Not Dead Enough (27 page)

To the only positive sighting, in nine years, of the woman he had loved so much.

His pace getting more urgent with every step, he strode with Kullen towards a large lake. Kullen navigated them across a bridge and left along the path, with the lake and a wooded island on their right and dense woodland to their left. Grace breathed in the sweet scents of grass and leaves, savouring the sudden delicious coolness of the shade and the slight breeze from the water.

Two cyclists swerved past them, then a young man and a girl, chatting animatedly, on roller blades. Moments later a large French poodle bounded along, with an irate man with a centre parting and tortoiseshell glasses running after it, shouting out, ‘Adini! Adini! Adini!’ He was followed by a very determined-looking Nordic walker in her sixties, wearing bright red Lycra, teeth clenched, ski poles clacking on the tarmac path. Then, rounding a bend, the landscape opened up in front of them.

Grace saw a huge park, teeming with people, and beyond the island now the lake was far larger than he had at first realized, a good half-mile long and several hundred yards wide. There were dozens of boats out on the water, some of them elegant, wooden, clinker-built rowing boats, and the rest white and blue fibreglass pedalos, and flotillas of ducks.

People crowded the benches that lined the water’s edge, and there were sunbathing bodies lying everywhere, on every inch of grass, some with iPods plugged into their ears, others with radios, listening to music or perhaps, Grace thought, trying to shut out the incessant shrieks of children.

And blondes everywhere. Dozens. Hundreds. His eyes moved from face to face, scanning and discarding each one in turn. Two small girls ran across their path, one holding an ice-cream cornet, the other screaming. A mastiff sat on the ground, panting heavily and drooling. Kullen stopped beside a bench on which a man with his shirt completely unbuttoned was reading a book, holding it at an uncomfortable-looking arm’s length as if he had forgotten his glasses, and pointed across the lake.

Grace saw a sizeable, attractive – if rather twee-looking – pavilion, in a style that might have been interpreted from an English thatched cottage. Crowds of people were seated at the beer-garden tables outside it, and to the left there was a small boathouse and a wooden deck, with just a couple of boats tied up, and one pedalo pulled out of the water and lying on its side.

Grace suddenly felt his adrenaline surging at the realization of what he was looking at. This was the place! This was where Dick Pope and his wife, Lesley, reckoned they had seen Sandy. They had been out in one of those wooden rowing boats. And had spotted her in the beer garden.

Forcing the German to quicken his pace, Grace took the lead, striding along the tarmac path that girded the lake, past bench after bench, staring out across the water, scanning every sunbather, every face on every bench, every cyclist, jogger, walker, roller-blader that passed them. A couple of times he saw long, fair hair swinging around a face that reminded him of Sandy, and locked on to it like a Pavlovian dog, only to dismiss it when he looked again.

She might have had it all cut off. Dyed another colour, perhaps.

They passed an elegant stone monument on a mound. He absorbed the names engraved on the side: VON WERNECK . . . LUDWIG I . . . Then, as they reached the pavilion, Kullen stopped in front of a selection of menus pinned to an elegant, shield-shaped board, under the heading Seehaus im Englischer Garten.

‘You like we eat something? Perhaps we can go inside in the restaurant, where it is cooler, or we can be outside.’

Grace cast his eyes over at the rows and rows of densely packed trestle tables, some under the shade of a canopy of trees, some beneath a large green awning, but most out in the open. ‘I’d prefer outside – for looking around.’

‘Yes. Of course. We get a drink first – you like something?’

‘I’d better have a German beer,’ he said with a grin. ‘And a coffee.’

‘Weissbier or Helles? Or would you like a Radler – a shandy – or maybe a Russn?’

‘I’d like a large, cold beer.’

‘A Mass?’

‘Mass?’

Kullen pointed at two men at a table drinking from glasses the size of chimney stacks.

‘Something a little smaller?’

‘A half-Mass?’

‘Perfect. What are you going to have? I’ll get them.’

‘No, when you coming Germany, I buy!’ Kullen said adamantly.

The whole thing was attractively done, Grace thought. Elegant lamp posts lined the waterfront; the outbuildings housing the bar and the food area were in dark green and white, and recently painted; there was a funky bronze of a naked, bald man, with his arms folded and a tiny penis, on a marble plinth; orderly stacks of plastic crates and green rubbish bins for empties and rubbish, and beer glasses, and polite signs in German and in English.

