by Peter James
Ball frowned. Was this shrink about to start playing some clever mind games with him? ‘OK,’ he said, guardedly.
‘Does Logan have a mark or words – maybe a tattoo – anywhere on her body?’
He was silent for some moments, wondering where this was going. ‘A tattoo?’
‘Yes. A mark or tattoo.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’
‘Are you absolutely certain? Perhaps on her right thigh?’
‘Yes, I am sure, there’s nothing there.’
‘What about any writing or script?’
‘No, she doesn’t have. Why are you asking, Mr Van Dam?’
‘I have a reason.’
‘No, she has no tattoo. OK?’ The man’s insistent voice was irritating him, and making him feel even edgier.
‘You’ve been very helpful, I’m sorry to have troubled you. Thank you.’
Ball stared into the receiver as the call ended. Into the tiny holes in the mouthpiece. What was that all about, he wondered?
Jacob Van Dam sat for a long time at his desk, in silence, deep in thought. In his opinion, Ball’s reaction had been that of someone distraught because his loved one was missing.
Nevertheless, he had the feeling he was hiding something. But what?
32
Friday 12 December
After the briefing, Roy Grace went back to his office, deep in thought, needing some quiet time to reflect. On Monday he had to speak at Bella’s funeral, which was going to be emotional, he knew. One of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. Then on Tuesday, the removals company were due to be delivering all the packing cases, both to Cleo’s house and to his own, in advance of their move the following Friday. Somehow he was going to have to find the time to be at home to help Cleo pack everything up. He was also going to have to supervise the packing of all his belongings in his own house, near the seafront – very close to the Lagoon – which he had shared with Sandy prior to her disappearance.
But all he could think of was Logan Somerville. Her long brown hair. And Emma Johnson, who was missing and had a similar hairstyle. Was there a possible link with the body of the woman at the Lagoon – with the strands of long brown hair too?
He tried to dismiss that. He didn’t want any links. A solo murder victim was a tragedy, but a one-off nonetheless. The victim of a sexual assault, a revenge attack, a random attack by someone mentally ill, a domestic dispute, a robbery or a jealous lover. These were some of the reasons people killed – and got killed. Single, brutal, final acts.
Linked murders could be game changers. Three or more, in different locations and with time between them, and you had a serial killer by definition. They hadn’t had one in this city for a very long time, not in all of his career, to date – at least that the police had heard about.
Earlier he’d told Cleo there was no way he’d be home early tonight, even though she’d tried to tempt him by telling him she’d been planning some of his favourite dishes, a prawn and avocado cocktail, then grilled Dover sole. He was feeling hungry, and would have dearly loved to have headed straight back – to see Noah, have a couple of glasses of wine and a nice meal, and an evening doing what he loved most, spending time with Cleo.
His phone rang.
He answered instantly. It was Glenn Branson. ‘All right?’ the DI said.
‘Not great. You?’
‘Well, actually, I’ve got a bit of a development. Might be nothing – but I wanted to run it by you.’
‘Tell me?’
‘Fancy a drink? I kind of need one. I’m going off duty.’
‘Friday night?’ Grace said. ‘So you don’t have a hot date with that Argus reporter – what’s her name – Siobhan Sheldrake?’
‘Haha, very funny.’
‘I need one, too. Have to make it quick and it’ll have to be a soft one. Black Lion?’
‘Fifteen?’
‘Give me three quarters of an hour, I need to swing by my house to pick up some stuff I’m taking to a charity shop.’
‘Must be tough for you,’ Branson said.
‘Yes,’ Grace replied. ‘Sad, too.’
‘But you’ve moved on now. You’re happy, you’re in a good place. Life’s started all over for you, and I’m happy. I’m really happy.’
‘Thanks, mate, so am I.’
Yet as he hung up, Roy Grace had a heavy heart. He went down to the car park and headed into Hove in Cleo’s car – she was now driving his Alfa which had been fitted with a baby seat. He had so much to look forward to, he knew, but clearing his old home, bit by bit, was not something he was enjoying.
