March Violets

17

I awoke feeling hollower than a dug-out canoe, and disappointed that I didn’t have a bad hangover to occupy my day.

‘How do you like that?’ I muttered to myself as I stood by my bed, and squeezed my skull in search of a headache. ‘I suck the stuff up like a hole in the ground and I can’t even get a decent tomcat.’

In the kitchen I made myself a pot of coffee that you could have eaten with a knife and fork, and then I had a wash. I made a bad job of shaving; slapping on some cologne, I nearly passed out.

There was still no reply from Inge’s apartment. Cursing myself and my so-called speciality in finding missing persons, I called Bruno at the Alex and asked him to find out if the Gestapo might have arrested her. It seemed the most logical explanation. When a lamb is missing from the flock, there’s no need to go hunting tiger if you live on the same mountain as a wolf pack. Bruno promised to ask around, but I knew that it might take several days to find out something. Nevertheless, I hung about my apartment for the rest of the morning in the hope that Bruno, or Inge herself, might call. I did a lot of staring at the walls and the ceiling, and I even got to thinking about the Pfarr case again. By lunchtime I was in the mood to start asking more questions. It didn’t take a brick wall to fall on me to realize that there was one man who could provide a lot of the answers.

This time the huge wrought-iron gates to Six’s property were locked. A length of chain had been wrapped and padlocked around the centre bars; and the small ‘Keep Out’ sign had been replaced with one that read: ‘Keep Out. No Trespassers’. It was as if Six had suddenly grown more nervous about his own security.

I parked close to the wall and, having put the gun from my bedside-drawer in my pocket, I got out of the car and climbed onto the roof. The top of the wall was easily reached, and I pulled myself up to sit astride the parapet. An elm tree provided an easy climb down to ground level.

There was little or no growl that I could recall, and I hardly heard the sound of the dogs’ paws as they galloped across the fallen leaves. At the last second I heard a heavy, panting breath which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. The dog was already leaping at my throat as I fired. The shot sounded small beneath the trees, almost too small to kill something as fierce as the Dobermann. Even as it fell dead at my feet the wind was already bearing the noise away, and in the opposite direction from the house. I let out the breath that unconsciously I had held while firing, and with my heart beating like a fork in a bowlful of egg-white, I turned instinctively, remembering that there had been not one, but two dogs. For a second or two, the leaves rustling in the trees overhead camouflaged the other’s low growl. The dog came forward uncertainly, appearing in the clearing between the trees and keeping its distance from me. I stepped back as slowly it approached its dead brother, and when it dipped its head to sniff at the other’s open wound, I raised my gun once more. In a sudden gust of wind, I fired. The dog yelped as the bullet kicked it off its feet. For a moment or two it continued breathing, and then it lay still.

Pocketing the gun, I moved into the trees and walked down the long slope in the direction of the house. Somewhere the peacock was calling, and I had half a mind to shoot that too if it were unlucky enough to be stumbled upon. Killing was very much on my mind. It is quite common in a homicide for the murderer to get warmed up for the main event by disposing of a few innocent victims, such as the family pets, along the way.

Detection is all about chain-making, manufacturing links: with Paul Pfarr, Von Greis, Bock, Mutschmann, Red Dieter Helfferich and Hermann Six, I had a length of something strong enough to put my weight on. Paul Pfarr, Eva, Haupthändler and Jeschonnek was shorter, and altogether different.

It wasn’t that I intended killing Six. It was just that if I was unsuccessful in obtaining a few straight answers then I hadn’t ruled it out as a possibility. So it was with some embarrassment then that, with these thoughts passing through my mind, I came across the millionaire himself, standing under a great fir tree, smoking a cigar and humming quietly.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, quite unperturbed to see me turn up on his property with a gun in my hand. ‘I thought it was the groundsman. You’ll want some money, I suppose.’

For a brief moment I didn’t know what to say to him. Then I said: ‘I shot the dogs.’ I put the gun back into my pocket.

