Dead Man's Footsteps

Ronnie had died in 9/11. Events like that were so random. Had Ronnie killed his wife? His team were on the case. Tomorrow they would start checking into the man’s background, and his wife’s.
    Branson returned and sat back down.
    ‘What do you mean, Glenn, that Ari’s trying to punish you?’
    ‘When Ari and me met, we shagged all day. You know? We’d wake up and shag. Go out somewhere, get an ice cream maybe, and we’d fool around. Shag again in the evening. Kind of like it wasn’t the real world.’ He drank some more of his beer, almost half the glass, straight down. ‘OK, I know you can’t maintain that for ever.’
    ‘It was the real world,’ Roy said. ‘But the real world doesn’t stay the same. My mother used to say that life is like a series of chapters in a book. Different things happen at different times. Life changes constantly. You know one of the secrets of a happy marriage?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Don’t be a police officer.’
    ‘Funny. Ironic, isn’t it, that’s what she wanted me tobe.’ He shook his head. ‘What I don’t get is why she’s angry all the time. At me. You know what she said this morning?’
    ‘Tell me?’
    ‘She said that I deliberately keep her awake, right? Like, when I get up in the night to go to the toilet, you know, have a piss, that I deliberately aim into the water so it makes a splashing sound. She said that if I really loved her, I would pee on the side of the bowl.’
    Grace tipped the contents of the new glass into his existing one. ‘You’re not serious?’
    ‘I’m serious, man. There’s nothing I can do right. She’s, like, told me she needs her space, and screw my career as a policeman. She’s gonna go out in the evenings, she’s not prepared to be tied to the kids, and it’s my responsibility. If I have to work lates, then I have to find babysitters.’
    Grace sipped his drink and wondered if perhaps Ari was having an affair. But he didn’t want to upset his friend further by suggesting it.
    ‘You can’t live like this,’ he said.
    Branson picked up his packet of crisps and turned it over and over in his hands. ‘I love my kids,’ he said. ‘I can’t go through some divorce shit and, like, see them for a few hours once a month.’
    ‘How long has it been like this?’
    ‘Ever since she got this bug in her head about self-improvement. Mondays she does evening classes in English literature, Thursdays she does architecture. And all kinds of other shit in between. I don’t know her any more – I can’t reach her.’
    They sat in silence for a while before Branson mustered a cheerful smile and said, ‘Anyhow my shit to deal with, right?’
    ‘No,’ Roy replied, even though he knew that if Ari threwGlenn out again, he’d be lumbered once more with the lodger from hell. He’d had Glenn to stay a couple of months ago and the house would have been tidier if he’d had an elephant high on magic mushrooms come to stay. ‘I sort of feel we are in this together.’
    For the second time that evening Glenn smiled. Then he finally ripped open his packet of crisps, peering inside with a faint look of disappointment, as if he had been expecting it to be filled with something else.
    ‘So, what’s happening with Cassian Pewe – sorry, Detective Superintendent Cassian Pewe?’
    Grace shrugged.
    ‘Is he eating your lunch?’
    Grace smiled. ‘I think that was his game plan. But we’ve put him back in his box.’

50
OCTOBER 2007
    Cassian Pewe took another tentative sip of his tea, wincing as the hot liquid touched his teeth. Last night he had slept with whitening gel on them and today they were sensitive to extremes of temperature.
    Putting the cup down in the saucer, he said to Sandy’s parents, ‘I do want to make one thing clear. Detective Superintendent Grace is a well-respected police officer. I have no agenda other than to discover the truth about your daughter’s disappearance.’
    ‘We need to know,’ Derek Balkwill said.
    His wife nodded. ‘That’s the only thing that matters to us.’
    ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s very reassuring to know we are all on the same page.’ He smiled at them. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘without wanting to cast any aspersions, there are a number of senior officers in the Sussex CID who feel that a proper investigation has never been carried out. This is one of the main reasons I have been drafted in.’
    Pausing, he was satisfied by their receptive nods, and a little emboldened. ‘I’ve been