Prague Fatale

CHAPTER 14

I couldn’t sleep that night, but Arianne had very little to do with that, although she didn’t sleep well either. Sometime before dawn I must have slept a little because I dreamed I had returned to an almost preternatural time and place that was before the Nazis. But this was a recurring dream for me.

We made a desultory attempt at intimacy but our spirits were not in it, hers even less than mine. We washed and dressed and ate some breakfast in the mosaic café downstairs. She seemed depressed and spoke very little, almost as if she was already on the train back to Berlin; but then again, I wasn’t exactly gabby myself.

‘You seem very quiet this morning,’ she said.

‘I was thinking the same of you.’

‘Me? I’m fine.’ She sounded defensive. ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

‘You can sleep on the train.’

‘Yes. Perhaps I will.’

Pushing aside the salt and pepper cellars, I tried to take her hand but she pulled it away.

‘Don’t pretend, Bernie. You look like you can’t wait to get rid of me.’

‘Let’s not go over this again, Arianne.’

‘As you like.’

We walked toward the elevator. The boy opened the double doors to admit us to his little vertical world, but just as I was about to follow Arianne inside the hotel clerk appeared in front of us and handed me a sealed envelope. As the car groaned its way up the shaft I read the note that it contained.

‘What is it?’ asked Arianne.

‘I just lost my ride to the Jungfern-Breschan.’

She frowned.

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Heydrich reminding me who’s boss, probably.’

‘You mean you’ve got no car?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, how will you get there? It’s fourteen kilometres.’

‘Apparently I will have to walk over to Hradschin Castle and beg a lift there.’

The elevator car arrived on the top floor, where we got out.

‘That’s quite a walk from here,’ she said. ‘To the castle. I did it yesterday. At least forty minutes. Maybe more. You should telephone them and make them send a car.’ She smiled uncertainly. ‘Then you could spend some more time with me.’

I shook my head. ‘Believe me, I’m in no hurry to get there. Besides, it’s a nice day. And the walk will do me good. It will give me some time to think. Now I can see you off at the station.’

‘Yes. That would be lovely.’

On our way along the floor she went into the bathroom; and I went back to the room. I lit a cigarette and lay down on the bed and waited for her.

Arianne was quite a while, although this wasn’t unusual. She was always well dressed and well groomed, which was one of the reasons I liked her. There’s something very sexy about disassembling something that has taken so long to put together: belt, dress, shoes, suspenders, corselette, brassiere, stockings, panties. But when she returned after at least fifteen minutes, she seemed even stiffer than before, as if the paint she had applied to her lovely face was meant not just to enhance her beauty but also to cover her true feelings.

‘Actually,’ she said, a little breathlessly, as she came through the door, ‘I’d rather you didn’t come to the station if you don’t mind. I’ve just done my make-up and I know I’ll cry if you’re standing on the platform waving goodbye. So, if you don’t mind, darling, let me go on my own. It’s only five minutes’ walk. My bag isn’t heavy. And I can manage perfectly well on my own.’

I didn’t protest. Clearly her mind was made up.

And that was it. When I walked out of the hotel and turned right and west to walk to the Charles Bridge and the Castle that lay beyond it, I never expected to see Arianne Tauber again, and it was as if a great load had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt if not carefree then certainly a profound sense of liberation. Strange how wrong we can be about so much. Being a detective, even a bad one, I should have been used to that: being wrong is an important part of being right, and only time can tell which it turns out to be.

In the Old Town Square, I took a moment to remind myself of that. A few tourists, mostly off-duty German soldiers, had assembled in front of the town hall’s astronomical clock to witness the hourly medieval morality lesson involving Vanity, Delight, Greed and Death which took place in two little windows above the elaborate astrolabe. The off-duty soldiers took lots of photographs of the clockwork figures and checked their wristwatches, but none of them looked like they were learning much. That’s the thing about morality lessons. Nobody ever learns anything. We were face to face with the past, but none of us seemed to understand that we were also face to face with an allegory of our future.

I got back to the Lower Castle at around ten o’clock and found Kurt Kahlo waiting patiently for me in the Morning Room.

‘Captain Kluckholn was just here,’ he said.

‘What did he want?’

He handed me a sheet of paper.

‘It’s a list of Kuttner’s personal effects,’ he said. ‘Apparently these are available for our inspection in Major Ploetz’s office.’

I glanced over the list.

Kahlo handed me a brown envelope and, smiling, shook his head.

‘He’s also given us two tickets each for the circus next Wednesday evening.’

‘The circus? What the hell for?’

Kahlo nodded. ‘Prague’s Crown Circus. I hear it’s very good. Everyone’s invited. Even me. It’s an outing for the SD and the SS and the Gestapo. Isn’t that nice? Mr and Mrs Heydrich are going. And so are Mr and Mrs Frank. Apparently your lady friend, Fräulein Tauber, is also invited. Whoever she is. I didn’t even know you had a lady friend here in Prague.’

‘I don’t. Not any more. Right now she’s on a train back to Berlin.’

‘God, I wish I was.’

‘Me too.’

‘Now I understand why you wanted to get away last night. At the time I thought you were headed for the Pension Matzky.’

‘You know about that, do you?’

‘More than you might think. A mate of mine in the local vice squad had to interview the girls. Heydrich set the place up even before he became Reichsprotector.’

‘He never struck me as the type to pimp for his fellow officers.’

‘Oh, he’s not. The place is a honey trap. It’s equipped with listening devices so that he can eavesdrop on important Czechos or the top brass when they come down from Berlin. My mate reckons he’s blackmailing half of the General Staff. Apparently he’s got a similar place planned in Berlin. In Geisebrechtstrasse. If I were you, sir, I’d keep away from both.’

‘Thanks for the tip. I think I will.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘Anything else?’

There was a second envelope in Kahlo’s hand. He handed it over. In the envelope was a letter from Geert Vranken’s father in the Netherlands, thanking me for contacting his daughter-in-law – she was too upset to write herself – and for informing them of his son’s ‘accident’; he also asked me to keep him informed of exactly when and where his son’s remains were eventually interred.

‘News from home?’

‘Not exactly.’ I put the letter and the circus tickets in my pocket. ‘Who’s our next witness?’

‘Brigadier Bernard Voss.’

‘Remind me who he is.’

‘In charge of the SS Officer School at Beneschau. And everything you’d expect from the commandant of an officer training school: a real stiff prick. Very probably you could use some uglier words than that. Especially if you’re a Czech. In November 1939 some students from the local university organized a demonstration during which Frank’s driver was injured. He shouldn’t have been there at all, but that’s another story. Anyway, twelve hundred students were arrested and Voss commanded the firing squads that shot several of them. As an example to the rest.’

I pulled a face. It was easy to despise a man who’d done something like that. I knew because I’d done something like that myself.

‘And Voss once met Hitler,’ added Kahlo, ‘which is not so unusual in this house. However, when you talk to him it seems to have been the most important day in his life.’

It was easy to believe this after just ten minutes in Voss’s company. Hitler he regarded as the modern equivalent of Martin Luther; and maybe he wasn’t so far wrong: Luther was another hugely deluded German I regarded with more than a little distaste.

Fortunately for my inquiry it seemed Voss was just as happy to talk about the incident at Beneschau involving Kuttner and Jacobi as he was about the day he met Hitler.

‘Captain Kuttner was a highly intelligent young officer and I was surprised that he should have said what he did. However, I was not at all surprised that Colonel Jacobi should have answered him in that way. But then, that’s Jacobi for you.’

‘Where was General Heydrich when this happened?’

‘In the dining hall at Beneschau we have a long refectory-style table. I was right next to Jacobi. But Heydrich was at the opposite end of the table.’

‘Why didn’t he sit next to you, sir? Surely that would have been customary.’

Voss shrugged. ‘The General was late. Delayed by some official business.’

His voice was about as thick as a recently tarred road.

‘Why weren’t you surprised that Jacobi should have said what he said?’

Voss shrugged again. He wasn’t as tall as he should have been; these days you don’t have to look commanding to be in command. But he did look tough for a man of almost fifty, which is about the number of stitches it must have taken to sew up the Schmisse on his left cheek, and you couldn’t argue with an Iron Cross first class or the courageous even foolhardy way he smoked, like every cigarette was his last.

‘It’s no secret that he and I don’t agree on a number of issues. Still there was no excuse for young Kuttner to be insubordinate like that. That was a surprise. I always thought him a very polite, courteous young man. Always. Ever since I first met him several years ago.’

‘So you knew him before he came to Prague?’

‘Oh yes. He was a cadet-officer at the SS Junker School in Bad Tolz when I was the commander there.’

‘When was that?’

‘When I was the commander at Bad Tolz? Let’s see now. July 1935 until November 1938. Kuttner was one of the best young officers that was ever produced there. He graduated at the top of his class. As you might have expected. After all, he was a law graduate of some brilliance. And great things were expected of Kuttner. He was certainly being groomed for one of the top jobs in the SS. Yes, it’s true he had important connections. But he had considerable ability of his own. If only things hadn’t gone wrong for him in Latvia he’d have been a major by now. With an important desk job in Berlin.’

Voss shook his head.

‘Of course, he’s not the first SS officer that this sort of thing has happened to. I know because I keep up with a lot of the young men who passed through my hands at Bad Tolz. Men like Kuttner. The work is too much to expect anyone to carry out without it having some effects on morale and character. They’re only flesh and blood, after all.’

It was odd how the same did not seem to apply to the victims of ‘the work’ that Voss described.

‘A new approach is needed to the work of evacuation and resettlement. A different solution to the Jewish problem. A better solution. And I’ve told Heydrich as much. Something is needed that takes into account the humanity of the men we ask to carry out these special actions.’

He sounded so reasonable I had to remind myself that he was talking about mass murder.

‘After Bad Tolz, when you next saw Kuttner again – which was when?’

‘At the luncheon where the incident we were talking about took place.’

‘When you saw him again, would you say that he’d changed?’

‘Oh yes. Very much. And the change was obvious. To me he looked a nervous wreck. Which is what he was, of course. But still highly articulate. And likeable. Yes, I still liked him. In spite of everything. It’s a great shame this has happened.’

After I finished with Brigadier Voss, Captain Kluckholn appeared in the Morning Room and explained that Major Thummel had to be back in Dresden that evening and, with their agreement, he had leapfrogged the list of witnesses ahead of Geschke, Bohme and Jacobi.

‘Is that all right with you, Gunther?’

‘Yes. But now that you’re here, Captain, I have a couple of quick questions I’d like to put to you.’

‘To me?’

‘To you, yes. Of course. And by the way thanks for the circus tickets.’

‘Don’t thank me. Thank the General.’

‘I will.’ I opened my cigarette case and offered him one.

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘Don’t smoke.’

‘Hermann, isn’t it?’ I lit my nail and whistled down the smoke.

He nodded.

‘Which adjutant are you? First, second, or third? I never can remember.’

‘Third.’

Kluckholn folded his hands at his back and waited politely. He was the tallest and most distinguished of Heydrich’s remaining three adjutants. He was also the leanest. His hair was dark and worn slightly longer than most other officers in the SD, which added an almost glamorous, film-starrish aspect to the way he looked. A uniform suited him and he knew it. There was a second-class Iron Cross ribbon worn from the second buttonhole on his tunic and the right angles on the flares of his riding breeches looked like they’d been put there by Pythagoras. The Spanish-cut top-shaft boots were polished like horse brass and had almost certainly been supplied by an expensive dressage company like König. I had half an idea that if Heydrich ever accused him of being improperly dressed, Kluckholn would have hanged himself with his own aiguillette.

‘Tell me, Hermann. The night before Captain Kuttner was found dead. What did you two argue about?’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken. We never argued.’

‘Oh, come on. I saw you in the front garden. While the Leader was on the radio telling us how wonderfully things were going for our armies in Russia, you two were at each other’s throats, like one of those stone sculptures on the front gate.’

‘I’m sorry to contradict you, Gunther. You may have seen what you assumed to be an argument but if you had been privy to our conversation you would have heard something quite different from an argument.’

‘So what was it?’

‘A gentlemanly discussion.’

‘Clenched fists. Gritted teeth. Face to face like a couple of boxers at a weigh-in. I think I recognize an argument when I see one.’

‘Are you calling me a liar, Captain Gunther?’

I let my lips tug at my cigarette for a long second before I answered him.

‘No, not at all. But all the same I’m still wondering if the gentlemanly conversation you had that was very different from an argument makes you a suspect in a murder. You hardly liked the man, after all.’

‘Who said so?’

‘You did. Yesterday afternoon when General Heydrich was biting everyone’s ears in the library. I couldn’t help but hear your handsome eulogy of Captain Kuttner. I would say I was eavesdropping except that I imagine your boss left the door open and meant me and some others in the house to hear exactly what was said. There’s not much he does that hasn’t got a damned good reason behind it. Incidentally, I’m not the only one who’s wondering if you were up to putting a bullet in adjutant number four. Some of the other officers aren’t exactly slow when it comes to casting aspersions on the characters of their fellow officers. Are they, Kurt?’

‘I’m afraid so. But it is disappointing, sir. I thought that among brother officers of the SS and the SD there would be a greater sense of honour and camaraderie. To be honest, there have been times in the last couple of days when this room seemed more like the school principal’s office, the number of tales that have been told in here.’

‘So how about it, Hermann?’

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘Whatever you heard, Captain Gunther, I can assure you I did not murder Captain Kuttner. Perhaps my language was a little intemperate yesterday, in the library. But I had a better opinion of him than perhaps you heard me say.’

Kluckholn spoke as if his voice was being recorded on a gramophone disc.

I looked at Kahlo. ‘Kurt. Would you please close that door?’

Kahlo moved away from the piano and closed the door behind him quietly.

‘What are you hiding, Hermann?’

Kluckholn shook his head. ‘I can assure you, I’m not hiding anything.’

‘Sure you are, Hermann.’ I shrugged. ‘Everyone in this damned house is hiding something or other. Small secrets. Big secrets. Dirty secrets. And you’re no exception, Hermann.’

‘I would rather you did not call me Hermann in that familiar way. I prefer Kluckholn, or Captain Kluckholn. And your suggestion that I’m hiding something is not only nonsensical it is also insulting.’ Colouring with irritation and injured pride, Kluckholn moved toward the closed door. ‘And I am not going to remain here to endure your insinuations.’

‘Yes, you are, Hermann.’

I nodded at Kahlo, who quickly turned the key in the lock and then pocketed it.

Meanwhile Kluckholn looked as if I had just stood on his corn.

‘You really are a most vulgar, tiresome fellow, Gunther. Has anyone told you that?’

‘Many times. It must have something to do with all the vulgar murders I’ve investigated. Not to mention all the murders that I myself have been obliged to commit. Of course that hardly makes me unusual in this house. But like Captain Kuttner I found there was something about it I didn’t like. Which is the reason I’m here now, speaking to you instead of carrying on the good work out east with all the special action boys. By the way, how was it that you escaped that particular tour of duty, Hermann?’

‘I’m ordering you to unlock that door,’ Kluckholn told Kahlo.

Kahlo folded his arms and looked sad, as if disappointed that he couldn’t obey the order. I didn’t doubt that he was more than equal to the task of dealing with Kluckholn if the third adjutant decided to try and get tough with him. Kahlo looked tougher. Kahlo would have looked tough in a bath full of Turkish wrestlers.

‘Maybe you had vitamin B, too,’ I said. ‘Better still perhaps you had vitamin A. What’s the big name in Berlin that’s been helping you to keep your nice polished boots out of the murder pits of Minsk and Riga, Hermann?’

