Love You Dead (31 page)

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.

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 butterflies 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.

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 the 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.’

He looked up at the bank of monitors and dials. They were all meaningless to him. ‘There’s a million things I want to ask you. One day, yes? Maybe?’

He glanced at his watch. Then as he looked back at her, he suddenly had a flash of déjà vu. He remembered sitting beside his father’s body, laid out in the funeral parlour in
his pyjamas. His stone-cold hand. That was no longer his father, Jack Grace, the man he had loved so much. It was just a husk. An empty shell. His father had long departed it. And that was how he
felt now. This was a husk, too. Breathing, perhaps, but a husk all the same. It wasn’t the Sandy he had known and loved. It was just a shell. The Sandy he had known and loved no longer
occupied it.

Letting go of her hand, he stood up, abruptly. Her eyes opened, and she said, ‘Going already, Roy?’

He felt a catch in his throat. He sat back down, on the edge of the bed.

‘I’m pleased you’ve done well at work, that you’ve got to where you always wanted to be. Head of Major Crime. Detective Superintendent. I like that, it sounds good, sort
of suits you.’

He smiled. ‘Thanks.’

‘And you’ve got the son you always wanted. Noah’s a nice name. Very biblical.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. We both just liked it. So you’ve heard my download; now tell me what’s been happening in your life. I’ve heard bits and pieces.’

She gave him an almost guilty smile. ‘I expect you’ve heard the bad bits, the drugs and depression and failed relationships. I’ve got some good bits too – I’m
independently wealthy and I’ve got a son who’s ten.’

‘OK, so what I have to know is why you left me? What happened, where did you go? Did I do something wrong?’

‘It’s a long story, Roy, but not for today. I will explain, I promise.’

‘OK, tell me about your son. Bruno, is that his name?’

She nodded.

‘Who’s the father?’

‘That’s also for another day, Roy.’

‘OK, let’s focus on the future then. How’s your recovery going, what are your plans when you get out?’

‘I haven’t been doing that well. They told me a while ago that I was lucky to be alive – that when they brought me in they didn’t expect me to survive. I’ve had a
serious head injury, I’ve got a spinal injury and I don’t know yet if I’ll ever be able to walk properly – without a limp or a stick. They’ve removed my spleen. My
face is a mess, I’ll be permanently scarred – who’s going to want me? And I worry about Bruno.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Friends are looking after him for the moment. It’s not been easy bringing up a child as a single mum, even with the money.’

‘Have you spoken to your parents?’

‘No.’

‘Do you want me to call them?’

‘No, I’ll speak to them when I’m – when I’m ready.’