by Peter James
Grace made a mental note to get one of his team to place a marker at the relevant UK airports for her return. Then he asked Websdale if she could arrange for photographs of the couple to be emailed over to him, as well as the cruise ship’s itinerary and passenger and crew manifests.
In addition to his unfolding personal nightmare, something about this case was starting to trouble Grace, though he wasn’t yet sure exactly what.
70
Monday 9 March
As soon as he had ended the call, Grace sat thinking, Sandy temporarily put to one side. Two Brighton residents dead from snake bites within one week of each other. And the same kind of snake. His naturally suspicious mind was telling him this might not be a coincidence, however much it seemed to be.
He started jotting down thoughts. Then he picked up the phone and asked DS Guy Batchelor to come to his office.
A few minutes later, with the burly detective, reeking of tobacco smoke, seated in front of him, he said, ‘Guy, I may have to be absent for a couple of days. I’d like you to give these actions to the Operation Spider team.’
‘Of course, boss. What do you need?’
‘Firstly, I want you to find out everything you can about a Jodie Carmichael, previously Danforth, with an address in Alexandra Villas, in the Seven Dials area of Brighton – I’ll be getting the details imminently. Find out who she is, and what her background is.’ Then looking down at his notes, he continued, ‘Have someone speak to that expert from London Zoo. I want more specific information about venomous snake bites.’
Batchelor pulled out his notepad and began to write.
‘I want to know everything about this snake – where it lives, what countries you can find it in, how venomous it is, what the antidotes are, if it’s ever kept as a pet, what does it look like, how big it is, would you need a licence to keep it, how could you import it into the UK, what conditions would it need to be kept in if you did have such a snake in England.’
Batchelor nodded, writing furiously.
Grace went on. ‘What would the bite symptoms be, how quickly would you need treatment if bitten, and is it always fatal?’
‘Got all that, sir.’
‘Good man.’
‘Leave it with me.’
‘Good news regarding your promotion, Guy. Hopefully you’ll stay with the team. It would be useful for you to spend the next few days as an Acting DI, whilst Glenn and I are both away.’
Batchelor looked delighted. ‘Thank you, sir, I won’t let you down.’
71
Tuesday 10 March
For the second time in a month, a grieving woman accompanied her loved one’s body on a flight home after his sudden, tragic death in a foreign country.
And for the second time in that month she consoled herself on the flight, whilst composing and rehearsing her story, with the very acceptable bubbly served in British Airways First Class.
As her glass was topped up by a smiling, sympathetic steward, she dug her fingers into the bowl of warm, roasted nuts. Chewing on a sweet cashew, she switched her thoughts to the book she planned to write one day from her villa on the shore of Lake Como. The villas had gone up in value since that holiday, all those years back with her family. It would take somewhere upwards of fifty million pounds to buy a place impressive enough to be pointed out by a tour boat. Enough to impress her father. And her mother.
‘How do you get to afford one of those? The way you do it, Jodie, is you marry a millionaire.’
Meaning, No way on earth will you, little ugly girl.
She would show them. She longed for the day – the day that would happen – when he ate his words.
On her iPad she entered her password and opened her diary.
Then she typed:
OK, so anyone want to tell me how long is a respectable time to spend with a partner? Husband? Whatever?
It’s a bit of a tired cliché these days, that old saying: ‘Live every day as if it’s your last because one day you’ll be right.’
But honestly?
People talk about managing your expectations. Everyone has different expectations from life.
They say money cannot buy happiness. So I’ll tell you what I’ve learned in my thirty-six years, to date. First, here is a list of things I hate:
1. Marmite
2. Gooey-eyed mummies
3. Holy Joes
4. People who tell you money doesn’t buy happiness.
Here’s a list of things I love:
1. My cat
2. Looking at my bank balances
3. Good quality Chablis
4. Oysters Rockefeller
5. Lobster
6. Jimmy Choo shoes
7. Mercedes-Benz sports cars
Here’s a list of things I want:
1. An apartment in New York. A villa on Lake Como.
2. Private jets, so I never have to take my fucking shoes off again in an airport.
3. Enough money never to have to work again.
4. To marry a man I truly love.
5. To start a family.
Is that so unreasonable? I’d like to think of myself as a woman of simple tastes. I want the best of everything. I want it now, all the time I’m alive. And I’m fully aware that one day will be my last.
When that day comes, I want to die with a big smile on my face. Not, as too many people do, in a hospital corridor with a hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest, or withering away from old age or disease in an old people’s home.
Is that really so unreasonable?
Life’s a game.
So sad most of us never realize that.
I feel so lucky I worked that out while I was still young enough to make it happen.
Can you imagine what it must feel like to be on your deathbed thinking of all the things you wish you’d done? We’re not just a long time dead, we are dead forever.
Don’t let anyone tell you any different.
The formalities at London’s Heathrow Airport were less arduous than Jodie had been expecting. She signed over care of her late husband’s body to the Brighton and Hove Coroner, and was on her way down to Sussex, in the back of a BMW limousine, in just over an hour and a half after touchdown.