A cashier sat under a wooden awning, dealing with a long queue. Waiters and waitresses in red trousers and yellow shirts cleared away debris from tables as people left. Leaving the German police officer to queue at the bar, Grace stepped away a short distance, carefully studying the map, trying to pinpoint from it at which of the hundred or so eight-seater trestle tables Sandy might have sat.

There must be several hundred people seated at the tables, he estimated, a good five hundred, maybe more, and almost without exception they each had a tall beer glass in front of them. He could smell the beer in the air, along with wafts of cigarette and cigar smoke, and the enticing aromas of French fries and grilling meat.

Sandy drank the occasional cold beer in summer, and often, when she did, she would joke that it was because of her German heritage. Now he was starting to understand that. He was also starting to feel very strange. Was it tiredness, or thirst, or just the enormity of being here? he wondered. He had the ridiculous feeling that he was trespassing on Sandy’s patch, that he wasn’t really wanted here.

And suddenly he found himself staring into a stern, headmasterly face that seemed to be agreeing with him, admonishing him. It was a grey, stone head-and-shoulders sculpture of a bearded man that reminded him of those statues of ancient philosophers you often saw in junk shops and car-boot sales. He was still in the early stages of his studies, but this man definitely looked like one of them.

Then he noticed the name, paulaner, embossed importantly on the cornerstone, just as Kullen came up to him, carrying two beers and two coffees on a tray. ‘OK, you have decided where you want to sit?’

‘This guy, Paulaner, was he a German philosopher?’

Kullen grinned at him. ‘Philosopher? I don’t think. Paulaner is the name of the biggest brewing house in Munich.’

‘Ah,’ Grace said, feeling decidedly dim-witted. ‘Right.’

Kullen was pointing to a table at the water’s edge, where some spaces were being freed up by a group of youngsters who were standing and hauling on backpacks. ‘Would you like to sit there?’

‘Perfect.’

As they walked over to it, Grace scanned the faces at table after table after table. Packed with men and women of all ages, from teens to the elderly, all in casual dress, mostly T-shirts, baggy shirts or bare-chested, shorts or jeans, and just about everyone in sunglasses, baseball caps, floppy hats and straw hats. They were drinking from Mass or half-Mass glasses of beer, eating plates of sausages and fries, or spare ribs, or tennis-ball-sized lumps of cheese, or something that looked like meatloaf with sauerkraut.

Was this where Sandy had been earlier in the week? Was this where she came regularly, walking past the naked bronze on the plinth and the bearded head in the fountain who was advertising Paulaner, to sit and drink beer and stare at the lake?

And with whom?

A new man? New friends?

And, if she was alive, what went on in her mind? What did she think about the past, about him, their life together, all their dreams and promises and times shared?

He took out Dick Pope’s map and looked again at the fuzzy circle, orienting himself.

‘Bottoms up!’

Kullen, wearing aviator sunglasses now, had raised his glass. Grace raised his own. ‘Skol! ’

Shaking his head amiably, the German said, ‘No, we say Prost!’

‘Prost!’ Grace returned, and they clinked glasses.

‘To success,’ Kullen said. ‘Or perhaps that’s not what you want, I think?’

Grace gave a short, bitter laugh, wondering if the German had any idea just how true that was. And almost as if on cue, his phone beeped twice.

It was a message from Cleo.

57

Probationary PC David Curtis and Sergeant Bill Norris climbed out of the patrol car a short distance up from the address they had been given. Newman Villas was an archetypal Hove residential street of tired Victorian terraced houses. Once they had been single-occupancy homes, with servants’ quarters upstairs, but now they were carved up into smaller units. A battery of estate-agents’ boards ran the length of the street, most of them advertising flats and bedsits to let.

The front door of number 17 looked like it hadn’t seen a lick of paint in a couple of decades, and most of the names on the entryphone panel were handwritten and faded. S. Harrington looked reasonably fresh.

Bill Norris pressed the button. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘used to be just four of us on a stakeout. Today it can be twenty officers. I got into trouble once. There was a streetwalker who was a customer of this deli we was staking out. I wrote in the log, “Nice bum and tits.” Didn’t go down well. I got a right bollocking over that, I did, from the station inspector!’ He rang the bell again.

