Outside Munich’s police headquarters, Tayte ended his call to Jean with a wide smile on his face. He’d said he was going to get a taxi back to the hotel, but Jean had insisted on picking him up, so he didn’t argue. He checked his watch. It was just after nine in the morning, and although the hotel they were staying at wasn’t far away, he figured it would take her at least twenty minutes to reach him, probably longer if the traffic was bad. He sucked in the cool morning air and gazed up into another clear blue sky, thinking he would call the Kaufmanns as soon as he’d seen Jean. He wanted to confirm whether the man who had been murdered the night before was their insider at the FWK as he’d supposed, and he wanted to know whether they had managed to get him access to the records he wanted to see.
He took a stroll along the pavement outside the building he’d just been released from on Ettstrasse, and he began to wonder again what Jean had discovered about Trudi Strobel née Scheffler, and how it might help to find the answers they were looking for. That’s if they were going to carry on at all. He’d never been one to walk away before, but then he’d never felt he had anything much to lose before. Now he did, and the only way he could see Jean backing down was if he backed down first.
He reached the end of the street and began to amble back again, not wanting to wander too far from where Jean was going to pick him up. Ten minutes passed slowly by, and then another ten. He cursed the traffic for keeping Jean from him and decided he’d better stay put now in case he missed her. He leaned back against the wall in the shade of the building and considered whether he really could just pack his bags and go home. He felt closer now to the answers he was looking for than he’d ever felt before, and if Volker Strobel and Johann Langner held those answers somewhere between them, then given their ages he knew he might never have a chance like this again. He drew a deep, contemplative breath, and by the time he let it go again he had the answer. He would do it for Jean, without question. He was going to take Detective Eckstein’s advice and book the next available flight back to London.
Tayte closed his eyes and began to drift with his thoughts, still feeling tired after what had amounted to little more than a few hours of quality sleep. When he opened his eyes again, he checked his watch and saw that forty-five minutes had passed since he’d spoken to Jean. She’d said she was ready to come and get him, and that she was leaving straight away, so he thought there had to be a problem with the traffic. But after another fifteen minutes passed, he began to worry. He called her number again. After ringing several times the call went to voice mail. He tried the hotel room, just in case there had been a hold-up, although he thought she would have called him by now if there was. There was no reply.
She must be stuck in traffic, he told himself. That’s gotta be it.
He figured that was why she hadn’t picked up his call—she was driving and needed to concentrate, especially as she was driving on the opposite side of the road to the side she was used to. But as the time continued to tick slowly by with no sign of her and no phone call, he instinctively knew something was wrong. He called her again and this time he left a message.
‘Hi, Jean. It’s JT. I was getting worried about you, so I’m taking a cab back to the hotel. I’m sorry if you’re just stuck in traffic somewhere, but I didn’t know what else to do.’
He ended the message and immediately went looking for a taxi, which he found just around the corner on Maxburgstrasse.
‘Hilton Munich City hotel,’ he said to the driver, and on the way there, knowing the route was likely to be similar to the one Jean had taken, he kept looking out for their hire car and signs of heavier than usual traffic. He saw neither, and he began to feel very concerned as the taxi pulled up outside the hotel, little more than fifteen minutes after it had set out.
Tayte handed the driver a large currency note, and didn’t wait for the change. He sprinted into the hotel lobby where he took the stairs and ran up to the first-floor room he and Jean were sharing. ‘Jean!’ he called as he opened the door.
She wasn’t there. He hadn’t really expected her to be, but he had to be sure. He saw that her jacket was gone, the car keys, too, so he left his briefcase by the bed and ran down to the lobby again. He was panting as he asked the concierge whether there were any messages for him, but there were none.