Dead Man's Footsteps

ghost’s.
    ‘Abby?’
    ‘Mum!’
    ‘Is that you, Abby?’ Her mother started crying. ‘Please, please, Abby. Please.’
    ‘I’m coming to get you, Mum. I love you.’
    ‘Please let me have my pills. I must have my pills. Please, Abby, why won’t you let me have them?’
    It hurt Abby almost too much to listen to her. Then Ricky spoke again.
    ‘Start your engine. I’m going to stay on the line.’
    She started the car.
    ‘Accelerate, I want to hear the engine running.’
    She did what he said. The diesel clattered loudly.
    ‘Now drive out of the car park and turn right. In fifty yards you’ll see a track off to the left, up to the headland itself. Turn on to it.’
    She made the sharp left turn, the car lurching on the bumpy surface. The wheels spun for an instant as they lost traction on the loose gravel and mud, then they were up on the grass. Now she realized why Ricky had been so specific in instructing her to rent an off-roader. Although she did not understand why he had been so concerned it should be diesel. Fuel economy could scarcely have been something on his mind at this moment. To her right she saw a warning sign that said CLIFF EDGE .
    ‘You see a clump of trees and bushes ahead of you?’
    There was a dense copse about a hundred yards in front of her, right on a downward slope at the cliff edge. The bushes and trees had been bent by the wind.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Stop the car.’
    She stopped.
    ‘Put the handbrake on. Leave the engine running. Just keep looking. We are in here. I have the rear wheels righton the edge of the cliff. If you do anything I don’t like, I’m throwing her straight back in the van and releasing the handbrake. Do you understand that?’
    Abby’s throat was so tight it was a struggle to get her voice out. ‘Yes.’
    ‘I didn’t hear you.’
    ‘I said, yes. ’
    She heard a roar, like wind blowing on a phone. A dull thud. Then there was movement in the copse. Ricky appeared first, in his baseball cap and beard, wearing a heavy fleece jacket. Then Abby’s heart was in her mouth as she saw the tiny, frail figure of her bewildered-looking mother, still in the pink dressing gown she had been wearing when Abby had last seen her.
    The wind rippled the gown, blew all her wispy grey and white hair up in the air so it trailed from her head like ribbons of cigarette smoke. She was rocking on her feet, with Ricky gripping her arm, holding her upright.
    Abby stared through the windscreen, through a mist of tears. She would do anything, anything, anything at all, to get her mother back in her arms at this moment.
    And to kill Ricky.
    She wanted to floor the accelerator and drive straight at him now, smash him to pulp.
    They were disappearing back into the trees. He was jerking her mother along roughly, as she half walked, half tripped into the copse. The shrubbery was closing like fog around them.
    Abby gripped the door handle, almost unable to stop herself from getting out of the car and running across to them. But she hung on, scared of his threat and now even more convinced that he would kill her mother, and enjoy doing so.
    Maybe, with his warped mind, he would value that even more than getting his stamps back.
    Where were Detective Sergeant Branson and his team? They must be close. He had assured her they would be. They were well concealed all right, she thought. She couldn’t see a soul.
    Which meant, hopefully, that Ricky couldn’t either.
    But they were listening. They would have heard him. Heard his threat. They wouldn’t rush the copse and try to grab him, would they? They couldn’t risk him letting his van go over the edge.
    Not for a few fucking stamps, surely?
    His voice came back on the line. ‘Satisfied?’
    ‘Can I take her now, please, Ricky. I have the stamps.’
    ‘This is what you do, Abby. Listen carefully, I’m only saying it once. OK?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You leave your engine running and you leave your phone on like this, in the car, so I can hear the motor. You get out of the car and you leave the door wide open. You bring the stamps and you walk twenty steps towards me and then you stop. I’m going to walk towards you. I’m going to take the stamps and then I’m going to get into your car. You are going to get into the van. Your mother is in the van and she’s fine. Now this is where you have to be very careful. Are you taking this in?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘By the time you get to the van I will have looked at the stamps. If I don’t like what