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The reality of that was hammering home. Three hundred and two dollars to last him until he could make a transaction. He could pawn his laptop, but that was too risky. He knew, to his own cost, when the computer at the car dealership had been seized a few years back, that it was almost impossible to wipe a computer memory clean. His laptop would always be traceable back to him.
They were talking about volunteers wanted for the pile on the screen again now. Volunteers, he thought. The idea was taking root, exciting him.
Now, thanks to the morning news, he had another piece of his plan in place.
60
Sussex House had originally been acquired as the headquarters for Sussex CID. But recently, despite the fact that the building was bursting at the seams, a uniformed district, East Brighton, had been squeezed into the premises as well. The Neighbourhood Specialist Team officers, involved in community-orientated problem-solving, occupied a tight space behind double doors leading directly off the reception area.
One downside of this location for Inspector Stephen Curry was that every morning he needed to be in two places at once. He had to be here for his daily briefing with the duty Neighbourhood Policing Team inspector, which ended just after 9 o’clock, and then he had a mad dash through the Brighton rush hour to be at Brighton Police Station in John Street for the daily 9.30 review meeting chaired by the Superintendent Crime and Operations for Brighton and Hove Division.
A strong-framed man of thirty-nine with hard-set good looks and a youthful air of enthusiasm about him, Curry was in even more of a rush than usual today, looking anxiously at his watch. It was 10.45. He had just returned to his office at Sussex House from John Street, to deal with a couple of urgent matters, and was about to fly back out of the door when Roy Grace phoned him.
He carefully wrote down the name Katherine Je
As the matter didn’t sound urgent, he decided it could wait till later. Then he jumped up, grabbed his cap off the door, and hurried out.
61
Lorraine was sitting once again at the kitchen table in her white towelling dressing gown, a cigarette in her mouth and a cup of tea in front of her. Her head was pounding and she was bleary-eyed, not fully with it, from an almost sleepless night. Her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest and she had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She tapped the cigarette on the ashtray, sending a quarter-inch of ash tumbling in to join the four fresh butts already there this morning. The Daily Mirror lay beside her and the news was on television, but for the first time since yesterday afternoon, her mind was on something else.
In front of her lay the post that had arrived that morning, as well as yesterday’s and Monday’s. Plus more opened post she had found in Ro
The letter she was looking at now was from a debt-collection agency called EndCol Financial Recovery. It was acknowledging an agreement Ro
Then there was the letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, demanding that nearly eleven and a half thousand pounds be paid within three weeks or a distraint order would be made.
Lorraine shook her head in disbelief. Half the letters were demands for payment on overdue bills. And one, from his bank manager, told him that his request for a further loan had been rejected.
The worst letter of all was from the building society. She had found it in his bureau and it informed Ro
Lorraine crushed out the cigarette, buried her face in her hands and sobbed. All the time thinking, Why didn’t you tell me this, Ro
She shook another cigarette out and stared numbly at the screen. At the people in New York walking around with their placards, their photographs of lost loved ones. That’s what she needed to do, she knew. She had to get over there and find him. Maybe he’d been injured and was lying in a hospital somewhere…
He was alive, she felt it in her bones. He was a survivor. All these debts, he would deal with them. If Ro
For the millionth time, she dialled his number. And it went straight to his voicemail. Not his voice, just an impersonal one telling her sorry, the person she had called was not available and inviting her to leave a message.
She hung up, sipped her tea, then lit the cigarette and coughed. A deep, hacking cough which made her eyes water. They were now showing the smouldering rubble, the skeletal walls, the whole apocalyptic scene of what had been, until yesterday morning, the World Trade Center. She tried to work out from the images now on the screen – first a tight shot of a fireman in the foreground wearing a face mask, stumbling across a hillock of shifting, smoking masonry, then a much wider shot showing a slab maybe a hundred feet high and a flattened cop car – where the South Tower had been. What was left of it. When had Ro
Her front doorbell rang. She froze. Then there was a sharp rap.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She slunk upstairs and into the front bedroom, the one that Ro
She lay still, almost holding her breath. There were more raps on the door. The bell rang again, twice. Then, finally, she heard the van drive off.
62
Tosser!
Cassian Pewe had been in Sussex House for a couple of days, but it had taken about three minutes for Tony Case, the Senior Support Officer, to sum him up.
Case, a former police officer himself, ran the administration for this building and the three other buildings that housed between them all the Major Incident Suites in Sussex – at Littlehampton, Horsham and Eastbourne. Among his duties were performing risk assessments for raids, budgeting forensic requirements and new equipment, and general compliance, as well as ensuring that the people who worked here had everything they needed.
Such as picture hooks.
‘Look,’ Pewe said, as if he were addressing a flunky, ‘I want that picture hook moved three inches to the right and six inches higher. OK? And I want this one moved exactly eight inches higher. Understand? You don’t seem to be writing any of this down.’