Dead Man's Footsteps

passengers?’
    ‘Leave it with me. I already know that the plane is only half full. I’ll get on to the French police. I take it we are interested in who she might meet?’
    ‘Spot on. Thanks, Bill. Keep me informed.’
    Grace clenched his fist for joy, then he called Glenn Branson.

123
NOVEMBER 2007
    ‘So when do I see you again? Tell me. When?’
    ‘Soon!’
    ‘How soon is soon ?’
    She lay on top of him, their naked skin running with perspiration from their exertions in the morning heat. His spent penis nestled in her hairs. Her small round breasts pressed into his chest and her eyes gazed into his, nut-brown eyes, filled with laughter and mischief. And hardness. For sure.
    She was savyy, streetwise. She was a piece of work.
    A very rich piece of work.
    And she liked this goddamned humidity. This cloying heat which made him perspire constantly. She insisted on making love with the terrace doors of her house wide open and it was about a hundred fucking degrees in the room. And now she was pummelling his chest with her tiny fists.
    ‘How soon? How soon?’
    He brushed her jet-black hair away from his face and kissed her rosebud lips. She was so pretty and she had a great body. He’d come to appreciate slender Thai girls during his month holed up in Pattaya Beach, waiting for Abby to give him the signal that she was on her way.
    And oh wow! He had lucked out big time with this one. Totally unexpected! Because she was everything he hadfantasized about, but with a whole lot more. About twenty-five million US dollars more! Give or take a few percentage points on the Thai Baht conversion rate.
    He’d met her in a stamp dealer’s shop in Bangkok and just got chatting. Turned out her husband had a chain of nightclubs, which she’d inherited when he died in a scuba-diving accident – a tourist on a jet-ski had chopped his head off at the neck. She had been trying to flog his very serious stamp collection and Ronnie had given her guidance, stopped her being ripped off, got her treble what she’d originally been told they were worth.
    And had been banging her once and sometimes twice a day ever since.
    Which left him with a problem. Although it wasn’t too big a problem. He’d already started tiring of Abby. He couldn’t say exactly when that had begun to happen. Perhaps it was the way she had behaved – or looked – after her assignments with Ricky. Like, certainly after the first two occasions, she had really enjoyed them.
    Which had made him realize what she was capable of.
    A woman who had no limits. She would do anything to get rich and was, for sure, just using him as a stepping stone.
    Luckily, he was one step ahead. He’d screwed up twice before. Water had not served him well. Something had gone wrong with the damned storm drain in Brighton. And who the hell could have predicted the drought continuing in Melbourne?
    Fortunately there were plenty of boats for hire in Koh Samui. And they were cheap. And the South China Sea was deep.
    Ten miles out and there was no chance a body was going to fetch up back on the shore. He already had theboat moored and waiting. Abby would love it. It was fuck-off stunning. And cost peanuts. Relatively. And, hey, you had to speculate to accumulate.
    He kissed Phara.
    ‘Not long at all,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

124
NOVEMBER 2007
    Instead of following the signs for Departures when she stepped away from the easyJet check-in desk, Abby headed back into the main concourse and made her way to the toilets.
    Having locked herself in a cubicle, she removed the Jiffy bag from her carrier bag, ripped it open and shook out the contents – a cellophane bag containing an assortment of stamps, some loose, some in sheets.
    Most of the sheets were just replicas of the ones Ricky had wanted so badly, but several of the other sheets and individual stamps were genuine, and looked old enough to excite someone who knew nothing about philately.
    She also took out the receipt from the stamp dealer South-East Philatelic, which she had visited two weeks ago. It was for one hundred and forty-two pounds. Probably more than she had needed to spend, strictly speaking, but the assortment did look impressive to the layman, and she had rightly placed Detective Sergeant Branson in that category.
    She tore the stamps and the receipt into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then she removed her jeans, boots and fleece jacket. She wouldn’t need those where she was going. She pulled