Peter James: Dead at First Sight

Turbulent, like his mind. The heaving water at its greyest. Also like his mind. It was 11 a.m. He’d lain awake most of the night, his phone beside him. Waiting for a text from Ingrid. A call. Neither of which, he sensed increasingly in his heart, was going to happen. The photographs Detective Potting had given him, which were laid out on the breakfast bar behind him, attested to that.

Yet he still could not believe it. Did not want to believe it.

Could not afford to believe it.

In front of him was a lined notepad with calculations scrawled on it. Sums. Maths. The interest and repayment amounts on the money he owed. What remained of his army pension coming in.

Strewth, before Ingrid he’d been comfortably enough off. He was able to afford to live in this flat, with the mortgage paid off, and to enjoy plenty of luxuries — not that he had ever been an extravagant person. Now he faced ruin. The prospect of having to go to a military charity perhaps and beg for help mortified him.

Still in semi-denial, as he watched a seagull swirl a short distance from his window, he drained his coffee and stood up. He needed to eat something, but he had no appetite. He sat back down on a bar stool and stared again at the array of photographs of Ingrid Ostermann. Nine of them. Except in only one of them was she actually called ‘Ingrid Ostermann’.

In each of the other eight she had a different identity. The same woman, no question. But different names and profiles on different online dating agencies. He sent her yet another text.

Please call me, Ingrid. Please say the police have it wrong, that this is all a dreadful mistake. I love you. I love you so much. I’m looking forward so much to us spending the rest of our lives together! Call me! Please.

Moments later a text pinged in. His heart fleetingly rose, until he looked at it. And saw it was from Amazon, informing him of a delivery delay of a book on military strategies he had ordered. It was an expensive book. Maybe he should return it when it arrived?

He stared at the damned silent phone. Back at the photographs, his heart flip-flopping between love, hatred and disbelief.

Denial.

The love of his life did not exist.

All the money he had in the world, and much more beyond, was not coming back. He was going to lose his home.

How at his age could he ever make back the money he had now lost? The headline of the newspaper read:

Bankers, he thought, erratically. Bankers with bonuses of millions of pounds. None of those fat cats would miss a few hundred thousand. The sum would mean almost nothing to them. But it was everything to him.

Bastards.

A lifetime of careful savings and prudent investments, to ensure a decent lifestyle when he retired. Gone. The police told him there was little hope of ever recovering even one penny of it.

Gone.

No one was going to employ him in anything other than a menial job. His life was over.

He stared at the silver ice bucket on the coffee table, in front of the blue sofa. At the bottle of Laurent Perrier rosé still lying in there, with its soggy label floating free. At the vase of roses he had placed beside it. Was it his imagination or were they wilting, like himself?

Duped. Conned.

How stupid and gullible had he been?

On the wall beside him was a framed winged dagger badge of his former corps, the SAS. And beneath, its legend.

Who Dares Wins.

It was there as a permanent reminder of the best ten years of his life. He’d been at the peak of his fitness back then — something he’d endeavoured to get back to recently by doing two challenging hours of weights and interval training every day in the gym. Because he’d determined, successfully, to lose his pot belly and have as much of a six-pack as was possible for a man of his age, for when he and Ingrid were finally in bed together.

He’d better cancel his membership, to save some money there.

Beyond his army pension he had no income. He remembered, years ago, being pinned down in a foxhole in Iraq with a bunch of squaddies under his command. They were against impossible odds and running out of ammunition. If they stayed where they were they would eventually be taken out by a shell. If they climbed out, they’d be cut down by machine-gun fire.

He remembered the words he had shouted out to the men under his command.

‘ OK, we’re all going to die. Let’s just take out as many of them as we can before we do .’

Then they’d gone over the top.

To his astonishment, somehow with the loss of just one of his team, they’d made it through to the enemy gun emplacement and neutralized it by killing all five Iraqi soldiers manning it.

He had later been decorated with the Military Cross for valour in combat. It hung in a frame on the living-room wall. His proudest achievement, and the last thing he would ever sell.

Now he had been destroyed, with no bloodshed, by an unseen enemy.

And he was thinking to himself, Is this what I nearly died for? Only years later to lose my home to another enemy?

I thought I was smart. How could I have been so stupid?

Before going into any combat situation, some soldiers drank, some took drugs, others just pumped themselves up with fury-based adrenaline.

He stared down at the photographs again. Thinking. Anger, like the livid sea beyond his window, surging through his veins.

I fought so this could happen?

His phone rang.

The single-engined Cessna bumped and yawed through the grey cloud swirling past the windscreen in front of him. Through his headphones, Andreas Vogel heard the calm exchange between the English pilot, seated to his left, and the St Helier tower on Jersey. The little plane reminded him of his time, years back, as a sniper in the US military in George Bush’s Iraq, being flown places in Black Hawks. Not the greatest of memories. Sitting on his helmet to avoid losing his nuts if someone fired at their helicopter from the ground.

For most of the journey they’d flown in silence. The pilot, who used to fly for Qantas, he’d told him, and who had flown him from the little private airfield outside Rennes for a very large wad of cash, had attempted to chat to him, but Vogel had said little in response. He didn’t do small talk.

And he was still thinking about Munich, which he had left on a private flight to Rennes early this morning. What a screw-up that had been. He’d never normally have let something like that happen — his current illness was really impacting on his judgement.

Moments later the cloud became wispy, then was gone. Below them appeared the grey, white-flecked water of the outer extremity of the English Channel. He saw a couple of rocky outcrops. Then the green, hilly land mass of an island ahead. Clusters of houses; a town; a tall smokestack; a harbour mole.

Vogel saw the long, straight tarmac of the runway. The pitch of the engine changed and the plane began losing height rapidly. It bounced on the runway, veering right then left, then the wheels touched down again and settled. After a short taxi, the pilot turned right towards a series of hangars, in which there were parked several executive jets. They turned left and he saw a batman ahead, waving them forward with paddles. Finally, they stopped. The pilot killed the engine and removed his headphones. Vogel removed his.

‘Welcome to Jersey,’ the pilot said.

Vogel did not reply.

‘Nice talking to you.’

He didn’t respond to the sarcasm in the pilot’s voice.

The pilot reached across him and yanked on a door handle. ‘The best way to get out is put your right leg on the rubber strip on the wing, kneel, turn around and put your left leg on the rung just behind the wing.’