Dead Man's Footsteps

had extensive dental work done. Her name is – or rather was – Joanna Wilson.’
    ‘Nice work,’ Grace said. ‘Was she single or married?’
    ‘Well, I’ve got good and bad news,’ Potting said, and fell into a smug silence, grinning like an imbecile.
    ‘We’re all ears,’ Grace prompted him.
    ‘She had a husband, yes. Stormy relationship – so far as I’ve been able to discover – the dentist, Mr Gebbie, knows a little of the background. I’ll get more on that tomorrow. She was an actress. I don’t know the full storyyet, but they split up and she left. Apparently she went to Los Angeles to make her name – that’s what the husband told everyone.’
    ‘Sounds like we should have a little chat with the husband,’ Grace said.
    ‘There’s a bit of a problem with that,’ Norman Potting replied. Then he nodded pensively for some moments, pursing his lips, as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘He died in the World Trade Center, on 9/11.’

46
OCTOBER 2007
    At 6.45 Abby was beginning to worry that the courier company had forgotten her. She had been ready and waiting since 5.30, her suitcase by the door, coat slung over it, Jiffy bag addressed and sealed.
    It was completely dark outside now and, with the rain still torrenting down, she could see very little. She was watching for a Global Express van to come down the street. For the umpteenth time she removed the Mace pepper spray canister from the hip pocket of her jeans and examined it.
    The small red cylinder with its finger-grip indents, key chain and belt clip was reassuringly heavy. She repeatedly flipped open the safety lid and practised aiming the nozzle. The guy who had sold it to her in Los Angeles, on her way back to England, told her it contained ten one-second bursts and would blind a human for ten seconds. She had smuggled it into England inside her make-up bag in her suitcase.
    She put it back in her pocket, stood up and took her mobile phone out of her handbag. She was about to dial Global Express when the intercom finally buzzed.
    She hurried down the hall to the front door. On the small black and white monitor she could see a motorcycle helmet. Her heart sank. That twerp assistant, Jonathan,had told her it would be a van. She had been banking on a van.
    Shit.
    She pressed the intercom button. ‘Come up, eighth floor,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid the lift’s not working.’
    Her brain was racing again, trying to do a fast rethink. She picked up the Jiffy bag. Have to revert to her original plan, she decided, thinking it through in the two long minutes that passed before the sharp rap on the door.
    Vigilant as ever, she peered through the spyhole and saw a motorcyclist, clad in leather, in a black helmet, with a dark visor that was down, holding some kind of clipboard.
    She unlocked the door, removed the safety chains and opened it.
    ‘I – I thought you were coming in a van,’ she said.
    He dropped the clipboard, which fell to the ground with a clank, then punched Abby hard in the stomach. It caught her totally off guard, doubling her up in winded pain. She stumbled sideways into the wall.
    ‘Nice to see you, Abby,’ he said. ‘Not crazy about your new look.’
    Then he punched her again.

47
OCTOBER 2007
    Shortly before 7 o’clock, Cassian Pewe drove his dark green Vauxhall Astra through the buffeting wind and neon-lit darkness of the cliff-top coast road. He crossed two mini-roundabouts into Peacehaven, then continued for the next mile past endless parades of shops, half of them seemingly estate agents, the rest garish fast-food places. It reminded him of the outskirts of small American towns he had seen in films.
    Unfamiliar with this area a few miles east of Brighton, he was being bossed through it by the female voice of his plug-in sat nav. Now, past Peacehaven, he was following a crawling camper van down the winding hill into Newhaven. The sat-nav woman instructed him to keep straight on for half a mile. Then his mobile phone, in the hands-free cradle, rang.
    He peered at the display, saw it was from Lucy, his girlfriend, and reached forward to answer it.
    ‘Hello, darling,’ he cooed. ‘How is my precious angel?’
    ‘Are you on your hands-free?’ she asked. ‘You sound like a Dalek.’
    ‘I’m sorry, my precious. I’m driving.’
    ‘You didn’t call,’ she said, sounding hurt and a tad angry. ‘You were going to call me this morning, about tonight.’
    Lucy, who lived and worked in