by Peter James
“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, toward 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 that 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 that 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 color 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 that 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 while 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 motor-cycle 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. 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 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 postwar Britain, the Profumo and Lambton affairs.
A shame, Grace thought, that such a colorful but tragic back-ground 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,” Branson 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?”
“So I understand.”
“I had my researchers check the files on all mispers and cold cases five years either side of that date estimate, on females of that approximate age. This is what they found. Fill your boots.” He took a large gulp of his drink.
“I’m impressed, you’ve been moving fast.”
“On it like a car bonnet, mate.”
“Like a what?” Grace looked at his friend quizzically, then picked up the unsealed envelope, which had a musty smell, and pulled out the contents. It contained a batch of documents, with several photographs at the back, held together by two large elastic bands. Handwritten in black marker pen on the outside was Operation Yorker.
The first document was a Home Office pathologist’s report, headed CATHERINE (KATY) JANE MARIE WESTERHAM. Aged nineteen, she was an English Literature student at Sussex University, residing in Elm Grove, Brighton. She had been reported missing in December 1984, and the young woman’s remains had been found in Ashdown Forest in April 1985 by a man walking his dog.
Roy Grace reflected, ironically, just how big a debt homicide detectives around the globe owed to people walking their dogs. He’d often thought, if he had the time, of one day doing some research on the percentage of bodies discovered in this manner.
He speed-read through the document. The body was decomposed at the time it was found, with some bones missing, presumed taken by animals. Fragments of lung tissue and the findings of the pathologist indicated death had been by asphyxiation. But there was insufficient material remaining to provide a conclusive cause of death.
Grace then removed the photographs from the paperclip holding them. The first one was a portrait photograph of an attractive girl with long brown hair, unrecognizable from the remains. He stared hard at it for some moments. There was a striking resemblance, more in the hair than anything else, but also the face itself, to Emma Johnson. And she was a dead ringer for Logan Somerville, who had disappeared yesterday.
He removed several more photographs, which showed her entire decomposed body, in situ, each with a ruler in the frame. Then various close-ups of her skull, her rib cag
e, and other bones that remained.
Then he pulled out the last photo and froze.
It was again a close-up, marked “forehead.” The pathologist’s ruler, included in the picture, showed the length, of just over two inches, of what looked like tattooed letters on a fragment of flesh.
They were considerably more distinct than on the remains that had been discovered at Hove Lagoon. But they read the same:
U R DEAD
35
Friday 12 December
“You’re very quiet tonight, darling,” Jacob Van Dam’s elegantly dressed wife, Rachel, said. Even when they dined alone they always dressed smartly. It was something they had done all their married life, to make it more of an occasion, and the time in the day when they caught up with each other.
The psychiatrist sat at the far end of the oval mahogany dining table, in the smart dining room of their Regent’s Park mansion, cradling his crystal goblet of claret, staring pensively at the light reflecting in its facets from the chandelier above. The grilled lamb cutlets on his bone-china plate lay untouched and growing cold, along with the petits pois and gratin potatoes Rachel had lovingly prepared.
“Yes, well,” he said pensively. “It’s been an interesting day.”
“Would you like to share it with me?” Then after some moments, she said, “Dreadful, the news about Logan, I just can’t believe it. No one has any idea where she might be. The police are doing everything they can, apparently. I spoke to Tina myself, earlier, she’s in a terrible mess. She said the police don’t think it’s kidnap, because there’s been no ransom demand—they say it’s more likely she’s been abducted. Apparently they’ve said if someone her age is abducted it is likely to be a sex offender—and the chances of her being alive lessen the longer she’s not found. I feel helpless.”
He barely heard her words he was so consumed by his thoughts about Dr. Harrison Hunter.
Whoever Dr. Harrison Hunter really was.
U R DEAD
The man had lied to him. His niece had no such tattoo—no tattoos at all. She had been missing, possibly abducted, since yesterday evening. So what was the connection with this man and Logan?