‘This guy, Paulaner, was he a German philosopher?’
Kullen grinned at him. ‘Philosopher? I don’t think. Paulaner is the name of the biggest brewing house in Munich.’
‘Ah,’ Grace said, feeling decidedly dim-witted. ‘Right.’
Kullen was pointing to a table at the water’s edge, where some spaces were being freed up by a group of youngsters who were standing and hauling on backpacks. ‘Would you like to sit there?’
‘Perfect.’
As they walked over to it, Grace scanned the faces at table after table after table. Packed with men and women of all ages, from teens to the elderly, all in casual dress, mostly T-shirts, baggy shirts or bare-chested, shorts or jeans, and just about everyone in sunglasses, baseball caps, floppy hats and straw hats. They were drinking from Mass or half-Mass glasses of beer, eating plates of sausages and fries, or spare ribs, or tennis-ball-sized lumps of cheese, or something that looked like meatloaf with sauerkraut.
Was this where Sandy had been earlier in the week? Was this where she came regularly, walking past the naked bronze on the plinth and the bearded head in the fountain who was advertising Paulaner, to sit and drink beer and stare at the lake?
And with whom?
A new man? New friends?
And, if she was alive, what went on in her mind? What did she think about the past, about him, their life together, all their dreams and promises and times shared?
He took out Dick Pope’s map and looked again at the fuzzy circle, orienting himself.
‘Bottoms up!’
Kullen, wearing aviator sunglasses now, had raised his glass. Grace raised his own. ‘Skol! ’
Shaking his head amiably, the German said, ‘No, we say Prost!’
‘Prost!’ Grace returned, and they clinked glasses.
‘To success,’ Kullen said. ‘Or perhaps that’s not what you want, I think?’
Grace gave a short, bitter laugh, wondering if the German had any idea just how true that was. And almost as if on cue, his phone beeped twice.
It was a message from Cleo.
57
Probationary PC David Curtis and Sergeant Bill Norris climbed out of the patrol car a short distance up from the address they had been given. Newman Villas was an archetypal Hove residential street of tired Victorian terraced houses. Once they had been single-occupancy homes, with servants’ quarters upstairs, but now they were carved up into smaller units. A battery of estate-agents’ boards ran the length of the street, most of them advertising flats and bedsits to let.
The front door of number 17 looked like it hadn’t seen a lick of paint in a couple of decades, and most of the names on the entryphone panel were handwritten and faded. S. Harrington looked reasonably fresh.
Bill Norris pressed the button. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘used to be just four of us on a stakeout. Today it can be twenty officers. I got into trouble once. There was a streetwalker who was a customer of this deli we was staking out. I wrote in the log, “Nice bum and tits.” Didn’t go down well. I got a right bollocking over that, I did, from the station inspector!’ He rang the bell again.
They waited in silence for some moments. When there was still no answer, Norris pressed all the other buttons, one after another. ‘Time to ruin someone’s Sunday lie-in.’ He tapped his watch. ‘Maybe she’s in church?’ He chuckled.
‘Yeah?’ a wasted voice suddenly crackled.
‘Flat 4. I lost me key. Could you let me in please?’ Norris pleaded.
Moments later there was a sharp rasp, then a click from the lock.
The sergeant pushed the door open, turning to his young colleague and lowering his voice. ‘Don’t tell ’em it’s the law – they won’t let you in then.’ He touched his nose conspiratorially. ‘You’ll learn.’
Curtis looked at him, wondering for how many more patrols he was going to have to endure this pain. And hoping to hell someone would pull out his plug if he ever started becoming like this sad git.
They walked along a short, musty-smelling corridor, past two bicycles and a shelf piled with post, mostly fliers from local pizza and Chinese takeaways. On the first-floor landing they heard the sound of gunshots, followed by James Garner’s stentorian tones: ‘Freeze!’ It was coming from behind a door bearing the number ‘2’.
They climbed on, past the second-floor door numbered ‘3’. The staircase narrowed and at the top they reached a door numbered ‘4’.
Norris knocked loudly. No answer. He knocked again, more loudly. And again. Then he looked at the probationary. ‘All right, son. One day this’ll be you. What would you do?’
‘Break the door open?’ Curtis ventured.
‘And if she’s busy having nooky in there?’
Curtis shrugged. He didn’t know the answer.
Norris knocked again. ‘Hello! Ms Harrington? Anyone in? Police!’
Nothing.
Norris turned his burly frame sideways and barged hard against the door. It shook, but did not yield. He tried harder and this time the door burst open, splintering the frame, and he tumbled in to a narrow, empty corridor, grabbing the wall to steady himself.
‘Hello! Police!’ Norris called out, advancing forward, then he turned to his junior officer. ‘Keep in my footsteps. Don’t touch anything. We don’t want to contaminate any evidence.’
Curtis tiptoed clumsily, holding his breath, in the sergeant’s footsteps along the corridor. Ahead of him the sergeant pushed open a door, then stopped in his tracks.
‘Bloody hell!’ Norris said. ‘Oh, bloody hell!’
When he caught up with the sergeant, the young PC stopped in his tracks, staring ahead in revulsion and shock. A cold sensation crawled in his guts. He wanted desperately to look away but could not. Morbid fascination that went way beyond professional duty held his gaze rooted to the bed.
58
Roy Grace stared at the message from Cleo on his phone’s display:
Sort yourself out in Munich. Call me when you get back home.
No signature. No kiss. Just a bald, pissed-off statement.
But at least she had finally responded.
He composed a terse reply, in his mind, and instantly discarded it. Then he composed another, and discarded that. He had stood her up for a Sunday lunch date in order to go to Munich to try to find his wife. Just how good must that have sounded to her?
But surely she could be a little sympathetic? He’d never kept Sandy’s disappearance a secret – Cleo knew all about it. What choice did he have? Surely anyone would be doing what he was doing now, wouldn’t they?
And suddenly, fuelled by his tiredness, stress, the incessant heat of the sun beating down on his head, he felt a flash of anger at Cleo.
Hell, woman, can’t you bloody understand?
He caught Marcel Kullen’s eye and shrugged. ‘Women.’
‘Everything is OK?’
Grace put down his phone and cradled his heavy glass in both hands. ‘This beer is OK,’ he said. ‘More than OK.’ He took a large swig. Then he sipped his scalding coffee. ‘Nothing much else is. You know?’
The Kriminalhauptkommisar smiled, as if he was unsure how to respond.
A man at the next table was puffing on a briar pipe. Smoke drifted across them and the smell suddenly reminded Grace of his father, who also smoked a pipe. He remembered all the rituals. His father ramming long, slim white pipe cleaners, that rapidly turned brown, down the stem. Scraping out the rim with a small brass instrument. Mixing the tobacco with his large fingers, filling the bowl, lighting it with a Swan Vesta match, then tamping it down and relighting it. The living room instantly filling with the tantalizing aroma of the blue-grey smoke. Or, if they were out fishing in a small boat, or on the end of the Palace Pier, or on the mole of Shoreham Harbour, Roy use to watch the direction of the wind when his father took out his pipe, then ensure he stood downwind of him to catch those wisps.