You Are Dead (15 page)

Alive.

So did he. He'd never in all his life been a defeatist, but the odds of finding her alive, he knew, were not good.

 

31

Friday 12 December

Jamie Ball sat on one of the sofas, laptop open, glass of red wine in his hand, alternating between his Facebook page and staring at the constantly changing images on the digital photo frame. There were a few landscapes, a picture of Logan's parents' dog, a happy-looking black labradoodle, and a photograph taken at their engagement party of both sets of parents and siblings, but most of the pictures were of Logan and himself.

He topped the glass up with a shaking hand. His tiredness was really starting to kick in, but instead of calming him, the alcohol seemed to be having the reverse effect, making him increasingly jittery, as if it were strong coffee, shrinking his scalp so tightly around his skull that pains were shooting down it. His eyes were raw and gritty and he could barely focus. Unconsciously he drummed the fingers of his left hand continuously on the coffee table.

His parents had invited him over, but he didn't want to sit in their gloomy house. Logan's parents and her sister and brother had all been very slightly cold and remote to him—not cold enough to sound actively hostile, but enough to hint to him that they were suspicious. A couple of his mates, concerned for him, had invited him out for company to the Coach House in Middle Street for the evening. It was a pub he had been to many times in the past—in happier days—with Logan. But for now he preferred to sit here, alone. He didn't want any company at this moment.

He refreshed the Facebook page, where late last night he had posted the message, “Please help me find my missing beautiful fiancée, Logan,” beneath a row of photographs of her. He saw that another fifteen “likes” had come in during the past half hour, as well as six new friend requests, in response to his post.

“Good,” he said, suddenly, to no one.

Then his phone rang. He jumped up and grabbed the receiver with his hand shaking so much it dropped and fell to the wooden floor, a piece of the casing breaking off. He knelt and picked it up.

“I wonder if I could please speak to Mr. James Ball?” It was the voice of an elderly man, courteous but quite firm.

Few people called him James—he had been Jamie for as long as he could remember.

“Yes, speaking, who is this?” He'd already had several crank calls. One from a medium telling him she'd had a vision of Logan in the hold of a ship loaded with timber. Another from someone claiming to be a private detective, demanding one thousand pounds up front, but guaranteeing to find her. Yep, right.

“I'm Logan's uncle—my name is Jacob Van Dam. She may have mentioned me?”

“Ah, yes,” he replied. “Yes, she has.” She had indeed mentioned her uncle, the psychiatrist, to him on many occasions, although she'd told Jamie she had not seen him for several years. He was the one famous member of her family.

“I'm going to ask you a rather personal question about Logan, James, but I have a good reason for this, so please bear with me.”

Ball frowned. Was this shrink about to start playing some clever mind games with him? “OK,” he said, guardedly.

“Does Logan have a mark or words—maybe a tattoo—anywhere on her body?”

He was silent for some moments, wondering where this was going. “A tattoo?”

“Yes. A mark or tattoo.”

“No, she doesn't.”

“Are you absolutely certain? Perhaps on her right thigh?”

“Yes, I am sure, there's nothing there.”

“What about any writing or script?”

“No, she doesn't have. Why are you asking, Mr. Van Dam?”

“I have a reason.”

“No, she has no tattoo. OK?” The man's insistent voice was irritating him, and making him feel even edgier.

“You've been very helpful, I'm sorry to have troubled you. Thank you.”

Ball stared into the receiver as the call ended. Into the tiny holes in the mouthpiece. What was that all about, he wondered?

*   *   *

Jacob Van Dam sat for a long time at his desk, in silence, deep in thought. In his opinion, Ball's reaction had been that of someone distraught because his loved one was missing.

Nevertheless, he had the feeling he was hiding something. But what?