She had been very fortunate, she knew. It was something of an urban myth that all of ships’ captains could perform legal marriages. To do this they needed to be an officially recognized wedding celebrant, and few were. Very conveniently for her, Rowley Carmichael had chosen to go cruising with a line that recognized, with its romantic destinations, there could be a call for such services, and a lucrative one, so all their captains were legally recognized celebrants.
And what kept that smile on her face broadening by the minute was the knowledge that the moment someone was married, any existing will they had made became instantly invalid.
The only thing bothering her was that Rowley had four children, and would probably have made trust provisions for them. But she had no doubt that at the end of the day she would end up with a decent chunk of change. As any wife would be entitled to. And it would be a substantial addition to her declining savings. But perhaps not the golden egg she craved.
As the black BMW turned off the M25, onto the M23 south towards Brighton, she was only too aware that the real jackpot she sought still lay, at this moment, elusively ahead of her. And she was already busy on her laptop, googling hard, searching for Mr Right across the websites where she had registered.
He was out there, somewhere. And she would find him.
Someone who would be grateful to meet her. Someone rich enough to make all her dreams come true.
Someone rich enough to make Cassie turn in her grave.
72
Tuesday 10 March
Always an anxious flyer, at 7 a.m. the following morning Roy Grace buckled himself into his seat next to Cleo, who was by the window, near the back of the packed British Airways flight to Munich. He felt even more nervous than usual. A swarm of butt
erflies was going berserk in his stomach. He had taken a day’s leave – which was fine, he was well in credit.
He reached out his left hand and gripped Cleo’s. The aisle seat to his right was, so far, empty.
Breaking the news to Cleo had been far from easy. She was furious that he hadn’t trusted her to be all right with it, and instead had lied to her. She initially questioned what this meant for them long term – what else had he lied to her about in the past, and would he lie to her again in the future? They’d talked it over and over, late into the night, and he admitted he’d made the wrong call, because he’d been scared of losing her.
The fact that he asked her to come with him to see Sandy helped eventually to bring them to an understanding. Cleo could see that Roy really wanted them to confront this whole issue together.
They didn’t talk much during the flight, each immersed in their own thoughts.
Normally Cleo did not wear much make-up, and Roy liked that, she didn’t need to. But today she had more on than normal. As if she might have been trying to compete with Sandy, he wondered. Not that she needed to have any fears.
As the plane touched down on the runway at Munich Airport, they held each other’s hands tightly.
‘I’m really nervous,’ she said.
‘Listen, I love you. There’s nothing Sandy might say that could change anything between us. I wanted you to come with me to show her – let her see for herself – that we’re a unit. You’re my wife, and nothing’s ever going to change that. You’re Cleo Grace. Right?’
She smiled, thinly.
Grace tried to consider all that was happening at work, but he couldn’t. He just kept coming back to just what was going to happen when he entered the Klinikum Schwabing with Cleo, and saw Sandy.
There could be no pretence that it was not her any more.
How the hell was he going to feel?
He again tried to switch his thoughts back to Crisp, and to the victims of the snake venom, but it was impossible. Just one thing occupied his mind right now.
Sandy.
Less than an hour later they were hurtling down the autobahn in Marcel Kullen’s white Volkswagen Scirocco sports car, Cleo, knees against her chin in the rear, Roy, his seat forward as far as it would go, inches from the glove compartment.
Kullen was good-looking, with wavy black hair and a voice perpetually filled with humour. Much of the journey into Munich was taken up with Cleo quizzing Kullen on how he knew Roy, and about his life, his wife and kids, and what had made him become a policeman.
Roy sat in silence, grateful for Cleo’s wonderfully inquisitive mind, listening to the conversation that was going on between them in the background. Meanwhile, his nerves were tightening the nearer they got.
Was he making a massive mistake?
The car slowed and halted. He looked out of his window and saw the building he recognized. It looked like a cross between a hospital and a monastery. A beige brick facade with a crimson-tiled roof punctuated with gabled windows and a portico of three arches.
Klinikum Schwabing, München.
Panic momentarily gripped him. He took several deep breaths. Was he making the worst mistake of his life? Should he tell Marcel to turn the car round and head back to the airport?
But instead, silent as an automaton, he unbuckled his seat belt, climbed out, helped Cleo to tilt the rear seat forward and took her hand as she wormed her way out.
Kullen told them he would wait for them here.
A few minutes later, after signing the visitors’ register, Roy and Cleo were met by a very businesslike woman with iron-grey hair, who introduced herself as the ward manager. She led them along a network of corridors that were vaguely familiar to him from his previous visit here, in January, then up in a lift.
His nerves began to jangle again. Cleo gripped his hand, hard.
‘Are you sure about this, my darling?’ he asked her for about the tenth time.
‘Yes.’
He could smell disinfectant as the doors opened. A man, his shrivelled face the colour of chalk, was wheeled past them on a trolley as they stepped out into the orange-painted corridor. There was a row of hard chairs on either side, a snacks vending machine and several picture frames on the wall with staff portraits of doctors and nurses with their names beneath.
