Not Dead Enough

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.

He wondered what his father would have done in this situation. Jack Grace had loved Sandy. When he was sick in the hospice, dying far too young, at fifty-five, from bowel cancer, she used to spend hours at his bedside, talking to him, playing Scrabble with him, reading through the Sporting Life with him as he selected his bets for each day and placing them for him. And just chatting. They were like best friends from the day Grace had first brought Sandy home to meet his parents.

Jack Grace had always been a man contented with what he had, happy to remain a desk sergeant until his retirement, tinkering with cars and following the horses in his free time, never with any ambition to rise higher in the force. But he was a thorough man, a stickler for details, procedures, for tidying up loose ends. He would have approved of Roy coming here, of course he would. No doubt about it.

Bloody hell, Roy thought suddenly. Munich is just full of ghosts.

‘Tell me, Roy,’ Kullen asked, ‘how well was Inspector Pope knowing Sandy?’

Bringing him back to reality, to his task here today, Grace replied, ‘Good question. They were our best friends – we went on holiday with them, every year for years.’

‘So he would not easily be mistook – ah – mistaken?’

‘No. Nor his wife.’

A young man, tall and fit-looking, in a yellow shirt and red trousers, was clearing glasses away from the vacated places next to them. He had fashionable gelled fair hair.

‘Excuse me,’ Grace asked him. ‘Do you speak any English?’

‘Too right!’ he grinned.

‘You’re an Aussie?’

‘’Fraid so!’

‘Brilliant! Maybe you can help me. Were you here last Thursday?’

‘I’m here every day. Ten in the morning till midnight.’

From his jacket pocket Grace pulled a photograph of Sandy and showed it to him. ‘Have you seen this person? She was here, on Thursday, lunchtime.’

He took the photograph and studied it intently for some moments. ‘Last Thursday?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, mate, doesn’t ring a bell. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t here. There’s like hundreds of people every day.’ He hesitated. ‘Shit, I see so many faces, they all become a blur. I can ask my colleagues if you like.’

‘Please,’ Grace asked. ‘It’s really important to me.’

He went off and returned, a few minutes later, with a whole group of young clearer-uppers, all in the same uniform.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘This is a bunch of the stupidest people on the planet. But the best I could do!’

‘Yeah, you can fuck off, Ron!’ one of the young men said, a short, stocky Aussie with a head of hair that looked like a pin cushion. He turned to Grace. ‘Sorry about my mate, he’s just retarded. Happened at birth – we try to humour him.’

Grace put on a forced smile and handed him the photograph. ‘I’m looking for this person. I think she was here last Thursday at lunchtime. Just wondering if any of you guys recognize her?’

The stocky Australian took the photograph, studied it for some moments, then passed it around. Each of them in turn shook their head.

Marcel Kullen dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out a bunch of business cards. He stood up and handed one to each of the crew. Suddenly they all looked more serious.

‘I will come back tomorrow,’ the police officer said. ‘I will have a copy of this photograph for each of you. If she comes back, please call me immediately on my mobile number on the card, or at the Landeskriminalamt number. It is very important.’

‘No worries,’ Ron said. ‘If she comes back we’ll call.’

‘I would really appreciate that.’

‘You got it.’

Grace thanked them.

As they returned to their duties, Kullen picked up his beer and held his glass out, staring Grace in the eye. ‘If your wife is in Munich, I will find her for you, Roy. What is that you are saying in England? Whatever takes it?’

‘Close enough.’ Grace raised his glass and touched the German’s. ‘Thank you.’

‘I have also been making a list for you.’ He pulled a small notepad from his inside pocket. ‘If we imagine she is here, all her life she has lived in England. There are perhaps things that she would miss, yes?’

‘Like?’

‘Some foods? Are there any foods she might miss?’

Grace thought for a moment. It was a good question. ‘Marmite!’ he said, after some moments. ‘She loved the stuff. Used to have it on toast for breakfast every day.’

‘OK. Marmite. There is a store in the Viktualienmarkt that sells English foods for your expatriates. I will go there for you. Did she have anything medical wrong with her? Allergies, perhaps?’

Grace thought hard. ‘She didn’t have any allergies, but she had a problem with rich foods. It was a genetic thing. She used to get terrible indigestion if she ate rich foods – she took medication for it.’

‘You have the name of the medication?’

‘Something like Chlomotil. I can check in the medicine cabinet at home.’

‘I can make a search of the doctors’ clinics in Munich – we find if anyone with her description is ordering this medication.’

‘Good thinking.’

‘There are many things we should be looking at also. What music did she like? Did she go to the theatre? Did she have favourite movies or movie stars?’

Grace reeled off a list.

‘And sport? Did she do any sport?’

Suddenly, Grace realized where the German was coming from. And what had seemed, just a couple of hours ago, to be an impossibly enormous task was getting narrowed down into something that could be done. And it showed him just how fogged his own thinking had become. That old expression of not being able to see the wood for the trees was so true. ‘Swimming!’ he said, wondering why the hell he hadn’t thought of it himself. Sandy was obsessed with keeping fit. She didn’t jog, or go to a gym, because she had a knee that played up. Swimming was her big passion. She used to go to the public swimming baths in Brighton daily. Either the King Alfred or the Regency, or, when it was warm enough, the sea.

‘So we can monitor the baths in Munich.’

‘Good plan.’

Staring at his notes again, Kullen said, ‘Does she like to read?’

‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’

The German looked at him, puzzled. ‘The Pope?’

‘Forget it. Just an English expression. Yes, she loved books. Crime, especially. English and American. Elmore Leonard was her favourite.’

‘There is a bookstore, on the corner of Schelling Strasse, called the Munich Readery. It is run by an American. Many English-speaking persons go there – they can exchange books, you know? Swapping them? Is that the right word?’

‘Will it be open today?’

Kullen shook his head. ‘This is Germany. On Sunday, everything is closed. Not like England.’

‘I should have picked a better day.’

‘Tomorrow I go look for you. Now will you have something to eat?’

Grace nodded gratefully. Suddenly he had an appetite.

And then, as he looked yet again around the sea of faces, he caught a glimpse of a woman, blonde hair cropped short, who had been heading over in their direction with a group of people but suddenly turned and started walking very quickly away.

His heart exploding, Grace was on his feet, barging past a Japanese man taking a photograph, running, weaving through a group unloading their backpacks, locking on to her with his eyes, gaining on her.