Over fifteen emails related to the police rugby team, which he had been made president of for this coming autumn. They were a sharp reminder that although it was gloriously warm today, in less than four weeks it would be September. Summer was coming to an end. Already the days were getting noticeably shorter.
He clicked on his keyboard to bring up the Vantage software for the force’s internal computer system and checked the latest incident reports log to see what had happened during the past couple of hours. Scanning down the orange lettering, there was nothing that particularly caught his eye. It was still too early – later there would be fights, assaults and muggings galore. An RTA on the London Road coming into Brighton. A bag-snatch. A shoplifter in the Boundary Road Tesco branch. A stolen car found abandoned at a petrol station. A runaway horse reported on the A27.
Then his phone rang. It was Detective Sergeant Guy Batchelor, a new recruit to his inquiry team, whom he had dispatched to talk to Brian Bishop’s golfing partners from this morning.
Grace liked Batchelor. He always thought that if you asked a casting agency to provide a middle-aged police officer for a scene in a film, the man they sent would look like Batchelor. He was tall and burly, with a rugger-ball-shaped head, thinning hair and a genial but businesslike demeanour. Although not huge, he had an air of the gentle giant about him – more in his nature than his physical mass.
‘Roy, I’ve seen all three people Bishop played golf with today. Just something I thought might be of interest – they all said he seemed in an exceptionally good mood, and that he was playing a blinder – better than any of them had ever seen him play.’
‘Did he give them any explanation?’
‘No, he’s quite a loner apparently, unlike his wife, who was very gregarious, they say. He doesn’t have any really close friends, normally doesn’t say much. But he was cracking jokes today. One of the men, a Mr Mishon, who seems to know him quite well, said it was as if he had taken a happy pill.’
Grace was thinking hard.
‘Not the sort of reaction of man who’s just killed his wife, is it, Roy?’
‘Depends how good an actor he is.’
After Batchelor had finished his report, adding little further, Grace thanked him and said he would see him at the eleven p.m. briefing. Then, thinking hard about what Batchelor had just said, he tore away the film covering of the sandwich, levered it out and took a bite. Instantly, he wrinkled his nose at the taste; it was some new exotic kind of bread he’d never tried before – and regretted trying now. It had a strong caraway flavour he did not like. He’d have been much happier with an egg and bacon all-day-breakfast sandwich, but Cleo had been trying to wean him on to a healthier diet by getting him to eat more fish – despite his regaling her with a detailed account of an article he’d read earlier in the year, in the
He exited Vantage, launched the website of expedia.com and entered a search for flights to Munich on Sunday, wondering whether it was possible to get out there and back on the same day. He
It was all he could do to stop himself from getting the next possible plane. Instead, he glanced at his watch. It was nine fifty. Ten fifty in Germany. But hell, Dick Pope would be up and about, he was on holiday. Sitting in some cafe or bar in Bavaria with a beer in his hand. He dialled Pope’s mobile, but it went straight to voicemail.
‘Dick,’ he said. ‘Roy again. Sorry to be a pest, but I just want to ask you a few more details about the beer garden where you think you saw Sandy. Call me when you can.’
He hung up and stared for a moment at his prize collection of three dozen vintage cigarette lighters, hunched together on the ledge between the front of his desk and the window, with its view down on the parking area and the cell block. They reflected how much Sandy loved trawling antiques markets, bric-a-brac shops and car-boot sales. Something he still did, when he had the time, but it had never been the same. Part of the fun had always been seeing Sandy’s reaction to something he picked up. Whether she would like it too, in which case they would haggle the price, or whether she would reject it with a single, disapproving scrunch of her face.
Most of the space was occupied by a television and video player, a circular table, four chairs and piles of loose paperwork, his leather go-bag containing his crime-scene kit, and ever-growing small towers of files. Sometimes he wondered if they bred at night, on their own, while he was away from the office.
Each file on the floor stood for an unsolved murder. Murder files never closed until there was a conviction. There would come a point in every murder inquiry when every lead, every avenue, had been exhausted. But that did not mean the police gave up. Years after the incident room was shut down and the inquiry team disbanded, the case would remain open, the evidence stored in boxes, so long as there was a chance that the parties connected to it might still be alive.
He took a swig from his Coke. He’d read on a website that all lowcarb drinks were full of all kinds of chemicals hostile to your body, but he didn’t care at this moment. It seemed that everything you ate or drank was more likely to kill you than provide you with nutrients. Maybe, he pondered, the next food fad would be pre-digested food. You would just buy it and then throw it straight down the lavatory, without needing to eat it.
He clicked his keyboard. There was a British Airways flight out of Heathrow at seven a.m. on Sunday morning. It would get him into Munich at nine fifty. He decided to call the police officer he knew there, Kriminalhauptkommisar Marcel Kullen, to see if he would be free.