His heart was thudding. Here again. It all felt so familiar. A man hurried past them in blue scrubs and yellow Crocs and went into the alcove where there was a drinks vending machine.
Shit.
This was Groundhog Day.
The woman with the iron-grey hair had told him that the patient, Sandy, had been conscious intermittently during the past few days, with moments of lucidity.
He glanced at Cleo. She was conservatively dressed, in a plain navy coat over a black sweater, blue jeans and knee-high suede boots, with the large, dark blue Mulberry handbag he had bought her – for an insane price last Christmas – over her shoulder.
She looked back at him. An expression he could not read.
They followed the woman through double doors into the Intensive Care Unit, breathing in the sterile smells as they passed rows of beds, each with a patient surrounded by a bank of monitors, and screened off on either side by pale green curtains. Turning a corner, they entered a small, private room.
Inside lay a woman with short brown hair, in a blue and white spotted gown, connected to a forest of drip lines, in a bed with its sides up like the bars of a cage.
Sandy.
He looked at Cleo again. Her face had paled.
He stepped forward. ‘Sandy?’ he said.
There was no reaction.
‘It’s Roy,’ he said, more calmly than he felt. He waited some moments, but still there was no reaction. ‘I’m so sorry – about your accident.’ His voice choked, as he became increasingly emotional. ‘I’m so sorry. I – I don’t know – I don’t really know what to say. I’ve moved on. I have my new wife, Cleo, with me. She wanted to meet you.’
He turned away, clutched Cleo in his arms, holding her tight.
Behind him, unseen by either of them, Sandy’s eyes opened briefly, flickered, then closed.
He composed himself, then leaned down and touched Sandy on her forehead. ‘I – I can’t believe it’s you. It’s really you. After all this time.’
Then, holding hands tightly, Cleo and Roy stood, watching her.
Sandy remained silent. Breathing rhythmically.
‘Sandy?’ he said. ‘Can you hear me? It’s Roy.’
There was no reaction from her for some moments, then suddenly she opened her eyes wide, startling them. She looked at Roy then stared hard at Cleo.
‘So you’re Cleo?’ she said. ‘You’re the woman he’s married?’
Cleo smiled awkwardly. There was a nervous pitch to her voice as she answered. ‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
Sandy’s eyes narrowed into a glare. ‘Good luck,’ she said, acidly. Then her eyes closed.
A nurse came in, saying she had to change some of the patient’s dressings and administer her medication, and would they mind stepping outside for a few minutes. They could get themselves water or coffee, if they liked, just down the corridor outside the ward.
73
Tuesday 10 March
Standing in the small bay with the vending machines, Roy squinted at the choices then pressed the button for a large espresso.
‘Christ,’ Cleo said, ‘she looks awful. What did she mean by good luck?’
‘I don’t know – I’ve no idea.’
‘Listen,’ Cleo said, sipping her scalding tea, looking a little numb and shaken. ‘You have a lot of questions you need answers for. I think you should go back in and spend a few minutes with her alone. I don’t need to be there.’
He hesitated, then nodded.
‘I’ll go downstairs for some fresh air, wait for you out the front. Get some answers, she owes you that at least.’
He headed back to the ward and entered Sandy’s room again, closing t
he door behind him. She appeared to be asleep. His heart was hammering as he looked down at her silent figure, her eyes still closed, then perched on the end of the bed.
‘Hi, Sandy,’ he said. ‘I – I can’t believe it’s really you. After all this time. Nearly eleven years.’
He stared intently at her, at the woman he had loved so much, once. Despite much of her face being covered in scar tissue and bandages he could see how much she had aged in the intervening years. She wasn’t the Sandy who had walked out on him any more. All kinds of memories flashed through his mind, and he tried to link them to this woman lying here. But she remained a stranger. ‘What happened? Tell me. Why didn’t you contact me?’
She did not respond.
He took her hand, and lapsed back for some moments into his thoughts. Thinking how different things might have been. Wondering what he would do if she suddenly opened her eyes and threw her arms round him. ‘I’ve got a son,’ he said. ‘Noah. He’s eight months old. Maybe one day when you’re better we can meet and be friends. I’d like to think that’s possible. But before any of that can happen I need some answers. I need a lot of answers. Why did you leave? Why didn’t you make contact? Do you have any idea of the hell you put me through? Do you not care at all? I think I deserve to know.’
Her face showed no sign of any reaction.
Her hand felt strange, alien. ‘You were always so ambitious for me, wanting me to get to a higher rank than my dad. Well, I’ve been lucky. I reached Detective Superintendent. Did you ever think I’d do that?’
He waited, then said, ‘Me neither. I’m head of Major Crime for Sussex – although our branch has merged with Surrey. Lots of politics now that we didn’t have eleven years ago. I love my job, but there are days when I have doubts. Policing has become so damned politically correct. There’s good things about that and bad. All of us walk on eggshells, scared of offending almost anyone.’ He paused and looked down at her. ‘God, I wish we could just talk, tell each other all the stuff that’s happened in each of our lives in this past decade.’