To the casual – and occasionally not-so-casual – observer, some men could instantly be pigeonholed. From their combination of a brutal haircut, muscular physique, badly fitting suit and strutting walk, they were unmistakably either coppers or soldiers in civvies. But, despite his close-cropped hair and his very busted nose, Roy Grace cut a suave figure that gave few clues about his occupation.
Dressed in his Crombie coat, navy suit, white shirt and quiet tie, and carrying his bulging briefcase, he could have been a company executive or an IT man on a business trip, or perhaps a Eurocrat, or a doctor or an engineer, heading to a conference. Anyone glancing at him might also have noticed his authoritative expression, the few small frown lines of worry and the slightly blank gaze, as if he was deep in thought, as he strode along the moving walkway.
Roy felt strangely nervous. The trip was straightforward. His old friend Kriminalhauptkommissar Marcel Kullen was collecting him from the airport, and taking him straight to the offices of the organ broker, whom he would see alone. So long as he was careful and didn’t screw up, it would be fine. One quick, cunning meeting and then back to England.
Yet his stomach was unaccountably full of butterflies. That same nervous excitement he used to feel when going on a date, and he was at a loss to understand why. Perhaps it was his brain reminding him of his expectations last time he had come to Munich. Or was it just tiredness? He had slept badly for several nights running now. He never really got a decent night’s rest during any murder inquiry he was running, and this one, in particular, seemed to have so many moving parts. And, on top of that, he badly wanted to impress the new Chief Constable.
Checking his watch, he quickened his pace, overtaking several people, then found his path blocked by a harassed-looking mother with a pushchair and four small children. The end of this walkway section was coming up, so he waited for a minute or so to reach it, then stepped around the family and hurried on to the next section.
He passed, on a stand to his right, a crimson Audi TT – a later model than Cleo’s – with big signs around it in German. He could not read them, but assumed the car was being advertised as a prize. He could do with winning a car, he thought, to replace his wrecked Alfa. For sure, the insurance company bastards were going to come up with a derisory offer that might just about enable him to replace it with a second-hand moped.
Next, he passed a bar, followed by a Relay news stand and bookstore, then an empty departure gate. Faces on the opposite side of the walkway glided past, all ages, half of them talking on mobile phones.
He glanced at a beautiful young redhead, in a fur-trimmed leather coat, looking like a million dollars, who was heading towards him. Saw her big, classy handbag and wheeled suitcase, and wondered if she was a model, or a supermodel, or whatever they were called these days. He’d always had a thing for redheads, but had never actually dated one.
Strange, he thought. Before his relationship with Cleo had begun, he would have looked longingly at that girl, but now he didn’t lust after anyone, except for Cleo herself. This redhead was one of the few women he had even glanced at twice in recent months. As the walkway continued moving him forward, he again reflected how lucky he was, just how incredibly lucky, to love this amazing woman.
Four Japanese businessmen, talking intently, swept past in the opposite direction. His nerves were jangling even more. Screaming at him. He could almost feel a crackle of static in the air. Had the flight affected him?
Then two camp men in their twenties, wearing almost matching leather jackets, were heading towards him, holding hands. One had a shaven head, the other, blond spikes. He strode on and they shot past. Then the walkway track ahead of him was blocked by a large gaggle of teenagers, all with rucksacks, who were clearly off on some adventure.
Suddenly, gliding towards him, on the parallel walkway some distance ahead of him, her face blocked by an elderly couple who stood as motionless as statues, he saw a flash of light brown hair that reminded him of Sandy.
It was like a punch in the stomach.
He stood transfixed.
Then his phone pinged with an incoming text. He glanced down at the display for a split second.
Hans-Jürgen’s call disconnected abruptly again, as if he had gone into a tunnel. Why did the stupid guy always pick the places with the worst signal reception to call her from? It drove her nuts at times. Except, of course, she knew how to control her anger, so that nothing ever did truly drive her nuts any more – not like the way stuff used to.
Anger management was all part of the mental rebirth process of the International Association of FreeSpirits. The Scientologists operated the ‘Clear’, under their universal banner, THE BRIDGE TO TOTAL FREEDOM. The organization she had deserted them for offered similar mental regeneration, but through a less aggressive – and expensive – process.
Sandy was still a novice, but she was pleased, this morning, as she stepped off the end of the first stretch of the moving walkway and crossed the short distance to the next, passing a shoe-shine and a small bar, that the initial flare of temper she had felt at Hans-Jürgen’s call had been instantly extinguished, like the flame of a match in the wind.
That was one of the things her new masters were teaching her: to be a FreeSpirit was to be a flame in the wind, but not one that was attached to the wick of a candle or the top of a matchstick. Because if you needed a crutch to survive, when that crutch was gone, so were you. Extinguished.
You needed to learn to burn free. That way you could never be extinguished. Every FreeSpirit sought, one day, to become a free-floating flame in the wind.
She stared at the passing humanity on the opposite walkway. People chained to their BlackBerry emails, their iPhone keypads, their departure times, their financial worries, their guilt. Their stuff. They didn’t realize that none of it mattered. They didn’t realize that she was one of the few people on this planet who knew how to set them free.
She singled out one of the faces. A truly sad-looking man, tall and bendy, with a bad comb-over, wearing Porsche sunglasses and one of those Mandarin-collared leather jackets that were covered in motoring badges, and were designed to give off the impression that you were something important in the world of motorsport.
I could free you, she thought.
Beyond him was a group of teenagers, with backpacks, noisily teasing each other. Then her phone rang again.
Fumbling to answer it with her gloves on, she dropped it on the floor and instantly knelt down to retrieve it.
When Roy Grace looked up again from the display of his phone, the woman had gone.
Did I imagine it? he wondered. An instant ago, he was sure he had seen a woman’s hair, the same distinct, fair colour of Sandy’s hair, behind the grim-faced oldies heading rapidly towards him.
He glanced down at the display again and pressed the key to open the text message:
Yo, old-timer. At sea. Haven’t thrown up yet.
How u doing?
He composed a reply, then sent it:
Me neither.
Out of curiosity, he looked behind him. The woman with the same colour hair as Sandy had reappeared, standing behind the elderly couple, receding into the distance.
Again he felt that punch in his stomach. He turned, squeezed past a tall, irritated-looking man in a trench coat, and half walked, half ran a few steps back against the direction of the walkway. Then he wormed his way through a cabin crew group, all in uniform and towing their luggage.
Then he stopped.
Stupid.
Come on, man! Pull yourself together!
A few months ago, he might have continued to run after her, just in case…
But today he turned round and began, instead, threading a path back through the cabin crew, saying some of the few words of German he knew. ‘Entschuldigung. T’schuldigung. Danke!’