 

32

Friday 12 December

After the briefing, Roy Grace went back to his office, deep in thought, needing some quiet time to reflect. On Monday he had to speak at Bella's funeral, which was going to be emotional, he knew. One of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. Then on Tuesday, the removals company were due to be delivering all the packing cases, both to Cleo's house and to his own, in advance of their move the following Friday. Somehow he was going to have to find the time to be at home to help Cleo pack everything up. He was also going to have to supervise the packing of all his belongings in his own house, near the seafront—very close to the Lagoon—which he had shared with Sandy prior to her disappearance.

But all he could think of was Logan Somerville. Her long brown hair. And Emma Johnson, who was missing and had a similar hair-style. Was there a possible link with the body of the woman at the Lagoon—with the strands of long brown hair too?

He tried to dismiss that. He didn't want any links. A solo murder victim was a tragedy, but a one-off nonetheless. The victim of a sexual assault, a revenge attack, a random attack by someone mentally ill, a domestic dispute, a robbery or a jealous lover. These were some of the reasons people killed—and got killed. Single, brutal, final acts.

Linked murders could be game changers. Three or more, in different locations and with time between them, and you had a serial killer by definition. They hadn't had one in this city for a very long time, not in all of his career, to date—at least that the police had heard about.

Earlier he'd told Cleo there was no way he'd be home early tonight, even though she'd tried to tempt him by telling him she'd been planning some of his favorite dishes, a prawn and avocado cocktail, then grilled Dover sole. He was feeling hungry and would have dearly loved to have headed straight back—to see Noah, have a couple of glasses of wine and a nice meal, and an evening doing what he loved most, spending time with Cleo.

His phone rang.

He answered instantly. It was Glenn Branson. “All right?” the DI said.

“Not great. You?”

“Well, actually, I've got a bit of a development. Might be nothing—but I wanted to run it by you.”

“Tell me?”

“Fancy a drink? I kind of need one. I'm going off duty.”

“Friday night?” Grace said. “So you don't have a hot date with that
Argus
reporter—what's her name—Siobhan Sheldrake?”

“Haha, very funny.”

“I need one, too. Have to make it quick and it'll have to be a soft one. Black Lion?”

“Fifteen?”

“Give me three quarters of an hour, I need to swing by my house to pick up some stuff I'm taking to a charity shop.”

“Must be tough for you,” Branson said.

“Yes,” Grace replied. “Sad, too.”

“But you've moved on now. You're happy, you're in a good place. Life's started all over for you, and I'm happy. I'm really happy.”

“Thanks, mate, so am I.”

Yet as he hung up, Roy Grace had a heavy heart. He went down to the car park and headed into Hove in Cleo's car—she was now driving his Alfa, which had been fitted with a baby seat. He had so much to look forward to, he knew, but clearing his old home, bit by bit, was not something he was enjoying.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later he turned off New Church Road, and drove down the street, toward Kingsway and the seafront, where he and Sandy had once been so happy. Christmas lights shone through the windows of the houses on either side of the road, until he reached his own house, a 1930s mock-Tudor semi, on the right, near the bottom, which sat in darkness.

He pulled up onto the drive in front of the garage door. Beyond it sat Sandy's car, coated in dust, where it had been for the past decade awaiting her return. He unlocked the front door of the house. It had been over a week since he was last here, and as he went in he had to push the door hard through the mountain of junk mail and bills and local takeaway menus that had poured through the letter box in his absence.

He switched on the lights, went into the kitchen and pulled out a roll of black bin liners from under the sink, then carried them upstairs into their bedroom, which was still largely unchanged. He opened Sandy's wardrobe, and began to pull out her clothes and stuff them into a bag until it was full. He could smell her scent, faintly, through the mustiness—or could he? Memories flooded back.

He filled one bag, and then a second, all kinds of thoughts of the past being triggered. Empty coat hangers clattered on the rail. He knelt and filled a third bag with her shoes, remembering to go into the downstairs cloakroom and take her coats off the hooks. Then he stood up and looked around the bedroom. There was a chaise longue at the end of the bed, which they had bought years ago, in terrible condition, from an auction room in Lewes, and had re-covered in a modern, black and white pattern that Sandy had selected. On it sat the battered, furry toy stoat she had had since childhood. He put that in the bag, too, then took it out again and placed it back on the chaise longue. He hadn't the heart to give it away. Yet, at the same time, he could hardly take it to their new home.

