‘One moment, please.’
Tayte waited, walking slowly, his eyes scanning the plaza to see if anyone was looking at him. He saw that several people were, which he supposed was because of the shouting. They probably thought he was a madman.
The receptionist came back on the line. ‘I can put you through to Herr Langner’s personal nurse,’ she said. ‘Please hold.’
The call only took a few seconds to transfer. When it did, Tayte heard the almost offensively direct and harsh tones of Ingrid Keller, whom he now saw in a somewhat different light following Jean’s discovery. There was no introduction.
‘Herr Langner is very ill, Mr Tayte. You must leave him to rest.’
‘I just wanted to ask whether he was feeling any better.’
‘So you can come back and make him worse again?’
Tayte didn’t quite know what to say to that. Keller made him feel instantly uncomfortable. ‘I just wanted to . . .’
Tayte trailed off, aware that the volume of his voice had risen again, and that he wasn’t going to get anywhere talking to Ingrid Keller. He could see why Langner’s son, Rudi, let her get on with things, and why they communicated with one another about the state of his father’s health via text messages.
‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ he added, and then he ended the call thinking that if Johann Langner was Keller’s father, then her protectiveness, not only as his nurse, but also as his daughter, was perhaps understandable. Although he didn’t see why she had to be so rude about it.
He put his phone away and picked up his step as he went back to his subterfuge. Now he was looking for a gift shop or a travel accessory shop, further adding to the idea that he would soon be leaving Munich and perhaps wanted to buy a few souvenirs to take home, or maybe an inflatable neck cushion for the flight. He found a gift shop partway towards the Old Town Hall and he paused outside to peruse the postcards before going in, making sure that whoever was following him saw that he was simply killing time while he waited for Jean to get the all clear from the hospital. It was a small shop, like a pop-up shop that had been filled with low-quality touristy items. Once inside, he continued to browse the bags and T-shirts, the pens, key-rings, and confectionary, much of which bore the words ‘I love München.’
As before, Tayte kept an eye on the door and the street outside, looking for anyone who seemed familiar to him, or who appeared to be paying him too much attention. He recognised no one and no one seemed to be watching him. These people are good, though, he reminded himself, knowing that he and Jean had been followed since leaving the offices of the FWK earlier that week. Tayte supposed he wouldn’t know that these people were there unless they wanted him to, so after a few minutes he left the gift shop, heading back across the plaza for what appeared to be a market of some kind. It was busier there, which suited his purpose. When he reached the first stall he saw that it was a daily food market called the Viktualienmarkt, which occupied a large square in the centre of the city.
Tayte quickened his pace as he ventured further between the stalls, often having to slow down again as the shoppers and browsers thickened around him. He took his jacket off to change his appearance, in case his followers had become accustomed to looking out for his bright tan suit jacket. A white shirt was no less conspicuous perhaps, but it was a different look and he thought it might help. He turned around one stall and another, not stopping until he felt lost himself. Then he walked out of the market with his knees bent and his shoulders stooped to keep his head down, taking the nearest side-street he came to. When he felt sure he was in the clear, he began to run, fuelled by a sudden rush of adrenaline as a cat-and-mouse sense of danger kicked in.
Tayte found a taxi soon after leaving the pedestrianised Marienplatz area. He checked the street map on his phone and asked the taxi driver to drop him off a few blocks from his intended destination, just in case he’d underestimated his opponents’ resourcefulness. If the address of Kaufmann und Kaufmann was known to the FWK, which Tayte fully imagined it was, then Tobias Kaufmann’s door was the last door he wanted them to see him knocking on.
He thought Tobias looked tired and more than a little distressed as he greeted him. His eyes were red and his beard was knotted, as though he’d been pulling at it all night and half the morning. If Tayte was right about who the man that had just been murdered was, Tobias Kaufmann had every reason to be distressed.
‘Come in, quickly!’ Kaufmann said. He was looking past Tayte and his bunch of flowers as he spoke, looking out into the street, which had been quiet when Tayte arrived. ‘I hope you weren’t followed.’
‘I don’t believe so,’ Tayte said.