Dead Man’s Footsteps

98

Roy sat with Pat and Dennis at a wooden table in the restaurant area of the huge, open-plan Chelsea Brewing Company, which was owned by Pat’s cousin. To his right was a long wooden bar, and behind him were rows of gleaming copper vats as tall as houses, and miles of stainless-steel and aluminium piping and tubing. With its acres of wooden flooring and immaculate cleanliness, it had the feel more of a museum than a busy working enterprise.

Visiting had become a ritual, a compulsory watering-hole stop during every trip Roy made to New York. Pat was clearly proud of his cousin’s success and enjoyed giving an Englishman a run for his money with American-brewed beer.

There were six different varieties in sampler glasses in front of each of the three police officers. The glasses were positioned on a round blue spot on the specially designed table mat that gave the names of the beers. Pat’s cousin, also called Patrick, a stocky, bespectacled and intense man in his forties, was talking Roy through the different brewing processes for each one.

Roy was only half listening. He was tired; it was late according to UK time now. Today had yielded nothing – just one blank after another. Apart from the successful purchase of a precocious-looking Bratz for his god-daughter. In his view the doll looked like a Barbie that was working in the sex trade. But, as he reflected, what did he know about the tastes of nine-year-olds?

The hotel manager of the W had little to add to what Grace already knew other than, for what it was worth, Ronnie had watched a pay-per-view porn movie at 11 o’clock that last night.

And no one at any of the seven stamp dealers they had visited this afternoon had recognized either Wilson’s name or his photograph.

As Pat’s cousin intoned on about the science behind the beer Roy liked best, Checker Cab Blonde Ale, he stared out of the window into the night. He could see the rigging of yachts in the marina and further, beyond the darkness of the Hudson, the lights of New Jersey. It was so vast, this city. So many people coming and going. Live here, like any big city, and you’d see thousands of faces every day. How likely was it that he could find anyone who would remember one face from six years back?

But he had to try. Knocking on doors. The good old-fashioned-policing way. The chances of Ronnie being here were slim. More likely he was in Australia – certainly the latest evidence pointed that way. He tried to do a quick calculation of the time zones in his head, while Patrick moved on to explaining how the subtle caramel flavours of Sunset Red Ale were achieved.

It was 7 o’clock in the evening. Melbourne was ten hours ahead of the UK, so how many did that make it ahead of New York, which was five hours ahead – no – behind the UK? Christ, the calculation was doing his head in.

And all the time he kept nodding politely at Patrick.

It was fifteen hours ahead, he worked out. Mid-morning. Hopefully, ahead of Norman and Nick’s visit, the Melbourne police would make a start on checking whether Ronnie Wilson had entered Australia at any point since September 2001.

There was something else, he suddenly remembered, surreptitiously pulling out his notebook and flicking back a couple of pages to the notes he had taken at his meeting with Terry Biglow, the list of Ronnie Wilson’s acquaintances and friends. Chad Skeggs, he had written down. Emigrated to Oz. As a result of what Branson had told him, and the likelihood that Ronnie Wilson was in Australia, he was going to making finding Chad Skeggs a priority for Potting and Nicholl.

Patrick finally finished and went off to get Roy his own personal jug of Checker Cab. The three detectives each raised a glass.

‘Thanks for your time, guys, I appreciate it,’ Grace said. ‘And I’m buying.’

‘You’re in my cousin’s place,’ Pat said. ‘You don’t pay a dime.’

‘When you’re with us in New York, you’re our guest,’ Dennis said. ‘But shit, buddy, when we come to England you’d better take out a second mortgage!’

They laughed.

Then Pat looked sad suddenly. ‘You know, did I ever tell you that thing about 9/11, about the feelgood dogs?’

Grace shook his head.

‘They had people bring dogs along – to the pile, you know, the Belly of the Beast. They were just for the workers there to stroke.’

Dennis nodded, concurring. ‘That’s what they called ’em – feelgood dogs.’

‘Kind of like therapy,’ Pat said. ‘We were all finding such horrible things. They figured, we stroke the dogs, it’s a good feeling, contact with something living, something happy.’

‘You know, I think it worked,’ Dennis said. ‘That whole thing, 9/11, you know, it brought a lot of good out in people in this city.’

‘And it brought the scumbags out too,’ Pat reminded him. ‘At Pier 92 we were giving cash handouts between fifteen hundred and two and a half thousand bucks, depending on their needs, to help people in immediate hardship.’ He shrugged. ‘Didn’t take the scumbags long to hear about this. We had several came and scammed us, telling us they had lost family, when they hadn’t.’

‘But we got them,’ Dennis said with grim satisfaction. ‘We got ’ em after. Took a while, but we got every damned one of them.’

‘But there was good that came out of it,’ Pat said. ‘It brought some heart and soul back to this city. I think people are a little kinder here now.’

‘And some people are a lot richer,’ Dennis said.

Pat nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’

Dennis chuckled suddenly. ‘Rachel, my wife, she’s got an uncle over in the Garment District. He has an embroidery business, makes stuff for the souvenir shops. I stopped by to see him a couple of weeks after 9/11. He’s this little Jewish guy, right, Hymie. He’s eighty-two years old, still works a fourteen-hour day. The nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. His family escaped the Holocaust, came out here. There isn’t anybody he wouldn’t help. Anyhow, I walk in there and I never saw the place so busy. Workers everywhere. T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, all piled up, people stitching, ironing, machining, bagging.’

He sipped some beer and shook his head.

‘My uncle had had to take on extra staff. Couldn’t cope with all the orders. It was all Twin Towers commemorative stuff he was making. I asked him how it was going. He sat there in the middle of all this chaos and he looked at me with this little smile on his face and he said business was good, it had never been better.’ Dennis nodded, then gave a wry shrug, ‘You know what? There’s always a buck in tragedy.’