Peter James - You Are Dead

His old friend had refused to countenance the idea of his spending a night in a hotel, and insisted he stayed with him and his family, which the German detective assured him would give them a good opportunity to sample some fine local beers, some even finer German wines and some even finer still German schnapps.

At 9 a.m. the following morning, with one of the worst hangovers Grace could remember, in a long history of bad hangovers, compounded by his guilt at having lied to Cleo, Kullen drove down a wide, quiet street, through falling sleet, in the smart Schwabing district of Munich. Small, grubby patches of snow here and there lay on the pavement. They turned onto a circular driveway, passing a row of parked bicycles, and pulled up in front of an enormous, handsome beige building, with gabled windows in the roof and a sign over the arched entrance porch that said, KLINIKUM SCHWABING. It looked, to him, as if it might once have been a monastery.

‘Would you like me to come in, or wait for you?’ Kullen asked.

Grace’s mouth was parched, his head was pounding, and the last two paracetamol he had swallowed, an hour ago, had failed to kick in. He felt badly in need of a large glass of water and a multiple espresso. Why the hell had he drunk so much last night?

He knew the answer.

Staring at the facade of the building was scaring the hell out of him.

What?

What if?

What if it was really her, here? How would he feel? How would he react? What on earth would he say?

Part of him was tempted to turn to Marcel Kullen and tell him to drive on, back to the airport, to forget it. But he had come too far now, he knew. He was past the point of no return.

‘Whatever you’d prefer, Marcel.’

‘I stay. I think this is a journey you are needing to make alone.’

Fighting his reluctance, feeling like he had a dagger sticking into his head, Grace opened the door, and stepped out, limping, into the bitterly cold air. As he did so he heard the thwock-thwock-thwock of an approaching helicopter, and looked up. The machine was coming down out of the sky straight towards the building. Moments later it disappeared over the rooftop, and he could hear it descending.

He entered a large foyer, and saw a sign, INFORMATION, above two smartly dressed women at a modern reception desk, backlit in orange. He gave his name, and was directed to a row of chairs to wait. He looked around, in vain, for a water dispenser or a hot drinks machine, then sat down, his nerves shot to hell and back.

After a few minutes, a plump, middle-aged woman with shoulder-length fair hair and glasses, dressed in a black trouser suit and trainers, greeted him very formally. She gave him her name but he didn’t catch it.

‘Please come with me.’

He followed her down a long corridor, passing beneath an illuminated gantry of signs and direction arrows, then on past a glassed-in café, and stopped at an elevator.

‘I understand this lady — she might be your missing wife?’

His stomach was so tied up in knots he found it hard to speak. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe. She has not spoken?’

‘Sometimes she has mumbled, but that is all. Mostly she is silent. In her own world. Like she is locked in.’

They rode up a couple of floors, in silence, then emerged in front of a glass door, with the sign on it reading, ANÄSTHESIOLOGISCHE INTENSIVSTATION 16G.

They went through into an orange-painted corridor, with a row of hard chairs on either side, a snacks vending machine, and several picture frames on the wall with portraits of staff doctors and nurses.

A man hurried past them in blue scrubs, with yellow Crocs on his feet, and went into an alcove where Grace saw there was a drinks vending machine.

The woman suggested he sat while she checked it would be all right for him to go in now. As she went through some double doors he walked over to the alcove, poured himself a cup of water, and managed to get himself a black coffee. Then he sat down to wait, wondering whether he should ask Marcel to take him to meet the boy, but decided to delay for now.

He was too nervous to sit, and stood up again, pacing up and down. Wondering. Wondering. Wondering. He was shaking. Had he made a terrible mistake coming here? Was his whole life about to unravel?

Five minutes later the woman returned and said, ‘All is fine, it is fine for you to see her now. It is good with comatose patients to touch them. Talk to them. They can recognize smell — perhaps she will recognize your smells, if it is your wife. Also if you have any of her favourite music on your phone, it would be good to play it.’

He followed her in through the doors to the Intensive Care Unit. They passed rows of beds, each with an intubated patient connected to a bank of monitors, and screened off on either side by pale green curtains. A number was fixed to the walls above their heads. They turned a corner and he was ushered into a small room, marked ‘7’, its door already open.

Inside lay a woman with short brown hair, in a blue and white spotted gown, amid a forest of drip lines, surrounded by more banks of monitors, in a bed with its sides up like the bars of a cage.

The woman who had led him there discreetly disappeared, and he was all alone.

He stepped forward, slowly, until he was beside the bed, looking straight down at her face. It was still swollen, and covered in scabs and scars, and partially masked with bandages. One drip line fed into a cannula on her right wrist and another, held in place by a plaster, at the base of her throat. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing rhythmically.

He felt a lump in his throat.

Could this be her?

God.

Was this the woman he had once loved so much?

The truth was he did not know. He really did not. A plaster lay across the bridge of her nose, masking most of it. It was Sandy’s mouth.

‘Sandy?’ he whispered, tentatively. ‘Sandy? It’s me, Roy.’

There was no reaction.

He held her puffy, bandaged free hand, squeezing it very gently. ‘Sandy? My darling? Is this you?’

From what he could remember, her hand felt similar to the way it always had — small, a perfect fit into his. His heart was heaving. One instant he was sure it was her, and the next, he was convinced he was looking at a stranger.

‘Sandy?’

She continued her steady breathing.

What the hell was he going to do if she opened her eyes and stared at him in recognition? How could he deal with it? He had been massively devious coming here. How could he begin to explain it to Cleo?

He stared down at her again. Was this the woman he had once loved? Could he ever love her again, if it was her? He felt nothing. Empty of emotion.

She had a son. Was it possible it could be his son? How could he deal with that? This wasn’t his life any more. He was looking at a stranger. Even if it was — her.

He felt numb.

Suddenly, he made his decision. He turned and walked back out of the room. The woman who had brought him in was standing just outside, talking to a nurse in a blue tunic and Crocs. She stepped towards him, quizzically.

‘Is she your wife?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

Sunday 4 January

Three hours later, Roy Grace settled into his seat on the British Airways plane that would take him back to London. His mind was in overdrive. Why the hell had he come here, what had he hoped to achieve? Why hadn’t he had the courage to tell Cleo?

If the purpose of this trip had been to lay a ghost to rest, precisely the opposite had happened. He had re-opened the nightmare of the past.

Apart from his injury, which was now healing well, the last year had ended on a high. He had been lauded by his chiefs for saving Logan Somerville, and despite the tragedy of the lost lives, Operation Haywain had succeeded in halting the reign of terror of the Brighton Brander. He’d had several other successes this past year, too, and even with the arrival of Cassian Pewe he had been feeling more positive about the future. During this past year, he felt, more than ever, he had really proved his abilities as a homicide detective.