‘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 since the last phone call he had received earlier from Glenn Branson, telling him that Amis Smallbone had rented the house next door to Cleo’s. The little scumbag had been the other side of their party wall. With an electronic eavesdropping device. How had he been able to do that? Surely to God his Probation Officer . . .

But it wasn’t the Probation Officer’s fault. All he – or she – had to do was to check the address was suitable, and that their charge could afford it. They weren’t to know it was next door to where he was living.

But . . . shit.

The night manager, who had already been called and briefed by Pat Lanigan, appeared. ‘How can I assist?’

Grace showed him his warrant card and asked if he could view the hotel’s CCTV cover of its entrances from 6 p.m. yesterday. He had already noted the cameras at the front and rear of the hotel, giving both interior and exterior views.

A few minutes later he was seated in a cramped, airless room behind the hotel’s admin office, in front of a bank of monitors, each numbered and showing different views of parts of the hotel and of the street. Next to him sat a surly, hugely fat security guard, with expressionless eyes, who looked – and smelled – as if he had been up all night. The man was jiggling a joystick, moving and zooming remote cameras; he reminded Grace of the time he had been at a homicide conference in Las Vegas and had walked through the casino on his way to breakfast, past rows of fruit machines, with exhausted people sitting at them who looked like they had been working them all through the night.

Grace sped through the footage, occasionally slowing it down to check out a face; but he did not see anyone he recognized. Finally he gave up and, relieved to get out of this rancid room, returned to the lobby, and took a seat that afforded him a clear view of anyone entering or leaving the hotel from this side.

Moments later, Tony Case rang him. He’d managed to book him on a flight out of Newark at 9 p.m., getting in to Heathrow around 9 a.m. the next day; it also gave him the whole day in New York, which he was glad of, despite his concerns to get back home to take care of Cleo and Noah.

The lobby was deserted apart from a woman cleaning, laboriously shifting a yellow slippery floor warning triangle around as she moved. After some minutes, an early-rising businessman strode hurriedly into the lobby, trundling a small overnight bag on wheels behind him, and went up to the reception desk. Grace only watched him to relieve the monotony; he looked nothing like the images he had of Eamonn Pollock from his criminal record. And this man was about twenty years younger.

Ten minutes later a young couple in tracksuits came into the lobby and borrowed the two bicycles by the porter’s desk, wheeling them out into the brightening morning.

By 8.30 a.m. he was starting to get concerned. Pollock had flown here from Europe, just a few days ago. With the five hours’ – six in Spain – time difference, he would almost certainly have woken early, as he had done himself. He had, much earlier, asked the hotel security to alert him to any action from Eamonn Pollock’s room, 1406 – in particular any request for room service or a taxi. The man was going to eat breakfast, or order tea or coffee at the very least, surely?

A few minutes later, Pat Lanigan entered the lobby dressed in a sports jacket and tie, with a warm smile, accompanied by Aaron Cobb, who had the face of a man with a tooth abscess.