Shit, this was hard.

What if?

If she ever returned? And wanted it?

And suddenly, he realized, as he had so many times over the past years, he could not even remember her face any more. He walked across to her walnut dressing table, and stared down at the framed photograph that sat between her bottles of perfumes.

It had been taken in the restaurant of a gorgeous hotel near Oxford, the Bear at Woodstock, where they had celebrated their wedding anniversary after he had attended a conference on DNA fingerprinting, a short while before she disappeared. He was in a suit and tie, Sandy, in an evening dress, beaming her constant irrepressible grin at a waiter they had asked to take the picture.

He stared at her crystal-clear blue eyes, the color of the sky. It shocked him to look at her, realizing just how far she had faded into his past. He couldn't give that away, he knew, nor could he throw it away. He would have to pack it in a suitcase and stick it away, somewhere, up in the loft of his new home.

Then he looked at the stack of books, some on her bedside table and others neatly arranged on the mantelpiece above the fireplace that had been boarded over by previous owners, but that Sandy had opened up again, and occasionally lit, because she thought it was romantic.

He picked up one of the books, Anita Brookner's
Hotel Du Lac
, which she had asked him to buy from her Christmas list. He opened it up and read the inscription.

To my darling Sandy. On our fourth Christmas.

To the love of my life. XXXXX.

Whatever happened to you? God, where are you now? Resting in peace, I hope.

He kissed the book then dropped it, along with all the others, into a fresh bin bag.

 

33

Friday 12 December

Stationsschwester Anette Lippert was seventy-five minutes into the night shift in the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital where she had trained and spent most of her career to date. The Klinikum München Schwabing was, in her view deservedly, reputed to have one of the finest neurological departments in Germany with a nurse to every patient in the ICU.

As the senior staff nurse she normally took the morning shift, because that was when most of the transfers and operations took place, but with an epidemic of flu sweeping the city of Munich they were currently several nurses down and she was having to work around the clock some days to help cover.

The night shift was long and tedious, during which little tended to happen. The unit was kept at a carefully regulated twenty-four degrees Celsius, which sometimes felt stiflingly warm—although the patients who occupied the fifteen beds there never complained. Many of them never spoke. One exception was the comatose, unidentified woman in bed 12, who made occasional confused, sporadic utterings.

Stopping to check on each patient in turn, and getting an update from their charge nurse, accompanied by two doctors, Lippert reached bed 12. The occupant was a woman in her mid to late thirties, with short brown hair, her face heavily bandaged. She had been semi-comatose since being hit by a taxi a month ago while crossing Widenmayerstrasse, the busy main road that ran through one of the city of Munich's smartest districts, separating it from the river Isar.

She had been admitted here as
Unbekannte Frau.

An eyewitness to the accident had told the police, with disgust, that as she had lain in the road, some helmeted bastard on a motor-cycle had pulled up, snatched her handbag from the road and accelerated off.

For forty-eight hours, no one had any idea who she was. Then a young boy, back from football camp, in tears because his mama had not collected him on his return from his trip, had been brought in here by the police and identified her as his mother, Frau Lohmann. Yet, despite this, she remained something of an enigma.

It seemed, so the police had informed the hospital, that Frau Lohmann had gone to some considerable lengths to erase her past. A search of her apartment, her computer and her mobile phone had revealed no clues as to who she really was. It appeared that she had at least two faked identities, including forged passports and social insurance numbers. Her credit cards were in her assumed names. She had over three million euros on deposit in a Munich bank, under one of these names, and had managed to open that account some nine years earlier by getting through its money-laundering protocols with her false documentation.