by Peter James
Finally, at 5.30, he switched the light back on, got out of bed, dressed, pulled on his coat, and let himself out of the house in the dark, chilly dawn air. Across the road a small BMW started up, the reversing lights came on and it backed out into the street. He breathed in the smell of the exhaust as the driver accelerated away, the engine making a harsh rasp, then began to walk, after logging his bearings.
It was strange, he thought, as he crossed a road and carried on past the dark, curtained windows of houses. For many years – well over a decade now – Sandy had often dominated his waking thoughts, and, at least once a week, his dreams. For a long time he had felt he could never move forward in life until he knew what had happened to her. Now he did know the truth – or at least some of it – and it didn’t make him feel any better.
In some ways, quite the reverse.
A road-sweeping truck was coming towards him, brushes swirling. He walked on past it, then made a right turn into a small park. His thoughts switched for some moments to the crime scene he had left in the Hove seafront flat. Lorna Belling dead in the bathtub. Then the sight of Corin Belling’s body cartwheeling past the yellow Lamborghini.
Case closed?
Why would Belling have done a runner when he and Exton had gone to his office to see him, then punched him in the face and run off again, if he wasn’t guilty? Surely not because there’d been an incident and he had thrown her tiny puppies out into the street – something that made Roy Grace, who loved dogs, really angry.
Equally, he knew he always had to keep personal prejudices out of any investigation. If you summarily believed someone was guilty, you were in danger of obstructing the search for the truth. This would be a good case for Guy to cut his teeth on.
A woman in a tracksuit jogged past him, murmuring guten morgen. She was out of earshot by the time he replied, his focus switched back to the day ahead – and beyond.
He wished now that he’d encouraged Cleo to come with him to Germany. But she had been resolute in her view that he needed to have some time with his son on their own. The little boy already had a huge amount to contend with. Being uprooted would have a massive impact on him in ways they could not even guess. They were going to have to take it very gently, one step at a time.
He and Cleo had spent many hours during recent evenings googling about introducing a stepchild into a family with a baby. One issue was what Bruno might call her, and she him. Son? Stepson? They had decided it was best to wait to see what Bruno was most comfortable with. She didn’t mind whether she would be known by him as ‘mum’ or Cleo – or something totally different. Whatever the case, it wasn’t going to be an easy transition for any of them. They couldn’t expect to meet one day and all be best friends the next. It was going to take time and a lot of effort – which he and Cleo were completely prepared for.
What could he say at the funeral in England next week that would be meaningful? How many people would be attending? Sandy’s parents, an aunt and uncle and four cousins. She had never been one for friends in England. She had just one girlfriend, Chantal Rickards, and they’d never been that close. Chantal had genuinely been as surprised as he was by her sudden disappearance nearly eleven years ago. She’d told Chantal that it was hard at times being married to a cop who was married to his work, but she said she had accepted that.
A few of his friends and colleagues would attend, among them Glenn for sure, and Norman said he wanted to come. And his old friend Dick Pope, also a detective, and his wife, Leslie. He and Sandy had been good friends with them – and had been due to go out for dinner with them to celebrate his thirtieth birthday on the night that she’d disappeared. They had been good to him in those terrible months immediately after, inviting him over for meals and providing lots of support. But when Dick had later transferred to the Met they’d moved closer to London, and he barely saw them any more. He was glad they were coming.
He was less glad about Sandy’s parents, who were making things awkward. He’d learned long ago not to take the fact that they didn’t like him personally – so far as he could see, they didn’t actually like anyone, not even each other. Her mother looked permanently angry and her fantasist father, Derek, spent his time immersed in the world of model Second World War aircraft, telling anyone who would listen how his father had flown seventy-five missions in the legendary Dambusters squadron. In fact, his father had never even been up in the air during the war – sure, he was stationed at 617 Squadron at Lossiemouth in Scotland, but he was an aircraft fitter and never left the ground.
But now, decades later, Derek Balkwill had finally managed to drop a bombshell himself. He and his wife had decided they wanted a Catholic funeral for Sandy because, they informed him, they had brought her up Catholic. It was news to him.
When he and Sandy had married it had been an Anglican service and neither of her parents had made any comment then. Subsequently Sandy had pretty much rejected all religion, and had once told Roy that if she died before him, she would want a Humanist funeral. He’d told Derek and Margot Balkwill this at a tense meeting at their house last week, after breaking the news to them over the phone. He’d been there for nearly an hour before being offered anything to drink – a miserably weak cup of tea that tasted like it was the bag’s third or fourth outing. Margot was the kind of woman so mean he could imagine her hanging used teabags out to dry.
‘It’s the boy you have to think of,’ she had said, coldly and a bit oddly. ‘This funeral is not about our daughter – we lost her years ago. We all know what our daughter wanted, which was to turn her back on us all. Now it’s about our grandson. We need to nurture his spiritual wellbeing. Bring him up in the sight of our Lord.’
