Dead at First Sight Read online

  She gave him a look of reassurance. Johnny didn’t touch his water.

  Potting began, ‘Mr Fordwater, can I ask how you first met Ingrid Ostermann?’

  He blushed. ‘Online, on a German dating site.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Almost a year ago.’

  ‘Does October 22nd sound right?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t remember. Perhaps, yes.’

  ‘And you placed this advertisement? “Widower, mid-fifties, former army officer, fourteen handicap golfer, keen hiker, likes fine wine and good food, can do Times crossword in ten mins, seeks like-minded lady for companionship and perhaps romance.”’

  Johnny shrugged. ‘I did. You see, I’ve been on my own for the last four years since my beloved Elaine died. Years back I served in the army for a time in Germany and – frankly – I really liked German women, although I was married at the time and never strayed. But there is something about them that always appealed to me – so many of them seemed strong and confident and full of life.’

  ‘When did this lady begin asking you for money, Mr Fordwater?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘It might be relevant, sir.’

  Johnny shrugged. ‘About a month after we first made contact. She was going to come over for a weekend, but someone rear-ended her car on the way to the airport. She told me her ex-husband had cleaned out her bank account. So I sent her 3,000 euros to get her car fixed – oh, and another 2,000 for her medical bill, for her whiplash investigation – MRI scan and stuff. Apparently, her husband hadn’t told her he’d not been paying her medical insurance.’

  ‘That was all you sent her?’ Potting asked.

  ‘Initially, yes – as a loan. About three weeks later she paid it all back – and sweetly added two hundred euros, saying that was interest!’

  ‘She paid it back?’ Potting queried, surprised.

  ‘She did, yes.’

  ‘Did you send any more money after that?’ Wilde asked.

  Johnny hesitated. ‘She told me she wanted to come over to see me, but her two sons were going to be removed from private boarding school because, same problem, her ex hadn’t paid the fees. I sent her 30,000 euros to cover their schooling for the next term – as a loan, as was the car-repair money. She said she would pay me back as soon as her divorce was settled, and they’d sold the marital home – she’s entitled to a fair chunk of it, under German law.’

  ‘Did you make any further payments to this lady, Mr Fordwater?’ Wilde pressed.

  Beginning to feel irritated by them, he replied, ‘Look, frankly, this is very embarrassing, I don’t really want to talk about it any more. Can you take me back to the airport to get my car, please.’

  From her recent work with the Financial Crimes Unit, Velvet Wilde knew there were a number of phases that a victim of fraud went through. They would begin with denial, followed by doubt, then partial acceptance. Then would come realization, next anger and finally accusation, blaming anyone. Mr Fordwater was following just this deeply tragic pattern now.

  ‘We’ll drive you back,’ Norman Potting said. ‘But can you tell us if you made any more payments to Ingrid Ostermann, Mr Fordwater?’

  ‘It’s Major actually,’ he said testily. ‘But why do you need to know?’

  ‘As I’ve said before, it may be relevant, sir – Major.’

  ‘Well, OK, yes, a couple.’

  ‘And these were?’

  Johnny was silent for some moments, then he said, ‘Well, quite substantial, actually.’ He lapsed into silence again, studying his blank phone. ‘You see, she needs money for a top brief to fight her manipulative ex-husband. That doesn’t come cheap. I loaned her 60,000 euros for her legal battle. On top of that, the poor lady’s mother has advanced Alzheimer’s. In Germany, apparently, they don’t have the National Health care facilities we have here in this country. Her mother was living at home with her, you see. The only way she could be free to come over to be with me was to put her mother in a home, so I helped her out with that.’

  ‘Very generous of you,’ Norman Potting said. ‘To what extent?’

  ‘I paid for a year’s care for her mother – 120,000 euros.’

  Johnny ignored the gasp from the female police officer.

  ‘So if I total that up, sir, by my reckoning that comes to a grand total of over 200,000 euros – is that correct?’ Norman Potting asked.

  ‘More or less. There are a few further bits and pieces,’ he said, blushing. ‘It’s all just a loan, she’s going to pay it all back, as she did before. But what does this have to do with anything?’

  ‘Quite a lot, sir. May I ask a personal question? Are you a wealthy man, Major Fordwater?’

  ‘Wealthy? No, I was a career soldier. When I left the army, I worked in the charity sector, until my wife became sick – motor neurone disease. I had to quit my job to care for her full-time. I needed round-the-clock nursing care for her during the final two years, which financially drained me – that and private medical care. We didn’t have insurance, you see.’

  ‘But you were able to pay this lady, Ingrid Ostermann, over 200,000 euros?’

