Dead Man’s Footsteps

54

Roy Grace sat at the work station in Major Incident Room One, nursing the mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, grandson, first cousin and second cousin-once-removed of all hangovers. His mouth was like the bottom of a parrot’s cage and it felt as if a chainsaw was blunting its teeth on a steel spike inside his head.

His one consolation was that Glenn Branson, seated diagonally opposite him, looked like he was suffering too. What the hell had come over them last night?

They’d gone to the Black Lion for a quick drink, because Glenn wanted to talk to him about his marriage. They had staggered out some time around midnight, having drunk – how many whiskies, beers, bottles of Rioja? Grace did not even want to think about it. He vaguely remembered a taxi ride home, and that Glenn was still with him because his wife had told him she didn’t want him coming home in the state he was.

Then they had drunk more whisky and Glenn had started riffling through his CDs, criticizing his music, as he always did.

Glenn had still been there this morning, in the spare room, moaning about his blinding headache and telling Grace he was seriously thinking of ending it all.

‘The time is 8.30, Tuesday 23 October,’ Grace read from his briefing notes.

His policy book, and his notes, typed out half an hour earlier by his MSA, sat in front of him, along with a mug of coffee. He was maxed out on paracetamols, which weren’t working, and he was chewing mint gum to mask his breath, which he was sure must reek of alcohol. He had left his car at the pub last night and decided a walk there to get it, later this morning, would do him some good.

He was starting to get seriously worried about his lack of self-control over drinking. It didn’t help that Cleo drank like a fish – he wondered if it was to help her cope with the horrors of her work. Sandy liked an occasional glass of wine or two at weekends, or a beer on a hot evening, but that was all. Cleo, on the other hand, drank wine every night and seldom just one glass, except when she was on call. They would often go through a bottle of wine, on top of a whisky or two – and sometimes make good progress on a second bottle, as well.

At his recent medical, the doctor had asked him how many units of alcohol he drank a week. Lying, Grace had said seventeen, under the impression that around twenty was a safe number for a male. The doctor had frowned, advising him to cut down to under fifteen. Later, after a quick check on a calculator programme he had found on the internet, Grace discovered his average weekly intake was around forty-two units. Thanks to last night, this week’s would probably be double that. He vowed silently never to touch alcohol again.

Bella Moy, opposite him, was already stuffing her face with Maltesers at this early hour. Although she never normally offered them around, she pushed the box towards Grace.

‘I think you need a sugar hit, Roy!’ she said.

‘Does it show?’

‘Good party?’

Grace shot a glance at Glenn. ‘I wish.’

He removed his chewing gum, ate a Malteser, followed, more-ishly, by another three. They didn’t make him feel any worse. Then he swigged some coffee and popped the gum back in his mouth.

‘Coca-Cola,’ Bella said. ‘Full strength – not the Diet one. That’s good for a hangover. And a fried breakfast.’

‘There’s the voice of experience,’ Norman Potting interrupted.

‘Actually I don’t do hangovers,’ she said dismissively to him.

‘Our virtuous virgin,’ Potting grumbled.

‘That’s enough, Norman,’ Grace said, smiling at Bella before she rose any further to the bait.

He then returned to the task in hand, reading out the information Norman Potting had produced at the previous evening’s briefing meeting, that Joanna Wilson’s husband, Ronnie, had died in the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. When he had finished, he turned to Potting. ‘Good work, Norman.’

The DS gave a noncommittal grunt, but looked pleased with himself.

‘What information do we have on Joanna Wilson? Any family that we can talk to?’ Grace asked.

‘I’m working on it,’ Potting said. ‘Her parents are dead, I’ve managed to establish that. No siblings. I’m trying to find out if she had any other relatives.’