Kluckholn stood immediately in front of Kahlo and held out his hand. ‘As your superior officer I am ordering you to hand over that key.’

‘Why don’t you sit down and tell us what you’re hiding, Hermann? For example, why don’t we talk about this list of Captain Kuttner’s personal effects? It was you who compiled that, wasn’t it?’

‘Open that damn door, or you’ll regret it.’

‘The trouble is, I’m afraid, that you left some items off the list. And I don’t like it when people try to deceive me. You see I conducted a very swift search of the room before you tidied up. Which is how I know that this list doesn’t include those copies of Der Führer magazine that were in Kuttner’s drawer.’

I felt Kahlo frown at me.

‘They’re not quite what you think,’ I told Kahlo. ‘Der Führer is or rather was a homosexual magazine. Used to be quite popular with some of Berlin’s warmer boys. So were the others in that drawer. Der Kreise and Der Insel. Lots of naked men playing with medicine balls or doing press-ups on top of each other.’ I shook my head. ‘You see the corrupting things I’ve had to deal with in my career as a police officer, Kurt? It’s a wonder I’m not in the cement myself, some of the filth I’ve seen.’

‘Lots of bums, was it, sir?’

‘Lots. Collector’s items now, on the Berlin black market, pornography being so hard to obtain these days. Expensive stuff. For connoisseurs of that kind of thing, you might say.’

Kahlo pulled a face that was a pantomime of disgust.

‘It’s a dirty job, sir. Being a detective.’

‘Don’t tell anyone, Kurt. Not in this house. They’ll all want to do it.’

Kluckholn had calmed down a bit and was looking a little less inclined to fight Kahlo for the key to the Morning Room door.

But another minute passed before he turned away and sat down on the sofa.

‘Of course,’ said Kahlo, ‘it’s possible the Captain here took those dirty magazines off the list not because he wanted to deceive you, sir, but because he wanted to keep them for himself.’

‘No,’ said Kluckholn, loudly.

‘I never thought of that, Kurt. Good thinking.’

Kahlo grinned, enjoying himself. There wasn’t much licence to insult senior officers in the Gestapo and SS, and he was going to take full advantage of it now.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘He took them to use while he was rubbing his own pipe.’

‘No,’ insisted Kluckholn. ‘No. I was merely trying to safeguard Kuttner’s reputation. Not to mention the reputation of the squadron.’

The squadron was what nice well-bred people like Kluckholn called the SS.

‘Kuttner wasn’t like that, I’m sure of it. He liked women. Those filthy magazines must have belonged to someone else. Perhaps they were already here when the house was taken over. Perhaps they belonged to the Jews who owned the place before von Neurath. After all, as far as I could tell, they were hardly recent copies.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, I talked it over with my own conscience and I decided that it was best to burn them. It was obvious they had no bearing on the case.’

‘You burned them?’

‘Yes, I burned them all. It was quite bad enough that Kuttner should be murdered, but we hardly wanted you questioning his reputation as an officer and a gentleman.’

‘We? You mean you and Ploetz burned them?’

‘Yes. And we certainly didn’t want those filthy magazines being sent to his parents in Halle, along with all his other personal effects.’

‘That much I can understand.’

‘I doubt that, Gunther. I really do.’

‘What makes you think he liked women, Hermann?’

‘Because he talked about a girl he’d met. A girl here in Prague. That’s why.’

‘This girl have a name?’

‘Grete. I don’t know her surname.’

‘She wouldn’t be the woman in the framed photograph that’s still listed among his possessions?’

‘No, that’s his mother.’

‘Maybe this Grete was just his black face,’ I said. ‘To help persuade you that he was as normal as the rest of you.’

‘Or maybe,’ offered Kahlo, ‘he was just dipping his toe into the water, to see if he liked it.’

‘Or maybe Hermann here is just making it up,’ I said. ‘To make his fellow adjutant seem like less of a queer in our eyes than he really was.’

‘Perhaps he’s a bit warm himself, sir. Perhaps he has to give Kuttner an alibi so he can have one, too. Could be that’s what they were arguing about. A lover’s tiff.’

Kluckholn stood up and stared angrily at Kahlo. ‘I don’t have to take that from you.’ He turned to glare at me. ‘I don’t have to take it from either of you.’

‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Before I make you sit down.’

Kluckholn remained standing.

‘By the way,’ I said. ‘What other evidence did you destroy when you were burning Kuttner’s puppy mags?’

Kluckholn shook his head and sat down. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘A diary, perhaps, Some love letters? Photographs of the two of you on a nice trip to Rügen Island with all the boys?’

I wasn’t interested in any of these, although I might have been if I had ever supposed that they had been among his possessions. There was however one more thing I was interested in; something I knew had been in his drawer because I had seen it.

‘What about the pipe?’

‘What pipe?’

‘There was a broken clay pipe in his drawer. What happened to that?’

‘I didn’t see a clay pipe. But I fail to see what relevance a broken old pipe might have to anything.’

‘That all depends,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t it, Kurt?’

‘Depends on what?’ Kluckholn asked.

‘Depends on what he smoked in it,’ Kahlo said. ‘Tobacco. Marijuana. Opium. They say a clay is best for opium, don’t they, sir? Clay keeps the heat better.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Opium or marijuana might be just the thing for a man who was having trouble sleeping. Or just to ease the conscience of a man who felt very guilty about what he’d done in Riga.’

‘Of course,’ added Kahlo, ‘you would only throw it away if you suspected that’s what it had been used for. You wouldn’t throw it away if you thought he’d only used it to smoke tobacco.’

‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Of course, if we still had it we could have tested it in the lab. They might have cleared him of any suspicion on that score. But now we’ll never know.’

Kluckholn was about to say something and then seemed to think better of it. For a moment his brown eyes met mine pleadingly, as if he wanted me to stop and he really did have some secret he couldn’t bring himself to reveal. He took hold of his fist in the palm of his other hand and started to squeeze it, trying to stop it from punching me, almost as if Belshazzar had managed to get hold of the disembodied hand that was interrupting his famous feast.

‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Punch me on the nose. Then we’ll have all the excuse I need to beat it out of you. Won’t we, Kurt?’

‘Just say the word, sir. I’d love to smack this bastard.’

Kluckholn regarded us with real hatred before he seemed to shrink into a silence and then a shape that made me think we really would have to beat anything else out of him.

Which effectively meant that the interrogation was over.

‘Back at the Alex, when a suspect won’t talk, we put him down in the cells to think it over. That’s what I’d do with you, Hermann, if we weren’t doing this in a nice country house with a good piano and some choice works of art. That’s what we’d do if we were doing this back in Berlin. We’d lock you up for the night, if we were doing this the proper police way, not like some bullshit scene in a crappy detective novel by that English lady novelist Heydrich seems to admire so much.’

I flicked my cigarette into the fireplace, where it smashed against the chimney wall in a hail of tiny sparks.

‘You can go,’ I said. ‘But I shall certainly want to speak to you again, Hermann. You can depend on it.’

Kluckholn stood up and, without uttering another word, he made straight for the door, which Kahlo then unlocked with a deliberate insolence that reminded me strongly of myself.

When the Captain was gone, Kahlo went over to the coffee table where I’d left my cigarette case and helped himself.

‘Guilty conscience, do you think?’ he asked.

‘Around here? I’m not sure what that might look like.’

‘The bastard was shaking like a rice pudding. If he didn’t do it, or knows who did it, then I’m a Blue Dragoon.’

The Blue Dragoons was the nickname of an Army punishment battalion stationed on the peat-bog moors of the Ems River region. They said that if the damp didn’t kill you, the labour – digging peat in all weathers – was certain to do it.

‘That’s probably what he’s worried about,’ I said. ‘Being sent there. Or whatever the SS equivalent of the Blue Dragoons might be. Some lesser circle of hell, probably.’

‘A firing squad looks like a better bet, if you ask me. He destroys evidence and won’t say what he and Kuttner were arguing about? Fuck off. Not to mention his declared dislike of the man. If it was me, I’d arrest him now and tap it out of him with a small hammer.’

Kahlo took a fierce drag of his cigarette and then bared his teeth like he was enduring pain.

‘And you know something, sir? Kluckholn might be just as good as it can get for us. In fact, I think he’s perfect for it.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

‘Only that he’s standing right in front of your box camera with a name and number chalked on a piece of board. No, really. You could just as easily snap him for this murder as anyone else.’

‘You sound so like the Gestapo sometimes that I wonder why I like you, Kurt.’

‘You’re the one with Heydrich’s breath in your ear. When you’ve got a suspect who’s suspicious it’s foolish to go and look for someone with a kind face and a good alibi. Come on, sir. Every bull does it now and then, even when they don’t have to. And if you ask me, you have to.’ He paused. ‘We have to.’

I grinned. ‘It’s quite like old times, working with you. You remind me of why I left the police the first time.’

‘It’s your funeral.’ Kahlo shrugged. ‘I just hope that I’m only the chief mourner.’

‘You needn’t worry. I’m not about to reach up and pull you in the grave beside me.’

‘It’s not just that.’

‘What then?’

‘I need to get on. In the job. I can’t stay being a Criminal Assistant for the rest of my bloody life. Unlike you, I’ve got a wife to support. The only way I’m going to get a promotion is if you deliver someone’s head for Kuttner’s murder, or if I join one of those SS police battalions in Russia. Come on, sir, you’ve been there. Everyone says it’s the holiday in hell.’

I nodded. ‘That it is.’

‘It sent Kuttner over the edge. We know that. I don’t want that happening to me. I want kids. I want to be able to look them in the eye when they go to bed at night.’

‘Yes, I can understand that.’

‘Right then. So far I’ve managed to avoid all that resettlement shit. But I don’t know how much longer I can do it. I can’t afford for you to fuck this case up because you’re a bit squeamish about sewing someone into the bag for this, sir.’

‘So, you admit you don’t actually think he did it, then?’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is if it will stand up in front of General Heydrich.’

‘Well, I don’t think it will. I agree, Kluckholn’s keeping something from us. But if you remember, he said that Major Ploetz was party to the decision to burn those puppy mags. For all we know he knew about the pipe, too. You can’t put a man in front of a firing squad just because he tries to sidestep a few awkward questions.’

‘No? This is Germany, sir. Remember? It happens every day. Someone has got to go down for this and if you ask me it might as well be him. Besides, adjutant or not, he’s only a fucking captain and it’s going to be a lot easier pinning a charge on him than on any of the cauliflower. There’s not one of these bastards that doesn’t have a supply of vitamins that goes all the way to the top.’

He had a point. I didn’t like it but what he was saying made a lot of sense.

‘Am I interrupting you?’

An officer in Army uniform put his head around the door, and for a moment I failed to recognize him.

‘Only Captain Kluckholn said he was going to try to get me bumped up your list but – peculiar fellow – he wouldn’t answer me when I asked him just now if that was all right with you. Seemed rather upset about something. Had a face like thunder.’ He paused. ‘Well, is it? All right, I mean? I can come back in a few minutes if you’d prefer, only I was rather hoping to catch this afternoon’s train to Dresden. There’s quite a lot of work waiting on my desk. The Admiral – that’s Admiral Canaris – he keeps me pretty busy these days, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sorry. Major Thummel, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You’d better come in.’

‘Good of you,’ he warbled.

Paul Thummel advanced into the Morning Room. He moved with flat-footed nonchalance, like a golfer approaching a putt he expected to sink without any trouble, and sat down on the sofa recently vacated by Hermann Kluckholn.

‘All right here, am I?’ He smoothed his hands along the silk cushions like a schoolboy and then leaned back, comfortably. ‘I haven’t been in this room,’ he added, looking around. ‘Very cosy. Although maybe a bit too feminine for my taste. Not that I have any. At least that’s what my wife says. She gets to choose the wallpaper in our house, not me. I just pay for it.’

Thummel was about forty. He had dark hair which, like almost everyone wearing a German uniform, he wore very short at the sides so that what was on top of his skull resembled a little cap. His face was sharp and he had a very pronounced hook nose that looked as if it was trying its best to meet halfway his equally prominent chin. He was friendly and as smoothly confident as you might have expected of a man wearing a gold Party badge, a first-class Iron Cross, a decent cologne, and a silver wedding band.

‘Any suspects yet?’

‘It’s still a little early for that, Major.’

‘Hmm. Bad business all round. Leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth to think that some fellow sitting next to you at dinner might have murdered some other fellow you knew in cold blood.’

‘Have you anyone in mind?’

‘Who me? No.’ Thummel crossed his legs, took hold of the shin of his boot and hugged it toward him like an oar in a two-man scull. ‘But fire away with your questions, Commissar, all the same.’

‘Are you feeling better today?’

‘Hmm?’

‘The hangover?’

‘Oh, that. Yes. Fine thanks. I’ll say one thing for Heydrich, he keeps a spectacular cellar. Himmler will be jealous when I tell him.’

That was a little heavy-handed, I thought. Just as he was doing so well creating an easygoing impression of himself he had to go and spoil it by mentioning Himmler, with whom he was quite probably familiar. I looked at Kahlo who rolled his eyes eloquently as if to suggest that in comparison to Kluckholn I was wasting my time – that Thummel was one of the people with a kind face and a good alibi he had been talking about.

‘Nevertheless, I shan’t be at all unhappy to go back to Dresden. I don’t feel at all comfortable here in Bohemia. Nothing to do with the Reichsprotector’s hospitality, of course. But there’s something about this country that makes you feel as if you might get your head bashed in on your way to church, like poor old King Wenceslas. Or that one might be defenestrated by a bunch of malodorous Hussites. Awkward, stinky mob, the Czechos. Always were. Right the way through history. Always will be. If you ask me the General’s got his work cut out with these bastards. You were in Paris before this, I hear.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t have to tell you how different Prague is from Paris. The Frenchies are nothing if not pragmatic. They know what side their bread is buttered on, for now. But the Czecho is a very different kettle of fish. He’s a real festering sore is your average Czecho. You mark my words, Commissar, there’s going to be a lot of blood spilled here if we’re ever going to hold on to this country.’

He frowned.

‘Sorry. Rattling on like a milkmaid as usual. You want to talk about poor old Captain Kuttner, don’t you? Not my opinion of the Czechos.’

‘I found a spent cartridge on the landing in front of your door. From a P38. Which would seem to indicate that a shot must have been fired in that vicinity. On the morning of the murder did you hear a shot fired?’

‘You mean in the house. Not outside. Seems to me there’s always someone shooting something out there. No, I didn’t hear a thing. Mind you, that night I slept like a pickled marmot after all the booze I’d consumed. Slept right through until about – let’s see now – well, it must have been about seven o’clock in the morning when I heard a couple of loud bangs. I got up to see what the commotion was about and Captain Pomme, I think, explained to me that he and the butler had been obliged to batter down Kuttner’s door, on account of how they thought he must have taken an overdose of barbitol. At least that’s what I think he said. So I wandered along to see if I could help and heard Dr Jury say that the poor fellow was dead. There was nothing I could do, of course, so I went back to bed. Stayed there until just about nine. Had a wash, dressed, came out my door again, and there you were, crawling around on the floor looking for that bullet casing. Frankly, I’ve been racking by brains ever since for a reason why anyone would have killed him. Not to mention how. The room door was locked and bolted from the inside, wasn’t it? Window bolted? And no murder weapon yet found. A regular mystery.’

I nodded.

