of my hand smacking against my forehead.
'Shit, of course.' Her remark had the force of revelation. It wasn't one crime I was staring in the face, trying to understand. It was two.
We parked on Nollendorfplatz in the shadow of the S-Bahn. Overhead, a train thundered across the bridge with a noise that possessed the whole square. It was loud; but it wasn't enough to disturb the soot from the great factory chimneys of Tempelhof and Neuk/lln that caked the . Walls of the buildings which ringed the square, buildings which had seen many better days. Walking westwards into lower-middle-class Schoneberg, we found the five-storey block of apartments on Nollendorfstrasse where Marlene Sahm lived, and climbed up to the fourth floor.
The young man who opened the door to us was in uniform some special company of S A that I failed to recognize. I asked him if FrSulein Sahm lived there and he replied that she did and that he was her brother.
'And who are you?' I handed him my card and asked if I might speak to his sister. He looked more than a little put out at the intrusion and I wondered if he had been lying when he said that she was his sister. He ran his hand through a large head of straw-coloured hair, and glanced back over his shoulder before standing aside.
'My sister is having a lie-down right now,' he explained. 'But I will ask her if she wishes to speak with you, Herr Gunther.' He closed the door behind us, and tried to fix a more welcoming expression to his face. Broad and thick-lipped, the mouth was almost negroid. It smiled broadly now, but quite independently of the two cold blue eyes that flicked between Inge and myself as if they had been following a table-tennis ball.
'Please wait here a moment.'
When he left us alone in the hall, Inge pointed above the sideboard where there hung not one, but three pictures of the Fuhrer. She smiled.
'Doesn't look like they're taking any chances as far as their loyalty is concerned.'
'Didn't you know?' I said. 'They're on special offer at Woolworth's. Buy two dictators, and you get one free.'
Sahm returned, accompanied by his sister Marlene, a big, handsome blonde with a drooping, melancholic nose and an underhung jaw that lent her features a certain modesty. But her neck was so muscular and well- defined as to appear almost inflexible; and her bronzed forearm was that of an archer or a keen tennis player. As she strode into the hallway I caught a glimpse of a well-muscled calf that was the shape of an electric lightbulb. She was built like a rococo fireplace.
They showed us into the modest little sitting room, and, with the exception of the brother, who stood leaning against the doorway and looking generally suspicious of myself and Inge, we all sat down on a cheap brown-leather suite.
Behind the glass doors of a tall walnut cabinet were enough trophies for a couple of school prize- givings.
'That's quite an impressive collection you have there,' I said awkwardly, to no one in particular. Sometimes I think my small-talk falls a couple of centimetres short.
'Yes, it is,' said Marlene, with a disingenuous look that might have passed for modesty. Her brother had no such reserve, if that's what it was.
'My sister is an athlete. But for an unfortunate injury she would be running for Germany in the Olympiad.' Inge and I made sympathetic noises. Then Marlene held up my card and read it again.
'How can I help you, Herr Gunther?' she said.
I sat back on the sofa and crossed my legs before launching into my patter.
'I've been retained by the Germania Life Assurance Company to make some investigations concerning the death of Paul Pfarr and his wife. Anyone who knew them might help us to find out just what did happen and enable my client to make a speedy settlement.'
'Yes,' said Marlene with a long sigh. 'Yes, of course.'
I waited for her to say something before eventually I prompted her. 'I believe you were Herr Pfarr's secretary at the Ministry of the Interior.'
'Yes, that's right I was.' She was giving no more away than a card-player's eyeshade.
'Do you still work there?'
'Yes,' she said with an indifferent sort of shrug.
I risked a glance at Inge, who merely raised a perfectly pencilled eyebrow at me by way of response. 'Does Herr Pfarr's department investigating corruption in the Reich and the D A F still exist?'
She examined the toes of her shoes for a second, and then looked squarely at me for the first time since I had seen her. 'Who told you about that?' she said.
Her tone was even, but I could tell that she was taken aback.
I ignored her question, trying to wrong-foot her. 'Do you think that's why he was killed because somebody didn't like him snooping and blowing the whistle on people?'
'I I have no idea why he was killed. Look, here, Herr Gunther, I think '
'Have you ever heard of a man by the name of Gerhard Von Greis? He's a friend of the Prime Minister, as well as being a blackmailer. You know, whatever it was that he passed on to your boss cost him his life.'
'I don't believe that ' she said, and then checked herself. 'I can't answer any of your questions.'
But I kept on going. 'What about Paul's mistress, Eva or Vera, or whatever her name is? Any idea why she might be hiding? Who knows, maybe she's dead too.'
Her eyes quivered like a cup and saucer in an express dining-car. She gasped at me and stood up, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. 'Please,' she said, her eyes starting to well up with tears. The brother shouldered himself away from the doorway, and moved in front of me, much in the manner of a referee stopping a boxing- match.
'That's quite enough, Herr Gunther,' he said. 'I see no reason why I should allow you to interrogate my sister in this fashion.'
'Why not?' I asked, standing up. 'I bet she sees it all the time in the Gestapo.
And a lot worse besides that.'
'All the same,' he said, 'it seems quite clear to me that she does not wish to answer your questions.'
'Strange,' I said. 'I had come to much the same conclusion.' I took Inge by the arm and moved towards the door. But as we were leaving I turned and added, 'I'm not on anyone's side, and the only thing I'm trying to get is the truth. If you change your mind, please don't hesitate to contact me. I didn't get into this business to throw anyone to the wolves.'
'I never had you down as the chivalrous type,' Inge said when we were outside again.
'Me?' I said. 'Now wait a minule. I went to the Don Quixote School of Detection.
I got a B-plus in Noble Sentiment.'
'Too bad you didn't get one for Interrogation,' she said. 'You know, she got really rattled when you suggested that Pfarr's mistress might be dead.'
'Well, what would you have me do pistol-whip it out of her?'
'I just meant that it was too bad she wouldn't talk, that's all. Maybe she will change her mind.'
'I wouldn't bet on it,' I said. 'If she does work for the Gestapo then it stands to reason that she's not the sort who underlines verses in her Bible. And did you see those muscles? I bet she's their best man with a whip or a rubber truncheon.'
We picked up the car and drove east on Bnlowstrasse. I pulled up outside Viktoria Park.
'Come on,' I said. 'Let's walk awhile. I could do with some fresh air.'
Inge sniffed the air suspiciously. It was heavy with the stink of the nearby Schultheis brewery. 'Remind me never to let you buy me any perfume,' she said.
We walked up the hill to the picture market where what passed for Berlin's young artists offered their irreproachably Arcadian work for sale. Inge was predictably contemptuous.
'Have you ever seen such absolute shit?' she snorted. 'From all these pictures of the muscle-bound peasants binding corn and ploughing fields you would think we were living in a story by the Brothers Grimm.'
I nodded slowly. I liked it when she became animated on a subject, even if her voice was too loud and her opinions of the sort that could have landed both of us in a K Z.
Who knows, with a bit more time and patience she might have obliged me to re-examine my own rather matter-of-fact opinion of the value of art. But as it was, I had something else on my mind. I took her by the arm and
