‘Terrific! I’m in competition with cheese for your affections?’
‘No competition. The cheese wins hands down.’
‘Maybe I should take you back to the hospital.’
She leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. Then, as the lights turned green, she pressed her fingers even further into his thigh and said, ‘Don’t take it badly.’
As he drove forward, he pouted in a mock-sulk and said, ‘I’m going to arrest every sodding piece of Brie in this city.’
‘Great. Put them in the cooler for after Bump is born and I’ll devour them. But I will devour you first, I promise!’
As he turned south into Grand Parade and moved over into the right-hand lane, with the Royal Pavilion ahead of him to the right, Grace was aware of a sudden feeling of euphoria. After all his fears for Cleo and their baby these past few days, everything suddenly seemed good again. Cleo was fine, back to her normal cheery, breezy self. Their baby was fine. The bollocking from ACC Rigg suddenly seemed very small and insignificant in comparison. The two-bit petty crook van driver, Ewan Preece, would be found within days, if not hours, and that would put Rigg back in his box. The only thing that really mattered to him at this moment was sitting beside him.
‘I love you so much,’ he said.
‘You do?’
‘Yep.’
‘You sure about that? Even with my big tummy and the fact that I prefer cheese to you?’
‘I like your big tummy – more to love.’
She suddenly took his left hand and held it to her abdomen. He could feel something moving, something tiny but strong, and he felt a lump of joy in his throat.
‘Is that Bump?’
‘Kicking away! He’s telling us he’s happy to be going home!’
‘Awwww!’
Cleo released his hand, then pushed her hair back from her forehead. Grace stopped in the right-turn lane, in front of the Pavilion.
‘So have you missed me?’ she said.
‘Every second.’
‘Liar.’
‘I have.’ The lights turned green and he drove across the junction and doubled back around the Old Steine. ‘I’ve kept busy googling buggies and baby names.’
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about names,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘If it’s a girl, which I don’t think it is, I like Amelie, Tilly or Freya best so far.’
‘And if it’s a boy?’
‘I’d like Jack, after your father.’
‘You would?’
She nodded.
Suddenly his phone rang. Raising an apologetic finger, he hit the hands-free button to answer.
It was Norman Potting. ‘Sorry about that, chief, my battery is still down. But I thought you should know-’
Then there was silence.
‘Know what?’ Grace asked.
But he was talking into thin air.
He dialled the Incident Room number to ask if Potting had left any message. But Nick Nicholl, who answered, said no one had heard from him. Grace told him he would be back for the evening briefing, then hung up.
Cleo looked at him provocatively. ‘So, this wild sex, then? It’ll have to be a quickie?’
‘Hard cheese,’ he replied.
‘It’s the soft ones that have listeria.’ She kissed him again. ‘Hard sounds good.’
37
She did not feel like running any more. She felt in need of alcohol. When the waitress came round, she ordered a Maß of beer. One whole litre of the stuff. Then she stared back again at the words in the Münchner Merkur.
She could feel blind fury welling inside her. Somehow she had to contain it. It was one of the things she had been learning, anger management. She was much better at it, but she needed to focus hard to do it. Had to spiral back inside her mind to the place she was before she was angry. To the Münchner Merkur, lying on the table.
She closed the paper and pushed it away, calming a little. But struggling. A fury inside her was threatening to erupt and she must not let it, she knew. She could not let her anger win. It had already ruled too much of her life and had not ruled it well or wisely.
Extinguish it, she thought. Extinguish it like the flame of a match in the wind. Just let it blow out. Watch it go.
Calmer now, she opened the paper again and turned back to the page. She looked at the details at the bottom. There was a mailing address, an email address and a phone number.
Her next reaction was Why?
Then, calming a little further, she thought, Does it matter?
She’d kept some tabs on him, especially in recent years, now that the local Sussex newspaper, the Argus, was available online. As an increasingly prominent police officer it was easy; he was frequently being quoted in the news doing his stuff. Doing what he loved, being a copper. A crap husband, but a great copper. As a wife you’d always be second to that. Some accepted it. Some wives were coppers themselves, so they understood. But it had not been the life she had wanted. Or so she had thought.
But now here, alone, with each passing day she was less certain of the decision she had made. And this announcement was really unsettling her more than she could ever have imagined.
Dead?
Me?
How very convenient for you, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, now in charge of Major Crime for Sussex. Oh yes, I’ve been following you. I’m only a few footsteps behind you. The ghost that haunts you. Good for you, with your passion for your career. Your dad only made it to Sergeant. You’ve already gone higher than your wildest dreams – at least the ones you told me about. How much higher will you go? How high do you want to go? All the way to the very top? The place you told me you didn’t actually want to reach?
Are you happy?
Do you remember how we used to discuss happiness? Do you remember that night we got drunk at the bar in Browns and you told me that it was possible to have happy moments in life, but that only an idiot could be happy all of the time?
You were right.
She opened the paper and reread the announcement. Anger was boiling inside her again. A silent rage. A fire she had to put out. It was one of the first things they had taught her about herself. About that anger, which was such a big problem. They gave her a mantra to say to herself. To repeat, over and over.
She remembered the words now. Spoke them silently.
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It is about learning to dance in the rain.
As she repeated them, again and again, slowly she began to calm down once more.
38
Tony Case, the Senior Support Officer at HQ CID, phoned Roy Grace early in the afternoon, to tell him one of the current inquiries at Sussex House had ended in a result sooner than expected and was now winding down, which meant MIR-1 – Major Incident Room One – had become free. Case, with whom Grace got on well, knew that was the place the Detective Superintendent favoured for conducting his inquiries.
As he made his way towards MIR-1 for the 6.30 p.m. briefing, his phone rang. He stopped in the corridor, in front of a diagram on the wall – a white sheet pinned to a red board which was headed CRIME SCENE ASSESSMENT.
It was Kevin Spinella on the line.
‘Detective Superintendent, do you have a second for me?’
‘Not even a nanosecond, I’m afraid. Nor a picosecond. I don’t even have a femtosecond.’
‘Ha-ha, very witty. One millionth of one billionth of a second. You can’t even spare that?’
‘You actually know what that is?’ Grace was a little astonished.
‘Well, I know that a nanosecond is one billionth of a second and a picosecond is one trillionth of a second. So, yeah, actually, I do know what a femtosecond is.’’
Grace could hear him chewing gum, as ever, over the phone. It sounded like a horse trotting through mud.
‘Didn’t know you were a physicist.’