Peter James: Dead at First Sight

He stared around, surveying the flat. ‘Where’s the money?’

‘There is none,’ she said defiantly. ‘You told me your name is Dieter Haas and that you’re an air traffic controller, but I know who you really are. Your name is Tunde Oganjimi, right?’

He froze. She saw sudden rage in his face.

‘The police would very much like to know where you are, Mr Oganjimi. I have a friend in the Munich police.’

‘That’s too bad,’ he replied.

The goddam camper van finally moved off. The Audi had pulled over just past Lena Welch’s front door. Had he missed anything? Andreas Vogel, sweating profusely and feeling nauseous, opened the Passat’s door and stumbled out. A passing taxi missed him by inches.

Trying to pull himself together, he straightened up, unsteadily, supporting himself against the side of the car. Just in time to see a dark shape high above him, falling.

Plummeting from the balcony of the sixth-floor apartment. Her apartment.

There was a dull thud like a fallen sack of potatoes. Momentarily detached, as if observing a scene in a movie, he saw the motionless body of a woman impaled on railings directly beneath Lena Welch’s balcony. Before he could even gather the energy to run over to her, he saw the driver’s door of the Audi open, a wiry black man jump out holding what looked like a large blade, glinting in the street lighting, run over to her, grab her face, slice with his blade and sprint back to the car, clutching something in his hand. As he reached the vehicle, the front door of the apartment building opened and another man, much more powerfully built and wearing red shoes, raced out and across to the car with something bulky under his jacket.

Within seconds the Audi was pulling away.

Vogel hesitated. Then he got back into the Passat and drove after them. They drove straight through a red light and he was forced to jam on his brakes as a stream of traffic passed across in front of him. It was a full two minutes before the lights changed and he could accelerate. He drove recklessly fast for some distance, but there was no sign of the Audi. For ten minutes he drove around, searching up and down side streets, feeling no better.

He gave up and headed back to his apartment, cursing. And wondering just what the accomplice with the large blade had done.

He’d find out soon enough, he figured. Shit.

He’d failed. He swore loudly, shouting at the windscreen. He didn’t do failure.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace was reflecting on the words in one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

Not entirely true, he thought, although just now, when he’d taken a rare two weeks’ break, he’d still had to come into the office on several of those days. This was his first official day back and he was getting up to speed with current investigations.

During his time off he’d arranged a barbecue for friends and some members of his team, as well as a number of his senior colleagues in the force, though with one notable omission. He was particularly pleased that his eldest son, Bruno, who had been showing some signs of behavioural difficulty, seemed to interact with the adults. He also noted, with some amusement, how well his young DS Jack Alexander seemed to be getting on with his and Cleo’s nanny, Kaitlynn. The barbecue had also been an opportunity to introduce his team to its newest member, Vivienne, the wife of the American detective Arnie Crown, who had been seconded to Roy from the FBI. She had recently taken up a post as an analyst.

Back in the early days, as a detective constable at Brighton’s busy John Street police station, where he had handled everything from burglaries to drug dealers, vehicle thefts, street crimes and violent assaults, Roy had loved the constant adrenaline rush of his job and the building itself. When he’d been transferred to Major Crime, housed on the Hollingbury industrial estate on the outskirts of the city, he’d loved that job even more — and still did, most days — but he’d loathed the building, like just about everyone else who worked there. Among its numerous faults, of which lack of parking was just one, the heating only seemed to work in summer and the air con only in winter and there was no canteen. But after nine months in his cramped, horrid little office in the former student accommodation buildings at the Police Headquarters in Lewes, he would have given anything to be back in his spacious one in Hollingbury.

And to have had his old boss, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Rigg, back in place of his current one, ACC Cassian Pewe.

And to not feel, as he and all other officers did these days, that they were all the time walking on eggshells. Scared of putting a single politically incorrect foot wrong. Somewhere along the line, during the past decade, something called common sense had gone AWOL. Along with the world’s sense of humour.

At least the past few months had been a rare quiet period for the Head of Major Crime, with just a handful of murders in Sussex. Two of them had been domestics — fights or killings within a relationship — and the other three drugs-related. Each had been cleared up within days by other detectives in the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.

This had given him badly needed time to spend evenings and weekends with his family. Until recently the family unit had been his wife Cleo, toddler Noah and their rescue dog, Humphrey. Earlier this year they had been joined by the ten-year-old son he never knew he had, Bruno, who had been born and brought up in Germany. Bruno’s mother was Roy’s missing, now deceased estranged first wife, Sandy. Over the last few evenings Roy had also had the opportunity to prepare for the forthcoming trials of murder suspects his team had arrested, and at most of which he would be required to give evidence.

Roy Grace knew a lot of officers did not enjoy being in court, but he genuinely did. At least, when the trial was going his way. What the public didn’t realize was that the process of an investigation, and the ultimate successful outcome of the arrest of the prime suspect, was only the beginning. The many months that followed, of laboriously piecing together the evidence to make it watertight for presentation in court, was so often an even harder task than solving the crime itself. The tiniest slip in the chain of evidence would be pounced on by a smart defence brief, enabling an offender the police knew was guilty as hell to walk free. Free to perpetrate all over again. Few things were more demoralizing to his team than that.

Together with his colleague and mate DI Glenn Branson he was currently poring over the vast amount of trial documents relating to a Brighton family doctor who had turned out to be a serial killer. The man deserved to spend the rest of his life behind bars, and Grace was determined that was going to happen.

In addition to this case, he was working closely with a civilian financial investigator, Emily Denyer, on preparations for another trial, the so-called ‘Black Widow’ who he was certain had murdered at least two husbands, and possibly more.

As his job phone rang, the display showing Caller ID Withheld , he had no idea that, when he picked up, his period of respite would be under threat.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered. Then immediately recognized the voice at the other end, of his friend and German equivalent Detective Marcel Kullen from the Munich Landeskriminalamt or LKA.

‘Hey, Marcel, how are you doing?’

They exchanged jibes and pleasantries, briefly catching up on each other’s lives since they’d last seen each other, earlier this year in Munich. Then Kullen became serious.