‘Did you? Yes, I thought I heard a couple of shots.’ If he felt any fear or irritation at this piece of information, he did not show it.

‘You’d better come up to the house,’ he said, and began to walk slowly towards the house, with me following a short way behind.

When we got within sight of the house I saw Ilse Rudel’s blue BMW parked outside, and I wondered if I would see her. But it was the presence on the lawn of a large marquee that prompted me to break the silence between us.

‘Planning a party?’

‘Er, yes, a party. It’s my wife’s birthday. Just a few friends, you know.’

‘So soon after the funeral?’ My tone was bitter, and I saw that Six had noticed it too. As he walked along he searched first the sky and then the ground for an explanation.

‘Well, I’m not—’ he began. And then: ‘One can’t—one cannot mourn one’s loss indefinitely. Life must go on.’ Recovering some of his composure he added: ‘I thought that it would be unfair to my wife to cancel her plans. And of course, we both have a position in society.’

‘We mustn’t forget that, must we?’ I said. Leading us up to the front door, he said nothing, and I wondered if he was going to call for help. He pushed it open, and we stepped into the hall.

‘No butler today?’ I observed.

‘It’s his day off,’ said Six, hardly daring to catch my eye. ‘But there is a maid if you would like some refreshment. You must be quite warm after your little excitement.’

‘Which one?’ I said. ‘Thanks to you I’ve had several “little excitements”.’

He smiled thinly. ‘The dogs, I mean.’

‘Oh yes, the dogs. Yes, I am quite warm as it happens. They were big dogs. But I’m quite a shot, even though I say so myself.’ We went in to the library.

‘I enjoy shooting myself. But only for sport. I don’t suppose I’ve ever shot anything bigger than a pheasant.’

‘Yesterday, I shot a man,’ I said. ‘That’s my second one in as many weeks. Since I started to work for you, Herr Six, it’s become a bit of a habit with me, you know.’ He stood awkwardly in front of me, his hands clasped behind his neck. He cleared his throat and threw the cigar butt into the cold fireplace. When eventually he spoke, he sounded embarrassed, as though he were about to dismiss an old and faithful servant who had been caught stealing.

‘You know, I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘As it happens I was going to speak to Schemm, my lawyer, this afternoon, and arrange for you to be paid. But since you are here I can write you a cheque.’ And so saying he went over to his desk with such alacrity that I thought he might have a gun in the drawer.

‘I’d prefer cash, if you don’t mind.’ He glanced up at my face, and then down at my hand holding the butt of the automatic in my jacket pocket.

‘Yes, of course you would.’ The drawer stayed shut. He sat down in his chair and rolled back a corner of the rug to reveal a small safe sunk in the floor.

‘Now that’s a handy little nut. You can’t be too careful these days,’ I said, relishing my own lack of tact. ‘You can’t even trust the banks, can you?’ I peered innocently across the desk. ‘Fireproof, is it?’ Six’s eyes narrowed.

‘You’ll forgive me, but I seem to have lost my sense of humour.’ He opened the safe, and withdrew several packets of banknotes. ‘I believe we said five per cent. Would 40,000 close our account?’

‘You could try it,’ I said, as he placed eight of the packets on the desk. Then he closed the safe, rolled back the carpet, and pushed the money towards me.

‘They’re all hundreds, I’m afraid.’

I picked up one of the bundles and tore the paper wrapping off. ‘Just as long as they’ve got Herr Liebig’s picture on them,’ I said.

Smiling thinly, Six stood up. ‘I don’t think we need ever meet again, Herr Gunther.’

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

He began to look impatient. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said testily.

‘Oh, but I’m sure you are.’ I put a cigarette in my mouth and struck a match. Bending my head towards the flame I took a couple of quick puffs and then dropped the match into the ashtray. ‘The necklace.’ Six remained silent. ‘But then, you already have it back, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Or at least you know where it is, and who has got it.’

