to give her that one. 'Except for me, maybe, and that's only because I feel sorry for the little twitcher. If you were a friend of his you'd tell him to see a doctor. He isn't right in the head, you know.'
She took a long drag on her cigarette and then nicked the butt past my shoulder.
'He's not tapped,' I said. 'He just has a tendency to talk to himself. A bit strange, that's all.'
'If that's not tapped then I don't know what the hell is,' she said. There was something in that too.
'You know when he'll be back?'
The snapper shrugged. A hand that was all blue veins and knuckle-duster rings took hold of my tie; she tried to smile coyly, only it came out as a grimace.
'Maybe you'd care to wait for him,' she said. 'You know, twenty marks buys an awful lot of time.'
Retrieving my tie I took out my wallet and thumbed her a five. 'I'd like to.
Really I would. But I must be getting on my way. Perhaps you'd tell Neumann that I was looking for him. The name is Gunther. Bernhard Gunther.'
'Thank you, Bernhard. You're a real gentleman.'
'Do you have any idea where he might be?'
'Bernhard, your guess is as good as mine. You could chase him from Pontius to Pilate and still not find him.' She shrugged and shook her head. 'If he's broke he'll be somewhere like the X Bar, or the Rucker. If he's got any mouse in his pocket he'll be trying to nudge a bit of plum at the Femina or the cafT
Casanova.' I started down the stairs. 'And if he's not at any of those places then he'll be at the racetrack.' She followed me out onto the landing and down some of the steps. I got into my car with a sigh of relief. It's always difficult getting away from a snapper. They never like to see trade walking out of the door.
I don't have much faith in experts; or, for that matter, in the statements of witnesses. Over the years I've come to belong to the school of detection that favours good, old-fashioned, circumstantial evidence of the kind that says a fellow did it because he was the type who'd do that sort of thing anyway. That, and information received.
Keeping a tenor like Neumann is something that requires trust and patience; and just as the first of these does not come naturally to Neumann, so the second does not come naturally to me: but only where he is concerned. Neumann is the best informer I've ever had, and his tips are usually accurate. There were no lengths to which I would not go to protect him. On the other hand, it does not follow that you can rely on him. Like all informers he would sell his own sister's plum. You get one to trust you, that's the hard bit; but you could no more trust one yourself than I could win the Sierstorpff Stakes at the Hoppegarten.
I started at the X Bar, an illegal jazz club where the band were sandwiching American hits between the opening and closing chords of whatever innocuous and culturally acceptable Aryan number took their fancy; and they did it well enough not to trouble any Nazi's conscience regarding so-called inferior music.
In spite of his occasionally strange behaviour, Neumann was one of the most nondescript, anonymous-looking people I had ever seen. It was what made him such an excellent informer. You had to look hard to see him, but that particular night, there was no sign of him at the X. Nor at the Allaverdi, nor the Rucker Bar in the rough end of the red-light district.
It wasn't yet dark, but already the dope dealers had surfaced. To be caught selling cocaine was to be sent to a K Z, and for my money they couldn't catch too many of them; but as I knew from experience, that wasn't easy: the dealers never carried coke on them; instead they would hide it in a stash nearby, in a secluded alley or doorway. Some of them posed as war cripples selling cigarettes; and some of them were war cripples selling cigarettes, wearing the yellow armlet with its three black spots that had persisted from Weimar days.
This armlet conferred no official status, however; only the Salvation Army received official permission to peddle wares on street corners, but the laws against vagrancy were not strictly enforced anywhere except the more fashionable areas of the city, where the tourists were likely to go.
'Ssigars, and ssigarettes,' hissed a voice. Those familiar with this 'coke signal' would answer with a loud sniff; often they found that they had bought cooking salt and aspirin.
