Meet and Greet

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The arrivals hall was mid-morning busy. Peppard walked around for a bit, checking the uniforms and cameras. There were armed cops elsewhere in the airport, but not here. Chances were, no jihadists would arrive in the country locked and loaded. If anywhere, they’d be in departures, trying not to look nervous. Peppard, too, was doing his best not to let the nerves show. He usually only wore a suit at weddings and funerals. When the doors slid open, he caught glimpses of the beyond — luggage carousels, sniffer dogs, immigration officials. Weary travellers emerging, toting trolleys. Nicely laden trolleys. He had to hope for one of those. The greeters had a stoical look to them, used to delayed flights and hour-long queues at passport control. Their clients would be ready to offer an apology which was also a complaint.

“Welcome to England,” they’d be told with the thinnest of smiles.

The greeters held up clipboards or scraps of paper. The more expensive seemed to use iPads, with the surname capitalised on the screen. Bit of a pain that though, with the thing powering down every so often and needing to be refreshed.

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