His nose wrinkled with distaste, as if it detected a bad smell. ‘You’re not going to be tiresome about this are you, Herr Gunther? I do hope not.’

‘And what about those papers? The evidence of your involvement with organized crime that Von Greis gave to your son-in-law. Or do you imagine that Red Dieter and his associates are going to persuade the Teichmüllers to tell them where they are? Is that it?’

‘I’ve never heard of a Red Dieter, or—’

‘Sure you have, Six. He’s a crook, just like you. During the steel strikes he was the gangster you paid to intimidate your workers.’

Six laughed and lit his cigar. ‘A gangster,’ he said. ‘Really, Herr Gunther, your imagination is running away with you. Now, if you don’t mind, you’ve been very handsomely paid, so if you will please leave I would be most grateful. I’m a very busy man, and I have a lot of things to do.’

‘I guess things are difficult without a secretary to help. What if I were to tell you that the man calling himself Teichmüller, the one that Red’s thugs are probably beating the shit out of right now, is really your private secretary, Hjalmar Haupthandler?’

‘That is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Hjalmar is visiting some friends in Frankfurt.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s a simple matter to get Red’s boys to ask Teichmüller what his real name is. Perhaps he’s already told them; but then, Teichmüller is the name on his new passport, so they could be forgiven for not believing him. He purchased it from the same man he was planning to sell the diamonds to. One for him and one for the girl.’

Six sneered at me. ‘And does this girl have a real name too?’ he said.

‘Oh yes. Her name is Hannah Roedl, although your son-in-law preferred to call her Eva. They were lovers, at least they were until she murdered him.’

‘That’s a lie. Paul never had a mistress. He was devoted to my Grete.’

‘Come off it, Six. What did you do to them that made him turn his back on her? That made him hate you bad enough to want to put you behind bars?’

‘I repeat, they were devoted to each other.’

‘I admit it’s possible that they might have become reconciled to each other not long before they were killed, with the discovery that your daughter was pregnant.’ Six laughed. ‘And so Paul’s mistress decided to get her own back.’

‘Now you really are being ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You call yourself a detective and you don’t know that my daughter was physically incapable of having children.’

I felt my jaw. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Good God, man, do you think it’s something that I might have forgotten? Of course I’m sure.’

I walked round Six’s desk and looked at the photographs that were arranged there. I picked one of them up, and stared grimly at the woman in the picture. I recognized her immediately. It was the woman from the beach house at Wannsee; the woman I had socked; the woman who I had thought was Eva, and was now calling herself Frau Teichmüller; the woman who in all probability had killed her husband and his mistress: it was Six’s only daughter, Grete. As a detective, you have to expect to make mistakes; but it is nothing short of humiliating to come face to face with evidence of your own stupidity; and it is all the more galling when you discover that the evidence has been staring you in the face all along.

‘Herr Six, this is going to sound crazy, I know, but I now believe that at least until yesterday afternoon your daughter was alive, and preparing to fly to London with your private secretary.’

Six’s face darkened, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. ‘What the hell are you babbling about now, you bloody fool?’ he roard. ‘What do you mean “alive”? My daughter is dead and buried.’

‘I suppose that she must have come home unexpectedly and found Paul in bed with his bit of brush, both of them drunk as cats. Grete shot them both and then, realizing what she had done, she telephoned the only person she felt she could turn to, Haupthandler. He was in love with her. He would have done anything for her, and that included helping her to get away with murder.’

Six sat down heavily. He was pale and trembling. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. But it was clear that he was finding my explanation only too plausible.

