Dead Man's Footsteps

As he suspected, the bitch had ditched her phone. Which meant she now had a new one.
    You are really trying my patience .
    And where are you?
    A speed camera flashed at him, but he didn’t give a toss. Where had she gone in that hour? What had she used the time for?
    A few miles on, the taxi turned off, but he barely noticed. He was driving along Marine Parade now, passing the elegant Regency façades of Sussex Square. In a minute he would be approaching Abby’s street. He pulled over to the side, stopped the car and killed the engine, needing to think this through carefully.
    Where had she hidden the stash? She didn’t need much space. Just enough room to conceal an A4 envelope. The package she’d tried to send via the courier was a decoy. Why? To get him to follow the courier? So she could retrieve it and disappear? He’d made a big error, he realized, sending her that text. His intention had been to flush her out, but he had not reckoned on her being so devious.
    But the fact she had tried to send the decoy package told him something, when he added that together with the empty deposit box. Had she been hoping that he would follow the decoy, leaving her free to run with the package and put it in the safe-deposit box at Southern Deposit Security? Why else would it be empty? The only possible reason, surely, was that she hadn’t been able to get the package to the place yet. Or that she had recently withdrawn it.
    Unless she had another deposit box somewhere else, it was most likely still somewhere in her flat.
    He’d spent the night going through her belongings, including all her clothes that he had removed. He’d also taken her passport, which would at least stop the bitch from getting out of the country in a hurry.
    Surely if there was another deposit box somewhere he’d have found the key or a receipt? He’d searched every damn inch of the flat, moved all the furniture, levered up every loose floorboard. He’d even taken the backs off the televisions, ripped open the soft furnishings, unscrewed the ventilation grilles, dismantled the light fittings. From his days of dealing in drugs, he knew just how thoroughly police would take a place apart, and all the kinds of hiding places a smart dealer would use.
    Another possible option was that she had left it with a friend. But the name on the package she’d given to the courier was a dummy, he’d checked that one out. He suspected she had been avoiding contacting anyone here. If she hadn’t even told her mother she was back, he doubted she would want word to get out among her friends.
    No, he was becoming increasingly convinced that she still had it all in the flat.
    Despite all her clever ploys, as Ricky well knew, everyone has an Achilles heel. Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link. An army can only march as fast as its slowest soldier.
    Abby’s mother was both her weak link and her slowest soldier.
    Now he knew exactly what he had to do.
    The Renault van outside Abby’s flat, which had not been driven in a while, was reluctant to start. Then, just as thebattery started fading and he was beginning to think this was not going to work, it fired and spluttered into oily, smoky life.
    He drove it out of the parking space and replaced it with the rental Ford. Now, when Abby came back here, she would spot the car and think he was in there. He smiled. For the immediate future she would not be entering the flat. There was no residents’ parking sticker on the rental car, so it would probably be given a ticket at some point, and maybe get clamped, but what the hell did that matter?
    He removed the GSM 3060 Intercept from the Ford and put it in the van. Then he drove off back towards Eastbourne, stopping only to pick up a takeaway burger and a Coke. He felt happier now. Confident that he was close to having the situation back under control.

78
OCTOBER 2007
    At 6.30 p.m. the fourth briefing meeting of Operation Dingo commenced. But as Roy Grace began reading his summary to his assembled team, he hesitated, noticing that Glenn Branson was staring at him a bit strangely and twitching his nostrils, as if he was trying to send him a signal.
    ‘Is there a problem?’ Grace asked him.
    Then he noticed several of the others gathered around the work station seemed to be looking at him strangely too.
    ‘You smell a bit fruity, boss,’ Glenn said. ‘If you don’t mind me being personal. Not your usual brand of cologne, if you get my drift. Have you stood