Flashback (The Saskia Brandt Series Book Two) by Ian Hocking Read Free Book Online

handkerchief against his forehead. He saw computer files flashing by as though they were faces in a passing train.
    ‘... and Dr Óskarson will keep you fully informed of...’
    PassagierlisteDFU323.pdf
    ‘... there are practicalities involved, as I’m sure you understand. Mr Glöder? They have commandeered a local school for the... the remains. I could arrange a chaperone. Here, let me help you stand.’
    Cory interrogated the document for a name. He found it on the third page.
    Passenger 25F: Frau Doktor Saskia Dorfer.
    An address in Wedding, Berlin.
    ‘No, thank you. I will find him.’
    Cory, the Ghost, moved away. There was a quietness in his walk, and even the older journalists stopped talking as he passed through them.

Chapter Seven
    Berlin, two hours after the crash
    Viewed from the S-Bahn carriage, the low, violet sky above Berlin took Jem back to mornings camping on Dartmoor when she was a teenager - when she was a good girl, outdoorsy and bookish rolled into one. She smelled grass instead of the snug carriage air. She felt the dull, scratched handle of a pot instead of the metal frame of the seat in front of her. I’m looking at your future, Good Girl, she thought, trying to project her thoughts backwards, and it features rain, umbrellas and a metric assload of rye bread.
    Jem took her prepaid mobile phone from her rucksack. She dialled Wolfgang’s number.
    ‘Pick up, you lazy git.’
    He did not answer.
    ‘This is what’s happened,’ she said to his answer machine. Her vernacular was back, and it was a dish she would serve cold for Wolfgang. ‘I’m still in Berlin. Yeah, deal with it. I got as far as the airport, but I had to cut and run. I couldn’t go through with it. I don’t want to play any more. I’ll explain. I’m on my way back to yours.’ She looked at the information board at the front of the carriage. Orange letters slid by, as if on their own business. ‘I’ll take my time. Sleep. I’ll bring croissants.’
    There was no need to think of Saskia. That story had ended. Curiosity: satisfied.
    She twisted her fist around the metal handle of the seat in front. Revved it. Instead of the carriage seat, Jem saw one in the double-decker bus that had taken her to St Maynard’s School. She had once put her teeth on the metal rail just to feel the bus through her skull. The metal had been cold and oddly electric. Jem: hanging onto the bus by her teeth. Her hands in their fingerless gloves. Neeeeow . Her friends laughing.
    And now this.
    ~
    At her changeovers, she loitered on the platforms. She crossed Berlin in long, thoughtful strokes. Zigging one way, zagging the other. She was brittle but cheerful as she turned into Wolfgang’s road. It was raining and paper ribbons fluttered from the low branches of the tree near the launderette. Cars planed through the water. Jem was happy in the puddles. She could handle a doobie-doob-doob around a lamppost and a no-nonsense look from a German policeman. All the while, she worked on the speech she would give Wolfgang. It would make her intentions to leave him clear as crystal. She would fly east. She would watch the Urals pass beneath her aeroplane and move on to her Plan B.
    She stopped in the drizzle.
    There was a man outside the apartment building. He was leaning against the barrier that admitted cars to the rear of the block. His gloves were the colour of midnight arrest and his expensive suit did nothing for the dull impression he made: police from sensible shoes to flat-top military hairdo.
    ‘Well, doobie-doob-doob,’ she whispered.
    He turned to her.
    ‘ Wer bist du? Was willst du hier? ’
    Jem hesitated. There was a wide pavement between them. She felt the urge to run but knew it would be disastrous.
    ‘ Nichts. Ich bin verloren. ’
    The man withdrew a pair of glasses and put them on. They were NHS retro, black like his gloves. ‘Are you English?’
    Jem said nothing. She stared. It was natural, she told herself, to distrust him, no