Elegant grey letters on the store front read The Munich Readery. Another announced Second-hand Books in English.
‘I just wanted to show you the shop. I am asking in this tomorrow,’ the German detective said.
Grace nodded. He had consumed two large beers, a bratwurst, sauerkraut and potatoes, and was feeling decidedly woozy. In fact, he was having a problem keeping his eyes open.
‘Sandy was a big reader, you told me?’
Was. The word jarred in Grace’s mind. He didn’t like people referring to Sandy in the past tense, as if she were dead. But he let it slide. He used that tense himself often enough, subconsciously. Feeling more energized suddenly, he said, ‘Yes, she’s a big reader, always has been. Crime, thrillers – all kinds of mystery novels. Biographies as well – she liked reading about women explorers in particular.’
Kullen put the car in gear and drove on. ‘What is it – you have this saying in England – Keep your pecker up?’
Grace patted his friend on the arm. ‘Good memory!’
‘So now us will go to the police headquarters. There they have the records for the missing persons. I have a friend, Sabine Thomas, the Polizeirat who is in charge of this department. She is coming in to meet us.’
‘Thank you,’ Grace said. ‘That’s kind of her, on a Sunday.’
His earlier optimism had deserted him and he was feeling flat, realizing again the enormity of what faced him here. He watched quiet streets, deserted shops, cars, pedestrians slide by. She could be anywhere. In a room behind any of these fa�es, in any of these cars, on any of these streets. And this was just one city. How many gazillion towns and cities in the world were there where she might be?
He found the button on his door and lowered his window. Sultry, humid air blew on his face. The foolishness he had felt earlier, as he had returned to the table after his fruitless chase, had gone, but now he felt lost.
Somehow, after Dick Pope’s call, he had felt that all he had to do was go to the Englischer Garten and he would find Sandy there. Waiting for him. As if somehow letting Dick and Lesley Pope see her had been her subtle way of getting the message to him.
How dumb was that?
‘If you like on the way to the office we can walk through Marienplatz. It is a small detour. We can go there to the Viktualienmarkt, the place I told you where I think an English person might go for food.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Then you are come to my house and you meet my family.’
Grace smiled at him, wondering if the German had any idea just how much he envied him the apparent normality of his life. Then, suddenly, his mobile phone rang. Grace looked at the display.
Private number.
He let it ring a couple more times, hesitating. Probably work, and he wasn’t in the right mood to speak to anyone from work right now. But he was aware of his responsibilities. With a heavy heart, he pressed the green button.
‘Yo!’
It was Glenn Branson.
‘Wassup?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Munich.’
‘Munich? You’re still there?’
‘It’s only been a few hours.’
‘What the fuck are you doing there anyway?’
‘Trying to buy you a horse.’
There was a long silence. ‘A what?’ And then, ‘Oh, I get it. Very funny. Munich – shit, man. Ever see that movie Night Train to Munich?’
‘No.’
‘Directed by Carol Reed.’
‘Never saw it. This is not a good time to discuss movies.’
‘Yeah, well, you were watching The Third Man the other night. He directed that too.’
‘Is that what you phoned to tell me about?’
‘No.’ He was about to add something, when Kullen leaned across Grace, pointing at a rather unimpressive looking building.
‘Hold on a moment.’ Grace covered the mouthpiece.
‘The Bierkeller where Hitler was thrown out from, because he did not pay his bill!’ he said. ‘A rumour, you know!’
‘I’m just driving past Adolf Hitler’s watering hole,’ Grace informed Branson.
‘Yeah? Well, keep on driving past it. We have a problem.’
‘Tell me?’
‘It’s big. Massive. OK?’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘You sound pissed. Have you been drinking?’
‘No,’ Grace said, mentally sharpening himself up. ‘Tell me?’
‘We have another murder on our hands,’ the DS said. ‘Similarities with Katie Bishop.’