‘I expect it was his idea to burn the bodies and make it look like it was your daughter who had died in bed with her husband, and not his mistress. He took Grete’s wedding-ring and put it on the other woman’s finger. Then he had the bright idea of taking the diamonds out of the safe and making it look like a burglary. That’s why he left the door open. The diamonds were to stake their new life somewhere. New lives and new identities. But what Haupthandler didn’t know was that somebody had already been in the safe that evening and removed certain papers that were compromising to you. This fellow was a real expert, a puzzler not long out of prison. A neat worker too. Not the sort to use explosives or do anything untidy like leave a safe door open. As drunk as they were, I’ll bet that Paul and Eva never even heard him. One of Red’s boys, of course. Red used to carry out all your dodgy little schemes, didn’t he? While Goering’s man Von Greis had these documents, things were merely inconvenient. The Prime Minister is a pragmatist. He could use the evidence of your previous criminality to ensure that you were useful to him, and make you toe the Party’s economic line. But when Paul and the Black Angels got hold of them, that was altogether more uncomfortable. You knew that Paul wanted to destroy you. Backed into a corner you had to do something. So, as usual, you got Red Dieter to take care of it.

‘But later on, with Paul and the girl dead, and the diamonds gone from the safe, it looked to you as though Red’s man had been greedy, and that he’d taken more than he was supposed to. Not unreasonably you concluded that it was he who had killed your daughter, and so you told Red to put things right. Red managed to kill one of the two burglars, the man who had driven the car; but he missed the other, the one who had opened the safe, who therefore still had the papers and, you assumed, the diamonds. That’s where I came in. Because you couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t Red himself who had double-crossed you, and so you probably didn’t tell him about the diamonds, just as you didn’t tell the police.’

Six took the dead cigar from out of the corner of his mouth and laid it, unsmoked, on the ashtray. He was starting to look very old.

‘I have to hand it to you,’ I said. ‘Your reasoning was perfect: find the man with the diamonds and you would find the man with the documents. And when you found out that Helfferich hadn’t hazed you, you put him on my tail. I led him to the man with the diamonds and, you thought, the documents too. At this very moment your German Strength associates are probably trying to persuade Herr and Frau Teichmüller to tell them where Mutschmann is. He’s the man who really has the documents. And naturally they won’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Red won’t like that. He’s not a very patient man, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of all people of what that means.’

The steel magnate stared into space, as if he had not heard one word I had said. I grabbed the lapels of his jacket, hauled him to his feet, and slapped him hard.

‘Did you hear what I said? These murderers, these torturers, have your daughter.’ His mouth went as slack as an empty douche-bag. I slapped it again.

‘We’ve got to stop them.’

‘So where’s he got them?’ I let him go and pushed him away from me.

‘On the river,’ he said. ‘The Grosse Zug, near Schmöckwitz.’

I picked up the telephone. ‘What’s the number?’

Six swore. ‘It’s not on the phone,’ he gasped. ‘Oh Christ, what are we going to do?’

‘We’ll have to go there,’ I said. ‘We could drive there, but it would be quicker by boat.’

Six sprang round the desk. ‘I’ve got a slipper at a mooring close by. We can drive there in five minutes.’

Stopping only to collect the boat keys and a can of petrol, we took the BMW and drove to the shores of the lake. The water was busier than on the previous day. A stiff breeze had encouraged the presence of a large number of small yachts, and their white sails covered the surface of the water like the wings of hundreds of moths.

I helped Six remove the green tarpaulin from the boat, and poured petrol into the tank while he connected the battery and started the engine. The slipper roared into life at the third time of asking, and the five-metre polished-wood hull strained at the mooring ropes, eager to be up-river. I threw Six the first line, and having untied the second I stepped quickly into the boat beside him. Then he wrenched the wheel to one side, punched the throttle lever and we jerked forwards.

It was a powerful boat and as fast as anything that even the river-police might have had. We raced up the Havel towards Spandau, Six holding the white steering-wheel grimly, oblivious to the effect that the slipper’s enormous wake was having on the other waterway craft. It slapped against the hulls of boats moored under trees or beside small jetties, bringing their irate owners out on deck to shake their fists and utter shouts that were lost in the noise of the slipper’s big engine. We went east on to the Spree.

‘I hope to God we’re not too late,’ shouted Six. He had quite recovered his former vigour, and stared resolutely ahead of him, the man of action, with only a slight frown on his face to give a clue to his anxiety.

