Dead at First Sight

83 Wednesday 10 October

‘Healthy tonight, OK? Cod, quinoa, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad.’

‘Sure,’ Roy Grace said. ‘Sounds yum! Glenn told me I’m getting fat, so that would be good!’

‘He said what?’ Cleo peered at her husband. He was perched on the sofa, reading a paper, catching up on the news to switch off for a short while. ‘Well, OK, maybe there’s the tiniest bit of a tum visible.’

‘Thanks a lot! Is that the reason for the salad?’

‘No. We had the victims of a house fire in the PM room today,’ Cleo said. ‘You know how it always gets me.’

‘From that one yesterday?’

‘A chip pan on the gas hob. Two kids, the mother couldn’t get them out of the house. Poor woman.’

‘How do you ever recover from that?’

‘You don’t,’ she said, simply.

He stood up and put a comforting arm around her. ‘Poor love, you really are shaken, aren’t you?’

There were tears in her eyes and she was fighting back a sob. ‘It doesn’t get to me, not normally. I always think nothing can shock me any more, that I’ve seen it all. Then something like this comes along.’

‘It’s not just you, it’s every police officer and everyone in the emergency services. Children, that’s the one thing that gets us all.’

She sniffed. ‘Yep.’

Her kissed her tenderly on the cheek.

‘Are you going to be working over this weekend?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet. I’m not on call — are you?’

‘No. It would be nice to do something with the boys on Sunday, perhaps. Bruno’s at that party on Saturday — the one the boy at St Christopher’s is having on a gaming bus.’

‘It does sound an odd kind of party.’

‘I think it sounds fun — very modern, very zeitgeist!’

‘I guess anything that gets him out of his bedroom and mingling with other kids has to be a good thing. Zeitgeist or otherwise.’

She nodded in agreement. He stifled a yawn.

‘You should have an early night, you’ve barely slept this week — and you want to be looking your best for lovely Alison Vosper tomorrow. Maybe she’s going to tell you that she’s secretly craved your body for years!’

‘Ha ha — and now that I’m an old fatty, I’ll have to somehow cushion her disappointment.’

‘You will never be an old fatty,’ she said. ‘You take too much care of yourself.’

His phone rang. He glanced at the number before answering, ‘Fat Bastard’s phone.’

He heard Glenn Branson laughing at the other end. ‘Where are you? Working out on a treadmill?’

‘I’m giving my eyes a workout reading these trial documents. Did you just phone to insult me again or do you have anything interesting to tell me?’

‘I just had a call from one of Aiden Gilbert’s team. The burner Okonjo had on him when he was arrested has two numbers stored. They’re from Germany and he’s already passed them on to Marcel Kullen.’

Grace thanked him and immediately called the Munich detective.