Dead Man's Footsteps

or sat in something?’
    Grace realized to his horror what the DS was driving at. ‘Oh, right, I apologize. I – just got back from a dog-training class. The little bugger threw up all over me in the car. I thought I’d managed to wash it off.’
    Bella Moy delved into her handbag and handed Grace a perfume spray. ‘This’ll drown it,’ she said.
    Grace hesitantly sprayed his trousers, shirt and jacket.
    ‘Now you smell like a bordello,’ Norman Potting commented.
    ‘Well, thank you very much,’ Bella said, glaring at him indignantly.
    ‘Not that I would know, of course,’ Potting mumbled,in a feeble attempt at retrieving the situation. Then he added, ‘I read recently that Koreans eat dogs.’
    ‘That’s quite enough, Norman,’ Roy Grace said sternly, returning to his typed agenda. ‘OK, Bella, first can you report on your findings so far about Joanna Wilson ever going to America? My guy hasn’t come up with anything.’
    ‘I contacted the officer in the New York District Attorney’s Office you suggested, Roy. He sent me an email an hour ago, saying that prior to 9/11 all immigration was handled by the Immigration and Naturalization Agency. It’s different since. They’re merged with US Customs and are now called Immigration Customs Enforcement. He says that unless she had gone in on a visa for an extended stay, there would be no records. He’s checked back through those for the 1990s and she doesn’t show up as having gone in on a visa, but he says there’s no way of finding out whether she ever went there or not.’
    ‘OK, thanks. E-J, how are you progressing with the family tree? Did you track down any of Joanna Wilson’s relatives?’
    ‘Well, she doesn’t seem to have had many. I’ve found a gay stepbrother – who’s a piece of work. He goes under the name of Mitzi Dufors, is nudging sixty, wears studded leather hot-pants and is covered in piercings. He does some kind of a drag act in a Brighton gay club. Didn’t have many flattering words to say about his late stepsister.’
    ‘You can’t trust middle-aged men in leather hot-pants,’ Norman Potting interjected.
    ‘Norman!’ Grace said, firing a warning shot across his bows.
    ‘You’re not exactly a fashion guru yourself, Norman,’ Bella retorted.
    ‘OK, both of you, enough!’ Grace said.
    Potting shrugged like a petulant child.
    ‘Anything else from her stepbrother?’
    ‘He said Joanna inherited a small house in Brentwood from her mother, about a year before she went to America. He reckoned she took the sale proceeds to fund her acting career there.’
    ‘We should try to find how much money was involved and what happened to it. Good work, E-J.’
    Grace made some notes, then moved on to Branson. ‘Glenn, did you and Bella get hold of the Klingers?’
    Branson grinned. ‘I think we got Stephen Klinger at a good time, after lunch – pissed as a fart and well chatty. Told us that no one liked Joanna Wilson much – she sounds like she was a real slapper. She gave Ronnie a right old song and dance, and no one cared too much when she ditched him – or so it seemed – and went off to the States. He confirmed that Ronnie had married again, after dutifully waiting out the legal period for desertion, to Lorraine. When Ronnie died she was inconsolable. What made it worse for her, if that’s possible, is that he left her up shit creek financially.’
    Grace made a note.
    ‘Her car got repossessed, then her house. Sounds like Wilson was a man of straw. Had nothing, no assets at all. His widow ended up getting evicted from her posh house in Hove and moved into a rented flat. Just over a year later, in November 2002, she left a suicide note and jumped off the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry.’ He paused. ‘We went and saw Mrs Klinger as well, but she more or less confirmed what her husband told us.’
    ‘Any of her relatives able to verify her state of mind?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Yeah, she’s got a sister who works as a hostess forBritish Airways. I just talked to her. She was at work and couldn’t really speak. I’ve got an appointment to see her tomorrow. But she also pretty well confirmed what Klinger said. Oh, yeah, and she said she took Lorraine to New York as soon as flights were running again. They spent a week traipsing around the city with a big photograph of Ronnie. Them and a million others.’
    ‘So she’s convinced Ronnie died in 9/11.’
    ‘No question,’ Glenn said. ‘He was at a meeting in the South