Dead Man's Footsteps

building’s unofficial but handy canteen and parking overflow.
    Since the very recent departure of the amiable but lax Detective Chief Superintendent Gary Weston, who had been promoted to Assistant Chief Constable in the Midlands, tough, no-nonsense, pipe-smoking Jack Skerritt was making his presence felt throughout the place. Skerritt, theformer Commander of Brighton and Hove Uniform, who was fifty-two, combined old-school toughness with modern thinking, and was one of the most universally liked – and respected – police officers in the force. The return of this weekly meeting was his biggest innovation so far.
    Another instantly noticeable change, Grace reflected, as he entered the front door and exchanged a cheery greeting with the two security guards, was that Skerritt had imposed a modern stamp on the entrance staircase. The displays of antique truncheons had been dispatched to a museum. The cream walls had been freshly painted and there was now a new, wide blue felt board containing photographs of all the senior personnel currently manning HQ CID.
    Most prominent was the photograph of Jack Skerritt himself. He was a lean, square-jawed man, good-looking in a slightly old-fashioned Hollywood matinée-idol way. He had a stern expression, a slick of tidy brown hair, and was wearing a dark suit jacket and a muted, chequerboard tie. He exuded a commanding presence which seemed to be saying, Don’t fuck with me and I’ll be fair to you. Which was in fact the essence of the man.
    Grace respected and admired him. He was the kind of policeman he would like to be. With three years to go before retirement, Skerritt didn’t give a stuff for political correctness, nor was he too concerned about directives from above. He saw his role as being to make the streets and homes and businesses of Sussex safe places for law-abiding citizens, and how he did it was his business. And in his past two years as Commander of Brighton and Hove, before this new posting here, he had made a considerable impact on crime levels across the city.
    At the top of the stairs was a broad, carpeted landing,with a rubber plant that looked as if it was on growth hormones and a potted palm that looked as if it should have been in a hospice.
    Grace pressed his card against the door security pad and entered the rarefied atmosphere of the command floor. This first section was a large, open-plan area, with a dark orange carpet down the centre, with clusters of desks on either side for the support staff.
    Senior departmental heads had their own offices. The door to one was open and Grace exchanged a nod with his friend Brian Cook, the Scientific Support Branch Manager, who was on his feet, finishing a call. He then hurried past the large, glassed-in office of Jack Skerritt, wanting a quick word with Eleanor Hodgson, his Management Support Assistant, as his PA was called these days in this bonkers, politically correct world.
    Posters were stuck up all over the walls. A big red and orange one stood out the loudest:
    RAT ON A RAT
    DRUG DEALERS RUIN LIVES
    TELL CRIMESTOPPERS WHO THEY ARE
    He hurried past his office and one marked ‘Detective Superintendent Gaynor Allen, Operations and Intelligence Branch’, and went over to where Eleanor was sitting.
    It was a cluttered area of desks stacked with over-full red and black in-trays and littered with keypads, phones, file folders, writing pads and Post-it notes. A car ‘L’ plate had been stuck to the rear of one flat computer screen by some joker.
    Eleanor’s was the only orderly desk. A rather prim, quietly efficient if nervy middle-aged woman with neat black hair and a plain, slightly old-fashioned face, she ranmuch of Roy Grace’s life for him. She was looking nervous now as he approached her, as if he was about to shout at her for some balls-up, although he had never once raised his voice at her in the eighteen months she had worked for him. It was just the way she was.
    He asked her to check with the Thistle Hotel on the size of the tables for the Rugby Club Dinner for this December, and quickly ran through some urgent emails she drew to his attention, then, glancing at his watch and seeing it was two minutes after 10.30, he entered Skerritt’s spacious, impressive domain.
    Like his own new office – he had recently been moved from one side of the building to the other – it had a view over the road towards ASDA. But that was where the similarity ended. While his just had room for his desk and a