Dead Man's Footsteps

batch of implants was supplied to a hospital called the Nuffield in Woodingdean, in the city of Brighton and Hove, back in 1997.’
    Pewe took his feet off the table and looked around hopelessly for a notebook, before using the back of an envelope to scribble down a few details. He then asked Franks to fax through the information on the implants and the DNA analysis of both the mother and the foetus, promising that he would start making enquiries right away. He then pointed out rather crisply that his name was Cassian , not Cashon , and hung up.
    He really did need a junior officer to assist him. He had far more important things to deal with than a floater in an Australian river. One of them much more important.

63
OCTOBER 2007
    Abby was laughing. Her father was laughing too.
    ‘You stupid girl, you did that deliberately, didn’t you?’
    ‘No I didn’t, Daddy!’
    Both of them stood back, staring at the partially tiled bathroom wall. White tiles with a navy-blue dado rail and a scattering of navy tiles as relief, one of which she had just put on backwards, so that the coarse grey underside was now visible, looking like a square of cement.
    ‘You’re meant to be helping me, young lady, not hindering me!’ her dad admonished.
    She burst into loud giggles. ‘I didn’t do it deliberately, Daddy, honestly.’
    For an answer, he patted her squarely on the forehead with his trowel, depositing a small lump of grout.
    ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘I’m not a bathroom wall, so you can’t tile me.’
    ‘Oh yes, I can.’
    Her father’s face darkened and the smile faded. Suddenly it wasn’t him any more. It was Ricky.
    He was holding a power drill in his hand. Smiling, he squeezed the trigger. The drill whined.
    ‘Right knee or left knee first, Abby?’
    She began shaking, her body still held rigid by her bonds, her insides twisting, shrinking back, screaming silently.
    She could see the spinning drill bit. Corkscrewing towards her knee. Inches from it. She was screaming. Her cheeks popping. Nothing coming out. Just an endless, trapped moan.
    Trapped in her throat and in her mouth.
    He lunged forward with the drill.
    And as she screamed again, the light changed suddenly. She smelled the sharp, dry smell of fresh grout, saw cream wall tiles. Hyperventilating. There was no Ricky. She could see the carrier bag lying where he had left it, untouched, just beyond the doorway. She felt slippery with perspiration. Heard the steady whirr of the extractor fan, felt the cold draught from it. The insides of her mouth were feeling stuck together. She was so parched, so terribly parched. Just one drop. One small glass of water. Please.
    She stared at the tiles again.
    God, the irony of being imprisoned in here. Facing these tiles. So near. So damned near! Her mind was all over the place. Somehow she had to get to Ricky. Had to get him to remove the tape from her face. And if he was rational, when he returned, that’s exactly what he would have to do.
    But he wasn’t rational.
    And thinking about that now chilled every cell in her body.

64
12 SEPTEMBER 2001
    Wide awake and feeling mentally alert, despite his tired eyes, Ronnie stepped out of the front door of the rooming house shortly after 7.30. Immediately, he noticed the smell. There was a hazy, metallic blue sky and there should have been a dewy freshness in the morning air. But instead a pungent, sour reek filled his nostrils.
    At first he thought it must be coming from the garbage cans, but as he walked down the steps and along the street it stayed with him. A suggestion of something that was damp and smouldering, something chemical, sour and cloying. His eyes hurt too, as if there were tiny pellets of sandpaper in the haze.
    On the main drag, there was a strange atmosphere. It was Wednesday morning, midweek, yet there were hardly any cars about. People were walking slowly, with drawn, haggard expressions, as if they too had not slept well. The whole city seemed to be in a state of deepening shock. The numbing events of yesterday had now had time to work through everyone’s psyche and were bringing a new, dark reality this morning.
    He found a diner, displaying, among all its Russian signs in the window, the English words stencilled in red letters on illuminated plastic, all day breakfast. Inside, he could see a handful of people, including two cops, wereeating in silence, watching the news on the television high on one wall.
    He sat in a booth towards the rear. A subdued