  ‘Actually, I – took out bank loans, and did one of these equity-release plans on my flat. I’m pretty much hocked to the hilt. Sold a rare Bentley I inherited from my father. But it’s fine, because Ingrid’s going to pay it all back from her share of her house in Munich.’ He shrugged. ‘You know? If you love someone, you help them, right?’

  The two detectives were giving him a strange look.

  ‘I love her. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. The money is irrelevant. She’s going to pay it all back and we can live on the income from her divorce settlement.’

  ‘We told you earlier, sir, that this lady does not exist, but you don’t believe us, do you?’

  ‘No, you’ve got this all wrong – I think you must have crossed wires somewhere along the line.’

  Norman Potting slid a photograph across the table to him. ‘Is this the lady you believe is Ingrid Ostermann?’

  Johnny studied it for a fleeting second and his face lit up. ‘Yes! But hold on, old chap, I don’t believe it – I know it!’

  ‘You are absolutely sure?’

  ‘No question, that is her, yes. What exactly are you implying?’

  Potting hesitated. When he had been a young cop, working on Traffic, the one job he had hated was delivering what the police called a ‘death message’. Knocking on a door at 2 a.m. to tell them a loved one had died. What he was about to tell Major Johnny Fordwater was going to be just as bad.

  In some ways, maybe, worse.

  5

  Monday 24 September

  Lena texted.

  Hurry up! Your surprise is ready ;-)

  The reply came instantly.

  30 seconds!

  As the text pinged on her phone, the doorbell rang. Nerves began to set in.

  She gulped down the last of the glass of prosecco and pressed the intercom. ‘Ja?’

  ‘It’s Dieter!’

  She buzzed him in.

  A minute later, there was a knock on her apartment door. She strode along the hall and carefully checked the spyhole, but the light was out on the landing and it was too dark to see clearly. She removed the safety chain and opened the door, cautiously.

  Then when she saw the figure, she hesitated.

  Before she could close the door again, a powerful hand clamped over her mouth, stifling the scream. He pushed her backwards, one foot kicking the door shut behind him. He then hooked his foot around her ankle, sending her crashing backwards onto the bare wooden floorboards.

  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 pol
ice 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.

  6

  Monday 24 September

  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.

  7

  Wednesday 26 September

  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.

  ‘Roy, we have a situation I am thinking you might be able to help us with. You are still Head of Major Crime for Sussex Police?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Gut. We have a murder inquiry you may be able to help us with. Does the name Lena Welch mean anything to you – or to anyone in Sussex Police?’

  ‘Lena Welch?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘No. Not immediately, anyway.’ With Kullen spelling the name to him, Roy Grace wrote it down on his pad. Putting the phone momentarily on mute, he turned to Branson. ‘The name Lena Welch mean anything?’

  The DI, wearing a sharp waistcoat with his suit, looked pensive for an instant. ‘Nope. She welched on someone?’

  Grace shook his head. ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Lena Welch?’ Branson thought for a few seconds. ‘Nope.’

  Un-muting the phone, Grace sa
id, ‘Why do you ask, Marcel?’

  ‘She died on Monday night, and is originally from England – from your city. Her birth name is Williamson.’

  ‘Lena Williamson?’ Grace added a note and looked at Branson. Again his colleague shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, Marcel. Tell me?’

  ‘Although Lena’s laptop and phone seem to have been taken, we have found a back-up hard drive. From initial examination, it seems she discovered that her photograph was being used by internet romance fraudsters. One of the identities is an Ingrid Ostermann. It is looking as if this fictitious character was purporting to be in love with a man in Sussex, England, called John – or Johnny – Fordwater. A former army officer, a major. We understand he has transferred considerable amounts of money to a München bank account in the fake name and identity of Ingrid Ostermann – a total in excess of 400,000 euros. And now we have Lena Welch found dead and the money long cleared out of the fictitious Ingrid Ostermann’s account.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Not very pleasantly.’

  ‘Dying isn’t generally a very pleasant experience, Marcel.’

  Kullen laughed. ‘Glad to know you still have your dark humour, my friend. This was definitely not a pleasant death.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘She fell from her sixth-floor apartment and was impaled on railings beneath.’

  ‘Was it suicide?’

  ‘No. She lived on her own after a divorce. But we have very good reason for doubting suicide.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘She had most of her tongue cut off.’

  ‘Her tongue?’

  ‘Ja. A witness reported that moments after she landed on the railings, a man ran from a car over towards her holding what looked like a machete. He hacked at her face and ran back to the car. A few seconds after, another man ran from the apartment building into the same car, an Audi A4, and they drove off at high speed.’