Ten minutes later he turned off New Church Road, and drove down the street, towards Kingsway and the seafront, where he and Sandy had once been so happy. Christmas lights shone through the windows of the houses on either side of the road, until he reached his own house, a 1930s mock-Tudor semi, on the right, near the bottom, which sat in darkness.
He pulled up onto the drive in front of the garage door. Beyond it sat Sandy’s car, coated in dust, where it had been for the past decade awaiting her return. He unlocked the front door of the house. It had been over a week since he was last here, and as he went in he had to push the door hard through the mountain of junk mail and bills and local takeaway menus that had poured through the letter box in his absence.
He switched on the lights, went into the kitchen and pulled out a roll of black bin liners from under the sink, then carried them upstairs into their bedroom, which was still largely unchanged. He opened Sandy’s wardrobe, and began to pull out her clothes and stuff them into a bag until it was full. He could smell her scent, faintly, through the mustiness – or could he? Memories flooded back.
He filled one bag, and then a second, all kinds of thoughts of the past being triggered. Empty coat hangers clattered on the rail. He knelt and filled a third bag with her shoes, remembering to go into the downstairs cloakroom and take her coats off the hooks. Then he stood up and looked around the bedroom. There was a chaise longue at the end of the bed, which they had bought years ago, in terrible condition, from an auction room in Lewes, and had re-covered in a modern, black and white pattern which Sandy had selected. On it sat the battered, furry toy stoat she had had since childhood. He put that in the bag, too, then took it out again and placed it back on the chaise longue. He hadn’t the heart to give it away. Yet, at the same time, he could hardly take it to their new home.
Shit, this was hard.
What if?
If she ever returned? And wanted it?
And suddenly, he realized, as he had so many times over the past years, he could not even remember her face any more. He walked across to her walnut dressing table, and stared down at the framed photograph which sat between her bottles of perfumes.
It had been taken in the restaurant of a gorgeous hotel near Oxford, the Bear at Woodstock, where they had celebrated their wedding anniversary after he had attended a conference on DNA fingerprinting, a short while before she disappeared. He was in a suit and tie, Sandy, in an evening dress, beaming her constant irrepressible grin at a waiter they had asked to take the picture.
He stared at her crystal-clear blue eyes, the colour of the sky. It shocked him to look at her, realizing just how far she had faded into his past. He couldn’t give that away, he knew, nor could he throw it away. He would have to pack it in a suitcase and stick it away, somewhere, up in the loft of his new home.
Then he looked at the stack of books, some on her bedside table and others neatly arranged on the mantelpiece above the fireplace that had been boarded over by previous owners, but which Sandy had opened up again, and occasionally lit, because she thought it was romantic.
He picked up one of the books, Anita Brookner’s Hotel Du Lac, which she had asked him to buy from her Christmas list. He opened it up and read the inscription.
To my darling Sandy. On our fourth Christmas.
To the love of my life. XXXXX.
Whatever happened to you? God, where are you
now? Resting in peace, I hope.
He kissed the book then dropped it, along with all the others, into a fresh bin bag.
33
Friday 12 December
Stationsschwester Anette Lippert was seventy-five minutes into the night shift in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital where she had trained and spent most of her career to date. The Klinikum München Schwabing was, in her view deservedly, reputed to have one of the finest neurological departments in Germany with a nurse to every patient in the ICU.
As the senior staff nurse she normally took the morning shift, because that was when most of the transfers and operations took place, but with an epidemic of flu sweeping the city of Munich they were currently several nurses down and she was having to work around the clock some days to help cover.
The night shift was long and tedious, during which little tended to happen. The unit was kept at a carefully regulated twenty-four degrees Celsius, which sometimes felt stiflingly warm – although the patients who occupied the fifteen beds there never complained. Many of them never spoke. One exception was the comatose, unidentified woman in bed 12, who made occasional confused, sporadic utterings.