‘I even had a look about the dead man’s bedroom last evening, in search of some inspiration. I’m not trying to show the hen how to lay an egg and all that but while I was there I found several floorboards underneath the rug that were loose. Loose enough to pull them up. There was a good space underneath them. Easily big enough for a decent-sized man to have hidden there. And it occurred to me that the murderer, with a sufficiently cool head, might have been lurking in there all the while that you were all in the room, on top of him, so to speak. Of course, he would have to have devised a means of replacing the floorboards on top of his place of concealment and then pulling the rug back. With a couple of lengths of fishing line, perhaps. Yes, that’s what I’d have used if it had been me in there. With a couple of strategically-placed nails on the skirting-board, you could have wound the rug in as easily as a venetian blind.’

I looked at Kahlo, who shrugged back at me.

‘Sorry.’ Thummel smiled ruefully. ‘I just sort of thought you ought to know. Really, I wasn’t trying to make you look a fool or anything, Commissar Gunther.’

‘Actually, sir, I seem to be managing that particular task perfectly well on my own.’

I sighed and stared up at the ceiling where, immediately above, Kuttner’s room was situated.

‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘You can’t think of everything. Such an investigation as you are trying to conduct in this house would try the patience and ingenuity of any mortal man. And look here, I am not saying that is where the murderer was hiding. I am merely suggesting it as a possibility, although not a strong one, I think.’

He shrugged.

‘However, I will say this. In the Abwehr we are constantly impressed by the resourcefulness and imagination of the enemy. Especially the Tommies. Desperation is the father of innovation, after all.’ He sighed. ‘I do not say that is how it was done, Commissar. I say only that is how it could have been done.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Don’t mention it, Commissar. I certainly won’t. If you receive my meaning.’

‘We had better go up there and take a look for ourselves.’

We all three stood up and moved, simultaneously, for the Morning Room door.

‘By the way, Major Thummel,’ I said, remembering the letter I had received from Berlin that morning. ‘Does the name Geert Vranken mean anything to you?’

‘Geert Vranken?’ Thummel paused for a moment and then shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why, should it?’

‘There was a murder investigation in Berlin this summer. The S-Bahn murderer? Vranken was a foreign worker on the railways who was interviewed by the police as a potential suspect and he mentioned a German officer who might be prepared to stand as a character witness for him.’

‘And you think that was me?’

‘I just received a letter from his father in the Netherlands and he said that his son had met a Captain Thummel, in The Hague, before the war, in 1939.’

‘Well, there you are, Commissar. It must be another officer called Thummel. Last time I was in The Hague was 1933. Or maybe thirty-four. But certainly not in 1939. In 1939, I was stationed in Paris. You know, Thummel is not an uncommon name. The maître d’ at the Adlon Hotel is called Thummel. Did you know that?’

‘Yes sir. I do know that. You’re right, it must be another officer called Thummel.’

Thummel grinned cheerfully. ‘Besides, I’m hardly in the habit of giving guest workers a character reference.’ He nodded upstairs. ‘But I don’t mind showing you those loose floorboards, Commissar.’

After Thummel had left Kuttner’s bedroom, Kahlo climbed into the space in the floor and waited patiently while I replaced the boards. Then I took them up again.

Kahlo climbed out, covered in dust.

‘Well, it’s possible, all right,’ I said. ‘But hardly probable.’

‘Why do you say that, sir?’

‘The amount of dust on you. If someone had been hidden there on Friday morning I’d have expected a little less dust than there is in there now. Or at least, was, until you got in there.’

I handed Kahlo the clothes brush I’d picked up from the top of the dresser.

‘Lucky it’s not a good suit,’ I said.

Kahlo growled an obscenity and began to brush off his jacket and trousers.

‘Depends on how much dust there was down there before, doesn’t it?’ he muttered.

‘Maybe.’

‘And with all of the cauliflower still pissed in their rooms, any one of them might have hidden himself in there and no one would have been any the wiser.’

‘I’ve looked at the rug, too, and I can see no means whereby someone drew the rug back over the boards while he was hidden down there. No fishing line; no nails on the skirting.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Kahlo, ‘the murderer has been back in here and removed them.’

‘Perhaps. Anyway, if the murderer did manage to conceal himself down there, that puts Kluckholn in the clear. Immediately after the murder, he was here in the room, remember? With you and me.’

‘Pity. But I still like him for it. And like you said yourself, it’s hardly probable, is it? That the killer would have hidden in here.’ Kahlo shook his head. ‘No, you’re right. Kluckholn must have done it some other way. It might just be that he turned himself into a bat.’

I grinned and shook my head. ‘He couldn’t have done it that way, either. The window was closed, remember?’

‘So the General says. We all assume that because he’s the General his evidence is one hundred per cent. What if he made a mistake about that? What if the window was open after all?’

‘Heydrich doesn’t make mistakes about things like that.’

‘Why not? He’s only human.’

‘Whatever gave you that impression?’

Kahlo shrugged.

‘It’ll be lunchtime soon,’ he said. ‘You could ask him then.’

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

‘Yeah sure. I meant what I said about that promotion, you know.’

He handed me the clothes brush and then turned around.

‘Do you mind, sir?’

I brushed the worst of it off his jacket and thought of Arianne brushing off my own jacket the previous day. I liked that she had been so particular about my appearance, straightening my tie, adjusting my shirt-collar, and always picking my trousers off the floor and tucking them under the mattress so that they might keep the crease. It was a caring touch I was missing already. By now she was probably across the Bohemian border and back in Germany and a lot safer than she was in Prague. I knew what Thummel had been talking about; there was something about Prague that I didn’t care for at all.

‘I’m looking forward to lunch,’ said Kahlo. He was sniffing the air like a big hungry dog. ‘Whatever it is smells good.’

‘Everything smells good to you.’

‘Everything except this case.’

‘True. Look, you go ahead, to lunch. I’m going to stay here for a while.’

‘And do what?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Stare at the floor. Listen to that crow outside the window. Shoot myself. Or perhaps pray for some inspiration.’

‘You’re not going to miss lunch, are you?’

Kahlo’s tone made this sound as serious as if I really was planning to shoot myself. Which wouldn’t have been so very far from the truth.

‘Now I come to think of it, that’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘Eating has a habit of interfering with my thinking. In that respect it’s almost as bad as beer. If I fast for a while maybe I’ll be given a vision as to how this murder was done. Yes, why not? Maybe if I starve myself like Moses for forty days and nights then perhaps the Almighty will just come and tell me who did it. Of course he might have to set the house on fire to get my full attention, but it’ll be worth it. Besides, I’m pretty sure I have a head start on Moses in one respect.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

I opened my cigarette case. ‘A smoke. A very small burning bush from whence a great deal of wisdom can be imparted. I reckon any one of those saints could have saved themselves a lot of time and discomfort with a simple cigarette.’

After Kahlo had left me alone with my angst I sat on the edge of Kuttner’s mattress and lit one, and when I’d had enough of looking at my cigarette’s little mystic trail of holy inspiration I decided to take a look around the house. With more or less everyone now gathered in the Dining Room I was able to go where I pleased without having to furnish an explanation of what I was doing. Besides, I wasn’t sure there was an explanation for what I was searching for. All I knew was that I needed to have an idea – any idea – and to have one fast.

Hearing a loud cheer downstairs in the Dining Room gave me my first idea. It wasn’t much of an idea but it had at least the merit of being practical. An experiment. An empirical test of an assumption I and everyone else had made right from the very beginning of the case.

I went along to my own bedroom and fetched the Walther PPK from my bag. Back in Kuttner’s room, I closed the door as best I could, racked one bullet into the chamber, fired the weapon twice in quick succession and then sat down to wait for whatever was going to happen. But if I had expected the shots to summon the arrival of a concerned group of officers in Kuttner’s room, I was wrong. A minute passed, then two; and after five minutes I was quite certain that no one was coming because no one had heard the shots. Of course this told me only that Kuttner might easily have been shot without anyone hearing or bothering to investigate the shots, but that still felt like something. It was one assumption I’d made that could easily be proved to have been false. And where there was one, there might easily be another.

I went back to my room and replaced the gun in my bag before heading out and along the landing with its blackamoor figures, the hunting-style leather chairs, the decorative Meissen and the less decorative framed photographs of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Bormann and von Ribbentrop. It was a home from home if you lived at the Berghof.

I was familiar with the more attractive parts of the Lower Castle, including the Library, the Dining Room, the Billiard Room, the Winter Garden, the Conference Room and the Morning Room; but there were other parts of which I knew nothing or which felt forbidden. Heydrich’s study certainly felt like it was out of bounds, even to someone who was supposed to be Heydrich’s detective. Outside the door I paused for a moment, knocked, and then, hearing no one and expecting to find the door locked, I turned the thick brass handle. The door opened. I went inside. I closed the heavy door behind me.

The room – one of the largest in the house – was quiet and cool; it felt more like a sepulchre than a study. I walked around for a good minute before I was retracing my footsteps, which, like a ghost’s, were completely silent in that room, as if I hardly existed at all. Heydrich could have arranged that, of course, and only too easily. As easily as emptying out the crystal ashtray on the desk which looked very clean and brightly polished. One of Kritzinger’s duties, perhaps?

I don’t know that I expected to find anything. I was just being nosy, but like any detective I felt I had the licence to indulge this tendency, which only feels like a vice when it is accompanied by something more venial like envy or greed. There was nothing in there I really coveted, although I had always wanted a nice desk with a comfortable office chair, but maybe this furniture was a little too grandiose for my purpose. All the same I sat down, spread my hands along the Reichsprotector’s desk, leaned back in his chair, glanced around the room for a moment, handled some of the books on his shelves – mostly popular fiction – looked over his many photographs, inspected the blotter for some recent correspondence – there wasn’t any – and then decided I was very glad I wasn’t Reinhard Heydrich. Not for all the world would I have changed places with that man.

The leather desk diary was full of appointments and not much else. There were many previous meetings at the Wolf’s Lair in Rastenburg, at the Berghof, at the Reich Chancellery; and future evenings at the circus – strangely, that was underlined – a day at Rastenburg, a weekend at Karinhall, a night at the Deutsches Opernhaus, Christmas at the Lower Castle, and then a January conference at an SS villa in Grosser Wannsee. As Heydrich’s detective would I be required to go to all of these places? Rastenburg? The Reich Chancellery? The thought of actually meeting Hitler filled me with horror.

I searched the wastepaper bin underneath the desk and found only a sock, with a hole in it. There were no office drawers for me to search. If Heydrich had secret files they were certainly kept somewhere secret. I looked around the room.

The safe I decided at last was behind the portrait of Hitler; and so it proved; but I wasn’t about to try and open it; even my impertinence had its limits. Besides, there were things I really didn’t want to know. Especially the secret things that Heydrich knew.

The heavily lined curtains looked like they belonged in a theatre and might easily have afforded me a hiding place if someone came into the study. The big windows were as thick as my little finger and quite possibly bullet-proof, too. At the back of the curtains were a couple of machine pistols and a box of grenades; Heydrich wasn’t leaving much to chance. If anyone attacked him in his house he clearly intended to defend himself to the last.

But did I want him or one of his adjutants to catch me in there? Perhaps. Being thrown out of his office might also have resulted in my being thrown off the case and sent back to Berlin in disgrace, which seemed like an outcome devoutly to be wished. But it didn’t happen and finally, after I’d been in there for almost fifteen minutes, I got up and went out onto the landing, still unobserved.

The next door along from Heydrich’s study was a suite of rather more feminine rooms – doubtless these had been set aside for Lina Heydrich – where, among the rose-patterned sofas, elegant chairs, and long mirrors, was a dressing table as big as a Messerschmitt.

I went downstairs and managed to creep unnoticed past the open door of the Dining Room, which was full of cauliflower; nearer the back garden I put my head around the door of a Play Room, and then a Nursery.

As yet I had no knowledge of the extensive servants’ quarters in the basement, so I descended a narrow flight of stairs and walked along a dimly lit corridor that seemed to serve as the spine and nervous system of the house. Even on a sunny day like this one, the stone-flagged basement corridor felt more like the lock-up at the Alex, although it smelled a lot better. Kahlo was right about that.

In the big kitchen several cooks were hard at work preparing the next course of lunch, which was being served by waiters whose faces were more familiar. They regarded me with suspicion and alarm. Fendler, the footman I’d spoken to earlier, who happened to be smoking a cigarette near the back door, came over and asked me if was lost. I said I wasn’t of course, but a little deterred by the horrified looks I was getting, I was about to return upstairs and get some lunch after all when, at the furthest, dimmest end of the corridor, a door opened and an SS sergeant whom I was certain I’d never seen before came out, closed the door carefully behind him, and then went into the room opposite.

In the moment before the door closed I saw a brightly lit, busy room containing what looked like a telephone switchboard, and thinking that this was as good a time as any to introduce myself in person – there was another call to the Alex I wanted to place – I went along the corridor and opened the door.

Immediately, a burly-looking SS corporal jumped up from a wooden bench, threw down his newspaper, and blocked my way. At the same time he kicked another door shut behind him, but not before I caught a glimpse of several large taperecorders and, seated in front of them, some more SS men wearing headphones.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the corporal, ‘but I’m afraid you can’t come in here.’

‘I’m a police officer.’ I showed him my warrant disc. ‘Commissar Gunther, from the Alex. General Heydrich has given me the run of the house to investigate a murder.’

‘I don’t care who you are, sir, you can’t come in here. This is a restricted area.’

‘What’s your name, Corporal?’

‘You don’t need to know that, sir. You don’t need to know anything about what happens in here. It doesn’t concern you or your particular investigation.’

‘My particular investigation? That’s my call, Corporal. Not yours. What is this place anyway? And what happens behind that door? It looks like Deutsches Grammophon in there.’

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you leave, sir. Right now.’

‘Corporal, did you know that you’re obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty? I have no intention of leaving until I have a full explanation of what’s going on in here.’

By now voices were raised, my own included, and there had been a certain amount of chest-on-chest pushing and shoving. I was angrier at myself than at the corporal – frustrated at having missed finding the loose floorboards before and now irritated to discover what looked to me like a listening post for eavesdropping on the house guests – only the corporal didn’t know that, and when someone appeared behind me in the door I had just come through and I turned around to see who this was, the corporal hit me. Hard.

I didn’t blame him. I didn’t blame anyone. Like raising your voice and arguing and pointing, blaming people is not something you can do when you’re heading down through the black hole that suddenly appears underneath your shoes. Doctor Freud didn’t give it a name and, strictly speaking, you only know what being unconscious really means if a thug with a hardwood fist like a Zulu’s knobkerrie has used this same lethal object to hit you expertly on the back of the neck, as if trying to kill a large and argumentative and rather gullible rabbit. No, wait, I did blame someone. I blamed myself. I blamed myself for not listening to the eavesdropping SS corporal in the first place. I blamed myself for missing the trick with the floorboards in Kuttner’s bedroom. I blamed myself for taking Heydrich at his word and thinking I really did have the run of the house to pursue my investigation. But mostly I just blamed myself for thinking it was even possible to behave like a real detective in a world that was owned and run by criminals.

I don’t suppose I was unconscious for longer than a couple of minutes. When I came to I could have wished it had been a lot longer. Another thing you can’t do when you’re unconscious is feel sick or have a splitting headache or wonder if you should dare to move your legs in case your neck really is broken. Ignoring the severe pain of opening my eyelids I opened my eyelids, and found myself staring down the blunderbuss-barrel of a large brandy balloon. It was a big improvement on a real blunderbuss, or the pistol that these circumstances usually produce. I took a deep, heady breath of the stuff and let it toast my adenoids for a moment before taking the glass from the hand that was holding it in front of me and then pouring all of the contents carefully – tipping my head meant moving my neck – down my throat.

I handed the glass back and found it was Kritzinger who took it from me.

