Dead Man's Footsteps

police officers. Or to nurses, or others in professions where antisocial hours were par for the course.
    ‘I chose you today because you are the best man to have beside me. But I’m not forcing you. You can come with me or you go home. It’s up to you.’
    ‘Yeah, old-timer, I go home and then what? Tomorrow I’m back in uniform, busting gays for indecent exposure down on Duke’s Mound. Have I got it right?’
    ‘More or less.’
    Grace got out of the car. Branson followed.
    Ducking against the rain and howling wind, they changed into their white oversuits and wellington boots, then, looking like a couple of sperm, walked up to the scene guard constable and signed themselves in.
    ‘You’re going to need torches,’ the constable said.
    Grace clicked his torch on, then off. Branson did the same. A second constable, also wearing a bright yellow jacket, led the way in the falling light. They squelched through sticky mud that was rutted with the tyre tread patterns of heavy plant, making their way across the vast site.
    They passed a tall crane, a silent JCB digger and stacks of building materials battened down under flapping sheetsof polythene. The crumbling Victorian red-brick wall, fronting the foundations of Brighton Station’s car park, rose steeply in front of them. Beyond the darkness, they could see the orange glow of the city lights around them. A loose piece of hoarding clattered and somewhere two pieces of metal were clanging together.
    Grace was eyeing the ground. Foundation pilings were being sunk. Heavy diggers would have been criss-crossing this area for months. Any evidence would have to be found inside the storm drain – anything outside would have long gone.
    The constable stopped and pointed down into an excavated gully twenty feet below them. Grace stared at what looked like a partially buried prehistoric serpent with a jagged hole gouged out of its back. The mosaic of bricks, so old they were almost colourless, formed part of a semi-submerged tunnel just rising above the surface of the mud in places.
    The storm drain from the old Brighton to Kemp Town railway line.
    ‘Nobody knew it was there,’ the constable said. ‘The JCB fractured it earlier today.’
    Roy Grace held back for a moment, trying to overcome his fear of heights, even for this relatively small distance. Then he took a deep breath and scrambled down the steep, slippery slope, exhaling sharply with relief when he reached the bottom upright and intact. And suddenly the serpent’s body looked a whole lot bigger, and more exposed, than it had seemed from above. The rounded shape curved above him, nearly seven feet high, he guessed. The hole in the middle looked as dark as a cave.
    He strode towards it, with Branson and the constable right behind him and switched on his torch. As he enteredthe storm drain, shadows jigged wildly back at him. He ducked his head, crinkling his nose at the strong, fetid smell of damp. It was higher in here than it had seemed from the outside; it felt like being in an ancient tube tunnel, with no platform.
    ‘ The Third Man ,’ Glenn Branson said suddenly. ‘You’ve seen that movie. You’ve got that at home.’
    ‘The one with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten?’ Grace said.
    ‘Yeah, good memory! Sewers always remind me of it.’
    Grace shone the powerful beam to the right. Darkness. Shimmering puddles of water. Ancient brickwork. Then he shone the beam to the left. And jumped.
    ‘Shit!’ Glenn Branson shouted, his voice echoing round them.
    Although Grace had been expecting it, what he saw, several yards away down the tunnel, still spooked him. A skeleton, reclining against the wall, partially buried in silt. It looked like it was just lounging there, waiting for him. Long fronds of hair were still attached to the scalp in places, but otherwise it was mostly just bare bones, picked or rotted clean, with a few tiny patches of desiccated skin.
    He squelched towards it, being careful not to slip on the mulch base. Twin pinpricks of red appeared for an instant and were gone. A rat. He swung the beam back on to the skull, its inane rictus grin chilling him.
    And something else about it chilled him too.
    The hair. Even though the lustre had long gone, it was the same length and had the same winter-wheat colouring as the hair of his long-vanished wife, Sandy.
    Trying to dismiss the thought from his mind, he turned to the constable and asked, ‘Have you searched the whole length?’
    ‘No, sir,