‘I’m usually an excellent judge of a man’s character,’ he said, as if by way of explanation, ‘but if it’s any consolation to you, Herr Gunther, I’m afraid I gravely underestimated you. I had not expected you to be as doggedly inquisitive. Frankly, I thought you’d do precisely what you were told. But then you’re not the kind of man who takes kindly to be being told what to do, are you?’

‘When you get a cat to catch the mice in your kitchen, you can’t expect it to ignore the rats in the cellar.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said.

We continued east, up-river, past the Tiergarten and Museum Island. By the time we turned south towards Treptower Park and Köpenick, I had asked him what grudge his son-in-law had had against him. To my surprise he showed no reluctance to answer my question; nor did he affect the indignant, rose-tinted viewpoint that had characterized all his previous remarks concerning members of his family, living and dead.

‘As well-acquainted with my personal affairs as you are, Herr Gunther, you probably don’t need to be reminded that Ilse is my second wife. I married my first wife, Lisa, in 1910, and the following year she became pregnant. Unfortunately things went badly and our child was still-born. Not only that, but there was no possibility of her having another child. In the same hospital was an unmarried girl who had given birth to a healthy child at about the same time. She had no way of looking after it, so my wife and I persuaded her to let us adopt her daughter. That was Grete. We never told her she was adopted while my wife was alive. But after she died, Grete discovered the truth, and set about trying to trace her real mother.

‘By this time of course Grete was married to Paul, and was devoted to him. For his part, Paul was never worthy of her. I suspect he was rather more keen on my family name and money than he was on my daughter. But to everyone else they must have seemed like a perfectly happy couple.

‘Well, all that changed overnight when Grete finally tracked down her real mother. The woman was a gypsy from Vienna, working in a Bierkeller on Potsdamer Platz. If it was a shock to Grete it was the end of the world to that little shit Paul. Something called racial impurity, whatever that amounts to, gypsies running the Jews a close second for unpopularity. Paul blamed me for not having informed Grete earlier. But when I first saw her I didn’t see a gypsy child, but a beautiful healthy baby, and a young mother who was as keen as Lisa and I that we should adopt her and give her the best in life. Not that it would have mattered if she’d been a rabbi’s daughter. We’d still have taken her. Well, you remember what it was like then, Herr Gunther. People didn’t make distinctions like they do these days. We were all just Germans. Of course, Paul didn’t see it that way. All he could think of was the threat Grete now posed to his career in the S S and the Party.’ He laughed bitterly.

We came to Grünau, home of the Berlin Regatta Club. On a large lake on the other side of some trees, a 2,000-metre Olympic rowing course had been marked out. Above the noise of the slipper’s engine could be heard the sound of a brass band, and a public-address system describing the afternoon’s events.

‘There was no reasoning with him. Naturally, I lost my temper with him, and called him and his beloved Fuhrer all sorts of names. After that we were enemies. There was nothing I could do for Grete. I watched his hate breaking her heart. I urged her to leave him, but she wouldn’t. She refused to believe that he wouldn’t learn to love her again. And so she stayed with him.’

‘But meanwhile he set out to destroy you, his own father-in-law.’

‘That’s right,’ said Six. ‘While all the time he sat there in the comfortable home that my money had provided for them. If Grete did kill him as you say, then he certainly had it coming. If she hadn’t done it I might have been tempted to have arranged it myself.’

‘How was he going to finish you?’ I asked. ‘What evidence was there that was so compromising to you?’

The slipper reached the junction of Langer See and Seddin-see. Six throttled back and steered the boat south in the direction of the hilly peninsula that was Schmöckwitz.

‘Clearly your curiosity knows no bounds, Herr Gunther. But I’m sorry to disappoint you. I welcome your assistance, but I see no reason why I should answer all your questions.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much now,’ I said.

