Some of her old confidence was beginning to return and she had finally taken the advice of her sister, who had joined an online dating agency after being widowed, and pressed her to do the same. And her sister had been right, these past months of flirting online with a number of men had done wonders for her self-esteem. But after enduring years of Jorg’s behaviour, it was still taking the former PR executive time to trust any man. And she had good reason, just recently, to be suspicious about this one. Although Dieter Haas was the only one of her current suitors that she actually really fancied.
Until she’d discovered that he wasn’t real.
Propped up on her desk in front of her was a row of photographs of a fair-haired hunk. In one he was modelling a Prada suit on a catwalk. In another, all rippling muscles, he was wearing the briefest of swimming trunks on the quay of a Mediterranean harbour, against a background of yachts. In a third, he was in a cool black jacket and Ray-Bans, leaning on a bar, being admired by a very beautiful girl.
And in a fourth, he was posed in a pornographic shot, stark naked.
None of these images quite gelled with the advert he had placed on the German dating agency site, ZweitesMal.de.
Thirty-five-year-old divorcee, Air Traffic Controller, seeks friendship with a feisty fair-haired lady for fun, frolics, and who knows what beyond?
She took another sip of prosecco for Dutch courage and texted back:
You’ll have to wait to get here to see what I’m wearing;-)
Moments later he replied:
Meine liebe Lena, I cannot wait!
She looked again at the photographs of Mr Too-Good-To-Be-True. Thinking how much she had been enjoying their email correspondence, but at the same time getting increasingly concerned that some of the things he had said to her and his excuses for not meeting just did not correlate. And then came the bombshell of asking her for a loan of 25,000 euros for his sick mother’s hospital bills.
That had made her suspicious enough to begin extensive research on the internet. With her background in IT and with the help of a former work colleague who was a borderline hacker, she now believed she’d uncovered his true identity.
She hadn’t yet updated her sister about what she had found out earlier today, and before she went to the police she needed to have some evidence. Which was why she’d invited him here tonight, under the pretext of handing over the money he’d asked for. She’d set up a hidden camera and recording device.
But would he take the bait?
3
Monday 24 September
So far, a no-show.
His intelligence was wrong. Crap. And he was feeling crap, again. His head was swimming from the symptoms that kept recurring, randomly, and mostly when they were least welcome. Behind the tinted glass of his grey Passat parked on Munich’s residential Müllerstrasse, Andreas Vogel continued his vigil, drinking a tepid can of Coke and frequently lighting another cigarette, which, each time, made him feel even worse. A steady drizzle was falling, coating his windows, helping make him even more invisible, but not helping his view of the entrance to the small apartment building a short distance ahead, on the other side of the street. A typically Bavarian building, painted yellow with red roof tiles and dinky balconies.
Lena Welch, the woman he had been sent here to watch, had arrived home over four hours ago. Definitely her. In her forties, with blonde hair, a smart raincoat and high boots; from the photograph on his phone there was no mistaking her. She’d opened the gate in the spiked railings, let herself in the front door of the building and had not come out again, that he was certain of. The rear entrance was only a fire escape that would trigger an alarm. He might not be feeling up to the job at this moment, but he was professional enough not to have let her slip out unnoticed. Vogel could see lights on in the sixth-floor apartment that, from the plan he had been given, he was pretty certain was hers.
Suddenly, he stiffened. Headlights in his rear-view mirror. A car was crawling along the street as if looking for an address. A dark-coloured sedan. An Audi. It passed by and in the glow of a street light he saw the silhouettes of two men inside. African-looking.
Them?
An instant later his view was blocked by a large motorhome that pulled up alongside him.
‘Get out of my way!’
The passenger door of the camper opened and a dumpy woman climbed down, then stood in the road talking loudly to the driver. Another car pulled up behind and, after some moments, gave a blast of its horn.
The woman carried on talking, in German, to the driver. ‘Get out of my way!’ Vogel repeated, frustrated.
The horn from the car behind blasted again.
4
Monday 24 September
Johnny Fordwater sat in silence in the back of the car during the short drive from Gatwick’s North Terminal to the airport police station, anger rising inside him. He stared at his phone, willing a text to appear from Ingrid. The police had no idea. Of course she existed! He and Ingrid were crazily in love with each other. About to start a new life together. She had been selling up everything in Germany, preparing for her move to be with him in England. He’d had his flat redecorated, with new carpets in some rooms, and he’d worked hard making it feel homely.
The male officer in front of him put his window down as they reached a barrier and held a card against the reader. The barrier rose and they entered a wire-mesh compound containing several police vehicles. They pulled into a bay and the female officer opened the door to let him out.
They walked through the September warmth, the male officer having a quick vape on the way, and entered a nondescript two-storey building that smelled of old linoleum. They went up a flight of stairs, along a drab corridor past several notices stuck to the wall and into a small, functional, windowless room with two chairs on either side of a metal table. A CCTV camera, mounted high on one wall, was aimed down at them.
‘Would you like something to drink, Mr Fordwater?’ Velvet Wilde asked. ‘Tea or coffee?’
He felt sick with worry. Numb. He didn’t know what he wanted. ‘Just some water, please.’
As the two police officers left the room, he checked his phone again. Then again. There was clearly a terrible mistake here. Had Ingrid missed the flight? There could have been any number of reasons. Most likely the road to the airport closed because of an accident, or something of that nature. He texted her again. Perhaps the police were mistaken and she was still in the baggage area, waiting for her luggage? Or filling in a lost-baggage claim?
No reply.
He dialled her number.
All he got was a message in German which he did not understand. But it sounded like there was some kind of a problem with the number.
Was the network down? Had she lost her phone? Had the battery died?
The woman officer, DC Wilde — he remembered her name — came back in, followed by her colleague. She placed a plastic beaker of water on the table in front of him. He thanked her. ‘Mr Fordwater, would you be comfortable if my colleague, DS Potting, and I recorded this conversation?’ she asked.
‘Sure, why not,’ he said, bleakly.
‘We met you at the airport as a result of a phone call from your sister, Angela, and we believe you have been targeted in a fraud case that we are investigating. You may remember my colleague DC Helen Searle coming to see you a couple of months ago. She was concerned that you were a possible victim of an internet scam, but you disagreed,’ she said. ‘We believe the situation now has changed and want to ask you a number of questions. It will be easier to have those on record, so thank you for agreeing to us recording it.’