I was in a neat little sitting room with a window onto the basement corridor, a small desk, a couple of easy chairs, a safe, and the chaise-longue I was lying on.

‘Where am I?’

‘This is my office, sir,’ said Kritzinger.

Behind him were two SS men, one of whom was the corporal who had argued with me a few minutes before. The other was Major Ploetz.

‘Who hit me?’

‘I did, sir,’ said the corporal.

‘What were you trying to do? Make a bell ring?’

‘Sorry about that, sir.’

‘No, don’t apologize. Kritzinger?’

‘Sir?’

‘Give this boy a piece of sugarloaf. I reckon he won it fair and square. The last time I got hit like that I was wearing a pointy hat and sitting in a trench.’

‘If only you’d listened to me, sir,’ said the corporal.

‘It looked to me as if that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.’ I rubbed the back of my neck and groaned. ‘To me and everyone else in this house.’

‘Orders are orders, sir.’

Ploetz put his hand on my shoulder. ‘How are you feeling, Captain?’ He sounded oddly solicitous, as if he really did care.

‘Really, sir,’ insisted the corporal. ‘If I’d known it was you, sir—’

‘It’s all right, Corporal,’ Ploetz said smoothly. ‘I’ll handle things from here.’

‘Sure, doc, sure,’ I said. ‘You can pretend there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for all that recording equipment and while you’re at it, I’ll pretend I’m a proper detective. Right now the only thing I am absolutely certain of is the quality of that brandy. Better pour me another, Kritzinger. I pretend better when I’ve had a drink.’

‘Don’t give him any,’ Ploetz told Kritzinger. And then: ‘Your tongue is quite loose enough as it is, Gunther. We wouldn’t want you to say something to your own detriment. Especially not now you’re in the General’s good books.’

I ignored this. It didn’t sound right. Clearly the blow on the back of my neck had affected my hearing.

‘That’s right, doc. We’ve got to be careful what we say. What is it that the sign says? Attention! The enemy is listening. Well, they are. And they’re pretty good at it, too. Aren’t you, boys? What were you listening to anyway? And don’t tell me it was the Leader talking about the Winter Relief. Something in the Meeting Room? Something in the bedrooms? Maybe you’ve got a recording of Kuttner getting shot. That might come in useful. For me, anyway. Something in the Morning Room? Me, perhaps. Only what would be the point in that? I don’t mind calling you all crooks and liars to your ugly faces. Just see if I don’t.’

Ploetz moved his head in the direction of the door and the two SS men started to leave.

‘Look, Gunther,’ Ploetz said, ‘I think it might be better if you returned to your room and had a lie-down. I’ll inform the General of what’s happened. Under the circumstances, he’ll want to know you’re all right.’

At this moment a lie-down looked very appealing.

Ploetz went outside while Kritzinger helped me to my feet.

‘Are you all right, sir? Would you like me to help you back to your room?’

‘Thanks no, I’ll manage. I’m used to it. It’s an occupational hazard for a policeman, being hit. It comes of sticking my nose in where it’s not wanted. I should know better by now. It used to be that a detective could turn up at a country house, question everyone, find some recognizable clues, and then arrest the butler over chilled cocktails in the library. But it hasn’t worked out like that, I’m afraid, Kritzinger. I’m afraid you won’t be getting your big moment when everyone realizes what a clever fellow you’ve been.’

‘That is disappointing, sir. Perhaps you would care for another brandy after all.’

I shook my head. ‘No. I expect Doctor Ploetz is right. I do talk too much. It comes of not having any answers. I don’t suppose you know who shot Captain Kuttner.’

‘No, sir.’

He smiled a fleeting smile and then scratched the back of his head, awkwardly.

‘Pity.’

‘You understand, sir, that there are lots of things in this house I prefer not to hear, but if these things had included a shot, or perhaps a snippet of conversation that might shed some light on his unfortunate death, then I should certainly tell you, Commissar. Really I would. However, I am certain there’s nothing I can tell you.’

I nodded. ‘Well, that’s very good of you to say so, Kritzinger. I really think you mean that. And I appreciate you saying it.’

‘Really?’ The smile flickered on again for just a second. ‘I wonder.’

‘No, I do.’

‘I flatter myself that perhaps I know your own independent cast of mind. One can’t help but hear things in a house like this.’

‘So I noticed.’

‘Consequently, I know you believe that I think in a certain way only, for what it’s worth, I don’t. I never have. I am a good German. Like you, perhaps, I don’t know what else to be. But unlike you, I am not a courageous man, if you follow me.’

‘That Iron Cross ribbon in your buttonhole says otherwise, Mister Kritzinger.’

‘Thank you, sir. But that was then. I think things were simpler in that war, were they not? Courage was perhaps easier to recognize not only in oneself but in others as well. Well, I was younger then. I have a wife now. And a child. And long ago I concluded that the only practical course of action available to me was simply to do as I’m told.’

‘Me, too.’

I headed for the stairs a little unsteadily. It had been a very German conversation.

As I passed the dining room I noticed that lunch was finishing. Seeing me, Heydrich made his excuses to the other cauliflower and, smiling, nodded toward the Drawing Room.

It wasn’t every day that Heydrich smiled at me. I followed him, and he led me to the French windows and out onto the terrace where he offered me one of his cigarettes and even condescended to light it for me. He did not smoke one himself. And he seemed oddly cheerful considering that Vaclav Moravek continued to elude the Gestapo. I had only ever seen him like this once before, and that had been in June 1940, after the French capitulation.

‘Major Ploetz told me what happened to you below stairs,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘I should have informed you about the SD listening station but really, I’ve had so much on my plate. As if I didn’t have enough to do here in Bohemia with the Three Kings and UVOD and the traitor X. Reichsmarshal Göring has tasked me to submit to him a comprehensive draft as to how we can sort out the way the Jews are being handled in all new territories under German influence. Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what things are like in the East. It’s nothing short of chaos. But that’s hardly your concern.

‘But to come back to the traitor X: as you know, all of the guests in this house were under suspicion in that respect. However, by a simple process of elimination our intelligence analysts had narrowed down the search for the traitor’s identity to one of six or seven officers. Consequently everything these men said on the least of subjects was of interest to us. Which is why some of the rooms in the Lower Castle have concealed microphones, just in case one of them should let something important slip.’

‘You mean, like the Pension Matzky.’

Heydrich nodded. ‘You know about the microphones, do you?’ He grinned. ‘Yes, like the Pension Matzky.’

‘And do these rooms here include the Morning Room?’

‘Yes, they do.’

My stomach turned over for a moment; not for my own sake – as far as Heydrich was concerned, I was a hopeless case – but for Kurt Kahlo’s, and I started to rack my brains for anything he had said that might have been interpreted as evidence of his disloyalty.

‘So you’ve heard everything that was said in there?’

‘No, not me personally. But I’ve read some of the transcripts.’

‘Kuttner’s room?’

‘No. My fourth adjutant was hardly important enough to have rated that level of surveillance.’ Heydrich made a face. ‘Which is a pity, because if he had been, then of course we would now know who it was who pumped two bullets into his chest.’

I let out a weary sigh and tried to put some sort of tolerant, understanding face on what had just been revealed to me.

‘In my book, a traitor is a traitor. I can easily see why you should wish to employ every method at your disposal in order to catch him. Including secret microphones. But I just hope you’ll excuse some of my Criminal Assistant Kahlo’s looser talk in the Morning Room. You can blame me for a lot of that. He’s a good man. I’m afraid I’ve been a bad influence on him.’

‘On the contrary, Gunther. It’s thanks to you and your unconventional, not to say insubordinate methods, that the traitor has now been revealed. In fact, everything has worked out exactly as I had hoped it would. You, Gunther, have been the catalyst that changed everything. I don’t know who to congratulate more: me for having the inspiration of bringing you here in the first place, or you for your own stubbornly independent cast of mind.’

I felt my face take on an expression of disbelief.

‘Yes, it’s quite true. It seems that we owe you everything in this matter, Gunther. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that your immediate reward should have been to be knocked unconscious by one of our more robust colleagues in the SD. For which, once again, I offer my sincere apologies. You were after all merely doing your job. A job well done. For even as we speak the traitor is under close arrest and on his way to Gestapo headquarters in Prague.’

‘But who was it? The traitor.’

‘It was Major Thummel. Paul Thummel, of the Abwehr.’

‘Thummel. He’s a man with a gold Party badge, isn’t he?’

‘I did say it would turn out to be someone who was apparently above reasonable suspicion.’

‘But he’s also a friend of Himmler.’

Heydrich smiled. ‘Yes. And that is something of a bonus. The acute embarrassment that this particular association will cause the Reichsführer will be a great pleasure to behold. I can’t wait to see Himmler’s face when I tell the Leader. For that same reason, however, it’s by no means certain that we’ll make any of this stick against Thummel. We shall, of course, do our best.’

I nodded. ‘I’m beginning to understand. It has something to do with that letter I received this morning from the Netherlands, doesn’t it?’

‘It does indeed. You asked Major Thummel if he was the same Captain Thummel who was in The Hague in 1939. He denied it, of course. Now why? Why would that be of any interest to you? But this was a lie. It was a matter of only a few minutes to check through a record of his military service. When Thummel was a captain in 1939, he passed through The Hague on his way to Paris. We know he was in The Hague because he visited our military attaché at the German Embassy. But while he was in The Hague we also think he met secretly with his Czech controller, a man named Major Franck. Franck and Thummel shared a Dutch girlfriend named Inge Vranken. I shall want to see your letter of course, but it rather looks as if Inge Vranken was your friend Geert’s little sister.

‘We suspect Thummel has been spying for the Czechos since as early as February 1936. For a long time he was using a radio transmitter to send messages here, to Prague. As you are aware we were intercepting some of that radio traffic; what we called the OTA intercepts. The Czechos called him A54. Don’t ask me why. Call sign probably. The radio messages were forwarded by courier to the Czech government in exile in London. That went on for quite a while. But then Thummel began to get scared. He stopped using the radio transmitter altogether. And to all intents and purposes it looked as if he had closed up shop, thus narrowing our chances of getting him.

‘We suspect that UVOD despaired of having lost their best agent. Not least because his material had put the exiled Benes government in London in very good odour with Winston Churchill. No more intelligence meant no more operational scraps from the top table. So the UVOD people set out to re-establish contact with him in Berlin, in person; and for a while that did the trick. But with the net closing in, he lost his nerve for that, too. Frankly I think he’s been expecting this for a while.’

‘But why? Why would an old Party comrade – a man with the confidence of Hitler – why would such a man spy for the Czechos? Why spy at all?’

‘That’s a good question. And I’m afraid I don’t yet know the answer. He’s still denying everything, of course. It’s likely to be several days before we have any idea of the reason behind his treason, or even the full extent of his treachery.’

Was it possible that Thummel had been Gustav? For a moment I pictured Thummel in the hands of the local Gestapo and wondered how long it might take them to beat ‘the full extent of his treachery’ out of the man.

‘Surely it won’t take your people that long.’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘Actually it will. As I said, Thummel has vitamin B. We shall have to question him quite carefully. Himmler would never forgive me if I had him tortured. In the short term at least we can but hope that close interrogation will find holes in his story.’

‘I understand.’

Heydrich nodded, silently.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good work, Gunther. As my personal detective you are off to a flying start, I think.’

He was heading back through the French windows when I spoke again.

‘What I don’t entirely understand, General, is why you murdered Captain Kuttner.’

Heydrich stopped and turned slowly on the heel of his shoe.

‘Hmm?’

‘It was you who killed your own adjutant. That I am certain of. I know how you did it. I just don’t know why you did it. I mean why bother to murder him when you had ample opportunity to have him court-martialled? No, I don’t understand that. Not entirely. And I certainly don’t understand exactly why you had me go to all the trouble of investigating a murder that you yourself had committed.’

Heydrich didn’t say anything. It seemed he was waiting for me to do some more talking before he said anything. So I did. It felt like I was talking my own neck into a noose, but it was hard to imagine it being any more painful than it was now.

‘Of course, I have a few ideas on that score. But first, if you’ll permit me, sir, let me deal with how you killed him.’

Heydrich nodded. ‘I’m listening.’

‘I see you haven’t denied it.’

‘To you?’ Heydrich laughed. ‘Gunther, there are about three people in the world to whom I ever need to justify myself, and you’re not one of them. Nevertheless, I should like to hear your explanation of the solution to the crime, as you see it.’

‘On the night before he was murdered, you gave Kuttner a dose of Veronal, which unwittingly he drank in a glass of beer. It was the only thing Kuttner drank that night, as he knew to avoid mixing the drug with alcohol. But I bet you persuaded him to have just the one. Everyone else was celebrating, after all. And what an honour to be served by you. I should have thought beer was perfect for your purposes. It wasn’t so alcoholic that he might refuse. And of course beer is bitter, so Kuttner wouldn’t ever have tasted the significant dose of the drug with which you’d doctored it.

‘But doctor it you certainly did. Kritzinger reports seeing Kuttner looking very tired at around two. So the drug was already working its effect. But Kuttner didn’t know that, so when he got back to his room he took his regular dose of Veronal and actually passed out with one of the pills still in his throat. Which accounts for how he only had one boot off. My guess is that you wanted him to sleep extra soundly, although why you didn’t just do him in with an overdose, I’m not sure. Possibly you wanted to make sure he was indeed dead and there is, as you must know, always something uncertain about an overdose. It’s amazing just how much people can swallow without dying. But a bullet is much more certain. Especially when it’s fired point-blank to the heart.

‘In the morning, you let Captain Pomme and Kritzinger try to rouse him before making sure that you were on the scene to authorize them to break down the door. And being a General, naturally you were first into the bedroom, which meant you were also the one who was able to take charge and examine Kuttner’s drugged body and pronounce him dead. Naturally, they took your word for it, General. You’re not an easy man to contradict, sir.

‘Judging by his appearance, of course, it hardly looked at all probable that he was still alive. He was half dressed from the night before, and there was an open bottle of Veronal on the bedside table, so everyone assumed that the obvious explanation was the correct one: Kuttner had taken an overdose, possibly intentionally – after all, most of his fellow officers were aware he’d had some sort of breakdown – and was dead. No one suspected that he had been shot because the fact is he hadn’t been shot. Not at that moment. At that moment he was only unconscious.

‘Having ordered Kritzinger to call an ambulance and Captain Pomme to fetch Doctor Jury, you were now alone in the room with the Captain’s unconscious body. Doctor Jury’s room is in the other wing of the house, so you knew Pomme would take several minutes to return with him. Apart from the telephone in your office, the nearest telephone is on the ground floor, so Kritzinger was far away, too. All the same, you probably waited a few minutes just to make sure that no one was around before closing the door as best you were able. There was now plenty of time for you to produce a gun from inside your fencing jerkin, pull aside his tunic and coolly fire two shots in rapid succession into Kuttner’s body at close range, killing him instantly. Because he was still wearing his tunic, the gunshot wounds were not immediately obvious to anyone who had already seen the body. Moreover these wounds didn’t bleed much either because Kuttner was lying on his back. Not to mention the convenient effect that the extra Veronal would have had on the dead man’s blood pressure.’

Heydrich listened patiently, still denying nothing. Folding his arms he placed a thoughtful finger across his thin lips. He might have been considering some plan for the evacuation of Prague’s Jews.

‘You put the gun back inside your jerkin. Then you opened the window, just to help ventilate the room a little more, just in case someone caught a whiff of the shots. When you opened the window, that’s when you saw the footman, Fendler, with the ladder; you told him that the ladder was no longer required; that poor Kuttner was dead of an overdose, because after all, you were obliged to pay lip service to what at that moment everyone else believed.

