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

waiting for a friend.’
    ‘ Zwei Euro fuffzich .’
    Jem stared at him. Then she tipped the contents of her purse onto her palm and let him take whatever for the untouched coffee. Like what- ever . As his fingertips walked over the coins, she thought about springing her hand shut. Nobody expects the English humour.
    About then, the ARD Tagesschau news programme appeared on the giant screen above the counter. Germany’s hang-dog chancellor, whose name Jem could never remember, was talking from the steps of the Reichstag.
    The waiter frowned and fussed. He selected a coin.
    Jem watched a banner roll across the bottom of the screen. ‘DFU Flug Berlin-Mailand abgestürzt - keine Überlebenden’ .
    Jem’s smile straightened.
    ‘Berlin-Mailand’ ?
    The words plugged the holes in her thoughts, suffocating her playfulness. This was the flight she had a ticket for. But why was it on the telly?
    Keine Ueberlebenden .
    ‘Excuse me, could you tell what keine Ueberlebenden means?’
    The waiter completed his work on her palm and shook his head. ‘I think you should go now, please. Sleep somewhere else.’
    Jem’s eyes remained fixed on the screen. The programme cut to grainy footage of woodland. The camera shook, tilted to mossy ground, then refocused on a blemish in the sky. It might have been a bird of prey. But, with a perceptual switch, Jem saw that it was an aeroplane in a vertical dive. The camera followed the plane until trees blotted the view.
    ‘ Keine Ueberlebenden means ‘no survivors’,’ said the waiter, wiping the table around her elbows. ‘It is very sad news.’
    ~
    By midnight, at the end of a nightmarish day riding the underground and staring through everyone and everything, Jem found herself at the bottom of the steps to Saskia’s apartment building. The rain had worked its way down her collar. Her damp tights itched and a pimple had taken root in the corner of her mouth. She dallied between the desperate hope that Saskia was alive – in her apartment and cursing Jem – to the certainty that Saskia’s essence yet walked, unreflected, across its ebony floor. Jem pressed and pressed again at the button marked ‘Frau Doktor Dorfer’.
    You didn’t get on the plane. You came home. Please.
    ‘ Hallo? ’ said a voice, male and unfamiliar.
    ‘Um, hello. Who is this? Inspector?’
    The door buzzed. Jem pushed through to the stairwell, which was dark and echoic. She touched the light and heard its rattlesnake timer rotate. Her tired legs trembled with each step. When she reached Saskia’s door, she found it open an inch. A sound behind her reignited her fear, but it was only her rucksack, settling.
    The timer for the stairwell light stopped.
    The darkness closed down.
    ‘Hello?’
    With a click, light erupted from the opening doorway. An old gentleman stood there. His eyes were rheumy and his eyebrows stately ticks of white. His thin hair was rusty at the temples. He wore a pullover with shoulder patches and rested both hands on a short, ivory cane. Despite his age, there was something of Saskia about him. The apartment staircase rose, behind him, to darkness.
    ‘You must be one of Saskia’s friends.’ His accent was American.
    Jem wanted to reply that, no, she was Saskia’s girlfriend, but the word would not do.
    ‘Saskia...’
    He cupped her elbow.
    ‘My poor girl, come inside.’
    ~
    She slipped from her coat, which was heavy with rain, and dumped her rucksack in the space where Saskia stored her umbrellas and black, flat shoes. She followed the stranger up the apartment stairs. His shoes were wet too. At the top landing, he turned and tapped his left shin with the cane. ‘Excuse my slowness. It is sensitive to the weather.’
    ‘The hallway light is on the left at the top.’
    ‘I know it. Here.’
    He pressed it, and Saskia’s spirit returned with a flash: the antique phone; the ‘wooden man’ kung fu dummy with Jem’s special-occasion knickers hanging from an arm; a poster from the