“I hate it when it does that,” grumbled Ute. “I can’t put my shopping in the front seat any more. It’s like we’re all fucking children, being told by machines what we can and can’t do. Ridiculous, just ridiculous.”

Ute Sauer.

When I first met her, she was seventeen, lived in East Berlin, and her father had been arrested by the Stasi.

Get me to the West, she’d said, and my body is yours.

That it is, I replied, but not perhaps in the way you think.

A few years later the Wall fell, but Ute remained on the books of the local estate agent as what she was–a clean willing skin, perfect for short-term engagements or quick reconnoitring trips. She charged an hourly rate for her body and was prepared to let you borrow her car if you promised to obey the speed limit and not double-park. The ideal body to wear on the way to being someone else, Ute prided herself on her dignity, clean health and modest dress. When I left Berlin, she’d stayed on Hecuba’s books, running errands for ghosts about town, waiting on the sidelines as Will had waited for me in LA; save that Ute had made a profession of the occupation.

Now we drove through Zehlendorf as the sun rose over the shedding trees, and she said, “I have to pick the kids up at 2.30 from school. Will this take long?”

“Possibly. I tried calling Hecuba, but there wasn’t an answer.”

Short auburn hair, square face, Ute must have been a stubborn child, evolved now into a mother who knew how to get her way. “Hecuba is dead,” she said. “The office was raided, wiped out.”

“Who did it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look. I have children now.”

“You’re safe?”

“No one has come after me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”

“Then I am safe.”

“Do you recognise my body?” I asked.

She glanced at it from the corner of her eye. “No. I’ve never seen you before. Should I have?”

“No,” I breathed, sinking back into the seat. “You shouldn’t. I need a place to stash this body for a while.”

“Why?” Her voice harder than the tarmac beneath our wheels.

“I don’t believe this body to be a threat to you–he’s primarily interested in me. But he has attempted to kill me, and if that’s a problem, please, say so, and I’ll go and there’ll be no hard feelings.”

Her lips curled in, as she tasted, chewed and digested the idea. Then, a single brisk shake of her head. “My husband sells real estate. There’s a house we can keep him. Can we sedate you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We stash, we sedate, you run your business, and I’m at the school gate by 2.30 p.m. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“There will be no charge. You… and I have an understanding. For services previously rendered.”

“That’s very kind.”

“Half past two,” she said. “The clock is ticking.”

The house was a square mansion of timber and glass with architecturally immense windows built on to balconies of terracotta. Empty rooms were waiting for happy people, white walls too bright to be besmirched, a kitchen too clean to cook in, and a bathroom of polished black stone. I rummaged through my bag for the handcuffs and Coyle’s medical kit of needles and blades. I pulled my sleeve up, disinfected the hollow of my elbow, rubbing to bring up the vein, and injected the sedative straight in. The fluid was cold as it entered my body, then warm as it spread. I handcuffed myself to the nearest radiator, both hands behind my back, while Ute disposed of the needle. She knelt down beside me and said, “Is it working?”

I giggled and didn’t know why. A flicker that might have been a smile–and I hadn’t yet seen her smile–passed across her lips. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, slipping her hand into mine. “Shall we?”

“… dance?”

Her voice, my words.

I looked down on Nathan Coyle as he opened his eyes. I pulled a sock and a roll of gaffer tape from his bag, stuffed the first in his mouth and wrapped the other across as an indignant blare of sound tried to push up from between his lips. Ute’s body was older than the last time I’d worn it, her knees creaked, cartilage wearing thin. Coyle kicked against the floor, strained against the radiator. His eyes moved without focusing, and he tried to snarl again, the sound deteriorating before it had a chance to grow.

“Bye,” I said to the rolling whites of his eyes.

I drove back into town in Ute’s car. It seemed to me unimaginable that Ute had a single point on her driving licence, and to sully this record induced a childish fear in me. Getting your body a parking ticket and walking away without paying the fine is the height of rudeness.

There was something numb in my chest, a weight I couldn’t explain. It was not pain, nor discomfort, nor chills nor an irritant to be scratched. I was halfway up Schönhauser Allee before I realised it was the emptiness left by a surgical scar, a place where flesh had been cut away. Had I focused any awareness on it, it could have dominated my senses, but the need to drive safely and not disturb any of Berlin’s highly pedantic policemen pulled my senses away from full understanding.

Ute had not spoken of her scars, and I would not ask.

I parked the car round the corner from Pankow, left the key in the ignition and waited for a dark-skinned businessman to walk by. His hair was short, his shirt was long, his shoes were smart, and as he passed I said, “Excuse me, do you have the time?”

His stride faltered in merely considering whether or not to answer, and as he looked to his watch, my hand curled around his wrist, and I jumped.

Ute swayed a little, supporting herself against the side of the car. I caught her by the shoulders, dropping my briefcase to the ground, and waited for her gaze to come back into focus.

“It’s… been a while,” she said.

“You all right?”

“Fine. I’m… fine. How am I doing for time?”

“Plenty. And thank you.”

She glanced at her watch, scrunching and unscrunching her face as the hands shifted back into focus. “I can wait one more hour,” she said. “If you need me.”

“I’ll be fine. The important thing was stashing Coyle.”

“Is that his name?”

“No,” I replied. “But it’ll have to do.”

She looked me up and down, assessing my body, then said, “Is that your style now?”

“No,” I grumbled, picking my briefcase up in a sulky sweep. “And I’ve got athlete’s foot.”

Neat streets of neat houses. A neat bakery, selling neat loaves on neat trays. Cars, neatly parked, and bicycles politely dinging. Berlin is a city which knows how to keep up appearances.

I walked the few blocks to a neat yellow apartment block on a perfect right-angle corner. Up a cobbled path lined with bins for paper, tin, plastics and organic recycling, to a thick blue door. I looked down the list of names by the buzzer. Alice Mair hadn’t bothered to disguise hers.

Wheels rattled on cobbles. I turned to find an elderly lady behind me, a shopping trolley in her hands, hat low on her head. The curvature of her spine pushed her head out almost horizontally from her shoulders, and as I stood aside, she went into her pocket for her door keys. With a slight shudder of apprehension, I reached out and touched her hand.

I hate being old.

Switching from legs which swing along merrily to hips of crumbling calcium and not much hope of repair is a quick path to injury. I took a step and nearly fell over, misjudging the stability of my own bones. I took another far more conservative step and felt tremors rush up my knees and shake my spine. My left hand was curled around the keys in my pocket, and as I pulled them out I saw twitching fingers, skin like a withered date. Half-bending to get a better look at my keys, aches down my back, it occurred to me that to drop them now would be a minor catastrophe all of its own.