Dead Man's Time (41 page)

It was Glenn Branson. ‘Yo, old timer, you awake?’

‘I wasn’t but I am now. What’s happening?’ he said, checking the time. It was 4.20 a.m; 9.20 a.m. in Brighton, he calculated.

‘Quite a lot while you’ve been zizzing away.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, I can’t be sure, but it looks like someone might have been trying to break into your house last night.’

‘Which house?’

‘Cleo’s.’

Grace sat bolt upright, fear surging through him. ‘What do you mean? What happened?’

‘I’m standing outside the house right now. We’ve got a dead body – looks like he fell from the roof. Got his face blackened; he’s all kitted out in black, with
night-vision goggles, and a whole set of house-breaking tools on him.’ Glenn deliberately omitted the barber’s razor, not wanting to worry his friend further.

Grace felt sudden deep dread grip him. ‘Is Cleo okay? Have you checked on her and Noah?’

‘They’re fine.’

‘Fell from the roof? Do you have an ID on him?’

‘Not yet. He’s not carrying a wallet or any other ID.’

‘He’s definitely dead?’

‘Certified by the paramedic. The Coroner’s Officer’s just arrived.’

‘Why do you think he might have been trying to break in, Glenn?’

‘He’s six feet in front of her house. If he isn’t a burglar, then he’s come from a fancy-dress party dressed as one.’

‘I need to speak to Cleo,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll bell you back.’

His finger shaking, he dialled Cleo’s house phone, but it was busy. He tried her mobile but that went straight to voicemail. He redialled the house number and finally she answered,
sounding terrible.

‘I was trying to call you,’ she said. ‘It must have been the noise I heard last night – when the television went all fuzzy – someone sliding down the roof. What was
he doing up there on our roof, Roy? What the hell was someone doing on our roof?’

His phone was beeping.
Caller waiting
was flashing on his display. ‘Darling, hold one sec, okay? I’m just putting you on hold, in case this is urgent.’

It was Glenn Branson. ‘Roy, the Coroner’s Officer, Philip Keay, says he recognizes the dead man from some years back. I’m not sure you’re going to like this much –
it’s Amis Smallbone.’

Sitting on the edge of his bed, the news was almost surreal. It took a moment for it to sink in. ‘Amis Smallbone? Is he sure?’

‘Yes, absolutely certain.’

‘I’ll call you back in a minute.’ He switched to Cleo. ‘I’m coming straight home – as soon as I can get a flight, darling. I won’t be able to get one
until this evening – the earliest I’ll get back is tomorrow morning. But I’m putting a police officer in the house with you until I’m back. I’ll get a Family Liaison
Officer.’

‘Please come back quickly,’ she said, her voice cracking.

‘I love you, darling,’ he said. ‘You’re fine, you and Noah. But I don’t want you leaving the house until I get back and find out what’s going on,
okay?’

He could barely decipher her reply through her sobbing. And he was shaking himself. Just what the hell had the little shit been up to?

Roy Grace sat on the edge of his bed, shivering from the air-con, his face in his hands, thinking. Amis Smallbone with house-breaking kit. There was no alternative scenario, no
other possible hypothesis. Smallbone had been there to break into the house. Period. The unanswered question was, what had he planned to do?

Harm Cleo or Noah, or both? He thought back to the vile, chilling words carved with a chisel on Cleo’s car, back in June:
COPPER’S TART. UR BABY IS NEXT
. Smallbone had
vigorously denied it was his handiwork. That had been followed by an obituary notice placed anonymously in the
Argus
, shortly after Noah had been born. The person who had done that had
still not been identified, but Grace had a pretty shrewd idea it was Amis Smallbone who had been responsible for both.

Did he have an accomplice? Grace thought that unlikely. If Smallbone had wanted something taken from the house, he would have hired someone to do that. No. Whatever he’d planned, he had
intended doing it himself. And now he was dead. One less piece of vermin on this planet. He doubted many people would be mourning him. A nasty, futile, squandered gift of life.

His phone pinged with an incoming text. He looked at the display and saw it was from Pat Lanigan.

He grinned, then phoned Glenn Branson back. ‘Has anyone checked Cleo’s house for signs of forced entry?’