‘Then you did a quick search on the bed and the floor for the spent brass. You wanted to pick this up so that you could help to muddy the waters and add to the mystery that was bound to attach to a murder in a room locked from inside. That might have taken a while. They’re elusive things when you need to find them in a hurry. Of course, if someone had entered the room you would have given some excuse about looking for clues. After all, there were pills on the floor. You were just picking them up. You are a policeman, after all. Maybe it was you who chucked them there for effect. Set dressing, so to speak. But to me it never seemed right that the Veronal bottle remained upright on the table when there were pills on the floor.

‘Having found the two spent brass cartridges, you flung them along the corridor, lit a cigarette to help conceal the smell of the two shots – although, as I discovered for myself a little while ago, it isn’t particularly noticeable, and certainly no more noticeable than the noise of two shots. I fired my own pistol in Kuttner’s room while you were all eating lunch and, of course, no one noticed a thing. Most people assume a noise like that is something else, something a little less dramatic. A car backfiring. A vase of flowers knocked over. A door slammed by a careless footman. Of course you already know that. I’ll bet you even conducted a similar experiment yourself when you were planning this whole thing.

‘It was about then that Captain Pomme and Doctor Jury arrived in the room. Doctor Jury was a good choice. For one thing Jury was possibly still drunk, and at the very least badly hungover, and he probably didn’t even notice that the dead man was still bleeding, only that he’d been shot. Again no one was about to suspect your own first version of events. Besides, there was now an even bigger mystery in front of everyone’s eyes, which is how a man could be found shot dead in a room locked on the inside with no murder weapon on the scene. It’s a useful thing, mystery. Any stage conjurer knows the value of misdirection. You draw attention to what one hand is doing while the other hand does the dirty work.

‘People do love a good mystery, don’t they? You included, General. Perhaps you more than most. On your bookshelves I found a well-read copy of a detective novel by that writer you mentioned to me when I arrived here: Agatha Christie. It’s a novel called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And I only had to flick through it for a few minutes to see that the book contains certain similarities with this case. A body in a locked room. Only that person, Roger Ackroyd, isn’t dead at all; not in the beginning; and it’s the person who supposedly finds the body – Doctor Sheppard, isn’t it? – who turns out to be the murderer. As indeed you are. In fact, I wouldn’t mind betting that’s where you got the idea in the first place.

‘But my neck and my head hurt and I just can’t figure out why. Why would you murder your mother’s favourite piano pupil? It couldn’t be that, could it? Jealousy? No, not you. That would be much too human of you, General Heydrich, sir. No, there has to be some other reason. Something much more important than personal revenge.’

I paused and lit another cigarette.

‘Well, don’t stop there,’ said Heydrich. ‘You’re doing so well and I have to confess I’m actually quite impressed. This is more than I had expected of you, Gunther.’ He nodded firmly. ‘Keep going. I insist.’

‘For old time’s sake, you’d rescued Albert Kuttner’s career. That was oddly sentimental of you. And quite out of character, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir. Or perhaps you did it at someone else’s request. Kuttner’s father. Your mother, perhaps.’

‘You’d best leave my mother out of this, Gunther, if you don’t mind.’

‘Gladly. You’d rescued Albert Kuttner’s career only to discover that, as you told me yourself, he was a disappointment. More than just a disappointment, he’d become something of a nuisance, even an embarrassment. Kuttner was insubordinate. For example, there was that scene at the Officers’ Training School with Colonel Jacobi. And what was worse, you had found out he was quite possibly homosexual, too. After what happened to Ernst Röhm and some of his warmer friends in the SA, that was too much. Did you worry that you might be tainted with an association like that? I wonder. In Germany it’s one thing to be suspected of being a Jew, as you are, and quite another to be suspected of being soft on homosexuals. Even then, however, you could have sent Kuttner quietly back to Berlin. To one of those nice private clinics in Wannsee where top Nazis go to dry out or be weaned off drugs. Some of them even claim they can cure you of homosexuality. So you must have had an important reason to murder him in cold blood like that. There must have been some sort of gain in it for you. But what?’

‘Excellent. You’re almost there.’

Heydrich lit a cigarette and looked very amused, as if I was telling him a very funny story. It made me suspect that he had a better punch-line than the one I had written myself. But I was in too far now to stop.

‘Everything you do has a reason, doesn’t it, General? Whether it’s murdering Jews or murdering your own adjutant.’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘Don’t get sidetracked,’ he said. ‘Keep to the point.’

‘But why have me investigate the murder? At first I assumed it was because you thought I wasn’t up to the job; that you wanted me to screw up; but that was too obvious. You could have picked anyone for the job. Willy Abendschoen from the local Kripo is a good man, I hear. Clever. Efficient. Or you could have picked someone more pliable than either of us. Unless of course that was exactly what you wanted. Someone who doesn’t care about his future in the SD. Someone who is just pig-headed enough to ask the difficult questions that the cauliflowers might not care to answer. Someone for whom advancement and promotion is not an issue. Me. Yes, that must be it. You picked me to handle the investigation of Kuttner’s murder because you really wanted me to search for your spy. You used the murder of Kuttner as a pretext for a secret spy hunt.’

‘Now you’re on to it,’ said Heydrich.

‘You couldn’t risk some flat-footed idiot questioning all of your spy suspects about being the traitor X, or A54, or whatever he’s called; not without putting them on their guard. But if I questioned them all about something else, something serious that necessitated their being detained here, then all of them might relax, more or less, since each knew he was innocent of murder. And of course my conversations with them were being recorded, transcribed, picked over by your own SD analysts for something small, an inconsistency, perhaps. A clue. Real evidence. You didn’t know exactly what it was, but you thought you would recognize it when you saw it. And you’re right. That’s all a clue really is. I have to hand it you, sir; it’s clever. Utterly ruthless, but clever.’

Heydrich clapped his hands three times. To me it sounded almost ironic, but there was it seemed some genuine appreciation in his congratulations.

‘Well done. I underestimated you, Gunther. I’ve always assumed that as a policeman you were the more muscular type. Tough, resourceful, and irritatingly dogged, but hardly intellectual. It seems I was wrong about that. You have a much better brain than I gave you credit for. I had hoped you might uncover the spy, it’s true. But I did not expect you would also solve the murder. That has been a real bonus. But now I really am intrigued. I want to know. I must have made a mistake. Exactly how did you conclude that it was me who shot Captain Kuttner?’

‘Sorry to disappoint you. It wasn’t anything clever, at all.’

‘Oh, come on. You’re being unnecessarily modest.’

‘Actually you told me yourself. Just a few minutes ago. Only I and the doctor who carried out the autopsy knew that Kuttner had been shot twice. Even Jury didn’t notice that. And I kept it secret in the hope that eventually the real killer would mention two shots when everyone else believes that it was just the one shot that killed him.’

Heydrich frowned. ‘Is that all?’

To my delight he sounded disappointed.

‘What else is there? I’m not one for crossword puzzles, General. Or detective novels. Actually I really can’t stand them. Me, I’m just a plain, old-fashioned cop. And you described me rather well a moment ago when you said I was irritatingly dogged. I don’t have the better brain you gave me credit for. These days I wouldn’t know what to do with it. You see, sir, most murders aren’t complicated. People just think they are. The same goes for the detection process. There are no great scenes of revelation. There’s just the small stuff. And that’s where I come in. Really, if detective work was as difficult as it seems in the books, then they wouldn’t let cops do it.’

‘Yes, I take your point.’ Heydrich sighed. ‘But now I have another question. And perhaps you should answer this one more carefully.’

I nodded.

‘What do you think you’re going to do about it?’

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. What could I do against a man of Heydrich’s standing and authority?

‘What I mean is: are you intending to try to arrest me, perhaps? To make a scene.’

‘You murdered someone, General.’

‘You’re right, of course. And I did regret having rescued Kuttner’s career. I could have lived with his behaviour in and after Latvia. What happened to him there is by no means unusual – which is of course why Reichsmarshal Göring has charged me with finding a better solution to this problem. I could even have lived with his behaviour to Colonel Jacobi. The two of them have some history, it seems; however, Jacobi is a prick and frankly anyone who gets the better of that man is to be admired rather than condemned.

‘But I was shocked when Berlin’s Gestapo informed me that my own adjutant was probably homosexual. Not that he was very obvious about it; indeed I was so sceptical that I sent him along to Pension Matzky, where I’m afraid to say he disgraced himself with a girl called Grete. When he failed to perform with her, unfortunately she mocked his inadequacy and earned herself a beating. He was very apologetic about it afterwards; he even sent her some flowers by way of compensation; most bizarrely he then seems to have adopted an entirely opposite opinion of the poor girl and decided that he felt some romantic attachment for her. I’m sure there are medical explanations for his mental state. But if there are, I have no time for them. That was when I decided to get rid of him. I dislike men who are violent to women almost as much as I dislike men who are unreliable.

‘Anyway, if I had sent him back to Berlin in disgrace it wouldn’t have been long before he disgraced himself again and, more importantly, disgraced his family in Halle. I couldn’t have that. I am very fond of those people. Fond enough to want to spare them any further pain. So I thought it was better for him to be quietly murdered by me in a way that can be easily hushed up rather than allow his family to endure the public disgrace that would follow his being sentenced to some SS punishment battalion. Indeed, it already seems to me much more probable that at some stage in the hopefully not too distant future Captain Kuttner will become an unfortunate victim of Vaclav Moravek, and heroically shot by him while trying to assist in the Czech terrorist’s arrest. We may even have to award him a posthumous decoration. That’s a story that should play well at home, don’t you think?’

‘Why not? He is as good a Nazi hero as any others I can think of.’

Heydrich smirked. ‘Yes, I thought you might approve. You were wrong about one thing, however. I couldn’t ever have risked wasting so much time searching for my spent brass on the floor of Kuttner’s room. So, I had the gun inside a sock, so that it could be fired without any of the spent brass being ejected onto the floor or the bed. It all stayed safely inside the sock. Until as you say, I threw it into the corridor. Anyway, having decided to kill him – it was as you say The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that gave me the idea of how to do it – I then wondered if I might put his death to some useful purpose. If I could rely on you to be your usual awkward self and pose a lot of awkward questions to people like Henlein, Frank, von Eberstein, Hildebrandt, Thummel and von Neurath, whom we’ve had our doubts about for some time. And you came up trumps. Nothing you’ve said can spoil what I’m feeling now. And you’ll no doubt be pleased to discover that you will have advanced my reputation even further. The apprehension of the traitor X will put me in very good odour with the Leader. Ever since the invasion of Poland, the traitor has been a thorn in our side. No more. And my triumph will be complete just as soon as the third of the Three Kings is in my hands. You see, now that I have Thummel, it can’t be very long before everything is neatly wrapped up.’

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘I’m not about to let you get away with murder, General.’

‘We’re getting away with it every minute,’ murmured Heydrich. ‘I thought you knew that.’

‘Kuttner had it coming for all I know, but even in the SS there are standards that have to be adhered to. Military discipline. Due process. Probably it will cost me my job. Even my life, but I can at least try to bring you down.’

‘You’re a fool if you think you can bring me down. But then I think you know that already, don’t you? It’s certainly true, you can cause a bit of trouble for me, Gunther. Himmler won’t thank me for exposing Paul Thummel; and naturally the investigation will have to be entirely above reproach. Very possibly that will involve you. In which case I can hardly have you shot or sent to a concentration camp. No, I can see I’m going to have to provide you with a better, more urgent reason than your loyalty to me, one that will make sure you keep your mouth shut about all of this.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen, sir. Not this time.’

‘Do try to be sporting about this, Gunther. At least let me try.’

‘If you like.’

Heydrich threw away his cigarette and glanced at his wristwatch.

‘We’ll go straight to Gestapo headquarters. There, if you wish, you can make out your own report, in as much detail as you like. Pecek Palace is the proper place to bring charges against me. That is, if I can’t provide you with a better reason than simple self-preservation.’

‘I dare say you have people there who can persuade anyone to do anything.’

‘Oh, you misunderstand me, Gunther. You weren’t listening, perhaps. I said I was going to give you a much better reason to keep your mouth shut than self-preservation, and I meant it. You’re quite safe from that sort of thing, I can assure you. I’m going to give you something much more compelling than violence against your person, Gunther. Shall we?’

I nodded, but something told me that I had already lost. That this was one murderer who was almost certain to get away quite unscathed.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon when Heydrich and I got into the Mercedes with Klein and started out for the centre of Prague. No one said very much but it was obvious that Heydrich was in a good humour, humming a pleasant-sounding melody that was the very opposite to the threnody playing inside my own thick skull.

Nearing the railway line that led west to Masaryk Station, we overtook a horse-drawn hearse headed south, for the Olsany Cemetery. The mourners walking behind looked at Heydrich with baleful eyes as if somehow they held him responsible for the death of the person they were escorting to church. For all I knew that was true, and the sight of his distinctive SS car must have been like catching a glimpse of the grim reaper himself. You could feel the hate following us like X-rays and despite Heydrich’s overbearing confidence that he was invincible, it was clear to me that the hatred directed at him could just as easily have been a hail of machine-gun bullets. An ambush was the best way to kill Heydrich, and once you were in that car, anything might happen. If it had happened right then and there, I wouldn’t have minded that much.

By the time we reached the outskirts of the city what little confidence I had of making something stick to Heydrich had faded. Optimism has its limits. I was an idealist and ahead of me lay an unpleasant, possibly painful, even fatal demonstration of just where idealism could get you. A jail cell. A beating. A train ride to the concentration camp being built around the fortress of Terezin. A bullet in the back of the head. Heydrich might have assured me I was safe but I had little confidence in his assurances; and thoughts of my own peril overpowered any other ideas of just what the man sitting in front of the car – whose own mind seemed more preoccupied with Schubert and his trout – had in store to deflect me from any attempt to bring charges against him.

So we drove on to what promised to be some sort of final reckoning between us.

Pecek Palace, formerly a Czech bank, was part of a government area that was home to several tall and rusticated grey buildings any one of which could have been Gestapo headquarters. But the real HQ was easy to spot at the end of the street, surrounded as it was with checkpoints and bedecked with two long Nazi banners. It was a grim, granite edifice that was a near-copy of the Gestapo’s central HQ in Berlin’s Prinz Albrechtstrasse, with huge cast-iron lamps that belonged on an ogre’s castle, and a Doric-columned portico that might have seemed elegant but for several SS men who were grouped out front, easily recognizable with their leather coats, pork-knuckle faces and pugilist’s manners. None of them looked as though they would have turned a short hair to see a defenestrated Czech crash onto the black cobbles in front of their cold eyes. Five storeys above the street the balustrade featured stone vases that resembled giant funeral urns. Certainly it wouldn’t have surprised the Czechs to have been told that this was what these were used for. After three years of occupation the Gestapo at Pecek Palace had the most fearsome reputation in all of Europe.

Klein stopped the car at the entrance and the guards came to attention. I followed Heydrich through the wrought-iron doors and up a short, shiny limestone staircase that was lit by a large brass chandelier. At the top of the stairs were some glass double-doors lined with green curtains and in front of these were two SS guards, a pair of Nazi flags, and between them a portrait of the Leader – the one by Heinrich Knirr that made him look like a queer hairdresser. To the left was a reception area where I presented my identification and endured the awl-like scrutiny of the uniformed NCO on duty.

‘Tell Colonel Bohme to come and fetch us,’ Heydrich told the NCO. And then to me: ‘I’m lost in here.’

‘A common experience, I imagine.’