The Grosse Zug was an inn on one of the two islands between the marshes of Köpenick and Schmöckwitz. Less than a couple of hundred metres in length, and no more than fifty wide, the island was tightly packed with tall pine trees. Close to the water’s edge there were more signs saying ‘Private’ and ‘Keep Out’ than on a fan-dancer’s dressing-room door.

‘What is this place?’

‘This is the summer headquarters of the German Strength ring. They use it for their more secret meetings. You can see why, of course. It’s so out of the way.’ He started to drive the boat round the island, looking for somewhere to moor. On the opposite side we found a small jetty, to which were tied several boats. Up a short grassy slope was a cluster of neatly painted boathouses, and beyond it the Grosse Zug Inn itself. I collected up a length of rope and jumped off the slipper on to the jetty. Six cut the engine.

‘We’d best be careful how we approach the place,’ he said, joining me on the jetty, and tying up the front of the boat. ‘Some of these fellows are inclined to shoot first and ask questions later.’

‘I know just how they feel,’ I said.

We walked off the jetty and up the slope towards the boathouses. Excepting the other boats, there was nothing to indicate that there was anyone else on the islet. But closer to the boathouses, two armed men emerged from behind an upturned boat. Their faces wore expressions that were cool enough to cope with me telling them that I was carrying bubonic plague. It’s the sort of confidence that only a sawn-off can give you.

‘That’s far enough,’ said the taller of the two. ‘This is private property. Who are you and what are doing here?’ He didn’t lift the gun from his forearm where it was cradled like a sleeping baby, but then he did not have to lift it very far to get off a shot. Six made the explanations.

‘It’s desperately important that I see Red.’ He thumped his fist into the palm of his hand as he spoke. It made him seem rather melodramatic, I thought. ‘My name is Hermann Six. I can assure you gentlemen he’ll want to see me. But please hurry.’

They stood there shuffling uncertainly. ‘The boss always tells us if he’s expecting anyone. And he didn’t say anything about you two.’

‘Despite that, you can depend on it that there’ll be hell to pay if he finds out you turned us away.’

Shotgun looked at his partner, who nodded and walked away towards the inn. He said: ‘We’ll wait here while we check it out.’

Wringing his hands nervously, Six called out after him: ‘Please hurry. It’s a matter of life or death.’

Shotgun grinned at that. I guessed he was used to matters of life and death where his boss was concerned. Six produced a cigarette and fed it nervously into his mouth. He snatched it out again without lighting it.

‘Please,’ he said to Shotgun. ‘Are you holding a couple on the island, a man and a woman? The—the—’

‘The Teichmüllers,’ I said.

Shotgun’s grin disappeared under a whole pantomine of dumb. ‘I don’t know nothing,’ he said dully.

We kept looking anxiously at the inn. It was a two-storey affair, white-painted with neat, black shutters, a windowbox full of geraniums and a high mansard roof. As we watched, smoke started to come out of the chimney, and when the door finally opened I half expected an old woman to come out carrying a tray of gingerbread. Shotgun’s pitman beckoned us forward.

We moved Indian-file through the door, with Shotgun bringing up the rear. The two stumpy barrels gave me an itch in the back of my neck: if you have ever seen someone shot with a sawn-off at close range, you would know why. There was a small hallway with a couple of hatstands, only nobody had bothered to check his hat. Beyond that was a small room, where somebody was playing the piano like he had a couple of fingers missing. At the far end there was a round bar and some stools. Behind it were lots of sports trophies and I wondered who had won them and why. The Most Murders in One Year perhaps, or The Cleanest Knockout With an India Rubber—I had a nominee for that award myself if I could find him. But probably they had just bought them to make the place look more like what it was supposed to be—the headquarters of an ex-convicts’ welfare association.

Shotgun’s partner grunted. ‘This way,’ he said, and led us towards a door beside the bar.

Through the door the room was like an office. A brass lamp hung from one of the beams on the ceiling. There was a long walnut chaise-longue in the corner by the window, and next to it, a big bronze of a naked girl, the sort that looks as though the model must have had a bad accident with a circular saw. There was more art on the panelled walls, but of the sort that normally you only find in the pages of midwives’ textbooks.

