Dead at First Sight

3 Monday 24 September

So far, a no-show.

His intelligence was wrong. Crap. And he was feeling crap, again. His head was swimming from the symptoms that kept recurring, randomly, and mostly when they were least welcome. Behind the tinted glass of his grey Passat parked on Munich’s residential Müllerstrasse, Andreas Vogel continued his vigil, drinking a tepid can of Coke and frequently lighting another cigarette, which, each time, made him feel even worse. A steady drizzle was falling, coating his windows, helping make him even more invisible, but not helping his view of the entrance to the small apartment building a short distance ahead, on the other side of the street. A typically Bavarian building, painted yellow with red roof tiles and dinky balconies.

Lena Welch, the woman he had been sent here to watch, had arrived home over four hours ago. Definitely her. In her forties, with blonde hair, a smart raincoat and high boots; from the photograph on his phone there was no mistaking her. She’d opened the gate in the spiked railings, let herself in the front door of the building and had not come out again, that he was certain of. The rear entrance was only a fire escape that would trigger an alarm. He might not be feeling up to the job at this moment, but he was professional enough not to have let her slip out unnoticed. Vogel could see lights on in the sixth-floor apartment that, from the plan he had been given, he was pretty certain was hers.

Suddenly, he stiffened. Headlights in his rear-view mirror. A car was crawling along the street as if looking for an address. A dark-coloured sedan. An Audi. It passed by and in the glow of a street light he saw the silhouettes of two men inside. African-looking.

Them?

An instant later his view was blocked by a large motorhome that pulled up alongside him.

‘Get out of my way!’

The passenger door of the camper opened and a dumpy woman climbed down, then stood in the road talking loudly to the driver. Another car pulled up behind and, after some moments, gave a blast of its horn.

The woman carried on talking, in German, to the driver. ‘Get out of my way!’ Vogel repeated, frustrated.

The horn from the car behind blasted again.