Dead Man's Footsteps

might need, then logged on to the internet and looked up cheap hotels in Brighton and Hove.
    When she had made her choice, she phoned for another taxi.

97
OCTOBER 2007
    The old woman was turning out to be more of a problem than Ricky had imagined. He stood in the tiny kitchenette area of the wooden building that served as the tennis club pavilion, toilet and shower facility for the campsite.
    She’d been in the bloody toilet for over fifteen minutes now.
    He stepped out of the door, into the pouring rain, beginning to think that killing her might be the best option, and peered across the field, anxiously, at the Dutch camper van. The lights were on behind drawn curtains. He just hoped to hell they didn’t decide to come and use these facilities while she was in here. Although he was confident she was scared enough of his threats not to say anything to anyone, or do anything stupid.
    Another five minutes passed. He glanced at his watch again. It was 9.30. Three hours since Abby had hung up on him. Three hours in which she would have been thinking about what had happened. Coming to her senses?
    Now would be a good moment, he decided.
    He flipped open the lid of his phone and texted Abby the photograph he had taken a little earlier, of her mother’s head poking out of the top of the carpet roll.
    He sent the words with it:
    Snug as a bug in rug .

98
OCTOBER 2007
    Roy sat with Pat and Dennis at a wooden table in the restaurant area of the huge, open-plan Chelsea Brewing Company, which was owned by Pat’s cousin. To his right was a long wooden bar, and behind him were rows of gleaming copper vats as tall as houses, and miles of stainless-steel and aluminium piping and tubing. With its acres of wooden flooring and immaculate cleanliness, it had the feel more of a museum than a busy working enterprise.
    Visiting had become a ritual, a compulsory wateringhole stop during every trip Roy made to New York. Pat was clearly proud of his cousin’s success and enjoyed giving an Englishman a run for his money with American-brewed beer.
    There were six different varieties in sampler glasses in front of each of the three police officers. The glasses were positioned on a round blue spot on the specially designed table mat that gave the names of the beers. Pat’s cousin, also called Patrick, a stocky, bespectacled and intense man in his forties, was talking Roy through the different brewing processes for each one.
    Roy was only half listening. He was tired; it was late according to UK time now. Today had yielded nothing – just one blank after another. Apart from the successful purchaseof a precocious-looking Bratz for his god-daughter. In his view the doll looked like a Barbie that was working in the sex trade. But, as he reflected, what did he know about the tastes of nine-year-olds?
    The hotel manager of the W had little to add to what Grace already knew other than, for what it was worth, Ronnie had watched a pay-per-view porn movie at 11 o’clock that last night.
    And no one at any of the seven stamp dealers they had visited this afternoon had recognized either Wilson’s name or his photograph.
    As Pat’s cousin intoned on about the science behind the beer Roy liked best, Checker Cab Blond Ale, he stared out of the window into the night. He could see the rigging of yachts in the marina and further, beyond the darkness of the Hudson, the lights of New Jersey. It was so vast, this city. So many people coming and going. Live here, like any big city, and you’d see thousands of faces every day. How likely was it that he could find anyone who would remember one face from six years back?
    But he had to try. Knocking on doors. The good old-fashioned-policing way. The chances of Ronnie being here were slim. More likely he was in Australia – certainly the latest evidence pointed that way. He tried to do a quick calculation of the time zones in his head, while Patrick moved on to explaining how the subtle caramel flavours of Sunset Red Ale were achieved.
    It was 7 o’clock in the evening. Melbourne was ten hours ahead of the UK, so how many did that make it ahead of New York, which was five hours ahead – no – behind the UK? Christ, the calculation was doing his head in.
    And all the time he kept nodding politely at Patrick.
    It was fifteen hours ahead, he worked out. Mid-morning. Hopefully, ahead of Norman and Nick’s visit, the Melbourne police would make a start on checking whether Ronnie Wilson had entered Australia at