Shooting a glance at Lizzie Mantle, his deputy SIO, Grace said, ‘OK, in the absence of immediate family we need to focus our enquiries on the Wilsons’ acquaintances and friends. Norman and Glenn can concentrate on that. Bella, I want you to contact the FBI through the American Embassy in London, see if you can find any record of Joanna Wilson entering the USA during the 1990s. If she was intending to work there, she would have required a visa. Ask the FBI to check all records and computer databases to see if they can find any record of her living there during that period.’

‘Do we have a point person at the embassy?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I know Brad Garrett in the Legal Attaché’s Office. He’ll give you any help you need. If you have a problem, I also have two friends in the District Attorney’s Office in New York. Actually, the smart thing might be to go straight to them. It’ll cut out some red tape. When we need the formal evidence, we will of course go through all the right channels.’ Then he thought for a moment. ‘Leave Brad to me. I’ll give him a ring and run things past him.’

Then he turned to DC Nicholl. ‘Nick, I want you to do a nationwide search on Ronnie Wilson. See if there’s anything on him cross-border.’

The young DC nodded. He looked as exhausted and pale-faced as usual. No doubt he had spent another sleepless night experiencing the joys of fatherhood, Grace thought.

He turned back to Lizzie Mantle. ‘Anything you would like to add?’

‘I’m thinking about this Ronnie Wilson character,’ she said. ‘On the balance of probability, he’s got to be our number-one suspect at this point.’

Grace popped the gum from his mouth and dropped it in a bin close to his feet. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘But we need to know more about him and his wife, understand their life together. See if we can find a motive. Did he have a lover? Did she? See what we can eliminate.’

‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,’ Norman Potting cut in.

There was a brief moment of silence. Potting looked as pleased as hell with himself.

Then Bella Moy looked at him and said acidly, ‘Sherlock Holmes. Very good, Norman. You and he are about the same generation.’

Grace shot her a warning glance, but she shrugged and ate another Malteser. He turned to Emma-Jane Boutwood. ‘E-J, I also want you to take charge of drawing the family tree on the Wilsons.’

‘Actually, I have something to report,’ Norman Potting said. ‘I did my homework last night on the PNC. Ronnie Wilson had form.’

‘Previous?’ Grace said.

‘Yes. He was a frequent flyer with Sussex Police. First time on the radar was 1987. He worked for a dodgy second-hand car dealership that was clocking cars, bunging written-off ones back together.’

‘What happened?’ Grace asked.

‘Twelve months, pope on a rope. Then he popped up again.’

Bella Moy interrupted him. ‘Excuse me – did you say pope on a rope?’

‘Yes, gorgeous.’ Potting mimed being hung from a rope around his neck. ‘Suspended sentence.’

‘Any chance you could speak in a language we all understand?’ she retorted.

Potting blinked. ‘I thought we did all understand cockney rhyming slang. That’s what villains speak.’

‘In movies from the 1950s,’ she said. ‘Your generation of villains.’

‘Bella,’ Grace cautioned gently.

She shrugged and said nothing.

Norman Potting continued. ‘In 1991, Terry Biglow went down for four years. Knocker boy, ripping off old ladies.’ He paused and looked at Bella. ‘Knocker boy. All right with that? I’m not talking about boobies.’

‘I know what knocker boys are,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he continued. ‘Ronnie Wilson worked for him. Got charged as his accomplice, but a smart brief got him off on a technicality. I spoke to Dave Gaylor, who was the case officer.’

‘Worked with Terry Biglow?’ Grace said.

Everyone in the room knew the name Biglow. They were one of the city’s long-established crime families. Several generations into everything from drug dealing, stolen antiques and call girls to witness intimidation, they were just plain trouble in all its forms.

Grace looked at DI Mantle. ‘Seems you could be right, Lizzie. There’s enough there at least to announce we have a suspect.’

Alison Vosper would like that, he thought. She always liked that phrase, We have a suspect. It made her in turn look good to her boss, the Chief Constable. And if her boss was happy, then she was happy.

And if she was happy, she tended to stay out of his face.