Red Dieter, his black shirt-sleeves rolled up, and his collar off, stood up from the green-leather sofa and flicked his cigarette into the fire. Glancing first at Six and then at me, he looked uncertain as to whether he ought to look welcoming or worried. He didn’t get time to make a choice. Six stepped forwards, and caught him by the throat.

‘For God’s sake what have you done with her?’ From a corner of the room another man came to my assistance, and each of us taking one of the old man’s arms, we pulled him off.

‘Hold up, hold up,’ yelled Red. He straightened his jacket and tried to control his natural indignation. Then he glanced around his person, as if to check that his dignity was still intact.

Six continued to shout. ‘My daughter, what have you done with my daughter?’

The gangster frowned and looked quizzically at me. ‘What’s he fucking talking about?’

‘The two people your boys snatched from the beach house yesterday,’ I said urgently. ‘What have you done with them? Look, there’s no time for an explanation now, but the girl is his daughter.’

He looked incredulous. ‘You mean, she’s not dead after all?’ he said.

‘Come on, man,’ I said.

Red swore, his face darkened like dying gaslight, his lips quivering like he had just chewed on broken glass. A thin, blue vein stood off his square forehead like a piece of ivy on a brick wall. He pointed at Six.

‘Keep him here,’ he growled. Red shouldered his way through the men outside like an angry wrestler. ‘If this is one of your tricks, Gunther, I’ll personally fillet your fucking nose.’

‘I’m not that stupid. But as it happens, there is one thing that’s puzzling me.’

At the front door Red stopped and glared at me. His face was the colour of blood, almost purple with rage. ‘And what’s that?’

‘I had a girl working with me. Name of Inge Lorenz. She disappeared from the area of the beach house in Wannsee not long before your boys tapped me on the head.’

‘So why ask me?’

‘You’ve already kidnapped two people, so a third along the way might not be too much for your conscience to bear.’

Red almost spat in my face. ‘What’s a fucking conscience, then?’ he said, and carried on through the door.

Outside the inn I hurried after him in the direction of one of the boathouses. A man came out, buttoning up his flies. Misinterpreting his boss’s purposeful stride, he grinned.

‘You come to give her one as well, boss?’

Red drew level with the man, looked blankly at him for a second, and then punched him hard in the stomach. ‘Shut your stupid mouth,’ he roared, and kicked his way through the boathouse door. I stepped over the man’s gasping body and followed him inside.

I saw a long rack on which were laid several eight-oar boats, and tied to it was a man stripped to the waist. His head hung down, and there were numerous burns on his neck and shoulders. I guessed that it was Haupthändler, although as I came closer I could see that his face was so badly contused as to be unrecognizable. Two men stood idly by, paying no attention to their captive. They were both smoking cigarettes, and one of them wore a set of brass knuckles.

‘Where’s the fucking girl?’ screamed Red. One of Haupthandler’s torturers jabbed a thumb across his shoulder.

‘Next door, with my brother.’

‘Hey, boss,’ said the other man. ‘This coat still won’t talk. Do you want us to work on him some more?’

‘Leave the poor bastard alone,’ he growled. ‘He knows nothing.’

It was almost dark in the adjoining boathouse, and it took several seconds for our eyes to become accustomed to the gloom.

‘Franz. Where the fuck are you?’ We heard a soft groan, and the slap of flesh against flesh. Then we saw them: an enormous figure of a man, his trousers round his ankles, bent over the silent and naked body of Hermann Six’s daughter, tied face down over an upturned boat.

‘Get away from her, you big ugly bastard,’ yelled Red.

The man, who was the size of a luggage locker, made no move to obey the order, not even when it was repeated at greater volume and at closer range. Eyes shut, his shoe-box of a head lying back on the parapet that was his shoulders, his enormous penis squeezing in and out of Grete Pfarr’s anus almost convulsively, his knees bent like a man whose horse had escaped from underneath him, Franz stood his ground.

