Dead Tomorrow

83

The Airbus was on its landing approach, steadily sinking through the clear, but bumpy sky. The seat-belt lights had just pinged on. Grace checked his seat was upright, although he hadn’t touched it during the flight. He had been concentrating on the notes a researcher had prepared for him on liver failure, and planning what he wanted to get out of his meeting, later this morning, with the German organ broker.

They were twenty-five minutes later than scheduled, due to air traffic control delays at take-off, which was a sizeable dent in the preciously short time he had here. From his window seat, he peered down. The snowy landscape looked very different from the previous time he had come here, in summer. Then it had been a flat, colourful patchwork quilt of farmland, now it was just a vast expanse of white. There must have been a recent heavy dump, he thought, because even most of the trees were covered.

The ground was looming closer, the buildings getting bigger with every second. He saw small clusters of white houses, their roofs covered in snow, then several thin copses and a small town. More clusters of houses and buildings. The light was so bright he regretted, for a moment, not bringing sunglasses.

It was strange how time changed everything. Not long ago he had come here, to Munich, with real hope that he might find Sandy, finally, after close friends had been sure they had spotted her in a park. But now all those emotions had gone, evaporated. He could honestly say to himself that he no longer had any feelings towards her. He really felt, for the first time, that he was in the final stages of laying all the complexities of his memories of her to rest. The darkness and the light.

Grace heard the clunk of the landing wheels locking beneath him and felt a sudden prick of apprehension. For the first time in so, so long, he really had something to live for. His darling Cleo. He did not think it would be possible to love a human being more than he loved her. She was with him, in his heart, in his soul, in his skin, his bones, his blood, every waking second.

The thought of anything bad happening to her was more than he could bear. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt nervous for his own safety. Nervous of something happening that might prevent them from being together. Just when they had found each other.

Such as this plane crash-landing them all into oblivion.

He’d never been a nervous flier, but today he watched the ground coming steadily closer, thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Overshooting. Undercarriage collapsing. Skidding off. Colliding with another plane. Bird strike. Power failure. He could see the runway now. Distant hangars. Lights. The mysterious markings on the runway and signs at the edge that were like a secret code for pilots. He barely even felt the wheels touching down. In a perfectly judged landing, the plane went seamlessly from flying to taxiing. He heard the roar of the reverse thrust, felt the braking pulling him forwards against his seat belt.

Then, over the intercom system, a hostess with a soft, friendly, guttural accent welcomed them to Franz Josef Strauss International Airport.

The rear door of the taxi opened and the woman alighted, her chic dark glasses shielding her eyes from the wintry glare. She paid the driver, giving him a small tip, and, towing her wheeled overnight bag, headed off into the departures hall of the domed terminal building.

An attractive woman in her late-thirties, she was dressed smartly and warmly in a long camel-hair coat over suede boots, a cashmere shawl and leather gloves. After years of dyeing her hair brown and keeping it cropped short, she had recently let it lighten of its own accord, and it was almost back to her natural, fair, not-quite-blonde colour. She had read in a magazine that when a woman is seeking a new man, she will often change her hair. Well, that was right in her case.

She went across to the Lufthansa section and joined the queue for the Economy check-in desks for Miami, a city she had last visited fifteen years ago, in a former life.

The woman behind the counter went through the routine questions with her. Had she packed her own bags? Had her bags been out of her sight? Then she handed her back her passport, her ticket and her frequent-flier card.

‘Ich wünsche Ihnen ein guten Flug, Frau Lohmann.’

‘Danke.’

She spoke perfect German now. That had taken a while, because, as everyone had correctly told her, it was a difficult language to learn. Towing her bag, she followed the signs to the gate, knowing from all her many experiences at this airport that it was a long journey.

Riding up the moving staircase, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her handbag and brought it to her ear.

‘Ja, hallo?’

The voice at the other end was crackly and indistinct. It was her colleague, Hans-Jürgen Waldinger, calling her from his Mini Cooper on a bad line. She could barely hear him. Stepping off the top of the escalator, pulling her bag over the lip and raising her voice, she said again, ‘Hallo?’

Then the line went dead. She walked along a short distance, following the signs for the Departure Gate in zone G, heading towards the first section of the moving walkway that could take her to the hall. Then her phone rang again. She answered.

Hans-Jürgen, barely audible for the crackling, said, ‘Sandy? Sandy?’

‘Ja, Hans!’ she said, and stepped on to the walkway.

Eight hundred yards away, at the arrivals section of zone G, Roy Grace, clutching his thick briefcase, and approaching from the opposite direction, stepped on to the parallel carriageway of the same moving walkway.