Dead Man’s Footsteps

112

At 8 o’clock, when her phone finally rang, Abby had been up, dressed and ready for a good two hours. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly all night, but had just lain on her hard bed, with its tiny pillow, listening to the traffic on the seafront, the occasional wail of sirens, the shouts of drunken yobs and the slamming of car doors.

She was worried out of her wits about her mother. Could she survive another night without her medication? Would the distress and the spasms bring on a heart attack or a stroke? She felt so damned helpless, and she knew that bully Ricky would be playing on that. Counting on that.

But she was well aware too that he’d seen just how devious she could be, from their time together in Melbourne and now from the events of the past few days. It wasn’t going to be easy. He wasn’t going to trust her an inch.

Where would he dictate that they meet? In a multi-storey car park? A city park? Shoreham harbour? She tried to think where people in films met to hand over kidnap victims. Sometimes they dumped them from moving cars; or left them in a car abandoned somewhere.

Every one of her speculations ran into buffers. She didn’t know, couldn’t predict. But one thing she had decided, totally and utterly non-negotiable, was that she would want absolute proof, to see with her own eyes, that her mother was alive before she did anything.

Could she trust the police? What would happen if he saw them and panicked?

Weighed against that was how much she could trust him to deliver her mother back at all. If she was even still alive. He’d shown what a total, feelingless shit he was in taking an old lady and putting her through this torment.

The display said the usual Private number calling.

She pressed the button to answer.