Not Dead Enough

brown leather loafers. He clamped Grace’s outstretched hand firmly with both hands, and said, in his guttural accent, ‘Roy, nearly was not recognizing you. You are looking so young!’
    ‘You too!’
    Grace was so touched by the warmth of the greeting, from a man he had never really known that well. In fact he was so overwhelmed by the emotion of the occasion that he found himself, suddenly and very uncharacteristically, close to tears.
    They exchanged pleasantries as they walked through the almost empty building, across the black and white chequerboard tiled floor. Kullen’s English was good, but it was taking Grace time to get used to his accent. They followed a solitary figure pulling an overnight bag on wheels, past the striped awning of a gift shop and back outside into the cloying heat, past a long line of cream taxis, mostly Mercedes. On the short walk to the car park Grace compared the almost suburban calm of this airport to the hurly-burly of Heathrow and Gatwick. It felt like a ghost town.
    The German had just had his third child, a boy, and if there was time today, he very much hoped to bring Grace to his home to meet his family, Kullen informed him with a broad grin. Grace, sitting in the cracked leather passenger seat of the man’s ancient but shiny BMW 5-series, told him he would like that a lot. But secretly he had no desire to do that at all. He had not come here to socialize, he wanted to spend every precious minute finding a trail for Sandy.
    A welcome current of cool air blew on his face from the asthmatic-sounding air conditioning, as they headed away from the airport, driving through the rural landscape he had scanned from the plane. Grace stared out of the windows, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of it all. And he realized he had not properly thought this through. What on earth could he hope to achieve in just one day?
    Road signs flashed past, blue with white lettering. One bore the name of Franz Josef Strauss airport, which they had just left, then on another he read the word München . Kullen continued chatting, mentioning names of the officers he had worked with in Sussex. Almost mechanically, Grace gave him the download on each of them, as best he could, his mind torn between thinking about the murder of Katie Bishop, worrying about his relationship with Cleo and trying to concentrate on the task in front of him today. For some moments his eyes followed a silver and red S-bahn train running parallel with them.
    Suddenly Kullen’s voice became more animated. Grace heard the word football . He saw on his right the massive new white stadium, in the shape of a tyre, the words Allianz Arena in large blue letters affixed to it. Then beyond it, high on what looked like a man-made mound, was a solitary white wind-farm pylon with a propeller attached.
    ‘I show you a little around, give you some feeling for Munich, then we are going to the office and then the Englischer Garten?’ Kullen said.
    ‘Good plan.’
    ‘You have made a list?’
    ‘I have, yes.’
    The Lieutenant had suggested that before he came Grace write down a list of all Sandy’s interests, then they could go to places she might have visited in pursuit of them. Grace stared down at his notepad. It was a long list. Books. Jazz. Simply Red. Rod Stewart. Dancing. Food. Antiques. Gardening. Movies, especially anything with Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen and Pierce—
    Suddenly his phone was ringing. He pulled it from his pocket and stared down at the display, hoping to see one of Cleo’s numbers.
    But the number was withheld.

55
    At ten fifteen on Sunday morning, David Curtis, a young probationary Police Constable on his second day at Brighton, was part-way through his shift. A tall nineteen-year-old with a serious demeanour and dark brown hair that was short and tidy, but with a nod towards fashion, he was in the passenger seat of the Vauxhall police patrol car, which smelled of last night’s French fries, being driven by the John Street police station club’s biggest bar bore.
    Police Sergeant Bill Norris, a crinkly haired, pug-faced man in his early fifties, had been everywhere, seen it all and done it all, but never quite well enough to get raised above the level of sergeant. Now, just a few months short of his retirement, he was enjoying teaching this youngster the ropes. Or more accurately, was enjoying having a captive audience for all the old stories no one else wanted to hear yet