And suddenly Roy Grace was sitting bolt upright, fully alert. ‘What similarities?’
‘A young woman – name of Sophie Harrington. She’s been found dead with a gas mask on her face.’
Cold fingers crawled up Grace’s spine. ‘Shit. What else do you have?’
‘What else do you need? I’m telling you, man, you need to get your ass back here.’
‘You have DI Murphy. She can handle it.’
‘She’s your understudy,’ he said disparagingly.
‘If you want to call her that. So far as I’m concerned, she’s my deputy SIO.’
‘You know what they said about Greta Garbo’s understudy?’
Struggling to remember any movie he had ever seen the screen legend in, Grace replied testily, ‘No, what did they say?’
‘Greta Garbo’s understudy can do everything that Greta Garbo does, except for whatever it is that Greta Garbo does.’
‘Very flattering.’
‘You geddit?’
‘I geddit.’
‘In that case get your ass on the next plane back here. Alison Vosper thinks she has your scalp. I don’t give a toss about those politics, but I do give a toss about you. And we need you.’
‘Did you remember to feed Marlon?’ Grace asked.
‘Marlon?’
‘The goldfish.’
‘Oh, shit.’
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Cleo tried to scream, but the sound stayed trapped in her throat. She struggled manically, trying to free her arms, the man’s face a blur to her unfocused eyes. She lashed out with her leg, kicking him in the shin.
Then she heard his voice.
‘Cleo!’
Quiet, plaintive. ‘Cleo! It’s me! It’s OK.’
Spiky black hair. A startled expression on his young, pleasant face. Dressed casually in an orange top and green shorts, headphones plugged into his ears.
‘Oh, shit.’ She stopped struggling, her mouth dropping open. ‘Darren!’
He released her arms very slowly, warily, as if not yet quite sure he could trust her not to stab him. ‘Are you all right, Cleo?’
Gulping down air, she felt as if her heart was trying to drill its way out of her chest. She stepped back, looking at her colleague, then at the knife on the floor, then back at his brown eyes. Numb. Too numb to say anything else for a moment.
‘You gave me such a shock.’ The words came out in a breathless, whispered rush.
Darren raised his hands and pulled out his earphones, letting them dangle by their white wires. Then he raised his hands again, in an attitude of surrender. He was trembling, she realized.
‘I’m sorry.’ She was still hyperventilating, her voice shaky. Then she smiled, trying to remedy the situation.
Still looking uncertain, he said, ‘Am I that scary?’
‘I – I heard the door,’ she said, starting to feel foolish now. ‘I called out and you didn’t reply. I thought you were an intruder. I – I was . . .’ she shook her head.
He dropped his hands, cupping his earpieces. ‘I was listening to some heavy music,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He reached down and rubbed his shin.
‘Did I hurt you?’
‘Actually, yes! But I’ll live.’ There was a nasty mark on his shin. ‘I suddenly remembered we’d left the body out. I thought, with this heat, it ought to go i
n a fridge. I called you, but there was no answer from your home or your mobile, so I decided to come in and do it.’
Feeling more normal now, Cleo apologized again.
He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. But I never thought of working in a mortuary as being a contact sport.’
She laughed. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I’ve just had a shit twenty-four hours. I—’
‘Forget it. I’m OK.’
She looked at the red weal on his leg. ‘It was good of you, that you came in. Thank you.’
‘I’ll think twice next time,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘Maybe I should have stayed in my last job – it was a lot less violent.’
She grinned. In his previous job, she remembered, Darren had been a butcher’s apprentice. ‘It’s good of you to give up time on a Sunday,’ she said.
‘It got me out of a barbecue at my girlfriend’s parents,’ he said. ‘That’s the downside of this work. I can’t cope with barbecues since I started working here.’
‘That makes two of us.’
