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

matter how guilty she felt.
    ‘Don’t be worried,’ he said, smiling. His age slipped from forty to thirty. ‘I apologise for my manner. It is cold and wet. I am a policeman. My name is Inspector Karel Duczyński. I am employed by the Bundeskriminalamt . I could show you some identification if you come closer.’
    Jem bit the inside of her cheek. The steady voice inside her, the compass by which she had always steered, whispered escape .
    ‘Madam, I must ask if you are here to see Wolfgang Klenze.’
    ‘I’m not here at all.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘I’m just passing by.’
    ‘Please. Let us talk briefly and I then can, so to say, exclude you from my query.’
    I wonder , she thought, if this has anything to do with the plans for homemade explosives in Wolfgang’s back pocket. Jesus, Saskia.
    ‘Inquiry. It’s ‘inquiry’.’
    ‘Inquiry. Thank you. Your name?’
    ‘Nancy Drew.’
    The inspector tilted his head. ‘Do you live in this building, Miss Drew?’
    ‘Nancy Drew just passing through.’
    ‘But your voice sounds familiar.’
    ‘We English must sound alike.’
    ‘Earlier, a young English woman left a message on Wolfgang’s answer machine.’ He shook his head, as though dismissing any inference she might have made. ‘The woman called herself Jem, not Nancy. But if you are to see her, please tell her that I would like to have a conversation. She is not for any trouble.’
    Jem glanced at the pavement, toed a broken slab, and looked up.
    ‘What’s your name again?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, it is difficult to remember.’ He produced a white deck of cards. He dealt one to himself and raised it like a cigarette. ‘Please?’
    When it was clear the inspector would not move, Jem walked to him and took the card. Her fingers trembled. She put it in the pocket of her coat. His expression suggested that he had complete knowledge of her, but Jem reassured herself that the look was standard issue, like his handcuffs.
    ‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked.
    His composure slipped for a moment. ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘You’re just waiting here. Standing in the rain.’
    ‘Yes, I am.’
    ‘Well,’ said Jem, as she walked away, thumbs in her belt loops. ‘You know what they say about your job.’
    ‘That it is mostly legwork?’
    Still walking, she said, ‘Ooh, you’re good. You read my mind.’
    ‘It’s nothing. A cliché.’ He looked at his feet. ‘I hope you find your way, Miss Drew.’
    ~
    Jem bounced around Berlin for the remainder of the day. She told herself, with each stop, that she would hole up and work through the implications of a policeman hanging around Wolfgang’s apartment. She had certainly committed a crime by giving him a false name. Did that leave her with no option but to return to England? She rather hoped it did. There was little of her loyalty to Wolfgang left. But she did not quite hate him enough. Somehow, she had to find out where he was held, and for what. Then she had to talk to him without becoming an accessory or suspect. What did they have on him? There was the con work, yes, like the discovery of Saskia’s gambling system. Jem knew, however, that in the last month Wolfgang had begun to move in another direction altogether. He would go missing for days and return with cash in a plastic bag that he called his Turkish suitcase. He slept with a knife beneath his pillow. Who was he becoming? Who was she becoming?
    Enough.
    Jem’s stopped at Potsdamer Platz. She knew a café nearby. There she sat, and the thoughts and plans and half-predictions that filled her attention soon moved out of focus. She found herself dozing on her folded arms when a waiter tapped her shoulder with a pen.
    ‘ Fräulein, hier können Sie nicht schlafen .’
    Her metal chair was cold, the table colder and the contempt of the waiter subzero. She had to fob him off. Still, no point packing her ideas into the meat grinder of her German language skills.
    In English, she said, ‘I’m