Eventually they reached an uncomfortable compromise. It would be a religious service but an Anglican one – and Grace would approach the senior police chaplain to see if he would be willing to conduct it, which he had done. The Reverend Smale had asked Roy if he or anyone would be giving a eulogy. It was something he had been thinking about and had not yet come to any conclusion. What could he say – just talk about the Sandy he had known? But then how would Bruno feel, to have a total stranger suddenly talking about how wonderful his mother had been?
He tried to put himself in Bruno’s shoes. How would he have felt in this situation? But he didn’t know. He really didn’t. And he hadn’t long to figure it out.
31
Friday 22 April
Dr Frazer Theobald was trying to figure it out. In the grey grimness of the tiled postmortem room at Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, and the sense of studious concentration around the dead woman, Guy Batchelor, who had barely slept all night, was trying to lighten his mood by recalling an observation someone made, years back, in classic police gallows humour, describing the hollowed-out torsos of bodies.
Canoes.
Right now, Lorna Belling’s torso, opened all the way down, her sternum removed, along with all her internal organs, did indeed look, with a small stretch of warped imagination, like a canoe.
Coroner’s Officer Michelle Websdale, the CSI video photographer James Gartrell, as well as Cleo and her assistant, Darren, all stood in attendance, whilst the Home Office pathologist proceeded at his normal pedestrian pace through his examination and dissection of each of her internal organs, pausing frequently to dictate notes into a recorder he kept on a shelf on the far side of the room.
Something else made the DI smirk, more gallows humour. The knowledge that husband and wife were both in Sussex mortuaries right now. Victim and offender. Corin Belling was in one of the fridges in Haywards Heath mortuary. His postmortem would be done by Theobald after he completed this one.
A family affair!
He stepped out of the room, not wanting anyone to see the grin on his face, walked through to the tiny office and switched on the kettle to make himself a cup of coffee. But, actually, after his sombre time in the tiny flat while Theobald carried out his inch-by-inch examination of Lorna’s body, and now this long, slow proc
ess, he was starting to feel elated. What a golden opportunity had fallen into his lap. His very first murder as a deputy SIO, and every chance it could be wrapped up in the next twenty-four hours, giving him the kudos, thanks to Roy having to be away.
The fingerprints on the beer cans already put Corin Belling at the scene. The DNA results on the cigarette butts in the flat should be back imminently, and hopefully they would add further confirmation of Belling, a chain-smoker, being there.
He unscrewed the lid of the coffee jar and spooned two heaped teaspoons into the mug, then poured in the milk – something his Swedish wife, Lena, had taught him. It stopped the boiling water from scorching the grounds, and made it taste more like percolated coffee.
Just as he picked up the kettle, his phone rang. It was Roy Grace.
‘Boss!’ he said. ‘How’s it going in Munich?’
‘Just about to go and meet my son,’ he replied. ‘What’s the latest?’
‘Theobald is hard at work, we should be finished sometime before the start of the next ice age.’
‘DNA on those butts back yet?’
‘No, I’m about to chase the lab.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, boss, we’re good. Just wondering if we need to hold a press briefing, but at the moment it looks such an open-and-shut case I don’t know if there’s any point. Shall I wait until you come back?’
‘Unless there are any unexpected developments, yes.’
‘OK – and – er – boss – I’m sorry for what happened yesterday afternoon – you know – sorry for you – but I really think that Corin Belling running, then giving you a smack in the face, says it all. He’s just a piece of shit – sorry – let me rephrase that – he’s now several pieces of shit!’
Roy Grace laughed. ‘Let’s hope when they start putting him back together they don’t find a bit left over – like I always used to do as a kid putting together model aircraft.’
‘I’ll make sure of it.’
Grace smiled.
‘Good luck today, Roy. Tough call.’
There was a long silence. Then a very distant and faint, ‘Yes.’
Batchelor ended the call and poured the water into his coffee, stirred it and noticed how much his hand was shaking. He hadn’t had any breakfast, he remembered. He’d climbed out of bed feeling totally shattered, made himself a double Nespresso, then showered, shaved, dressed and driven straight here. He removed the lid of the biscuit tin, munched a couple of shortbread biscuits, and then carried his mug through to the postmortem room.
As he entered, he felt a change in the atmosphere. The short and stocky pathologist was staring at him with his beady, nut-brown eyes, the only feature of his face currently visible.
‘Detective Inspector Batchelor,’ he said, holding up a glass vial with an air almost of triumph. ‘I have found something that may be significant.’
32
Friday 22 April
Guy Batchelor stared at Frazer Theobald. ‘What?’
‘The presence of semen.’
‘So she’s a sailor?’
Theobald looked at Guy Batchelor strangely. Humour had never been a part of the pathologist’s canon of talents. Most people, when thinking about it, realized they had never even seen Dr Frazer Theobald smile. ‘Sailor?’ he quizzed.
‘Sorry, just a bad joke. Semen. Sea men.’
The pathologist continued to stare at him, without getting it. ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
Batchelor noticed the creases around Gartrell’s and Websdale’s eyes. They were both grinning.
‘It’s OK. What can you tell us about it – are you able to say how recently she had intercourse before she died?’
Theobald lowered his mask, revealing almost in full his Groucho Marx moustache. With his diminutive frame, all he needed was a large cigar to complete the look, Batchelor thought, struggling to keep that thought to himself.