They were both thinking of burns victims. Usually their skin was blackened, crisp like pork crackling. Depending how long they had burned for, their flesh was sometimes grey and hard, sometimes raw and bloody liked seared, undercooked pork. Cleo had read once that cannibal tribes in central Africa called white man long pig. She understood exactly why. It was the reason many people who worked in mortuaries were uncomfortable at barbecues. Particularly when pork was involved.
Together they rolled the cadaver on to her stomach and examined her back for tattoos, birthmarks and bullet-entry wounds, but found nothing. With relief they finally eased her into a body-bag, zipped it up and slid it into fridge number 17. Tomorrow the process of identifying her would begin. The soft tissues from her fingers were gone, so there were no prints that could be taken. Her jaw was intact, so dental records could be checked. DNA was a longer shot – she would need to already be on a database to find a match. Her description and photographs and measurements would be sent to the Missing Persons Helpline, and Sussex police would contact friends and relatives of anyone who had been reported missing who fitted the description of this dead woman.
And in the morning the consultant pathologist, Dr Nigel Churchman, would conduct a post-mortem to establish the cause of death. If, during the course of this, he found anything suspicious, he would halt his work immediately, the coroner would be notified and a Home Office pathologist, either Nadiuska or Dr Theobald, would be called in to take over.
In the meantime, both Cleo and Darren had several hours remaining of a glorious August Sunday afternoon ahead of them
Darren left first, in his small red Nissan, heading for the barbecue he really could have done without. Cleo stood in the doorway, watching him drive off, unable to stop herself from envying him. He was young, full of enthusiasm, happy in his relationship with his girlfriend and in his job.
She was rapidly heading for the wrong side of thirty. Enjoying her career but worrying about it at the same time. She wanted to have children before she was too old. Yet each time she thought she had found Mr Right, he would spring something on her from left field. Roy was such a lovely man. But just when she thought everything was perfect, his missing wife popped up like a bloody jack-in-the-box.
She set the alarm, stepped outside and locked the front door, with just one thought in her mind – to get home and see if there was a message from Roy. Then, walking across the tarmac drive to her blue MG, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Somebody had slashed the black canvas roof open. All the way from the windscreen to the rear window.
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The woman behind the wooden counter and glass window handed him a buff-coloured rectangular form. ‘Please put your name and address and other details on this,’ she asked him in a weary voice. She looked as if she had been sitting there for too long, reminding him of an exhibit in a museum showcase that someone had neglected to dust. Her face had an indoors pallor and her shapeless brown hair hung around her face and shoulders like curtains that had become detached from some of their rings.
Above the reception desk of the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Royal Sussex County Hospital was a large LCD display of yellow letters on a black background, currently reading WAITING TIME 3 HOURS.
He considered the form carefully. A name, address, date of birth and next of kin were required. There was also a space for allergies.
‘Everything all right?’ the woman asked.
He raised his swollen right hand. ‘Difficult to write,’ he said.
‘Would you like me to fill it in for you?’
‘I can manage.’
Then, leaning on the counter, he stared at the form for some moments, his brain, muzzed by the pain, really not functioning that well at all. He was trying to think quickly, but the thoughts that he wanted didn’t come in the right sequence. He felt a little dizzy suddenly.
‘You can sit down and fill it in,’ she said.
Snapping back at her, he shouted, ‘I SAID I CAN MANAGE!’
People all around looked up from their hard grey plastic seats, startled. Not smart, he thought. Not smart to draw attention. Hastily he filled out the form and then, as if to make amends, beside Allergies he wrote, wittily, he thought, ‘Pain.’
But she didn’t appear to notice as she took the form back. ‘Please take a seat and a nurse will come and see you shortly.’
‘Three hours?’ he said.
‘I’ll tell them it’s urgent,’ she said flatly, then watched warily as the strange man with long, straggly brown hair, a heavy moustache and beard, and large, tinted glasses, wearing a baggy white shirt over a string vest, grey slacks and sandals, walked over to an empty seat, between a man with a bleeding arm and an elderly woman with a bandaged head, and sat down. Then she picked up her phone.