‘Bohme is the one who thought he could solve Kuttner’s murder,’ said Heydrich.

‘Are you going to tell him or shall I?’

‘Oh, I know you find it hard to credit, but I take a lot of vicarious pleasure in your solving Kuttner’s murder. I mean I can admire it as a piece of reasoning. And I’m very much looking forward to seeing the expression on his stupid Saxon face.’

‘I’d been kind of looking forward to that myself. Bohme was the other officer who straightened Kuttner’s tie after your speech the other night. When he rescued the maid, Rosa, from Henlein’s clumsy drunken pass. I shall miss the opportunity of making him feel like he had something to hide.’

‘You’re a natural contrarian, Gunther,’ observed Heydrich. ‘I think your problem is not with the Nazis, it’s with all authority. You just don’t like being told what to do.’

‘Maybe.’

I glanced around.

‘Major Thummel’s here?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Is Bohme questioning him?’

‘Abendschoen is leading the interrogation. He’s much more agile than Bohme. If anyone can trip Thummel up without breaking skin, it’s Willy Abendschoen.’

A minute or two passed before we heard footsteps coming up the broad stairs.

Bohme arrived at the top of the stairs and marched smartly across the hall and into the reception area. He saluted in the usual Nazi way, and under the circumstances I didn’t bother returning the compliment; but Heydrich did.

‘Let’s go and see the prisoner, shall we?’ said Heydrich.

Bohme led the way back across the hall and downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs we walked on through a warren of unpleasant smelling and dimly lit corridors and cells.

‘I hear it’s down to you, Captain Gunther, that we found Thummel was the traitor,’ Bohme told me. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

Bohme paused outside a cell door. ‘Here we are.’

‘Not only that but he has also solved the murder of Captain Kuttner,’ said Heydrich.

‘Then you’ve really covered yourself in glory, haven’t you?’ said Bohme. ‘So who did it?’

I glanced at Heydrich.

‘What’s the game, General?’ I said. ‘If you’ve got a card to play here, then you’d better play it, only don’t treat me like an idiot.’

‘In spite of all that, an idiot is what you are,’ said Heydrich. ‘A very clever idiot. Only a clever man could have deduced who murdered Captain Kuttner, how and why. But only an idiot could have behaved as you did.’

Heydrich pushed open the door to a large interrogation room that was complete with stenographer, several wooden chairs, some chains hanging from the ceiling, and an en suite bath. Besides the stenographer there were two largish men in the room and a naked woman.

‘Only an idiot could have been so easily duped by the Czechs,’ said Heydrich. ‘By her.’

He pointed at the girl.

It was almost as well he identified her because she was nearly unrecognizable.

The naked girl was Arianne Tauber.

As soon as I saw Arianne I moved to help her and found myself solidly restrained by Bohme and another largish man who’d been standing, unseen by me, behind the heavy wooden door of the interrogation room; restrained and then, on Heydrich’s order, searched for a non-existent weapon and quickly manacled on a length of chain to a cast-iron radiator as big as a mattress, safely out of harm’s way.

I hauled at the chain attached to my wrists and swore loudly, but no one was paying much attention to me. I was like a dog that had been safely kennelled, or worse.

Heydrich laughed, and that was the cue for the others to do the same. Even the stenographer, a young hatchet-faced woman in SS uniform, shook her head and smiled as if she was genuinely amused by my threats and bad language. Then she straightened the little forage cap she was wearing and adjusted the grip that kept it on her head. She must have sensed me wishing I could have smacked it onto the floor.

I glanced around the windowless room. It was as big as a chapel in a disused church. The walls were tiled in pea-green. Dusty bare light bulbs hung from the heavily cobwebbed ceiling. The floor was covered with pools of water. There was a slight smell of excrement in the cold air. I hauled some more upon my chain, to no effect. It seemed my situation was as helpless as Arianne’s seemed hopeless.

She did not move. Her battered purple eyes remained closed like sea anemones. Her wet hair was coiled around her face like dark yellow snakes on the head of a dead Medusa. There was blood in her nostrils and she appeared to have lost some fingernails, but she was not dead. The edges of her bare breasts shifted a little as breath entered and left her body; she could not move because she was strapped onto a wooden bascule. She was not, however, about to be guillotined, although that was the point of the bascule: to restrain the body and transport the head of a condemned person smoothly through a lunette so that he or she might be quickly decapitated by the falling axe.

Arianne was strapped onto the bascule for an altogether different but almost as unpleasant reason.

The bascule was positioned precipitously over the end of a bath full of pinkish-brown water so that it worked very like a lever. One of Arianne’s torturers had his foot on the end of the bascule just under her bare feet and all he had to do to allow the wooden board carrying her body to tip forward on the fulcrum that was the lip of the bath was to move his black boot a few centimetres; then she would fall head first into the water and remain there until either she drowned or her torturers decided to lift the bascule up again. It was ingeniously simple, and although the bath was smeared with blood, as if the bascule sometimes fell awkwardly – and perhaps that explained the several contusions on her eyes, cheeks and forehead – it was obviously effective.

At the end of my chain I was at least a metre away from everyone and this seemed to suggest that others before me had stood where I was, chained to the same radiator and obliged to watch friends being tortured. I couldn’t even kick the edge of the stenographer’s neat little corner-table with its typewriter, pencil, notebook, magazine, coffee-cup and nail-file; but I promised myself that if the bitch started filing her nails while Arianne was being tortured, I would take off my shoe and throw it at her.

Looking at Arianne, it was impossible to believe she was the same woman I had left behind at the Imperial Hotel that morning. Somehow Heydrich, or the SD or the Gestapo had discovered something about Arianne that had persuaded them to arrest her. But what? Only she and I knew about Gustav and the envelope he had asked her to give to Franz Koci. Nobody else knew anything. Nobody but Gustav. And even if Paul Thummel was indeed Gustav, it seemed impossible that her arrest could be connected with his. Not yet. They had to have picked her up at the station before I had identified Paul Thummel as traitor X.

‘Has she talked?’ Heydrich asked Bohme.

The other man pulled a face. ‘Well, of course, sir. What a question.’

‘You think so? What about Masin and Balaban? You couldn’t get them to talk, could you? You had those two Czechos for five months before you managed to get anything out of them.’

‘They were exceptionally strong and determined men, sir.’

‘Well, I’m not surprised, now that I’ve been in here. To me this hardly looks like torture. Somehow I imagined something much worse. Back at my gymnasium in Halle we used to do this sort of thing to other boys just for sport.’

‘With all due respect, sir, there’s not much that’s worse than the water bascule. Short of death itself, which would hardly be to the purpose, no other torture quite persuades as much that you are surely about to die.’

‘I see. So, what has she told us?’

Bohme approached the stenographer, who handed him a few sheets of typed paper; these he passed to Heydrich and, while the Reichsprotector glanced over what was written there, one of Arianne’s tormentors slapped her bruised cheeks to bring her out of a faint.

With the sleeves of their striped civilian shirts rolled up above their substantial biceps and their collars removed, Arianne’s tormentors looked ready for work. The man with his foot on the bascule was examining his knuckles, probably inspecting them for damage. His blond hair was almost white and he seemed indifferent to Arianne’s suffering. The other man was smoking a cigarette that stayed in his mouth while he was slapping her.

‘Come on,’ he said, almost kindly, like a father speaking to a child who was lagging behind on a Sunday afternoon walk in the park. ‘That’s it, Arianne. Wakey-wake. Say hello to our important visitors.’

Arianne retched bath water and some vomit that was part blood and then coughed for almost a minute.

‘Come on. Open your eyes.’

She started to shiver, probably from shock as much as the cold, but still she didn’t open her eyes; at least not until her fatherly interrogator sucked at his cigarette for a second, peeled it off his lower lip and then touched her breast with it.

Arianne opened her eyes and screamed.

‘That’s the girl,’ said the man who had burned her.

It was odd how sorry he looked, I thought; almost as if he regretted hurting her; as if he wouldn’t have hurt anyone by choice; right up until the moment he smiled a smile that was as thin as a razor and then burned her breast a second time, for the pleasure of it. I could see that now. He enjoyed giving pain.

Arianne screamed again and started to weep invisible tears.

‘Please, stop this,’ I pleaded.

Heydrich ignored me. He finished reading the transcript of the interrogation and handed the pages back to Bohme.

‘Is this really all that she knows, do you think?’ he asked.

Bohme shrugged. ‘That’s a little hard to say, sir. We’ve only had her for a few hours. At this stage there’s no telling how much she knows about anything.’

So it was true; her arrest had preceded Paul Thummel’s; in which case they couldn’t be connected.

‘Sergeant Soppa, isn’t it?’ Heydrich was looking at the very blond man whose foot was on the water board.

‘Sir.’

‘I believe you are something of an expert in matters like this. It was you who got Balaban to talk, wasn’t it?’

‘Finally. Yes sir.’

‘What is your opinion?’

Sergeant Soppa shifted his feet a little but still managed to keep Arianne’s head aloft. She looked like a human torpedo that, at any moment, he might launch into the water.

‘In my experience they always keep something back to the end, sir,’ he said ruefully. ‘There’s always one important thing that they’ll hold onto until the last. For their own self-respect, you might say. And they figure you’ll miss it because they’ve already told you absolutely everything else. It’s only when they’re begging to tell you something they think you don’t know – anything – that you can be sure you’ve got everything there is to be had out of them. Which means that it’s always best to keep the interrogation going for longer than seems decent.’

Heydrich nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. So then, I think we shall have to know if she knows something that we don’t yet know.’

Heydrich nodded at Sergeant Soppa, who immediately took a step back so that the bascule carrying Arianne’s naked body tipped forward and hit the water with a splash, head first.

There was a horrible gurgling sound, like a drain trying to clear itself. Arianne was swallowing water. Her hands and feet flailed helplessly under their restraints like the fins of a landed fish. Then Soppa picked up a length of thick rubber cable that was lying on the wet floor and started to beat Arianne hard, the way no living creature, not even a stubborn mule, should ever be beaten. Each blow of the cable snapped loudly on her flesh and sounded like a dangerous electrical short-circuit.

I watched her beautiful body endure this for several seconds. I remembered the exquisite pleasure we had given each other just a few hours before in the hotel room back at the Imperial. That seemed a very long time ago now. More than that, it seemed like another life, in another place where cruelty and pain did not exist. Worse than this, the body I had known and kissed so tenderly already seemed like a different one from the one I was looking at now.

Why had I agreed to bring her to Prague? I could easily have refused her request to accompany me. Surely this was all my fault. I had perhaps foreseen something like this happening, only not quickly enough.

Her hair floated and twisted in the water like yellow seaweed. There was only so much of this kind of treatment she could take. That anyone could take. I told myself I had to do something and I hauled on the chain with all my strength but I was helpless to help her. At this realization, I felt an unpleasant sensation and taste arrive in my mouth from my gut and I spat it out onto the wet floor. If I’d thought, I might have spat it at Heydrich.

‘For Christ’s sake, you’re killing her,’ I yelled.

‘No,’ said Soppa’s smiling colleague. ‘Not at all.’ His tone was scoffing. ‘You might say that we’re the ones keeping her alive. Believe me, you have to know what you’re doing to take someone right to the edge like this. To almost kill them, and then not kill them. That’s the skill, sir. Besides, this little bitch is a lot tougher than she looks. She might panic a bit if ever she was to go swimming again. But, no, we won’t kill her.’ He glanced at Heydrich. ‘Not unless he tells us to do it.’

Arianne’s head stayed under the water but Sergeant Soppa stopped beating her for a moment, wiped his brow and nodded. ‘That’s right. We’ve been helping people to take the waters in Prague like this for a while now. Just like Marienbad, it is, this place. Or Bad Kissingen.’

He grinned at his own attempt at humour. Then he started beating her again.

After a few seconds I turned my face to the wall and closing my eyes against the edge of my vision, I pressed my forehead against the cold, hard tiles. These felt like Heydrich’s conscience. I might have closed my eyes but I could hardly close my ears, and the awful combination of sound that was Arianne drowning while she took a dreadful beating continued for another fifteen long seconds before I heard the ghastly dripping creak of the bascule being lifted out of the bath and the banshee rasp of her trying, painfully, to drag air into lungs that were already bloated with water.

By now I was absolutely certain that Colonel Bohme was right: there was not much that was worse than the water board. Just listening to it seemed bad enough. And when I looked again I saw Arianne was just a few centimetres above the surface of the water, dripping wet, trembling uncontrollably, her body galvanized with the spasms that were her agonized attempts to breathe and covered with fresh, livid welts. Sergeant Soppa had thrown aside his cable and had the heel of his hand on the edge of the water board, ready to do exactly the same thing again the very second that Heydrich or Bohme gave him the order.

Soppa’s colleague tossed away his cigarette and turned on a tap to pour some more water into the bath. Had she swallowed that much? Or had it just spilled onto the floor? It was hard to tell. Then he lifted Arianne’s head by the hair, shook it like a handbell, and spoke into her ear.

‘Is there anything you want to tell us, darling?’ he asked. ‘Something close to your heart. Next time we’ll fucking drown you, if we have to. Won’t we, Sarge?’

‘Sure,’ said Soppa. ‘And I’ll fuck her while she’s drowning.’ He stroked Arianne’s bare behind with lascivious intent and then patted it fondly.

‘Ask her – ask her if she knows where Vaclav Moravek is hiding,’ said Heydrich.

Soppa’s colleague repeated the question into Arianne’s ear.

She gulped loudly and whispered, ‘No. I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve never heard of Vaclav Moravek. Please. You have to believe me.’

She swallowed another painful breath, belched and tried to say something else, but her previous answer drew a sneer and then a nod from Heydrich which was the cue for another ducking. And this time her head banged against the side of the bath as she fell into the water. Her body struggled against the leather straps and the buckles which cut cruelly into her skin so that a thin trickle of blood ran down her shoulders and dripped into the turbulent bath water.

I held my own breath at the same time as she went under the water so that I could at least experience some small part of her ordeal. But this time they kept her under for much longer than a minute and when, with my lungs bursting, I realized I could hold my own breath for no longer I let it out with a yell, even as Arianne’s struggles appeared to have ended for good. Her hands and feet stopped moving. The water calmed. All was still. Including my heart.

‘Pull her up, you bastards.’

‘Is she dead?’ asked Heydrich.

‘No,’ said Soppa. ‘Not by a long chalk. Not to worry, sir. We’ve brought people round who were under the water for much longer than that.’

He and the other man lifted Arianne out of the bath and proceeded to use a combination of smelling salts, slaps, brandy and massage to try to put some life back into her.

‘Leave her alone,’ I pleaded. ‘For God’s sake. She hasn’t done anything.’

‘You think so?’ said Heydrich. ‘I’m afraid that you’re wrong about that, Gunther. At least, that was the impression I gained from Colonel Bohme, on the telephone, just before lunchtime.’

He turned and faced the stenographer.

‘Read the Captain what she’s already told us, please.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just the salient points if you will.’

‘Yes sir.’

The stenographer picked up her transcript and read entirely without emotion, like someone announcing the arrival or departure of a train.

Question: What is your name and address?

Answer: My name is Arianne Tauber and I live in a room at Flat 6, 3 Uhland Strasse, Berlin, which is owned by Frau Marguerite Lippert. I have lived there for ten months. I work at the Jockey Bar on Luther Strasse, where I am employed to be the cloakroom attendant.

Question: You are a Berliner?

Answer: No, originally I am from Dresden. My mother still lives there. She lives in Johann Georgen Allee.

Question: So why are you here in Prague?

