Dead Man's Grip

large, headless, dark pink fish, hanging in rows, suspended by sturdy hooks to a ceiling rack. There were four rows of them, with narrow aisles between them, hardly wide enough for a person to walk through.
    Almost instantly his eyes were drawn to the front of the third row. He saw what at first looked like a huge, plump animal, its flesh all blackened, hanging among the fish. A pig, he thought, fleetingly.
    Then, as his brain began to make sense of the image, he realized what it actually was.

66
    She loved her view of the Isar, the pretty river that bisected Munich, running almost entirely through parkland. She liked to sit up here at the window, in her fourth-floor apartment above the busy main road of Widenmayerstrasse, and watch people walking their dogs, or jogging, or pushing infants in their strollers along the banks. But most of all she liked to look at the water.
    It was for the same reason she liked to go to the Englischer Garten and sit near the lake. Being close to water was like a drug to her. She missed the sea so much. That was what she missed most of all about Brighton. She loved everything else about this city but some days she pined for the sea. And there were other days when she pined for something else, too – the solitude she used to have. Sure, she had resented it at times, that enforced solitude, when work would summon her husband and their plans would be cancelled at the drop of a hat, and she’d find herself alone for an entire weekend, and the following weekends too.
    The Italian author Gian Vincenzo Gravina wrote that a bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
    This was how it was starting to feel now in her new life. He was so damned demanding. Her new life totally revolved around him. She checked her watch. He would be back soon. This was what it was like now. Every hour of her new life accounted for.
    On the screen of her computer on her desk was the online edition of the Sussex newspaper the Argus . Since seeing the announcement in the local Munich paper that Roy Grace had placed, about having her declared legally dead, she now scanned the pages of the Argus daily.
    If he wanted to have her declared dead, after all this time, there had to be a reason. And there was only one reason that she could think of.
    She took a deep breath, then she reminded herself of the mantra to control her anger. Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It is about learning to dance in the rain.
    She said it aloud. Then again. And again.
    Finally she felt calm enough to turn to the Forthcoming Marriages section of the newspaper. She scanned the column. His name was not there.
    She logged off with the same feeling of relief she had every day.

67
    Over the years Roy Grace had seen a lot of horrific sights. Mostly, as he had grown more experienced, he was able to leave them behind, but every now and then, like most police officers, he would come across something that he took home with him. When that happened he would lie in bed, unable to sleep, unpacking it over and over again in his mind. Or wake up screaming from the nightmare it was giving him.
    One of his worst experiences was as a young uniformed officer, when a five-year-old boy had been crushed under the wheels of a skip lorry. He’d been first on the scene. The boy’s head had been distorted and, with his spiky blonde hair, the poor little mite reminded Grace absurdly and horrifically of Bart Simpson. He’d had a nightmare about the boy two or three times a month for several years. Even today he had difficulty watching Bart Simpson on television because of the memory the character triggered.
    He was going to take this one in front of him home too, he knew. It was horrific, but he couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t stop thinking about the suffering during this man’s last moments. He hoped they were quick, but he had a feeling they probably weren’t.
    The man was short and stocky, with a buzz cut and a triple chin, and tattoos on the backs of his hands. He was naked, with his clothes on the ground, as if he had taken them off to have a bath or a swim. His blue overalls, socks and a green polo shirt that was printed with the words ABERDEEN OCEAN FISHERIES sat, neatly folded, next to his heavy-duty boots. Patches of his skin were smoke-blackened and there were some tiny crystals of frost on his head and around his face and hands. He was hung from one of the heavy-duty hooks, the sharp point of