Dead Man's Footsteps

and have a good chance of catching the perpetrator.
    But from the sound of the operator’s report, the findings in the storm drain indicated anything but a fresh murder. Skeletal remains. Might not even be a murder at all, could be a suicide, maybe even a natural death. There was even the remote possibility it could be a shop-window dummy – that had happened before. Remains like this could have been there for decades, so another couple of days wouldn’t have made a sodding bit of difference.
    Guilty at this sudden flash of anger, he looked down at the twenty or so blue boxes, stacked two and three deep, that were taking up most of the carpeted floor area of his office that wasn’t already filled by the small round conference table and four chairs.
    Each box contained the key files of an unsolved murder, a cold case. The rest of the case files were bulging out of cupboards elsewhere in the CID headquarters, or werelocked up, going mouldy, in a damp police garage in the area where the murder happened, or were archived away in a forgotten basement room, along with all the tagged and bagged items of evidence.
    And he had a feeling, born from close on twenty years of investigating murders, that what awaited him now in the storm drain was more than likely to result in another blue box on his floor.
    He was so saturated with paperwork at the moment that there was barely a square inch of his desk that wasn’t buried under mounds of documents. He was having to work through the time lines, evidence, statements and everything else needed by the Crown Prosecution Service for two separate murder trials next year. One concerned a scumbag internet sleaze merchant called Carl Venner, the other a c.
    Glancing through a document prepared by a young woman, Emily Gaylor from the Brighton Trials Unit, he picked up the phone and dialled an extension, taking only a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that he was about to ruin someone else’s weekend too.
    He was answered almost instantly. ‘DS Branson.’
    ‘What are you doing at the moment?’
    ‘I’m about to go home, old-timer, thanks for asking,’ said Glenn Branson.
    ‘That’s the wrong answer.’
    ‘No, it’s the right answer,’ the Detective Sergeant insisted. ‘Ari has a dressage lesson and I’m looking after the kids.’
    ‘Dressage? What’s that?’
    ‘Something involving her horse that costs thirty quid an hour.’
    ‘She’ll have to take the kids with her. Meet me down inthe car park in five minutes. We need to take a look at a dead body.’
    ‘I’d really prefer to go home.’
    ‘So would I. And I expect the body would prefer to be at home too,’ Grace replied. ‘At home in front of the telly with a nice cuppa instead of decomposing in a storm drain.’

4
OCTOBER 2007
    After just a few seconds the lift jerked sharply to a halt, swaying from side to side, banging against the walls with an echoing clang like two oil drums colliding. Then it rocked forward, throwing Abby against the door.
    Almost instantly it plunged sharply again, in freefall. She let out a whimper. For a split second, the carpeted floor dropped away below her, as if she had become weightless. Then there was a jarring crash and the floor seemed to rise, striking her feet with such force it knocked the air out of her stomach – it felt as if her legs were being driven up into her neck.
    The lift twisted, throwing her like a busted puppet against the mirror on the back wall, and lurched again before becoming almost still, swinging slightly, the floor tilted at a drunken angle.
    ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Abby whispered.
    The lights in the roof flickered, went out, came on again. There was an acrid reek of burnt electrics and she saw a thin coil of smoke glide, unhurriedly, past her.
    She held her breath, trapping another cry in her throat. It felt as if the whole damned thing was being suspended by one very thin and frayed thread.
    Suddenly there was a rending sound above her. Metal tearing. Her eyes shot up in stark terror. She didn’t knowmuch about lifts, but it sounded as if something was shearing away. Her imagination running wild, she pictured the shackle holding the cable on to the roof breaking off.
    The lift dropped a couple of inches.
    She shrieked.
    Then another couple of inches, the angle of the floor becoming steeper.
    It lurched left with a massive metallic bang, then sagged. There was a sharp crack above her head, like something snapping.
    It dropped a few more