Dead at First Sight

2 Monday 24 September

A text pinged in.

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.

Some of her old confidence was beginning to return and she had finally taken the advice of her sister, who had joined an online dating agency after being widowed, and pressed her to do the same. And her sister had been right, these past months of flirting online with a number of men had done wonders for her self-esteem. But after enduring years of Jorg’s behaviour, it was still taking the former PR executive time to trust any man. And she had good reason, just recently, to be suspicious about this one. Although Dieter Haas was the only one of her current suitors that she actually really fancied.

Until she’d discovered that he wasn’t real.

Propped up on her desk in front of her was a row of photographs of a fair-haired hunk. In one he was modelling a Prada suit on a catwalk. In another, all rippling muscles, he was wearing the briefest of swimming trunks on the quay of a Mediterranean harbour, against a background of yachts. In a third, he was in a cool black jacket and Ray-Bans, leaning on a bar, being admired by a very beautiful girl.

And in a fourth, he was posed in a pornographic shot, stark naked.

None of these images quite gelled with the advert he had placed on the German dating agency site, ZweitesMal.de.

Thirty-five-year-old divorcee, Air Traffic Controller, seeks friendship with a feisty fair-haired lady for fun, frolics, and who knows what beyond?

She took another sip of prosecco for Dutch courage and texted back:

Moments later he replied:

She looked again at the photographs of Mr Too-Good-To-Be-True. Thinking how much she had been enjoying their email correspondence, but at the same time getting increasingly concerned that some of the things he had said to her and his excuses for not meeting just did not correlate. And then came the bombshell of asking her for a loan of 25,000 euros for his sick mother’s hospital bills.

That had made her suspicious enough to begin extensive research on the internet. With her background in IT and with the help of a former work colleague who was a borderline hacker, she now believed she’d uncovered his true identity.

She hadn’t yet updated her sister about what she had found out earlier today, and before she went to the police she needed to have some evidence. Which was why she’d invited him here tonight, under the pretext of handing over the money he’d asked for. She’d set up a hidden camera and recording device.

But would he take the bait?