Peter James: You Are Dead

A son who had said the wedding had upset his mother.

Roy thought again about the nightmare he’d had before the wedding, in which he had dreamed he had seen Sandy in the church. And then, during the wedding itself, when he had turned to watch Cleo walk down the aisle and had seen the strange woman in black with a small boy at the back of the church.

Was it possible? Could Marcel be right?

Was she still alive and had come back to Brighton after all these years? And if so, why? Out of curiosity?

And if it really was her, how the hell would he — could he — deal with that?

His leg had healed to the point where he felt ready to start walking again, although the physio had told him to wait several weeks more before he attempted to start running. He had almost four more weeks at home before returning to work. And whilst he was going to miss work, to some extent, he was looking forward to the time he would spend with Cleo and Noah — and to getting stuck into stripping paint and paper and redecorating.

After the plane touched down he switched on his phone, then waited for a signal. As soon as he had one he texted Cleo to say he had landed. Feeling guilty that for the first time in their relationship, he had lied to her, telling her he had to make this one brief trip because of a witness’s vital testimony on a cold case he had been working on.

Immersed in his thoughts in the back of the taxi, he barely noticed the journey into the city. The cab driver, who spoke little English, had given him a dubious look when he had shown him the address. Forty minutes later, at midday, German time, the taxi turned into a seedy, rundown-looking Frankfurt street, with graffiti on the walls, and he could now understand the driver’s strange expression.

He saw the street name, Elbestrasse. Amid the strip clubs and sex shops, they passed several construction sites. To his left he saw a row of breeze blocks on the pavement behind a steel cage, and a blue tube running from the top of the building, down past the scaffolding and into a skip. Next to it was a garish-looking club, with the billboard announcing, CABARET. PIK-DAME. On his right they passed the shabby exterior of Hotel Elbe, then Eva’s Bistro and Hotel Garni. Then the taxi pulled over to the right and stopped beside several small, beat-up cars partially parked on the pavement, pointed at a drab, four-storey building, outside which several down-and-outs were gathered, some sitting, some standing, and said something to him in German that he did not understand. But he got the message.

They were here.

He paid the driver, went up the steps, lugging his overnight bag, and rang the bell. Moments later he heard a sharp buzz, pushed open the heavy glass door and entered a small, tiled reception area. A young woman sat behind a high counter at the rear, smiling pleasantly.

‘Do you speak English?’ he asked.

‘Ja, a little.’

‘My name is Roy Grace — I’ve come to see Wolfgang Barth — he is expecting me.’

She directed him up the steps past her and along a short corridor towards a door. ‘You will find him on the second floor.’

There was a plate-glass window to his left. Through it he could see down into an adjoining room. The drugs consumption room. There were functional plastic chairs against a narrow metal table that ran around three sides of the room. Three of the chairs were occupied, two by young men, one in a baseball cap, and the other by a wizened, bearded man, with long straggly hair, in his late fifties, Grace estimated. All of them were hunched over their part of the table, studiously preparing their drugs. The room was presided over by a young woman, who had a row of metal spoons and hypodermic syringes on paper towels laid out in front of her.

He stopped and stared, driven by curiosity, then moved on through the door. Is this where Sandy had been? Taking drugs?

He climbed the stairs and as he reached the second floor a door opened and a friendly looking man, in his mid-forties, emerged. He was dressed in a blue checked shirt and jeans, and his shoulder-length brown hair and craggy good looks gave him the appearance of a rock musician.

‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace?’ he asked in perfect English, with a cultured German accent. ‘I am Wolfgang Barth.’

They shook hands and Grace followed him into a bright, airy, cream-painted office, furnished with two desks, an aerial map of the city and several posters on the walls, one prominently worded, CANNABIS.

They sat down at a small conference table and Barth got him a coffee. There was a bowl of assorted chocolate biscuits on the table, which the German pushed towards him. ‘Help yourself if you are hungry.’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘So,’ Barth said, sitting opposite him, ‘you are a detective with Sussex Police. Do you know Graham Barrington?’

‘Indeed, very well. He was a Chief Superintendent who recently retired.’

Barth frowned. ‘Retired? Such a young man?’

Grace smiled. ‘That’s the system we have. Most officers retire after thirty years.’

‘He was here two years ago, looking at our work — he was keen to introduce what we are doing here into your city of Brighton.’

‘He was very forward-thinking. Unfortunately I don’t think my country’s politicians are as enlightened as yours in dealing with drug problems.’

Barth shrugged. ‘In 1992 we had one hundred and forty-seven drug deaths in this city. Now, since we introduced the consumption rooms, like this one, we have thirty. And the number is still reducing.’ He shrugged again. ‘So tell me, how can I be of help to you?’

Roy Grace unzipped his bag, and pulled out a stiff brown envelope. From it he removed a photograph of Sandy, taken just before she vanished, and handed it to him. ‘Do you recognize this woman?’

The German studied it intently.

‘About a month ago,’ Grace said, ‘Munich police circulated a photograph of a woman who was involved in an accident, whose identity was uncertain. They discovered she appeared to have three different names — aliases. One of them was Alessandra Lohmann. You responded that you recognized her, and that she had been a regular at this consumption room a couple of years back, using the first name, Sandy. ’

Wolfgang Barth put the photograph down and nodded, thoughtfully. Then he went over to a tall metal rack of box files, peered at the covers, pulled one out and opened it up.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sandy Lohmann. She was a recovering drug user who wanted to help by providing counselling services to others. She worked here for free every day from March 2009 until December 2011. But then she stopped coming.’

He replaced the file and sat back down again. Grace leaned forward and pointed at the photograph. ‘Is that her? Do you recognize her?’

Barth stared at it again for some moments, then looked at Grace and shrugged. ‘You know, this is very difficult. So many faces here. I remember Sandy a little, but she had red hair and wore a lot of, how you call it, make-up. It’s possible. She was very thin.’ He ran his fingers down his face as if to illustrate. ‘Gaunt, you know?’

Grace sat silently for some moments. Then he pulled out the photograph he had been sent by Marcel Kullen, of the woman in the Intensive Care Unit. ‘How about this one?’

Barth studied it. ‘This is the same woman?’

‘Perhaps. This was taken a month ago.’

Barth stared down at it for a long while, before looking up. ‘You know, it is possible. But I cannot say yes for sure. She is a person of interest to you?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘She’s a person of interest to me.’

Saturday 3 January

At 5 p.m. that afternoon, Roy Grace sat in the passenger seat of Marcel Kullen’s immaculate fifteen-year-old BMW, heading from the airport into Munich. Ahead of them, out of the falling darkness, blue road signs with white writing loomed up then shot past them. SALZBURG. MÜNCHEN. NÜRNBERG. ECHING.