Answer: I am on holiday. I came here with a friend. I was staying at the Imperial Hotel.

Question: What is the name of that friend?

Answer. Kripo Commissar Bernhard Gunther. From the Police Praesidium at Berlin Alexanderplatz. I am his mistress. He will vouch for me. He works for General Heydrich. Clearly there has been some mistake here. I spent the weekend with him and I was going home to Berlin when I was arrested.

Question: Do you know why you were arrested at the Masaryk Station this morning?

Answer: No. Clearly there’s been some sort of mistake here. I’ve never been in any trouble before. I am a good German. A law-abiding citizen. Commissar Gunther will vouch for me. So will my employers.

Question: But aren’t you also working for UVOD?

Answer: I don’t know what you mean by that. What is UVOD? I do not understand.

Question: UVOD is the Home Resistance Network here in Prague. We know you are working for UVOD. Why?

Prisoner refused to answer the question.

Prisoner refused to answer the question.

Prisoner refused to answer the question.

Answer: Yes, I am working for UVOD. Following the deaths of my husband and my father in February and May 1940, for which I held Adolf Hitler ultimately responsible, I decided to work for a foreign government against the National Socialist government of Germany. Since I am from Dresden and my mother is Czech, it seemed logical that this foreign government should be Czech.

Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?

Prisoner refused to answer the question.

Heydrich interrupted the stenographer. ‘Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear, my dear young woman,’ he said patiently. ‘I asked you to read out only the salient points. What I meant was that it will save a great deal of time if you omit all mention of when the prisoner refused to answer a question.’

The stenographer coloured a little. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Now continue.’

‘Yes sir.’

Question: How did you go about establishing contact with UVOD?

Answer: I made contact with an old friend from university called Friedrich Rose in Dresden, a Sudeten German communist, who put me in contact with a Czech terrorist organization that is part of the Central Leadership of Home Resistance – UVOD. I am part Czech myself and I speak a little Czech and I was pleased when, having investigated my background, they accepted me into their organization. They said a native German could be very useful to their cause. Which is all that I wanted. After my husband died on a U-boat all I wanted was for the war to be over. For Germany to be defeated.

Question: What did they ask you to do?

Answer: They asked me to leave Dresden and to undertake a special mission on their behalf. In Berlin.

Question: What was this mission?

Prisoner refused to—.

‘Sorry, sir . . .’

After a short pause, while she tracked down the transcript with a well-manicured fingernail, the stenographer started reading again.

Answer: At the request of UVOD I joined the Berlin Transport Company in the autumn of 1940 and worked for the BVG director, Herr Julius Vahlen, as his personal secretary and sometime mistress. It was my job to monitor Wehrmacht troop movements through Berlin’s Anhalter Station and to report on these movements to my Czech contact in Berlin. This I did for several months.

Question: Who was your contact?

Answer: My contact was a former Czech German Army officer I knew only as Detmar. I didn’t know his surname. I would give him a list of the troop movements on a weekly basis. The troop movements were passed on to London, I think. Detmar would give me some more instructions and some money. I was always short of money. Living in Berlin is so much more expensive than Dresden.

Question: What else did Detmar tell you to do?

Answer: At first I had to do very little. Just give him the troop movement reports. But then in December 1940 Detmar asked me to help the Three Kings organization in Berlin to plant a bomb in the station. This was much more important work and much more dangerous, too. First of all I had to obtain a plan of the station building; and then, when the bomb was ready, I had to prime it and put it in a place where it had been decided it would cause the most damage.

Question: Who taught you how to prime a bomb?

Answer: I am a qualified chemist. I studied Chemistry at university. I know all about handling difficult materials. It’s not difficult to prime a bomb. I’m better at that than I was as a stenographer.

Question: What was the purpose of that bomb?

Answer: The purpose of the bomb at Anhalter Station was to cause panic, to demoralize the population of Berlin; and to disrupt troop movements in and out of the city.

Question: Wasn’t the real reason for planting that bomb altogether different? Wasn’t the real reason that you had inside information about the train belonging to the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, that was due to be leaving the station? And that the bomb was meant to kill him?

Answer: Yes. I admit that this bomb was really designed to assassinate the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. I planted the bomb in the left luggage office in February 1941. This is right by the platform where Himmler’s train was to leave from; and, even more importantly, the office is also beside the place on the platform where Himmler’s personal carriage was usually located. The assassination was unsuccessful because the bomb was not powerful enough. It was meant to bring down a joist on top of the train and it didn’t.

Question: Then what happened? After the failed assassination?

Answer: With the war in Europe more or less won, it was decided by my controller that troop movements in Germany were of less importance to UVOD; and a few months afterwards I left the BVG’s employment. I was not unhappy about this as my boss, Herr Vahlen, was besotted with me and something of a nuisance. Thereafter I worked in a series of nightclubs. Especially the Jockey Club, where I was supposed to befriend Germans from the Foreign Ministry in order to sleep with them and get information useful to the Czech cause. I did this. Again I was short of money and sometimes I was obliged to sleep with some of these men in the Foreign Ministry for money so that I could keep myself. I also worked for UVOD as a courier. Then in the summer of 1941 my contact Detmar was replaced by another Czech called Victor Keil. I do not know what happened to Detmar and I don’t know Victor’s real name. But we were very uncomfortable comrades. Victor was a very demanding man to work for and I did not like him at all. He was not brave like Detmar. He was fearful and he did not inspire much confidence. He didn’t understand my situation at all, how difficult it was for me in Berlin. And we often quarrelled. Usually about money.

Question: Tell me what Victor asked you to do for him.

Answer: He gave me a gun and asked me to shoot someone for UVOD. I don’t know the man’s name. All I had to do was meet the man and shoot him. I didn’t want to do this. I was worried the gun would attract too much attention and I’d get caught. So Victor gave me a knife and ordered me to use that instead. Again I refused. I am not a murderer. So Victor murdered the man himself at a railway station in Berlin where I had arranged to meet him. He was a foreign worker, Dutch I think, and all I had to do was ask him for a light and distract him and Victor would commit the murder. Which he did. But it was horrible. And I said I couldn’t ever do something like that again.

Question: What station was this?

Answer: The S-Bahn station at Jannowitz Bridge.

Question: What else did he ask you to do?

Answer: Victor had come into possession of an important list of Czechs who were working for the Germans in Prague. I don’t know where he got this list. He was intending to return to Prague with it. Leaving me on my own. Which greatly alarmed me as I suspected he wasn’t planning to come back. He was scared he was being followed and so, temporarily, he gave me the list to look after until he was sure he wasn’t being shadowed by the Gestapo. Then Victor and I quarrelled, again about money. I was broke and I said that if I was going to stay on in Berlin and do important jobs for UVOD like help to kill people I wanted more money to cover my expenses. We’d arranged to meet at the station in Nollendorfplatz, in the blackout, but as he went away there was an accident and Victor was knocked down and killed by a taxi. Which was a disaster.

Question: So what did you do then?

Answer: I was in real shit here. Without a contact in Berlin I had no way of getting the list of traitors to our people in Prague. And no way of getting more money. So I resolved to try to go there myself and make contact with someone from UVOD. But it was dangerous and, of course, I was still very short of money. Not to mention a suitable cover story to get myself down to Prague.

Question: So how did you do this?

Answer: After Victor’s fatal accident I had become intimate with a police officer called Bernhard Gunther, who was investigating Victor’s death. When I met him I didn’t know he was a policeman; but when he turned up at the bar one night I got a bit suspicious and searched his coat pockets in the cloakroom and found his Kripo identification disc. At first I thought he was suspicious of me so I decided that the best thing to do would be to seem to take him into my confidence. And to throw myself on his mercy and persuade him that I was simply a joy-girl who had made a bad mistake. When I told him this he didn’t know that I knew he was a cop.

Anyway I told him that a man I’d met in the Jockey Bar who I knew only as Gustav had hired me to give an envelope to a stranger on a railway station in return for a hundred marks. I told Gunther that I got greedy, which is why the transaction went wrong. And I also told him I had no idea what the envelope contained as I’d since lost it.

Question: Which station was this?

Answer: The S-Bahn station at Nollendorfplatz.

Question: Tell us about Gustav.

Answer: There never was a Gustav. In fact it was Victor who had given me the envelope. And I didn’t mention anything about a list of Czech agents who were working for the Gestapo. I just told him about the envelope and that I’d been looking to make an easy hundred marks. Subsequently Gunther revealed he was a policeman and told me that he believed Victor had been working for the Czechs and that I was in danger. I think it flattered him that he could help me; and I allowed a relationship to develop. An intimate relationship.

Question: Tell me more about your relationship with Bernhard Gunther.

Answer: After Victor was killed, I had no one to help me in Berlin. I thought of returning to Dresden but then the idea of developing Gunther as an unwitting source of intelligence presented itself to me. I knew he was a senior detective in Kripo. So I began a relationship with him. I told him I loved him and he believed me, I think. It was dangerous but I felt the possible benefits were worth taking that kind of risk. And when he told me he had been posted to Prague, I saw a way of travelling there in comparative safety and comfort: as Gunther’s mistress. This seemed a fantastic opportunity that was too good to ignore. After all, what better cover could I have for travelling to Prague than as a Kripo Commissar’s bit on the side? He even paid for my ticket and arranged my visa at the Alex. In all respects he was very kind to me.

Question: Did Commissar Gunther know of your involvement with UVOD?

Answer: No, of course not. He suspected nothing except perhaps that I had been a whore. Or very stupid. Or both. Either that or he didn’t care to ask very much. Perhaps it was a bit of both. He was in love with me and he liked sleeping with me. And, of course, also he was too busy with his own work.

Question: Did he talk about his work?

Answer: No. It was very hard to get any information out of him. He said it was safer for me that way. It took me a while to find out that he was working for General Heydrich and that he was coming to Prague to work at Heydrich’s country house. But he didn’t say what he was doing there.

Question: What happened when you arrived in Prague?

Answer: We arrived in Prague and stayed at the Imperial Hotel. We spent the first day together. For most of the next day Gunther was away on official business. He turned up at night to sleep with me. Which suited me very well as I had the rest of the time to myself. I had heard Detmar talk about what to do if he and I ever lost contact. The places to go for help. There was a man in Prague, a UVOD agent called Radek. I should go to these places myself and try to make contact with this man. And I decided to go to these places and ask around for Radek. It was taking a risk but what choice did I have?

Question: What were these places you went to?

Answer: Elektra. It’s a café on Hoovera Ulice, next to the National Museum. And Ca d’Oro, a beer restaurant on Narodni Trida, in the same building as the Riunione Adriatica di Sicurta. Detmar had given me some instructions in how to go about this: I should take a red rose wrapped in an old copy of Pritomnost and leave it on the table while I ordered something. Pritomnost is Presence, the weekly review that Masaryk helped to found. I could buy a copy on the black market quite easily. That’s what happened. And having made contact with Radek in the Elektra – I do not know his last name – I handed over the list of traitors.

Question: Was it Radek who came up with the plan to kill General Heydrich this morning?

Answer: No, it was someone else Radek introduced me to. I’d told them about Gunther and how he was working at the Lower Castle in Panenske-Brezany. How a car from Gestapo HQ with just a driver would come and pick him up and drive him there. A plan was quickly conceived – the opportunity appeared too good to miss. Two men from UVOD would hijack Gunther’s SS car and sit on the floor behind the seats so that they might get into the grounds of the castle, walk in and shoot everyone and anyone they could. Hopefully Heydrich would be one of these casualties.

Question: By which time you would be safely on a train back to Berlin?

Answer: Yes. That was the plan.

Question: And Gunther?

Answer: He was also to be shot by the two UVOD assassins. But the plan went up in smoke when Gunther’s car from Pecek Palace was cancelled and the poor fool had to walk to the Castle and requisition a car from there. After that, there seemed little or no choice but to get on the train as arranged. I’d done all I could. What will happen to me, please?

‘That’s a very good question,’ said Heydrich.

He turned to me.

‘And at the present moment in time, as you can see for yourself, things are not looking so good for your lady friend. But I think it answers your earlier remark, Gunther: that she hadn’t done anything. Now you know. She tried to murder Himmler. She planned to murder me, and as many of my guests as possible. And she planned to murder you. That’s quite an achievement. It looks as if she played you for a fool, wouldn’t you say?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘It’s fortunate for you I’m still feeling grateful that you helped us catch Paul Thummel, otherwise you yourself might now be facing what undoubtedly lies ahead of this deeply misguided young woman.’

While the stenographer had been reading, Arianne had recovered consciousness and was at least alive; but she had fainted again and while I could see no way of saving her from execution, or at best a concentration camp, I did think there was a way of preserving her from further suffering on the water bascule. Much of what I’d heard made sense to me, but it was obvious that she was still concealing things from her torturers; and it was equally obvious that I was now in a position to tell Heydrich exactly what I knew and thus save Arianne from herself, even if that meant putting my own head in the Gestapo’s lunette.

It was clear that it was me who’d been betrayed by her; and yet, as I started speaking, it somehow felt as if it was Arianne who was being betrayed by me.

I guess it made it easier that I despised myself so much, not for what was said now but for what hadn’t been said before – in the Ukraine, and immediately afterward. I hardly counted the short lecture I had given Heydrich on my first day at the Lower Castle. I had tried to believe that in spite of all that I had seen and done in the East I was a person like her, with a sense of moral purpose and values. As a matter of fact I had no such qualities; and I didn’t blame her in the least for wanting to kill me. In Arianne’s eyes, I deserved to be shot, like everyone wearing an SS or SD uniform, and I couldn’t argue with that. Whatever happened now or in the future, I had it coming to me. We all did. But if my plan was going to work – if I was to prevent her from further suffering – I had to make certain Heydrich understood what I said in the only way he could understand it: not out of pity for Arianne but out of loathing and contempt for her, and a desire for revenge. A sense of my true feelings for Arianne would only have caused her more harm. And for her sake I had to kill any love I had for her, and kill it quickly, too. I had to harden my heart until it was made of iron. Like a true Nazi.

I fished out my cigarettes and lit one to give myself some puff for what I was about to do. It wasn’t easy with my hands manacled to a chain. Nothing about what I was doing was easy. I blew some smoke at the ceiling for nonchalant effect and leaned back against the wall. How much Arianne heard of what I said next, I don’t know. None of it, I hope.

‘It looks like I’ve been had all right.’ I sighed. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a fellow like me got given the slow trot around the Tiergarten by a pretty girl. Only it’s been a while since I was dummied as well as she managed it. Christ, at my age I should know better, of course, but since I stopped believing in Santa Claus I don’t get many presents that are as nicely wrapped as this little half-silk.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m not making excuses, General. That’s just how it is for a man who likes to think he’s still in the game. And I don’t sleep so well on my own any more. The same as Captain Kuttner. She was my version of Veronal. A lot easier to swallow. But probably just as lethal.’

I allowed myself a wry smile.

‘So, she tried to send me upstairs, did she? Bitch. And after all I tried to do for her. That really sticks a hole in my sock. Go ahead and wash her hair again, Sergeant, why don’t you? I’m all through pulling my chain about it. Hell, now I can see why she was jumpy when she got out of bed this morning. I thought she was sad because she had to go back to Berlin. Because we were to be parted. What a chump I’ve been. She’s quite a liar, I’ll say that for her. It strikes me that you fellows have got your work cut out there, with or without the water board. You could send her to the guillotine and the head on that little cunt would still talk its way out of the basket. And, by the way, make sure you send me a ticket. That’s one party I wouldn’t want to miss. Who knows? Maybe I can help to put her there myself. Because you know, it strikes me that the ration is short on that story of hers, and that maybe I can make up the weight. In fact, it would be my pleasure.’