‘Without laboratory examination, I can’t tell you how fresh it is, but I would estimate that sexual intercourse had occurred within the last forty-eight hours. From the briefing you gave me, I understood this unfortunate lady was renting the flat she was found in as some kind of a bolthole – to get away from her abusive husband. I would hardly consider the presence of semen to be a surprise. You told me earlier that her husband’s fingerprints were found in this apartment, indicating his knowledge of it. It is reasonable to assume that he had sex with her, consensually or otherwise. Unless of course she was having an affair. DNA will establish this one way or another.’
‘I’ll get it fast-tracked,’ Batchelor said.
Theobald carried on, while the DI made notes on his pad, intending to update Roy Grace in a short while and ask him how he wanted him to handle the investigation from here.
Something bothered him a lot about the semen. Sure, to the Home Office pathologist the presence of it in the woman’s vagina, given the circumstance of her relationship with her abusive, dominating husband, was entirely plausible. But not to Guy Batchelor.
It told him a very different story.
Had she met a lover there? Had sex with him? The DNA result, which could be back in twenty-four hours, with luck, might provide an answer.
If it came back with a match to the husband, and his DNA was found on the beer cans which had been sent to the lab following the fingerprint identification, then it would be case closed.
But if not?
He hoped so much it would turn out to be the husband. To have solved this before Roy Grace had even returned from Germany would make him look very good.
But a feeling he could not explain told him that this wasn’t the whole picture.
33
Friday 22 April
Nothing, in all his life, had prepared Roy Grace for this moment. He’d dealt with horrific crime scenes, including a father who had murdered his baby son, a beautiful young woman murdered for a snuff movie, and a decent young doctor’s charred remains found on a golf course.
Little shocked him any more.
Little scared him.
But right now, just before midday, as Marcel Kullen pulled up his white VW Sirocco outside the Lipperts’ elegant modern villa in the Gräfelfing district of west Munich, he was shaking. Before leaving England he had debated what to wear. Both Cleo and his style guru, Glenn Branson, had texted him advising him to go casual. Glenn had urged him to look cool, adding with his usual dry humour that he didn’t want his son’s first impression of him to be a dull old fart – he’d find that out soon enough . . .
So, with Kullen wishing him luck, he removed the chewing gum from his mouth, climbed out of the car dressed in leather jacket over a black T-shirt, jeans and boots, and shut the door behind him. As he walked up to the house he realized he was still shaking, aware Bruno’s eyes might already be on him, watching from behind one of the windows. It felt like a blender had been switched on inside his stomach. But at least his pounding head was calming down.
Something his friend had said last night resonated, repeating over and over. Remember this, Roy, your last shirt has no pockets.
He couldn’t get that damned expression out of his head.
We come into this world with nothing, and we don’t need pockets when we leave it, because we take nothing away with us; nothing to put in our pockets, Marcel Kullen had explained. Whatever we have is left behind for others.
Sandy was gone, and had left him Bruno.
What the hell was he going to say to him when he went through that door – the home of Bruno’s best friend, Erik, where Bruno had been staying since his mother, Sandy, had been run over by a taxi and lay comatose in hospital. Before hanging herself in her room soon after she had begun, seemingly, to recover.
And charging him in her suicide letter with their son’s care.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Marcel Kullen smiling at him. He gave him a cursory nod. Could anyone possibly have any idea what was going through his mind right now?
As he rang the b
ell he found himself, irrationally, hoping – praying – that no one would be in.
The door opened.
34
Friday 22 April
A casually dressed red-haired woman in her thirties stood there with a welcoming smile.
‘Roy?’
He held out his hand. ‘Anette?’
She nodded, and stared at him intently. ‘Wow, your son is so like you!’
‘Really?’
‘Incredible!’
He noticed a rucksack and two large suitcases in the hallway behind her.
‘Would you like some coffee? Or perhaps as an Englishman you’d prefer some tea?’
‘OK. Coffee would be good, thank you.’
‘Would your friend like to come in?’
‘No, thank you, he’s happy to wait. I think it would be best if I’m on my own.’
‘Yes, I think so. You met with Andreas Thomas?’
‘Yes, I’ve just come from his office.’
‘I think he’s a good lawyer.’
‘I liked him – he seems very sensible and practical.’
‘Good.’ Then she looked hard at him again and smiled. ‘You really are just so alike!’
A lanky, serious-looking man, dressed in a sweatshirt and jogging bottoms, appeared in the hall.
‘This is my husband, Ingo,’ she said.
The two men shook hands.
‘It’s good to meet you,’ her husband said, also in excellent English with a pronounced American accent.
‘I’m very grateful to you both – and your son – for taking care of Bruno.’
‘It has not been a problem, I think our Erik has enjoyed having his company. He is going to miss him,’ Ingo said, a tad stiffly. ‘So are you ready to meet your son?’
He smiled, nervously. ‘Absolutely!’
They led him through into a large, bright modern kitchen, with a view out onto a sizeable, well-kept garden, mostly laid to lawn, and woods beyond. Two goalposts, complete with nets, were positioned on part of the lawn.