Dead Man's Footsteps

the city and on the other by a railed promenade and views out across the beach and the English Channel. There was a rabbit warren of streets immediately off and behind Marine Parade, most of them residential, almost all of them containing a mix of flats, cheap hotels and B&Bs.
    He remembered how much she loved the sea view fromhis own flat and he figured she would be close to the sea now. And almost certainly have some kind of a view of it. Which had made it a simple measuring job to identify the group of streets in which she must be residing. All he’d had to do was patrol around them, disguised, in the hope that she would appear. And that had happened within three days. He had spotted her going into a newsagent on Eastern Road, then followed her back to her front door.
    It had been tempting to grab her then and there, but too risky. There were people around. All she had to do was shout, and game over. That was the problem. That was the advantage she had over him. And she knew it.
    The rain was coming down even harder now, drumming noisily, reverberating all around him. On a day like this it would have been nice to have room service, he thought. But hey, you couldn’t have everything! Not, at any rate, without a little patience.
    He used to go fishing with his dad when he was a kid. Like him, his dad had always been into gizmos. He’d bought one of the earliest electronic floats. The first strike from a fish, pulling the float under, would trigger a short, high-pitched beep from the little transmitter on the ground beside their folding chairs.
    It was similar to the beep he heard now from his interceptor system, as he flipped through the pages of the Daily Mail , a distinct, sharp, high-pitched beep. Followed by another.
    The bitch was making a phone call.

40
OCTOBER 2007
    The automated voice said, ‘Thank you for calling Global Express. Please press any key to continue. Thank you. To check the status of a delivery, please press 1. To request a collection, press 2. If you are an account customer requesting a collection, press 3. If you are a new customer requesting a collection, press 4. For all other enquiries, press 5.’
    Abby pressed 4.
    ‘For deliveries within the UK, please press 1. For overseas deliveries, press 2.’
    She pressed 1.
    There was a brief silence. She hated these automated systems. Then she heard a couple of clicks, followed by a young, male voice.
    ‘Global Express. Jonathan speaking. How can I help you?’
    Jonathan sounded like he’d be better suited helping young men into trousers in a gents’ outfitters.
    ‘Hi, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘I have a package I need delivered.’
    ‘No problem at all. Would that be letter size? Parcel size? Larger than that?’
    ‘An A4 envelope about an inch thick,’ she said.
    ‘No problem at all,’ Jonathan assured her. ‘And where would that be going?’
    ‘To an address just outside Brighton,’ she said.
    ‘No problem at all. And where would we be picking up from?’
    ‘From Brighton,’ Abby said. ‘Well, Kemp Town, actually.’
    ‘No problem at all.’
    ‘How soon can you collect?’ she asked.
    ‘In your area – one moment – we will collect between 4 and 7.’
    ‘Not before?’
    ‘No problem at all, but that would be an extra charge.’
    She thought quickly. If the weather remained like this it would be fairly dark by about 5 o’clock. Would that be an advantage or a disadvantage?
    ‘Will you be sending a bike or a van?’ she asked.
    ‘For overnight it will be a van,’ Jonathan replied.
    A revised plan was forming in her mind. ‘Is it possible you could ask them not to come before 5.30?’
    ‘Not to come before 5.30? Let me just check.’
    There were some moments of silence. She was trying hard to think this through. So many variables. Then there was a click and Jonathan was back with her.
    ‘No problem at all.’

41
SEPTEMBER 2007
    Oh yes, what a great place to be – not – on a Monday morning this was, thought Detective Senior Sergeant George Fletcher. It was bad enough to have a blinding hangover on a Monday morning. But being here, in the Forensic Pathology department of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, greatly compounded it. And he hated all this bullshit newspeak. It was the city morgue , for God’s sake. It was the place where dead bodies got even more dead. It was the last place before the cemetery where you’d ever have your name on the guest check-in register.
    And at this moment he was