Dead Man's Time

more about the father of your son,’ Dr Eberstark said. ‘You told me you were having an affair with one
of your husband’s work colleagues. Do you believe this man is the father?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Sandy said.
    ‘And how do you feel about that? About not knowing?’
    She was silent for some moments, then she shrugged. ‘It’s difficult. I’m not sure if I would prefer to know that Roy is Bruno’s father, or that he isn’t.’
    ‘And if he is, do you not think he has a right to know?’
    ‘I thought I was paying you to help me, not to interrogate me.’
    The psychiatrist smiled. ‘You keep so much inside you, Sandy. Do you not know that expression,
The truth will set you free
?’
    ‘So how do you suppose I will find the truth? I can hardly ask Roy, or the man I had the affair with, to send me samples for DNA testing.’
    ‘In my experience, most women know,’ he said. ‘You are a very instinctive person. What do your instincts tell you?’
    ‘Can we change the subject?’
    ‘Why does it make you so uncomfortable to talk about it?’
    ‘Because . . .’ She shrugged again, and lapsed into silence.
    After several minutes, Dr Eberstark asked, ‘Did you think any more about the house in Brighton that you are planning to buy?’
    ‘It’s in
Hove
, actually.’
    ‘Hove?’
    ‘I guess the equivalent here would be Schwabing.’
    ‘A smart area?’
    ‘There used to be a big snobbery between Brighton and Hove residents. Brighton was brash and racy; Hove was more sedate and genteel.’
    ‘Ah.’
    There was another long silence.
    Dr Eberstark, after checking his watch and seeing they only had a few minutes left, prompted her. ‘So, the house in
Hove
, did you make any decision?’
    She said nothing, and stared at him with an expression he could not read.
    *
    As Sandy left the front door of Dr Eberstark’s building, and stepped onto the pavement of Widenmayerstrasse, she stopped, staring at the wide, grass bank of the Isar river
across the busy street, collecting her thoughts. She had lied to the psychiatrist. She did know who the real father was.
    As the traffic roared past in front of her, she wondered whether it was time, finally, to tell Roy about her son.
Their
son. She knew now, for sure, that he was the father. On her visit
to the house, two months ago, when she had been taken round by the estate agent, she had sneaked an old toothbrush and a hairbrush from his bathroom into her handbag. From the DNA provided by them,
a firm in Berlin had confirmed the paternity of her son, Bruno Roy Lohmann, beyond doubt. It had not been Cassian Pewe’s child. She’d had a fling with him, over several months, after
meeting him when Roy had attended a crime course he was running, but it had fizzled out.
    She was agonizing, too, over the house. She could afford to buy it, but was going back like that the right thing?
    Then, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, she smiled, and thought to herself,
I know where I am going now and what I want to do.
    With a spring in her step she took two paces forward and hailed a cab.

105
    The same man-mountain was still on night duty in the lobby, beside the bank of elevators in the Marriott Essex House Hotel, when the three British detectives arrived, shortly
after 6.15 a.m. To Roy Grace’s relief, the two police officers who had been fast asleep when he had been here earlier were now wide awake and nervously eager to give him information. Not that
they had anything of significance to report. Last night, at 7.30 p.m., Eamonn Pollock had had a meal delivered to his room. According to the room service waiter, he also had a male visitor.
Sometime later, Pollock had pushed his tray out into the corridor. He’d been silent since then, and they presumed he was now still asleep.
    Grace asked if he could speak to the waiter about Pollock’s visitor. The man-mountain made a call on his radio, and reported back that the waiter had gone off duty and would not be here
again until midday.
    Leaving the hotel security guard in situ, Grace took his colleagues and the American police officers down to the two basement exits, leaving Batchelor covering one and Jack Alexander the other.
He sent one officer up to stand outside Pollock’s door and the other to remain down here. Grace went into the front lobby and up to the reception desk, keeping an eye on the main entrance,
and asked to speak to the duty manager.
    He was finding it really hard to focus on anything