time she saw her.

  Mary Dawson sat on the two-seater sofa in the large, well-appointed room, filling in a form in one of her competition magazines. Abby walked across, laid a hand tenderly on her shoulder and looked down.

  ‘What are you trying to win?’ she asked, her voice choked as their last, precious minutes together were ticking away. Her taxi would be here soon.

  ‘A fortnight for two in a luxury hotel in Mauritius!’

  ‘But Mum, you don’t even have a passport!’ Abby chided her good-humouredly.

  ‘I know, dear, but you could easily get me one if I needed one, couldn’t you?’ She gave her daughter a strange look.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Smiling like an impish child, she replied, ‘You know exactly what I mean, dear.’

  Abby blushed. Her mother had always been sharp as a tack. She’d never been able to hide anything from her for long, right from earliest childhood.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ her mother added. ‘I’m not going anywhere. There’s a cash prize as an alternative.’

  ‘I’d love you to get a passport,’ Abby said, sitting on the sofa, putting an arm around her frail shoulders and kissing her on the cheek. ‘I’d love you to join me.’

  ‘Where?’

  Abby shrugged. ‘Wh
en I get settled somewhere.’

  ‘And have me turn up and cramp your style?’

  Abby gave a wistful laugh. ‘You wouldn’t ever cramp my style.’

  ‘Your dad and I, we were never much ones for travelling. When your late aunt, Anne, moved to Sydney all those years ago, she kept telling us how wonderful it was and that we should move out there. But your dad always felt his roots were here. And mine are too. But I’m proud of you, Abby. My mother used to say that one mother could support seven children, but seven children could never support one mother. You’ve proved her wrong.’

  Abby fought back her tears.

  ‘I’m really proud of you. There’s not much more a mother could ask of a daughter. Except maybe one thing.’ She gave her a quizzical look.

  ‘What?’ Abby smiled at her, knowing what was coming.

  ‘Babies?’

  ‘Maybe one day. Who knows. Then you’d have to get a passport and come and be with me.’

  Her mother looked down at her entry form again for some moments. ‘No,’ she said, and shook her head firmly. Then she put down her pen, took her daughter’s hand with her own bony, liver-spotted fingers and squeezed it tightly.

  Abby was surprised by her strength.

  ‘Always remember one thing, Abby dear, if you ever decide to become a parent. First you give your children roots. Then you give them wings.’

  122

  NOVEMBER 2007

  An hour and a half after leaving her mother, Abby pulled the suitcase containing almost everything she was taking with her from Brighton along the platform of Gatwick Station, and up the escalator into the arrivals area. Then she deposited it at the left-luggage baggage storage.

  Carrying with her only the Jiffy bag that Detective Sergeant Branson had returned to her on Saturday, which was inside a carrier bag, and her handbag, she walked up to the easyJet ticket counter and joined a short queue. It was midday.