Dead Man's Footsteps

name if and when he went to Australia. Maybe by then he had become yet another person.
    But an hour later, as they were about to enter the slateblue and grey Medical Examiner’s Office, Glenn Branson phoned, sounding excited. ‘We have a development!’
    ‘Tell me?’
    ‘I said earlier that we’d lost Katherine Jennings, right? That she gave the surveillance team the slip. Well, get this. She walked into John Street Police Station an hour ago.’
    The words were like an electric shock. ‘What? Why?’
    ‘She says her mother’s been kidnapped. A sick little old lady. A guy’s threatening to kill her.’
    ‘Have you spoken to her?’
    ‘A CID officer spoke to her down there – and discovered the man she is accusing of the kidnap is none other than Chad Skeggs.’
    ‘Shit!’
    ‘I thought you’d like it.’
    ‘So what’s happening now?’
    ‘I’ve sent Bella, along with a Family Liaison Officer, Linda Buckley, to bring her up here. I’m going to see her with Bella when she gets here.’
    ‘Call me as soon as you’ve spoken to her.’
    ‘What time are you flying back?’
    ‘Leaving at 6 o’clock – that’s 11 o’clock tonight your time.’
    Branson’s voice changed suddenly. ‘Old-timer, I might need to crash at your place tonight. Ari’s doing her tank. I didn’t get home until midnight last night.’
    ‘Tell her you’re a police officer, not a fucking babysitter!’
    ‘You tell her. Want me to call her, put her on the line?’
    ‘The key’s in the usual place,’ Grace said hastily.

107
OCTOBER 2007
    Abby’s phone remained silent. It seemed that her lifeline to the world had flat-lined. It was almost three hours since she had heard from Ricky.
    She stared bleakly out of the window of the empty railway carriage, clutching the plastic bag into which she had scooped all the medicines she could find in her mother’s bathroom and bedroom. She told Doris that she was putting her mother in a rest home because she was worried about her ability to look after herself, and that she would phone her with her mother’s new address and phone number. Doris said she was sad to lose her neighbour, but that her mum was lucky to have such a lovely, caring daughter to look after her.
    Some irony, Abby thought.
    More and more of the sky was turning blue. Large clouds scudded across it as if they were on some urgent mission. It was becoming a fine, blustery autumn afternoon. The kind of weather in which she loved walking along the seafront, particularly the under-cliff walk at Black Rock, past the Marina and towards Rottingdean.
    Her mother used to enjoy that walk too. Sometimes, they would do it as a family on a Sunday afternoon, her mother, her father and herself. She loved it when the tide was in, waves exploding on the groynes and sometimessmashing up against the sea wall itself, hurling spray over them.
    And there was a time, somewhere back there in the mists of her childhood, that she remembered she had felt content. Was that before she had started going with her father to the big houses he did work in? Before she saw there were people who were different, who had lives that were different?
    Was it then? Her personal tipping point?
    In the distance to her left she could see the soft hills of the Downs as the train headed back towards Brighton. To where so many memories of her life lay. Where her friends still lived. Friends who didn’t know she was here. Whom she would have loved to see. More than ever she craved the company of her friends now. To pour her heart out to someone not involved in all this. Someone who could think clearly and tell her whether she was mad or not. But it was too late for that, she feared.
    Friends were the one part of life that was not a game. But sometimes it was necessary to discard them, however hard that was.
    Her eyes started watering. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d eaten nothing all day except for the one digestive biscuit at Hugo Hegarty’s house, and she’d drunk a Coke on Gatwick Station platform a short while ago. She was too knotted up for anything more.
    Please phone .
    They were passing through Hassocks. A short while later they entered Clayton Tunnel. She listened to the roar of the train exploding off the walls. Saw her own pale, scared reflection staring back in the window.
    When they emerged back into light – the sloping greeneryof Mill Hill to her right, the London Road to her left – she saw to her dismay that she had