Stopping to check on each patient in turn, and getting an update from their charge nurse, accompanied by two doctors, Lippert reached bed 12. The occupant was a woman in her mid to late thirties, with short brown hair, her face heavily bandaged. She had been semi-comatose since being hit by a taxi a month ago whilst crossing Widenmayerstrasse, the busy main road that ran through one of the city of Munich’s smartest districts, separating it from the river Isar.
She had been admitted here as Unbekannte Frau.
An eyewitness to the accident had told the police, with disgust, that as she had lain in the road, some helmeted bastard on a motorcycle had pulled up, snatched her handbag from the road and accelerated off.
For forty-eight hours, no one had any idea who she was. Then a young boy, back from football camp, in tears because his mama had not collected him on his return from his trip, had been brought in here by the police and identified her as his mother, Frau Lohmann. Yet, despite this, she remained something of an enigma.
It seemed, so the police had informed the hospital, that Frau Lohmann had gone to some considerable lengths to erase her past. A search of her apartment, her computer and her mobile phone had revealed no clues as to who she really was. It appeared that she had at least two faked identities, including forged passports and social insurance numbers. Her credit cards were in her assumed names. She had over three million euros on deposit in a Munich bank, under one of these names, and had managed to open that account some nine years earlier by getting through its money-laundering protocols with her false documentation.
Interpol would take several weeks before they had results – if any – of fingerprint and DNA tests. But because of the police interest in her, she was due to be moved into one of the private rooms at the side of the ward as soon as one became vacant.
Lippert stared at her now. Her eyes were closed, as they had been since she had first arrived here. Her breathing was controlled by a ventilator, and she was catheterized. Fluids containing the various nutrients that kept her alive were steadily pumped into her through the dual lumen central line catheter that protruded from her upper chest.
Who are you really? Anette Lippert wondered. Where were you heading to when you were hit by that taxi? Where had you come from? What have you been running away from?
The police were doing all they could. She had various aliases, they had told the hospital. At some point in her life, before her son was born, she had changed her name, at least twice. But they could not give any reason why. Perhaps to escape from a nightmare relationship? A criminal past? A terrorist? The police were continuing with their investigations.
Meanwhile, Frau Lohmann continued to sleep. Kept alive by the tubes cannulated into her body.
And Anette Lippert continued to stare down at her, with a feeling of deep sadness. Someone loved you, once. You have a son. Come back to us. Wake up! Your son needs you.
Occasionally Frau Lohmann would take a sharp intake of breath. But her eyes would remain closed.
Always closed.
There were no relatives – at least, none that her son, Bruno, knew of. He was now staying with one of his friends, whose parents brought him frequently to visit.
What the hell is locked in your mind? Lippert wondered. How do we unlock it?
On the fourth round of her shift, shortly after midnight, when Anette Lippert was once again staring down at her, the woman suddenly, and very briefly, opened her eyes.
‘Tell him I forgive him,’ she said, then closed them again.
‘Tell who?’
But all she got back was the steady puff-hiss-puff-hiss of the ventilator, and the beep-beep-beep-beep from the monitors.
Locked inside her skull, Sandy heard their voices. She understood what they were saying. But she felt like she was swimming underwater at the deep end of a pool. She could not talk back to them.
‘Tell who?’ Lippert pressed.
But she was gone again. Gone into some deep, inaccessible recess of her brain.
Lippert lingered for some while, then moved on to the next bed.
34
Friday 12 December
The Black Lion pub in Patcham had a background, which Roy Grace liked – more than he actually liked the pub itself. In 1976 Barbara Gaul, wife of a shady property developer she was in the middle of divorcing, was shot in the Black Lion’s car park, and subsequently died from her wounds. It became one of the most notorious cases in all of Brighton’s dark history, with links to the Krays, the famous London gangster family, and to two of the biggest sex scandals of post-war Britain, the Profumo and Lambton affairs.
