They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

113 March 2018

Kriminalhauptkommissar Marcel Kullen sat in his third-floor office at the Munich Landeskriminalamt headquarters, sipping his scalding first coffee of the day, while staring at his screen, viewing the video footage he had just been sent.

It was a woman in a hospital gown, in a room at the Klinikum München Schwabing. She had hanged herself from the arm of a ceiling light.

According to early estimates from the attending police officers, she had been dead for some hours. Her last visit from any of the nursing staff at the hospital had been at 8.15 p.m. yesterday.

Her death had all the hallmarks of a carefully planned suicide. There was a lengthy note to her former husband, Roy Grace, which Kullen had just read, as well as notes to her son, Bruno, and to her lawyer.

He liked Roy, from the brief times they had spent together, and was sure he would be very upset at this news. The English detective had been so convinced his long-vanished wife might still be alive and living in Germany — in Munich. As had turned out to be the case. Her letters — all three at her bedside, in sealed envelopes — were even greater evidence of this.

With a heavy heart, he picked up his phone and dialled Roy Grace’s number.