Dead Man's Footsteps

professional and surprisingly gentle. ‘You the couple that found the car?’
    MJ nodded. ‘Yep.’
    ‘I’m going to need a statement from you both. Would you mind coming to Geelong Police Station?’
    MJ looked at Lisa, then at the detective. ‘You mean now?’
    ‘Some time today.’
    ‘Of course. But I don’t think there’s a lot we can tell you.’
    ‘Thank you, but I’ll be the judge of that. My sergeant will take your names and addresses and contact phone numbers before we leave.’
    The journalist held out her recorder to the detective. ‘Detective Senior Sergeant Fletcher, do you think there is any connection between the Melbourne gangs and this dead woman?’
    ‘You’ve been here longer than I have, Ms Parks. I don’t have any comment for you at this stage. Let’s find out who she is first.’
    ‘Was?’ the journalist corrected him.
    ‘Well, if you want to be that pedantic, let’s wait for the police surgeon to turn up and make sure she is actually dead.’
    He gave a challenging grin, but no one smiled.

35
11 SEPTEMBER 2001
    Still nobody spoke except the driver, who talked non-stop. He was like a television in a bar, with the volume irritatingly high, that you couldn’t switch off or change channels. Ronnie was trying to listen to the news that was coming out of the pick-up truck’s radio and to collect his own thoughts, and the driver was preventing him from doing either.
    What’s more, the strong Brooklyn accent made it hard for Ronnie to decipher what he actually said. But as the man was being kind and giving him a ride, he could hardly tell him to shut up. So he sat there, half listening, nodding from time to time and occasionally saying, ‘Yep,’ or ‘No shit,’ or ‘You have to be kidding,’ depending on which he deemed the most appropriate.
    The man had trashed most of the ethnic minorities of This Great Country and now he was talking about his ladders in the South Tower. He seemed pretty bothered about them. He was pretty bothered about the IRS too, and began trashing the US taxation system.
    Then he lapsed back into a few moments of merciful silence and let the radio speak. All the ghosts behind Ronnie in the pick-up truck remained silent. Maybe they were listening to the radio, maybe they were in too much shock to absorb anything.
    It was a litany. A list of all the stuff that had happenedthat he already knew. And some time soon George Bush was going to be saying something. Meantime, Mayor Giuliani was on his way downtown. America was under attack. There would be more information as it came in.
    Inside Ronnie’s mind, his plan was coming together steadily.
    They were gliding along a wide, silent street. To their right was a threadbare grass verge with trees and lampposts. Beyond the grass was a pathway, or a cycleway, and then a railing, and beyond that another street, running parallel, with cars and vans parked along it, and red-brick apartment buildings that were not too tall, nothing like the Manhattan monoliths. After half a mile or so they gave way to big, angular, detached dwellings that might have been single-occupancy or divided into apartments. It looked a prosperous area. Pleasant and tranquil.
    They passed a road sign which said ‘Ocean Parkway’.
    He watched an elderly couple walking slowly on the sidewalk and wondered if they knew the drama that was unfolding just a short distance away across the river. It didn’t seem like it. If they had heard, they would surely now be glued to their television set. Apart from them, there was not a soul in sight. OK, at this time of day, during the week, a lot of people would ordinarily have been in their offices. But mothers would be out pushing infants in strollers. People would be walking dogs. Youths would be loitering. There was no one. The traffic seemed light too. Much too light.
    ‘Where are we?’ he said to the driver.
    ‘Brooklyn.’
    ‘Ah, right,’ Ronnie said. ‘Still Brooklyn.’
    He saw a sign on a building saying YESHIVA CENTER . It seemed like they had been driving for an age. He hadn’trealized Brooklyn was so large. Large enough to get lost in, to disappear in.
    Some words came into his head. It was a line from a Marlowe play, The Jew of Malta , that he’d gone to see recently with Lorraine and the Klingers at the Theatre Royal in Brighton.
    But that was in another country.
And besides, the wench is dead.
    The street continued dead straight ahead. They crossed an intersection, where the