Where is she?
He could feel the anxiety of not knowing—of believing without a doubt that something must have happened to her—begin to knot in his stomach. He ran out into the car park and looked for their hire car. The space where he’d parked it the day before was tellingly empty, which told him that Jean had left to pick him up as planned. But then what? Tayte sank his head into his hands, wishing now that he’d made the decision to fly home after Max Fleischer had flashed his gun at them outside the coffee shop. The familiar ringtone of his phone startled him then, and he almost dropped it in his haste to answer the call.
‘Jean!’
‘Is that JT?’
It wasn’t Jean. Tayte didn’t recognise the caller’s voice, but it belonged to a man with a German accent, and it immediately put his hackles up.
‘Who is this?’
‘I’m calling from the general hospital in Schwabing,’ the man said. ‘I saw that you’d left a message for Jean Summer earlier this morning and I didn’t know who else to call. Are you a family member, or a friend perhaps? Are you in Munich?’
Tayte felt the blood drain from his cheeks. ‘I’m her partner,’ he said. ‘We’re staying in Munich together. What’s happened? Is she okay?’
‘Jean Summer has been involved in a car accident. She was admitted to the hospital a short while ago.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tayte wasted no time getting a taxi to the accident and emergency unit at Munich’s general hospital in Schwabing, which was a short drive north of the city centre via one of the city’s major multi-lane parkways. The hospital staff member who had called Tayte from Jean’s phone hadn’t been able to give him any information about Jean’s condition, which made him all the more anxious as he sat in the back of the taxi, imagining the worse. He cursed himself several times over for not making his own way back to the hotel after he’d been released from police custody, telling himself that if he had then none of this would have happened and Jean would be okay. If only she hadn’t been so insistent. If only he hadn’t got himself arrested in the first place. If only this and if only that, but how could he have known? If Jean had been there, he knew she would have been the first to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but that gave him little consolation.
He was running again as soon as he got out of the taxi, only slowing to a fast walk as he entered the hospital and approached the information desk.
‘My friend, Jean Summer, was in a car accident earlier this morning,’ he said to the young woman behind the desk. ‘I just received a call to say she’d been admitted here. Can you please tell me how she is? Can I see her?’
A few minutes later, Tayte was led into a ward on the accident and emergency wing. Maybe it was the shock of seeing Jean lying in a hospital bed with a bandaged head and a brace around her neck, or perhaps it was just the relief of knowing she wasn’t dead or in intensive care, but when he saw her he wanted to cry.
‘Jean, I’m so sorry.’ He held her hand and squeezed it.
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I knew you’d say that.’
Jean tried to shake her head, but her neck brace restricted her. ‘No, it really wasn’t. I was turning off the main road towards the city centre. At the last minute another car cut inside me and I had nowhere to go. What’s going to happen with the hire company? The car must be a write-off.’
‘Don’t worry about any of that. I’ll deal with it. Just tell me what happened.’
‘Well, this other car forced me into the barrier and before I knew what was happening I’d hit it and the car flipped over. I was so scared. Thank God no one else was hurt.’
‘So someone did this to you on purpose? Did you get a look at the driver?’
‘No, it all happened so fast. I’ve already told the police what I could, which wasn’t much. I didn’t even see what type of car it was, let alone get the registration.’
Tayte’s blood was boiling. Within a period of twelve hours he’d been set up for murder and someone had potentially tried to kill Jean.
‘You’re hurting my hand,’ Jean said, and Tayte let go.
‘Sorry, it just makes me so mad. These people are clearly prepared to do whatever it takes to stop us looking into Strobel.’
‘They must think we’re a very real threat then,’ Jean said. ‘Strobel has successfully managed to evade the authorities for decades, so why does he think we have any chance of finding him?’
‘It must have something to do with our research—the connection to my parents perhaps. Supposing for now that Karl is my father—’