A shame, Grace thought, that such a colourful but tragic background could not be better reflected in the themed interior of the pub, for a long time now part of the Harvester chain – bright and corporate. But it was convenient for Sussex House.
He sat in a booth in a quiet corner, while Glenn Branson stood at the crowded bar, towering head and shoulders over most of the figures there. Grace was on the phone to Cleo, trying to plan a combined house-warming and New Year’s Eve party at their new house. As he spoke to her he glanced down at the thick buff envelope Branson had left on the table.
‘I think we should have the same yummy Ridgeview sparkling wine we had at our wedding – and nice to support a local producer.’
‘Yes, great thinking! We’d better order fast. How many people are you thinking of?’ he asked.
‘Oh my God!’ Cleo suddenly said, with laughter in her voice.
‘What?’
‘Noah’s just put his hand in Humphrey’s bowl and taken some food out! Humphrey’s just standing there. Amazing! Hang on, I’d better rescue your son!’
‘Great!’ he said. ‘We can save a fortune if we wean him on dog food!’
‘Yes, good idea,’ she said, sounding distracted. ‘Text me when you’re leaving, and I’ll get your dinner ready.’
‘So long as it’s not from the dog’s bowl!’
‘That, Detective Superintendent Grace, will depend on how late you are.’
He grinned. ‘I love you.’
‘Love you,’ she said but a little more coldly than usual. Again he felt the slight distance in her tone.
‘Look, I know I’m not being much help at the moment. I’m sorry.’
‘I get it, Roy,’ she replied. ‘I know it’s not easy for either of us.’
Grace looked up to see Glenn holding their drinks. He blushed and said to Cleo, ‘Have to go!’ He blew her a kiss, but did not get one back.
Branson sat down, shaking his head. ‘You’ll get over it, mate, one day.’ He handed Grace a Diet Coke, then sipped the white, creamy head of his Guinness.
‘I don’t think so,’ Grace replied.
‘You will, trust me.’
‘You’re such a cynic.’
‘Yeah,’ B
ranson said. Then gave a sad shrug.
‘So you and that Argus reporter? Siobhan Sheldrake?’
Branson suddenly looked coy. ‘What about her?’
‘You fancy her, don’t you?’
‘Rubbish!’
‘I’ve known you too long.’ Grace sipped his drink. ‘You play with fire sometimes. I could see you were attracted to that Red Westwood on our last case. Just be careful, mate. I’d love to see you with a nice lady but—’
‘But?’
‘Police and the press make a dangerous combination.’
Branson shrugged. ‘I’m having a drink with her tomorrow evening.’ He shrugged again. ‘She’s cool. She and I go back a while, actually – before she joined the Argus. We were just good friends – then after Ari died we became closer, but we’ve been keeping it low key.’
Grace gave him a quizzical look. ‘Just remember that old nautical expression, “Loose lips sink ships”.’
‘Ever see that fantastic submarine movie, Das Boot?’
Grace nodded. ‘I seem to remember it sank.’
Branson grinned. ‘Yeah? That’s your memory? I think your brain’s a bit addled these days.’
‘Just make sure yours isn’t in your dick.’ He gave him a cautioning look. ‘Be careful with Siobhan Sheldrake.’
‘I’ll wear protection.’
Grace smiled and shook his head. ‘So, you’ve dragged me away from my investigation because you have a development – tell me?’
‘You came to the mortuary earlier – remember that, or is it too long ago for your tired old brain?’
‘Very funny!’
‘Those words on the dead woman’s skull?’
‘U R DEAD?’
‘Yeah.’ The Detective Inspector tapped the bulky envelope on the table. ‘Take a look at this.’
‘Where’s it from?’
‘Lucy Sibun dated the age of the dead woman at around twenty years old, and estimated she died approximately thirty years ago. Yeah?’