Peter James: Dead at First Sight

Life may not be the party we’d hoped for, but while we’re here we should dance , Gerald Ronson used to say. It was Gerry who had put him up to this, the reason he was standing in the arrivals hall of London’s Gatwick Airport. A bit difficult to dance at this particular moment, but inside him, boy, was his heart pounding away!

She would appear at any moment.

His upright military bearing, conservative tweed suit, suede brogues and neat grey hair barbered earlier today were at odds with the sheer, utter childlike joy on his face. His whole body was jigging with excitement. With anticipation. His stomach was all twisted up. He felt like a teenager on a first date, except he was approaching sixty, and he knew it was ridiculous to be like this, but he couldn’t help it. And, hey, this day had been such a long time coming — almost a year — he could scarcely believe it was finally here — that she was finally here!

Most of the people massed alongside him were chauffeurs, holding up placards bearing the names of their pick-ups, peering hopefully at the throng emerging through the sliding doors. But Johnny Fordwater, instead, clutched a massive bouquet of pink roses, so big he needed both arms to hold it. Normally the former soldier might have been embarrassed about carrying a bunch of flowers, he wasn’t really a flowers kind of guy, but today was different. Today he didn’t give a monkey’s what anyone thought. He was walking on air. And he only had one thought.

Ingrid. She would be coming into the arrivals hall any second. The love of his life. Who had told him she loved pink roses. And rosé champagne. A fine bottle of that was on ice, awaiting her, back in his flat in Hove. Laurent Perrier, vintage. Classy.

For a very classy lady.

The wait was tantalizing. The butterflies were going berserk inside him. Butterflies he’d not felt since that first date with Elaine, over forty years ago, when as a teenage student he’d nervously climbed out of his rust-bucket of an old Mini and walked up the garden path of her parents’ house close to Brighton seafront.

A cluster of people emerged through the doors. An elderly couple being driven on a buggy, their luggage stacked behind them. A large Middle Eastern family, accompanied by a porter with a loaded flatbed trolley. A mother wheeling a suitcase with a small boy trailing behind her, pulling a little suitcase striped like a tiger. A group of serious-looking suits. Two nuns. A man in shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops with a woman wearing a sombrero the size of a tepee, each pushing along gaudy wheeled cases.

Come on, Ingrid! My darling, my love! Mein Liebling, mein Schatz!

He glanced at his watch: 7.08 p.m. Fifty minutes had elapsed since the Munich flight had landed. He looked at the arrivals board, then pulled out his phone and double-checked on the flight tracker app for the fifth or maybe sixth time to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. Definitely. Fifty-two minutes ago, now. Probably a delay with the baggage coming through, which often happened here. He looked at the luggage tags of passengers who had just emerged and were walking past him along the cordon. Looking for the tell-tale easyJet tags, which would show him they were probably on the flight from Munich, along with his beloved.

Ingrid Ostermann.

He loved everything about her, including her name. There was something mysterious about it, something exotic. A woman of the world!

A blonde in her late thirties, with cool dark glasses, a short leather jacket and ankle boots appeared, striding confidently, pulling an expensive-looking suitcase.

Ingrid!

His heart did a double flip. Then another!

Then sank as she came nearer and he realized it wasn’t her. Was it?

She walked straight past him. He was about to check her photograph on his phone when she waved at someone ahead. He watched her step up her pace and fall into the arms of a tall guy with a ponytail.

At least the Munich flight was coming through now, he thought. Hoped. He waited. Another fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes. Plenty more easyJet tags. But no Ingrid. He checked his phone. She had promised she would text the moment she landed, but maybe she had a problem getting her German phone to connect here. He sent a text.

I’m here waiting, mein Liebling! XXXXXXXXXX

He watched the display, waiting for a text back. Had she forgotten to switch her phone back on?

Then he heard a male voice right behind him say his name. ‘Mr Fordwater?’

He turned to see a shaven-headed, stocky man in his fifties, wearing a suit and tie, accompanied by a woman in her late twenties, with sharply styled fair hair, in a dark trouser suit.

‘Yes?’ Johnny said, alarmed by their sudden presence. Had something happened?

‘John Charles Fordwater?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

The man held out a warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Potting and Detective Constable Wilde from Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, sir. We’ve had a phone call from your sister, Angela, who’s been concerned about you since one of my colleagues spoke to you a couple of months ago. Your sister told us you would be here and who you are meeting. Could we have a word with you, sir?’

Johnny felt a moment of utter bewilderment. Then his insides were like a lift plunging down, as the terrible thought struck him. ‘Oh God, please no, please don’t tell me Ingrid’s had an accident. Please don’t.’

‘Would you mind accompanying us to the airport police station, Mr Fordwater?’ DS Potting said. ‘It’s only a five-minute drive.’

‘Please... please say she’s all right. She hasn’t had an accident, has she?’

‘There hasn’t been an accident, sir, no,’ DC Wilde said as they went outside and reached the parked police car.

‘Thank God, thank God for that,’ Johnny said, relief surging through his confusion. ‘You see I’m worried — I’ve been waiting for — waiting to meet her off the flight.’ He looked down a little sheepishly at the bouquet he was carrying.

‘I’m afraid Ingrid Ostermann wasn’t on the flight, sir,’ she said.

Johnny turned to her, feeling that plunging sensation again. ‘Why... what happened?’

There was a brief moment in which both police officers glanced uncomfortably at each other before DC Wilde spoke again, deeply sympathetic.

‘I don’t know quite how to put this to you, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry to have to tell you, as I think it’s going to come as a shock. From our intelligence, the lady you are waiting for, Frau Ingrid Ostermann, does not exist.’

A text pinged in.

Take your clothes off, meine liebe Lena, I want to see your beautiful body!

In her sixth-floor apartment in Munich’s Müllerstrasse, Lena Welch was feeling an erotic tingle and desire she had not experienced in a very long while. Fortified by three glasses of prosecco, her normal inhibitions were all but gone. The forty-seven-year-old divorcee was flattered by the attentions of the handsome man who had responded to her ad on an online dating agency, who had been engaging with her for the past three months, but whom she had not yet met.

She liked to think she was still attractive, and through keeping rigorously fit in the gym and by running three times a week, she knew her body was still in great shape, particularly for someone who had given birth to three children, now all at university. But five years on, she was still wounded by the break-up of her twenty-year marriage to her Peter Pan of a husband, who preferred the company of younger women to herself and to the responsibility of his growing children.