Dead Man's Footsteps

her two thousand, three hundred and fifty pounds for the stamps. She took the money, in cash, in fifty-pound notes, and crammed them into her pockets.

105
OCTOBER 2007
    Abby walked out into the street in a daze. Her phone started ringing, but it was several moments before she even noticed.
    ‘Yes, hello?’ Abby blurted.
    It was Ricky. She could barely hear him as traffic roared past. ‘Wait,’ she said, hurrying down the street through the rain until she saw a covered doorway. Ducking into it, she said, ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’
    ‘I’m worried about your mum.’
    It took her a moment to be able to reply. To swallow the sob back down her gullet. To slow her breathing down.
    ‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Tell me where she is, Ricky, or bring her back to me.’
    ‘She needs her medication, Abby.’
    ‘I’ll get it. Just tell me where to bring it.’
    ‘It’s not that simple.’
    A bus stopped in a line of traffic right in front of her. Its engine made it too noisy to speak or hear. She stepped out into the rain again, hurried back up the street and ducked into another shop entrance. She didn’t like the way he said not that simple .
    She had a sudden, terrible panic that her mother was dead. Had the spasm killed her, since they had spoken just a short while ago?
    She began crying, she couldn’t help it. The shock of what she had read and now this. She was so far out of her depth.
    ‘Is she all right? Please just tell me if she’s all right.’
    ‘No, she’s not all right.’
    ‘But she’s alive.’
    ‘For the moment.’
    Then he ended the call.
    ‘No!’ she cried out. ‘No! Please!’
    She stood leaning against the front door of the shop, not caring whether anyone inside was looking at her or not, rain and tears stinging her eyes, almost blinding her. But not so much that she didn’t see a small brown car drive slowly past.
    There were two men inside, the one in the passenger seat on his phone. Both men had short hair: one was totally shaven, the other had a crew cut. Military types. Or police types.
    They looked at her the same way as the two men she had seen drive past in the blue car, before she had gone into Hawkes. Her time on the run had sharpened her awareness of everything around her. Something just felt wrong about these two cars.
    Each with the passenger on his phone.
    Each looking in her direction as they drove past.
    Had Hugo Hegarty phoned the police? Was she under surveillance?
    Both cars were in heavy traffic southbound. Were there any others? Northbound? On foot?
    She stared wildly in every direction, then sprinted north, ducking left down an alley and easing past a row of stinking dustbins. Across the next street she saw an alley running up between two houses. She shot a glance overher shoulder but could see no one following, so dashed into that narrow space. The rain was easing a little. Her brain was racing. She knew this area like the back of her hand, because for a time, in her previous incarnation, she had lived in a flat near the Seven Dials.
    She ran fast, checking every few steps that the package was still firmly at her midriff and that the money was safely wedged in her pockets, then checking over her shoulder. She sped up a tree-lined street of terraced houses, with few people out and about in this horrible weather to notice her. The exercise and the pattering of rain on her face helped to clear her head a little.
    Helped her to think.
    Abby headed uphill, towards the Dials, then turned right, along another residential street, and emerged above the station. Standing back, out of sight from the road, she watched several cars and commercial vehicles go past, then dashed across Buckingham Road and into another street directly above the station. She ran down that, and again, being careful to wait, crossed another main road, New England Street, and ran on uphill again, through a maze of terraced residential streets and forests of estate agents’ boards.
    She got a stitch and stopped for some moments, then carried on at walking pace, gulping down air, perspiring heavily. The rain had stopped almost completely now and there was a strong breeze, which felt good and cooling on her face.
    She was thinking clearly now, more clearly than for some hours, as if the shock of what she had seen in the Argus had rebooted her clogged hard drive. Striding purposefully, she kept to the back streets, checking behind her constantly for any sign of a blue or a brown car, orany