Dead Man's Footsteps

any point since September 2001.
    There was something else, he suddenly remembered, surreptitiously pulling out his notebook and flicking back a couple of pages to the notes he had taken at his meeting with Terry Biglow, the list of Ronnie Wilson’s acquaintances and friends. Chad Skeggs , he had written down. Emigrated to Oz . As a result of what Branson had told him, and the likelihood that Ronnie Wilson was in Australia, he was going to make finding Chad Skeggs a priority for Potting and Nicholl.
    Patrick finally finished and went off to get Roy his own personal jug of Checker Cab. The three detectives each raised a glass.
    ‘Thanks for your time, guys, I appreciate it,’ Grace said. ‘And I’m buying.’
    ‘You’re in my cousin’s place,’ Pat said. ‘You don’t pay a dime.’
    ‘When you’re with us in New York, you’re our guest,’ Dennis said. ‘But shit, buddy, when we come to England you’d better take out a second mortgage!’
    They laughed.
    Then Pat looked sad suddenly. ‘You know, did I ever tell you that thing about 9/11, about the feelgood dogs?’
    Grace shook his head.
    ‘They had people bring dogs along – to the pile, you know, the Belly of the Beast. They were just for the workers there to stroke.’
    Dennis nodded, concurring. ‘That’s what they called ’em – feelgood dogs.’
    ‘Kind of like therapy,’ Pat said. ‘We were all finding such horrible things. They figured, we stroke the dogs, it’s a good feeling, contact with something living, something happy.’
    ‘You know, I think it worked,’ Dennis said. ‘That whole thing, 9/11, you know, it brought a lot of good out in people in this city.’
    ‘And it brought the scumbags out too,’ Pat reminded him. ‘At Pier 92 we were giving cash handouts between fifteen hundred and two and a half thousand bucks, depending on their needs, to help people in immediate hardship.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t take the scumbags long to hear about this. We had several came and scammed us, telling us they had lost family, when they hadn’t.’
    ‘But we got them,’ Dennis said with grim satisfaction. ‘We got ’em after. Took a while, but we got every damned one of them.’
    ‘But there was good that came out of it,’ Pat said. ‘It brought some heart and soul back to this city. I think people are a little kinder here now.’
    ‘And some people are a lot richer,’ Dennis said.
    Pat nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’
    Dennis chuckled suddenly. ‘Rachel, my wife, she’s got an uncle over in the Garment District. He has an embroidery business, makes stuff for the souvenir shops. I stopped by to see him a couple of weeks after 9/11. He’s this little Jewish guy, right, Hymie. He’s eighty-two years old, still works a fourteen-hour day. The nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. His family escaped the Holocaust, came out here. There isn’t anybody he wouldn’t help. Anyhow, I walk in there and I never saw the place so busy. Workers everywhere. T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, all piled up, people stitching, ironing, machining, bagging.’
    He sipped some beer and shook his head.
    ‘My uncle had had to take on extra staff. Couldn’t cope with all the orders. It was all Twin Towers commemorative stuff he was making. I asked him how it was going. He sat there in the middle of all this chaos and he looked at me with this little smile on his face and he said business was good, it had never been better.’ Dennis nodded, then gave a wry shrug, ‘You know what? There’s always a buck in tragedy.’

99
2 NOVEMBER 2001
    Lorraine lay in bed, wide awake. The sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed for her were about as effective as a double espresso.
    The television was on in the room, the shitty little portable that had been in the guest bedroom, the only one that hadn’t been repossessed by the bailiffs, as there wasn’t any money owing on it. There was an old film playing. She hadn’t caught the title, but she kept the set on all the time, as if the screen was wallpaper. She liked the light from it, the noises, the company.
    Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway were playing chess in a swish pad with moody lighting. There was a seriously erotic, charged atmosphere between them, with all kinds of nuances.
    She and Ronnie used to play games together. She recalled those early years, when they had been crazy about each other and did wild things sometimes. They played strip chess, and Ronnie always wiped her out, leaving her