They waited in silence for some moments. When there was still no answer, Norris pressed all the other buttons, one after another. ‘Time to ruin someone’s Sunday lie-in.’ He tapped his watch. ‘Maybe she’s in church?’ He chuckled.

‘Yeah?’ a wasted voice suddenly crackled.

‘Flat 4. I lost me key. Could you let me in please?’ Norris pleaded.

Moments later there was a sharp rasp, then a click from the lock.

The sergeant pushed the door open, turning to his young colleague and lowering his voice. ‘Don’t tell ’em it’s the law – they won’t let you in then.’ He touched his nose conspiratorially. ‘You’ll learn.’

Curtis looked at him, wondering for how many more patrols he was going to have to endure this pain. And hoping to hell someone would pull out his plug if he ever started becoming like this sad git.

They walked along a short, musty-smelling corridor, past two bicycles and a shelf piled with post, mostly fliers from local pizza and Chinese takeaways. On the first-floor landing they heard the sound of gunshots, followed by James Garner’s stentorian tones: ‘Freeze!’ It was coming from behind a door bearing the number ‘2’.

They climbed on, past the second-floor door numbered ‘3’. The staircase narrowed and at the top they reached a door numbered ‘4’.

Norris knocked loudly. No answer. He knocked again, more loudly. And again. Then he looked at the probationary. ‘All right, son. One day this’ll be you. What would you do?’

‘Break the door open?’ Curtis ventured.

‘And if she’s busy having nooky in there?’

Curtis shrugged. He didn’t know the answer.

Norris knocked again. ‘Hello! Ms Harrington? Anyone in? Police!’

Nothing.

Norris turned his burly frame sideways and barged hard against the door. It shook, but did not yield. He tried harder and this time the door burst open, splintering the frame, and he tumbled in to a narrow, empty corridor, grabbing the wall to steady himself.

‘Hello! Police!’ Norris called out, advancing forward, then he turned to his junior officer. ‘Keep in my footsteps. Don’t touch anything. We don’t want to contaminate any evidence.’

Curtis tiptoed clumsily, holding his breath, in the sergeant’s footsteps along the corridor. Ahead of him the sergeant pushed open a door, then stopped in his tracks.

‘Bloody hell!’ Norris said. ‘Oh, bloody hell!’

When he caught up with the sergeant, the young PC stopped in his tracks, staring ahead in revulsion and shock. A cold sensation crawled in his guts. He wanted desperately to look away but could not. Morbid fascination that went way beyond professional duty held his gaze rooted to the bed.

58

Roy Grace stared at the message from Cleo on his phone’s display:

Sort yourself out in Munich. Call me when you get back home.

No signature. No kiss. Just a bald, pissed-off statement.

But at least she had finally responded.

He composed a terse reply, in his mind, and instantly discarded it. Then he composed another, and discarded that. He had stood her up for a Sunday lunch date in order to go to Munich to try to find his wife. Just how good must that have sounded to her?

But surely she could be a little sympathetic? He’d never kept Sandy’s disappearance a secret – Cleo knew all about it. What choice did he have? Surely anyone would be doing what he was doing now, wouldn’t they?

And suddenly, fuelled by his tiredness, stress, the incessant heat of the sun beating down on his head, he felt a flash of anger at Cleo.

Hell, woman, can’t you bloody understand?

He caught Marcel Kullen’s eye and shrugged. ‘Women.’

‘Everything is OK?’

Grace put down his phone and cradled his heavy glass in both hands. ‘This beer is OK,’ he said. ‘More than OK.’ He took a large swig. Then he sipped his scalding coffee. ‘Nothing much else is. You know?’

The Kriminalhauptkommisar smiled, as if he was unsure how to respond.

A man at the next table was puffing on a briar pipe. Smoke drifted across them and the smell suddenly reminded Grace of his father, who also smoked a pipe. He remembered all the rituals. His father ramming long, slim white pipe cleaners, that rapidly turned brown, down the stem. Scraping out the rim with a small brass instrument. Mixing the tobacco with his large fingers, filling the bowl, lighting it with a Swan Vesta match, then tamping it down and relighting it. The living room instantly filling with the tantalizing aroma of the blue-grey smoke. Or, if they were out fishing in a small boat, or on the end of the Palace Pier, or on the mole of Shoreham Harbour, Roy use to watch the direction of the wind when his father took out his pipe, then ensure he stood downwind of him to catch those wisps.