Heydrich gave me a narrow-eyed look as if he was trying to estimate the distance between what I was saying and what he believed. It was like facing a suspicious parent and, moreover, one who was such a practised liar himself that he knew precisely what to look for in establishing what was true and what was not. An art expert with a picture of uncertain provenance could not have been more thorough in the way he studied the brushwork and checked the signature on the contrary picture I had painted for him.

‘Such as?’ he said, coldly.

‘Such as Victor Keil’s real name was Franz Koci.’ I flicked my cigarette into the bathwater as if I hardly cared that Arianne’s head might yet be ducked in it. ‘I know that because I was the cop who investigated his death; and at the special invitation of your friend Colonel Schellenberg. He was found dead in Berlin’s Kleist Park. After the collision she mentioned, with the taxi on Nollendorfplatz, he must have staggered down Massen Strasse. We found him under a big red rhododendron bush with the knife he’d used on the Dutchman, Geert Vranken, still in his possession.

‘I’ve been thinking about the letter I received from Vranken’s father, in the Netherlands. And how Paul Thummel was the character reference Geert gave the police when he was a potential suspect in the S-Bahn murders. Well, because Thummel had had some sort of relationship with Vranken’s sister, he must have found out from her, I suppose, that Vranken was working on Berlin’s railways. That must have been the reason the Abwehr asked to see the files on the S-Bahn murders; which they did; and in particular the interviews with all the foreign workers. The official excuse was that they were on the lookout for spies; but in reality, Thummel must have been on the lookout for Geert Vranken. He was the only person in Germany who could connect him with his Czech controller in The Hague. And when he saw Vranken’s statement, which mentions knowing a German officer who might vouch for him, Thummel must have panicked. Most likely Vranken was killed by Franz Koci at Paul Thummel’s specific request.’

Heydrich was nodding now. ‘Yes, that makes sense, I suppose.’

‘Either he radioed the request to UVOD here in Prague or, as seems more likely, he told Arianne. Probably she was the cut-out between Thummel and Franz Koci, who she knew better as Victor Keil.’

Heydrich continued nodding. This was a good sign. But an even better one was to come.

‘Horst.’ Heydrich waved at Colonel Bohme. ‘Release him.’

A little reluctantly – he still hadn’t forgiven me for being a better detective than he was – Bohme produced a key from the pocket of his riding breeches and unlocked my manacles.

I rubbed my wrists and muttered a thank you. I didn’t say anything about Arianne, who remained strapped to the bascule balanced over the bath of water. It was crucial that Heydrich believe that his revelation about her part in the plot to kill me meant I was now indifferent to her immediate fate; and it was equally crucial that my story was both plausible and authoritative, even though a lot of it was based on sheer guesswork, so that it would seem there was little real point in torturing Arianne any more; at least for the present.

To my enormous relief he now came to this conclusion.

‘Take the woman back to her cell,’ he told Sergeant Soppa.

‘Yes sir.’

Soppa and the other man laid the bascule down on the wet floor and started to unstrap Arianne. She groaned slightly as the buckles were released, but it was hard to tell if her heavily bruised eyes were open, so I had no way of knowing if she saw me.

Either way, it was certainly the last time I ever saw her.

‘Let’s continue this conversation in your office upstairs, Horst,’ said Heydrich. ‘Gunther?’ Now he was ushering me out of the interrogation cell, ahead of him.

I walked toward the door. My heart was on the floor alongside Arianne’s bedraggled, half-drowned body, twisting over and over like a dying trout.

Heydrich held my arm for a moment and then smiled a sarcastic smile. ‘What? No fond goodbyes for your poor lover? No last words?’

I didn’t turn around to look back at her. If I had he’d have seen the truth in my face. Instead I met Heydrich’s chilly, wolf-blue eyes, turned a deep sigh into a wry laugh and shook my head silently.

‘To hell with her,’ I said.

It was, I thought, the only place Arianne and I were ever again likely to meet up with each other.

In a large office on an upper floor of the Pecek Palace, Heydrich told an orderly to bring us schnapps.

‘I think we all need one after that ordeal, don’t you, gentlemen?’

I couldn’t argue with this. I was desperate for a drink to put a little iron in my soul.

A bottle arrived. A proper one containing real liver glue but none of the deer or elk blood that Germans sometimes said it contained. That was just a story like the one I was getting ready to tell Heydrich and Bohme. I drank a glassful of the stuff. It was ice-cold, the way it’s supposed to be. But I was colder. Nothing’s been invented that’s as cold as how I felt at that moment.

I went and sat on the windowsill and looked out at the old medieval city of Prague. Somewhere, under one of those dark, ancient roofs, was a fatal creature of death and destruction that was exactly like my own twin brother. Indeed, if the Golem had looked in my eye at what was elusively called the soul, he might well have concluded that I was a man to be shunned, just as people in the street below avoided the Pecek Palace front door like it was a Jaffa pesthouse. Given the wicked, monstrous, inhuman events that I’d just witnessed in the basement, they weren’t so far wrong.

Unbidden, I fetched the bottle and poured another glass of the embalming fluid that helps make Germans like me more German than before and I lit a cigarette half-hoping that it might set fire to my insides and turn me to ashes like everything else that was almost certain to be turned into ashes in due course.

‘I expect you’re wondering how we got onto her,’ said Heydrich.

‘No, but I would have got around to it before long.’

‘The list of Czechs working for the Gestapo here in Prague was hardly complete. One of the people Arianne Tauber approached in that other café she mentioned – I can’t remember what it was called – he was ours.’

‘The Ca d’Oro,’ said Bohme. ‘It was the Ca d’Oro, sir. The head waiter is a French fascist who’s been working for the Gestapo since the Spanish Civil War. As soon as he saw her sitting there with the flower inside the magazine he contacted us.’

‘After that,’ added Heydrich, ‘it was only a question of having her followed around the clock. She led us to Radek, about whom Bohme already had his suspicions, didn’t you, Horst?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

Bohme grinned and taking the bottle from my windowsill, he refilled my glass again and helped the General and then himself.

‘That’s why your car didn’t turn up this morning, Gunther. We arrested the two assassins around the corner from your hotel. And the girl when she arrived at the railway station a little later on. We had hoped there would be someone there from UVOD to see her off, but there wasn’t, so we picked her up and put her in the bag with the two killers.’ He shrugged. ‘Not that I think there was ever much danger of either one of you being killed. It was a pretty desperate, spur-of-the-moment sort of plan. And the chances are they’d have been shot by the sentries at the Lower Castle before they got very far.’

‘All in all,’ said Heydrich, smugly, ‘it’s been an excellent day’s work. We have the traitor. We have some more terrorists. It can only be a matter of time before we catch up with Vaclav Moravek.’

‘Yes, congratulations, sir,’ said Bohme, toasting him. ‘Tell me, what are your orders regarding Arianne Tauber? Do you want her questioned again?’

Heydrich was still thinking this over when I said, ‘I expect I can fill in the rest of the gaps in her story for you.’

‘Yes, why don’t you tell us again how you met,’ said Heydrich. ‘In detail.’

I gave him the whole story, more or less; from the circumstances in which I had first met her at Nollendorfplatz Station, to my own middle-aged infatuation; there seemed little point in hiding anything other than my true motive for telling him.

‘Paul Thummel was obviously this fellow Gustav she told me about back in Berlin. She might have denied he exists downstairs but there can be no doubt about that now. I expect that’s the one thing she was keeping back from Sergeant Soppa. He was right about that. I also expect that when Thummel sees her again he’ll fold like a picnic table. Especially when he sees the state you’ve left her in.’

I lit a cigarette and swung my leg carelessly.

‘As far as I can gather, it was Paul Thummel who gave her the list of agents to pass on to Franz Koci. As a major in the Abwehr he was well placed to know exactly who they were. But when she met up to hand them over to Franz Koci, they quarrelled about money, just as she said, and he must have thought she was holding out on him. Maybe she was, too. I expect he demanded that she give him the list and when she wouldn’t – at least not until her complaints had been addressed – he got rough with her and decided to search her underwear.

‘That was when I saw her for the first time. I assumed, wrongly, that he was attempting to rape her. Or worse. As you know, there’s been a lot of that in the blackout this summer. Women attacked and murdered in and around railway stations. I guess it was still on my mind a lot. So naturally I went to her assistance.’

‘Very gallant of you, I’m sure,’ said Heydrich.

‘Koci and I fought but he got away and ran into the blackout. The next day I was looking at his dead body under a bush in Kleist Park.’

‘At the request of Walter Schellenberg,’ said Heydrich.

‘That’s right. The Berlin Gestapo guessed he was a Czech agent, but they had no idea how he’d met his death. Who killed him, or why. I agreed to help. And soon enough I was able to connect Franz Koci with Geert Vranken.’

‘But you decided to leave the girl out of it.’

I nodded.

‘So you could take advantage of her, I suppose.’

It hadn’t been like that; but it was no good saying that I had honestly believed her to be more innocent than she turned out to be. I needed to give Heydrich the kind of cold and clinical reason he could understand. The kind of reason he would have acted upon himself, no doubt.

‘Yes. That’s true. I wanted to fuck her. I had the idea she was just a dupe, but that was always me. Of course as soon as I started sleeping with her I stopped seeing what was right under my nose. That she was in it all the way up to her pretty neck. But it was such a pretty neck.’

‘The rest of her is not bad either,’ said Bohme.

‘About that neck, Gunther,’ said Heydrich. ‘I won’t be able to save it. You know that, don’t you? The fact that she was involved in a plan to kill me, well, that’s of no real consequence. But an attempt to kill Himmler is a different story. The Reichsführer takes any assault on his personal safety rather more personally than I do.’

I shrugged as if I cared nothing now for what happened to her. And I shrugged because I knew Heydrich was right. Nothing could save Arianne now. Not even Heydrich.

‘The real question here is what happens to you, Gunther. In many ways you’re a useful fellow to have around. Like a bent coat hanger in a toolbox, you’re not something that was ever designed for a specific job, but you do manage to come in useful sometimes. Yes, you’re an excellent detective. Tenacious. Single-minded. And in some ways you’d have done a good job as a bodyguard. But you’re also independent, and that’s what makes you dangerous. You have standards you try to live up to but they’re your standards, which means that ultimately you’re unreliable. Now that I’m where I am in the scheme of things, I can’t tolerate that. I had hoped I might be able to bend you to my will and use you when I could. Like that coat hanger. But I can see now I was wrong. Yes, it’s difficult to turn a woman over to the Gestapo, especially a good-looking woman like Arianne Tauber. Some can do it and some can’t and you’re just the type who can’t. So, I have no further use for you. You’ve become an unfortunate liability, Gunther.’

This sounded like the best thing he’d ever said to me; but I was through opening my mouth like that for a long while. Perhaps permanently. He hadn’t yet finished telling me my own fate.

‘You will return to your desk in Kripo and leave Germany’s destiny in the hands of men like me who truly understand what that means.’

He smiled his paper-knife smile and toasted me silently.

I toasted him back but only because, perhaps for the last time, I was hoping to point out a long hair in his chicken soup.

‘And the attempt on your life, sir? The poisoning, at Rastenburg? I accept that you no longer wish to have me act as your bodyguard. But am I to take it that you no longer wish me to investigate the recent attempt to kill you?’

He stared at me for a moment and, with a quiet surge of pleasure, I realized he had forgotten all about this incident.

‘There never was such an attempt,’ he said defiantly. ‘I made it up so that I might have a plausible reason to invite you to Prague with the rest of them.’

I nodded meekly, a little surprised that he’d admitted such a thing; and I wondered where the actual truth was to be found: if there really had been an attempt to poison Heydrich at Rastenburg after all.

‘Besides, as the most powerful man in Bohemia and Moravia, I think I’m quite safe here, wouldn’t you agree, Horst?’

So that clinched it, for me; he was lying.

Bohme smiled an obsequious smile. ‘Absolutely, sir. You have Prague’s SS and SD at your immediate disposal; not to mention the Gestapo and the German Army.’

‘You see?’ crowed Heydrich. ‘I have nothing to worry about. Especially not in Prague. The day the Czechs try to kill me – really try to kill me, not that half-baked attempt we had today, although you mark my words that will have its own repercussions – the day they try to kill me will be the very worst day in the history of this country and will make the defenestrations of Prague look like a childish prank. Isn’t that right, Horst?’

‘Yes sir. In a long line of crazy Czech ideas that would be the craziest idea of all.’

I had my doubts about that. I hadn’t been in Bohemia for very long but from what little I knew about the country it seemed only appropriate that the idea of the Bohemian – a type of fellow not easily classified and who never acted in a conventional or predictable way – had got started in Prague. In Prague throwing someone out of a window was just a childish prank. A bit of harmless fun. But I didn’t expect a Roman Catholic German from Halle-an-der-Saale to understand this. And if I really had been as single-minded and independent as Heydrich said I was, I would probably have told him he was wrong: murder – even political assassination – is rarely ever committed by people who are anything else but crazy; and, over the centuries, one way or another, a lot of crazy things had happened in Prague.

So I nodded and told Heydrich he was right, when I knew he wasn’t.

And that is what makes anyone dangerous.

I moved back to the Imperial Hotel and waited for my Berlin rail warrant to arrive. Heydrich liked to keep most people waiting and I waited for several days. So I saw the sights and tried not to think about what might be happening to Arianne. But of course that was impossible. I preferred to believe that she hadn’t actually condoned my murder but that she had felt obliged to go along with it as part of the general plan to kill Heydrich; and after all, when you’re shooting Germans it’s hard to know who is a Nazi and who isn’t. It’s a dilemma I understood very well.

Finally my travel papers came through, and on my last night in Prague I remembered my ticket for the Circus Krone, and decided to go along.

It was a cold autumn evening with a clear sky and a full moon, and people were already wearing their warmest winter coats. I sat well away from the rest of my SS colleagues but I had a good view of all of them in the front row of seats and I confess I paid more attention to Mr and Mrs Heydrich and Mr and Mrs Frank than I did to the clowns and the animals.

I hadn’t seen Lina Heydrich before. She was handsome rather than beautiful. She wore black with a thick fur stole and a little black pillbox hat. Mrs Frank wore a wool overcoat with wide lapels and a brown fedora. The two wives sat beside each other and next to them sat their husbands, who were wearing civilian clothes, like everyone else in the SD and Gestapo who was at the circus that night. Frank wore a plain gaberdine coat with a white shirt and a patterned silk tie. Heydrich wore a thick double-breasted overcoat and held a black trilby on his lap. And he also wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that I’d never seen on him before.

Like anyone else, these four marvelled at the trapeze and laughed at the clowns and they appeared to enjoy themselves. Like anyone else. That was what struck me most of all. Out of uniform, Heydrich and Frank looked just like anyone else, although even as they sat there a security crackdown was already under way in the city. Later on, I learned that the mayor of Prague, Otokar Klapha, had been executed and on the very same day that Arianne was arrested. Hundreds of UVOD collaborators were being rounded up and buildings right across the city were covered with posters listing the names of many others sentenced to death. You wouldn’t have known any of that if you’d watched Heydrich at the circus, shaking with laughter as three clowns behaving like the sort of simpletons the Nazis would probably have murdered for reasons of racial purity fell off chairs and soaked each other with buckets full of water.

Two days later, Heydrich announced that the deportation of all the Jews in the Protectorate – some ninety thousand of them – was to begin at the end of the year. To where, he didn’t say. Nobody did. Me, I had a pretty good idea, but by then I was back in Berlin.