The Femina, on Nurnberger Strasse, was the sort of spot you went when you were looking for some female company if you didn't mind them big and florid and thirty marks for the privilege. Table telephones made the Femina especially suitable for the shy type, so it was just Neumann's sort of place, always presuming that he had some money. He could order a bottle of sekt and invite a girl to join him without so much as moving from his table. There were even pneumatic tubes through which small presents could be blown into the hand of a girl at the opposite end of the club. Apart from money, the only thing a man needed at the Femina was good eyesight.
I sat at a corner table and glanced idly at the menu. As well as the list of drinks, there was a list of presents that could be purchased from the waiter, for sending through the tubes: a powder compact for one mark fifty; a matchbox-container for a mark; and perfume for five. I couldn't help thinking that money was likely to be the most popular sort of present you could send rocketing over to whichever party girl caught your eye. There was no sign of Neumann, but I decided to stick it out for a while in case he showed up. I signalled the waiter and ordered a beer.
There was a cabaret, of sorts: a chanteuse with orange hair, and a twangy voice like a Jew's harp; and a skinny little comedian with joined-up eyebrows, who was about as risquT as a wafer on an ice-cream sundae. There was less chance of the crowd at the Femina enjoying the acts than there was of it rebuilding the Reichstag: it laughed during the songs; and it sang during the comedian's monologues; and it was no nearer the palm of anyone's hand than if it had been a rabid dog.
Looking round the room I found there were many false eyelashes flapping at me that I was beginning to feel a draught. Several tables away a fat woman rippled the fingers of a pudgy hand at me, and misinterpreting my sneer for a smile, she started to struggle out of her seat. I groaned.
'Yessir?' answered the waiter. I pulled a crumpled note out of my pocket and tossed it on to his tray. Without bothering to wait for my change I turned and fled.
There's only one thing that unnerves me more than the company of an ugly woman in the evening, and that's the company of the same ugly woman the following morning.
I got into the car and drove to Potsdamer Platz. It was a warm, dry evening, but the rumbling in the purple sky told me that the weather was about to change for the worse. I parked on Leipziger Platz in front of the Palast Hotel. Then I went inside and telephoned the Adlon.
I got through to Benita, who said that Hermine had left her a message, and that about half an hour after I had spoken to her a man had called asking about an Indian princess. It was all I needed to know.
I collected my raincoat and a flashlight from the car. Holding the flash under the raincoat I walked the fifty metres back to Potsdamer Platz, past the Berlin Tramway Company and the Ministry of Agriculture, towards Columbus Haus. There were lights on the fifth and seventh floors, but none on the eighth. I looked in through the heavy plate-glass doors. There was a security guard sitting at the desk reading a newspaper, and, further along the corridor, a woman who was going over the floor with an electric polisher. It started to rain as I turned the corner onto Hermann Goering Strasse, and made a left onto the narrow service alley that led to the underground car-park at the back of Columbus Haus.
There were only two cars parked a D K W and a Mercedes. It seemed unlikely that either of them belonged to the security guard or the cleaner; more probably, their owners were still at work in offices on the floors above. Behind the two cars, and under a bulkhead light, was a grey, steel door with the word 'Service' painted on it; it had no handle, and was locked. I decided that it was probably the sort of lock that had a spring bolt that could be withdrawn by a knob on the inside, or by means of a key on the outside, and I thought that there was a good chance that the cleaner might leave the building through this door.
I checked the doors of the two parked cars almost absent-mindedly, and found that the Mercedes was not locked. I sat in the driver's seat, and fumbled for the light switch. The two huge lamps cut through the shadows like the spots at a Party rally in Nuremberg. I waited. Several minutes passed. Bored, I opened the glove-box. There was a road map, a bag of mints and a Party membership book with stamps up to date. It identified the bearer as one Henning Peter Manstein.
Manstein had a comparatively low Party number, which belied the youthfulness of the man in the photograph on the book's ninth page. There was quite a racket in the sale of early Party numbers, and there was no doubting that was how Manstein had come by his. A low number was essential to quick political advancement. His handsome young face had the greedy look of a March Violet stamped all over it, as clearly as the Party insignia embossed across the corner of the photograph.