‘We’ve done that and it’s all secure.’

‘She’s very shaken, Glenn. Can you get someone to stay with her?’

‘I’m on it. I’m organizing an FLO to be with her until you get back.’

‘Thanks. I thought you weren’t going to be at work today – isn’t Ari’s funeral this week? Wednesday?’

‘I wasn’t, then I saw the address of the incident on the serial and I came over. I have Ari’s sister staying at the house to help with the kids, so it’s okay.’

‘I really appreciate it. Thanks, matey.’

‘I’ll phone you with any updates. How’s it going there?’

‘For half four on a Monday morning, quite lively, so far,’ Grace said, wryly. He gave him a quick update, ended the call, then immediately phoned Tony Case, the Senior Support
Officer, who was responsible for travel arrangements. He explained the circumstances and asked Case if he could get him an emergency ticket home.

‘Hmm, that’s going to cost,’ Tony Case said. A former police officer himself, he could be a bit of a curmudgeon. ‘I got you all a good deal on return tickets, but
they’re non-refundable.’

‘I’ll pay it out of my own pocket.’

That seemed to cheer Case a little. ‘Well, leave it with me, Roy. May not be necessary. You’re on your mobile?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give me half an hour or so.’

With no interest in – or prospect of – any more sleep, he ordered a pot of coffee, then stepped into the hard, hot jets of the shower, making a mental note to check with Cleo that
she had arranged for flowers to be sent to Ari Branson’s funeral.

*

Twenty minutes later, invigorated from the shower and from his second cup of coffee, Roy Grace checked his emails. But there were no further updates so far regarding
Cleo’s house, beyond the information Glenn Branson had already given him.

It was 5.10 a.m. His eyes felt tired, but his brain was wired. In three-quarters of an hour he was due to meet Guy Batchelor and Jack Alexander down in the lobby, and then head up to Central
Park South and Eamonn Pollock’s hotel.

He called MIR-1 and asked Bella Moy for an update. There were no significant developments, she told him. Then as he ended the call, Glenn Branson rang again.

‘You’re not going to like this at all,’ he said.

‘I’m not liking it already!’ Grace replied.

‘I thought in our last session you were going to talk more about the father of your son,’ Dr Eberstark said. ‘You told me you were having an affair with one
of your husband’s work colleagues. Do you believe this man is the father?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sandy said.

‘And how do you feel about that? About not knowing?’

She was silent for some moments, then she shrugged. ‘It’s difficult. I’m not sure if I would prefer to know that Roy is Bruno’s father, or that he isn’t.’

‘And if he is, do you not think he has a right to know?’

‘I thought I was paying you to help me, not to interrogate me.’

The psychiatrist smiled. ‘You keep so much inside you, Sandy. Do you not know that expression,
The truth will set you free
?’

‘So how do you suppose I will find the truth? I can hardly ask Roy, or the man I had the affair with, to send me samples for DNA testing.’

‘In my experience, most women know,’ he said. ‘You are a very instinctive person. What do your instincts tell you?’

‘Can we change the subject?’

‘Why does it make you so uncomfortable to talk about it?’

‘Because . . .’ She shrugged again, and lapsed into silence.

After several minutes, Dr Eberstark asked, ‘Did you think any more about the house in Brighton that you are planning to buy?’

‘It’s in
Hove
, actually.’

‘Hove?’

‘I guess the equivalent here would be Schwabing.’

‘A smart area?’

‘There used to be a big snobbery between Brighton and Hove residents. Brighton was brash and racy; Hove was more sedate and genteel.’

‘Ah.’

There was another long silence.

Dr Eberstark, after checking his watch and seeing they only had a few minutes left, prompted her. ‘So, the house in
Hove
, did you make any decision?’

She said nothing, and stared at him with an expression he could not read.

*

As Sandy left the front door of Dr Eberstark’s building, and stepped onto the pavement of Widenmayerstrasse, she stopped, staring at the wide, grass bank of the Isar river
across the busy street, collecting her thoughts. She had lied to the psychiatrist. She did know who the real father was.