The Time Billionaire unclipped the BlackBerry from its holster, which was attached to his belt, but before he had time to do anything, a shadow fell in front of him. A pleasant-looking, dark-haired woman in her late forties, in nursing uniform, was standing over him. The badge on her lapel read Barbara Leach – A&E Nurse.
‘Hello!’ she said breezily. ‘Would you come with me?’
She led him into a small booth and asked him to sit down.
‘What seems to be the problem?’
He raised his hand. ‘I hurt it working on a car.’
‘How long ago?’
Thinking for a moment, he said, ‘Thursday afternoon.’
She examined it carefully, turning it over, then comparing it to his left hand. ‘It looks infected,’ she said. ‘Have you had a tetanus injection recently?’
‘I don’t remember.’
She studied it again for a while thoughtfully. ‘Working on a car?’ she said.
‘An old car. I’m restoring it.’
‘I’ll get the doctor to see you as soon as possible.’
He went back to his chair in the waiting room and turned his attention back to his BlackBerry. He logged on to the web and then clicked on his bookmark for Google.
When that came up, he entered a search command for MG TF.
That was the car Cleo Morey drove.
Despite his pain, despite his muzzy thoughts, a plan was forming. Really quite a good plan.
‘Fucking brilliant!’ he said out loud, unable to control his excitement. Then immediately he shrank back into his shell.
He was shaking.
Always a sign that the Lord approved.
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Reluctantly cutting short his precious hours in Munich, Grace managed to board an earlier flight. The weather in England had changed dramatically during the day, and shortly after six o’clock in the evening, as he went to get his car from the short-stay multi-storey car park at Heathrow, the sky was an ominous grey and a cold wind was blowing, flecking the windscreen with rain.
It was the kind of wind that you forgot even existed during the long, summer days the
y’d had recently, he reflected. It was like a stern reminder from Mother Nature that summer was not going to last much longer. The days were already getting shorter. In little over a month it would be autumn. Then winter. Another year.
Feeling flat and tired, he wondered what he had achieved today, apart from earning another black mark in Alison Vosper’s book. Anything at all?
He pushed his ticket into the machine and the barrier rose. Even the rorty sound of the engine as he accelerated, which ordinarily he liked listening to, seemed off-key tonight. Definitely not firing on all cylinders. Like its owner.
Sort yourself out in Munich. Call me when you get back home.
As he headed towards the roundabout, taking the direction for the M25, he stuck his phone in the hands-free cradle and dialled Cleo’s mobile. It started ringing. Then he heard her voice, a little slurred, and hard to decipher above a raucous din of jazz music in the background.
‘Yo! Detective Shhuperintendent Roy Grace! Where are you?’
‘Just left Heathrow. You?’
‘I’m getting smashed with my little sister, we’re on our third Sea Breezes – no – sorry – correct that! We’re on our fifth Sea Breezes, down by the Arches. It’s blowing a hooley, but there’s a great band. Come and join us!’
‘I have to go to a crime scene. Later?’
‘Don’t think we’ll be conscious much longer!’
‘So you’re not on call today?’
‘Day off!’
‘Can I swing by later?’
‘Can’t guarantee I’ll be awake. But you can try!’
When he was a kid, Church Road, Hove, was the dull backwater that Brighton’s busy, buzzy, shopping street, Western Road, morphed into, somewhere west of the Waitrose supermarket. It had perked up considerably in recent years, with trendy restaurants, delis and shops displaying stuff that people under ninety might actually want to buy.
Like most of this city, many of the familiar names from his past along Church Road, such as the grocer’s Cullens, the chemist’s Paris and Greening, the department stores Hills of Hove and Plummer Roddis, had now gone. Just a few still remained. One was Forfars the baker’s. He turned right shortly past them, drove up a one-way street, made a right at the top, then another right into Newman Villas.