Red punched him hard on the side of the head. He might as well have been hitting a locomotive. The very next second he pulled out a gun and almost casually blew his man’s brains out.

Franz dropped cross-legged to the ground, a collapsing chimney of a man, his head spurting a smoke-plume of burgundy, his still erect penis leaning to one side like the mainmast of a ship that has crashed onto the rocks.

Red pushed the body to one side with the toe of his shoe as I started to untie Grete. Several times he glanced awkwardly at the stripes that had been cut deep onto her buttocks and thighs with a short whip. Her skin was cold, and she smelt strongly of semen. There was no telling how many times she had been raped.

‘Fuck, look at the state of her,’ groaned Red, shaking his head. ‘How can I let Six see her like this?’

‘Let’s hope she’s alive,’ I said, taking off my coat, and spreading it on the ground.

We laid her down, and I pressed my ear to her naked breast. There was a heartbeat, but I guessed that she was in deep shock.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Red sounded naive, like a schoolboy asking about his pet rabbit. I looked up at him and saw that he was still holding the gun in his hand.

Summoned by the shot, several German Strength men were standing awkwardly at the back of the boathouse. I heard one of them say, ‘He killed Franz’; and then another said, ‘There was no call to do it,’ and I knew we were going to have trouble. Red knew it too. He turned and faced them.

‘The girl is Six’s daughter. You all know Six. He’s a rich and powerful man. I told Franz to leave her alone but he wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t have taken any more. He’d have killed her. She’s only just alive now.’

‘You didn’t have to shoot Franz,’ said a voice.

‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘You could have slugged him.’

‘What?’ Red’s tone was incredulous. ‘His head was thicker than the oak on a nunnery door.’

‘Not now it isn’t.’

Red bent down beside me. With one eye on his men he murmured, ‘You got a lighter?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Look, we don’t stand a chance in here, nor does she. We’ve got to get to a boat.’

‘What about Six?’

I buttoned the coat over Grete’s naked body, and gathered her up in my arms. ‘He can take his chances.’

Helfferich shook his head. ‘No, I’ll go back for him. Wait for us on the jetty as long as you can. If they start shooting, then get the hell away. And in case I don’t, I know nothing about your girl, fleabite.’ We walked slowly towards the door, Red leading the way. His men stepped back sullenly to allow us through, and once outside we separated, and I walked back down the grassy slope to the jetty and to the boat.

I laid Six’s daughter on the slipper’s back seat. There was a rug in a locker and I took it out and put it over her still unconscious body. I wondered whether if she came round I might have another chance to ask her about Inge Lorenz. Would Haupthandler be any more cooperative? I was just thinking about going back to get him when from the direction of the inn I heard several pistol shots. I slipped the boat’s line, started the engine and took the gun out of my pocket. With my other hand I held onto the jetty to stop the boat drifting. Seconds later I heard another volley of shots and what sounded like a riveter working along the stern of the boat. I rammed the throttle forwards and spun the wheel away from the jetty. Wincing with pain I glanced down at my hand, imagining that I had been hit, but instead I found an enormous splinter of wood from the jetty sticking out of the palm of my hand. Breaking off the largest part of it I turned and fired off the rest of my clip in the direction of the figures now appearing on the retreating jetty. To my surprise they threw themselves on their bellies. But behind me something heavier than a pistol had opened up. It was only a warning burst, but the big machine-gun cut through the trees and the wood of the jetty like metallic rain drops, sending up splinters, chopping off branches and slicing through foliage. Looking to my front again, I had just enough time to pull the throttle into reverse and steer away from the police-launch. Then I cut the engine and instinctively raised my hands high above my head, dropping my gun onto the floor of the boat as I did so.

It was then that I noticed the neat red caste-mark in the centre of Grete’s forehead, from which a hair’s breadth trickle of blood was now bisecting her lifeless features.