As the traffic roared past in front of her, she wondered whether it was time, finally, to tell Roy about her son.
Their
son. She knew now, for sure, that he was the father. On her visit
to the house, two months ago, when she had been taken round by the estate agent, she had sneaked an old toothbrush and a hairbrush from his bathroom into her handbag. From the DNA provided by them,
a firm in Berlin had confirmed the paternity of her son, Bruno Roy Lohmann, beyond doubt. It had not been Cassian Pewe’s child. She’d had a fling with him, over several months, after
meeting him when Roy had attended a crime course he was running, but it had fizzled out.

She was agonizing, too, over the house. She could afford to buy it, but was going back like that the right thing?

Then, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she smiled, and thought to herself,
I know where I am going now and what I want to do.

With a spring in her step she took two paces forward and hailed a cab.

The same man-mountain was still on night duty in the lobby, beside the bank of elevators in the Marriott Essex House Hotel, when the three British detectives arrived, shortly
after 6.15 a.m. To Roy Grace’s relief, the two police officers who had been fast asleep when he had been here earlier were now wide awake and nervously eager to give him information. Not that
they had anything of significance to report. Last night, at 7.30 p.m., Eamonn Pollock had had a meal delivered to his room. According to the room service waiter, he also had a male visitor.
Sometime later, Pollock had pushed his tray out into the corridor. He’d been silent since then, and they presumed he was now still asleep.

Grace asked if he could speak to the waiter about Pollock’s visitor. The man-mountain made a call on his radio, and reported back that the waiter had gone off duty and would not be here
again until midday.

Leaving the hotel security guard in situ, Grace took his colleagues and the American police officers down to the two basement exits, leaving Batchelor covering one and Jack Alexander the other.
He sent one officer up to stand outside Pollock’s door and the other to remain down here. Grace went into the front lobby and up to the reception desk, keeping an eye on the main entrance,
and asked to speak to the duty manager.

He was finding it really hard to focus on anything since the last phone call he had received earlier from Glenn Branson, telling him that Amis Smallbone had rented the house next door to
Cleo’s. The little scumbag had been the other side of their party wall. With an electronic eavesdropping device. How had he been able to do that? Surely to God his Probation Officer . . .

But it wasn’t the Probation Officer’s fault. All he – or she – had to do was to check the address was suitable, and that their charge could afford it. They weren’t
to know it was next door to where he was living.

But . . . shit.

The night manager, who had already been called and briefed by Pat Lanigan, appeared. ‘How can I assist?’

Grace showed him his warrant card and asked if he could view the hotel’s CCTV cover of its entrances from 6 p.m. yesterday. He had already noted the cameras at the front and rear of the
hotel, giving both interior and exterior views.

A few minutes later he was seated in a cramped, airless room behind the hotel’s admin office, in front of a bank of monitors, each numbered and showing different views of parts of the
hotel and of the street. Next to him sat a surly, hugely fat security guard, with expressionless eyes, who looked – and smelled – as if he had been up all night. The man was jiggling a
joystick, moving and zooming remote cameras; he reminded Grace of the time he had been at a homicide conference in Las Vegas and had walked through the casino on his way to breakfast, past rows of
fruit machines, with exhausted people sitting at them who looked like they had been working them all through the night.

Grace sped through the footage, occasionally slowing it down to check out a face; but he did not see anyone he recognized. Finally he gave up and, relieved to get out of this rancid room,
returned to the lobby, and took a seat that afforded him a clear view of anyone entering or leaving the hotel from this side.

Moments later, Tony Case rang him. He’d managed to book him on a flight out of Newark at 9 p.m., getting in to Heathrow around 9 a.m. the next day; it also gave him the whole day in New
York, which he was glad of, despite his concerns to get back home to take care of Cleo and Noah.

The lobby was deserted apart from a woman cleaning, laboriously shifting a yellow slippery floor warning triangle around as she moved. After some minutes, an early-rising businessman strode
hurriedly into the lobby, trundling a small overnight bag on wheels behind him, and went up to the reception desk. Grace only watched him to relieve the monotony; he looked nothing like the images
he had of Eamonn Pollock from his criminal record. And this man was about twenty years younger.