Dead Man's Footsteps

And the one-month payment in advance for her mother’s room at the Bexhill Lawns Rest House this morning hadn’t helped. She had enough credit left on her card to see her through a couple of months, if she holed up in a cheap hotelsomewhere. After that she would need to get at her resources. And to do that she had to evade Ricky.
    She thanked God for the sheer luck she hadn’t yet transferred them to her newly acquired safe-deposit box.
    She should have realized, from all she knew about Ricky, that he was a wizard with electronics. He’d boasted to her one night that he had front desk staff at half the top hotels in Melbourne and Sydney working for him, passing him the returned plastic room keys of guests who had checked out. Those keys contained their credit card details and their home addresses. He had a willing buyer for the information, he’d told her, and the scam, or rather, data service , as he liked to call it, netted him far more than his legitimate business.
    She let herself in the front entrance and walked along the corridor to her mother’s flat. She had rung her mother twice to check she was OK. The first time had been at about 10.30, when her mother told her the locksmith had rung to say he would be there by 11. And the second time was an hour ago, when she said the man was there.
    Abby was dismayed to discover that her key still unlocked the door. More worryingly, she saw no sign of any workman having been there at all. She called out anxiously, then hurried across the hallway and into the sitting room.
    To her astonishment, the carpet had been removed. The red carpet she remembered from her childhood, that she had cleaned the spilt rice pudding off yesterday, was gone. All that remained were some patches of worn-out underlay on top of bare, rough boards.
    For a moment her whole world skewed as she tried to make a connection between having new door locks and the need to take up a carpet. Something felt totally wrong.
    ‘Mum! Mum!!!!’ she called out, in case her mother was in the kitchen, or the loo, or the bedroom.
    Where was Doris? Hadn’t she promised to stay in her mother’s flat with her?
    She ran, in growing panic, into each room in turn. Then she rushed out of the flat, tore up the staircase two steps at a time and rang the bell of Doris’s flat. Then she knocked on the door with her fist as well.
    After what felt like an eternity, she heard the familiar rattle of the safety chain and, as before, the door opened a few inches. Doris, in her massive dark glasses, peered out warily, then gave her a welcoming smile and opened the door wider.
    ‘Hello, my dear!’
    Abby was instantly relieved by the cheeriness of the greeting and for an instant felt sure that Doris was going to say her mother was up here in her flat.
    ‘Oh, hi, I just wondered if you knew what was going on downstairs.’
    ‘With the locksmith?’
    So he had arrived. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, he’s getting on with the work, dear. He seems a very charming young man. Is anything wrong?’
    ‘You checked his ID, like I told you?’
    ‘Yes, dear, he had a card from the company. I had my magnifying lens with me to make sure I could read it. Lockworks, wasn’t it?’
    At that moment, Abby’s phone started ringing. She looked down at the display and saw it was her mother’s new number. She looked back at Doris.
    ‘It’s OK, thanks.’
    Doris raised a finger. ‘There’s something burning on the stove, dear. Pop back up if you need me.’
    Abby took the call as Doris closed the door.
    It was her mother’s voice. But it was all trembling and wrong, and breathless, as if she was reading from a script.
    ‘Abby,’ she said. ‘Ricky wants to speak to you. I’m going to put him on. Please do exactly what he tells you.’
    Then the line went dead.
    Abby frantically redialled. It went straight to voicemail. Then almost instantly she had another incoming call. The display read: Private number calling .
    It was Ricky.

88
OCTOBER 2007
    ‘Where’s my mother?’ Abby yelled into the phone before Ricky had a chance to speak. ‘Where is she, you bastard? WHERE IS SHE?’
    A door behind her opened and an elderly man peered out, then closed it again loudly.
    Distraught now, in retrospect, that she had been so stupid as to leave her mother with this old woman, Abby hurried to the relative privacy of the stairwell.
    ‘I want to speak to her now. Where is she?’
    ‘Your mother is fine, Abby,’ he said. ‘She’s as snug as a bug