'I hope you've got something, pushbelly,' he said, 'because Fat Hermann's patience is worn thinner than the jam in a Jewish baker's sponge-cake. So if this is just a social call then I'm liable to come and visit you with some dog-shit on my shoes.'
'What's the matter with you, Rienacker?' I said. 'You having to share a slab in the morgue or something?'
'Cut the cabbage, Gunther, and get on with it.'
'All right, keep your ears stiff. I just found your boy, and he's squeezed his last orange.'
'Dead?'
'Like Atlantis. You'll find him piloting a service-lift in a deserted hotel on Chamissoplatz. Just follow your nose.'
'And the papers?'
There's a lot of burnt ash in the incinerator, but that's about all.'
'Any ideas on who killed him?'
'Sorry,' I said, 'but that's your job. All I had to do was find our aristocratic friend, and that's as far as it goes. Tell your boss he'll be receiving my account in the post.'
'Thanks a lot, Gunther,' said Rienacker, sounding less than pleased. 'You've got ' I cut across him with a curt goodbye, and hung up.
I left Inge the keys to the car, telling her to meet me in the street outside HaupthSndler's beach house at 4.30 that afternoon. I was intending to take the special S-Bahn to the Reich Sports Field via the Zoo Station; but first, and so that I could be sure of not being followed, I chose a particularly circuitous route to get to the station. I walked quickly up K/nigstrasse and caught a number two tram to Spittel Market where I strolled twice around the Spindler Brunnen Fountain before getting onto the U-Bahn. I rode one stop to Friedrichstrasse, where I left the U- Bahn and returned once more to street level. During business hours Friedrichstrasse has the densest traffic in Berlin, when the air tastes like pencil shavings. Dodging umbrellas and Americans standing huddled over their Baedekers, and narrowly missing being run over by a Rudesdorfer Peppermint van, I crossed Tauberstrasse and Jagerstrasse, passing the Kaiser Hotel and the head office of the Six Steel Works. Then, continuing up towards Unter den Linden, I squeezed between some traffic on Franz/sische Strasse and, on the corner of Behrenstrasse, ducked into the Kaiser Gallery.
This is an arcade of expensive shops of the sort that are much patronized by tourists and it leads onto Unter den Linden at a spot next to the Hotel Westminster, where many of them stay. If you are on foot it has always been a good place to shake a tail for good. Emerging on to Unter den Linden, I crossed over the road and rode a cab to the Zoo Station, where I caught the special train to the Reich Sports Field.
The two-storey-high stadium looked smaller than I had expected, and I wondered how all the people milling around its perimeter would ever fit in. It was only after I had gone in that I realized that it was actually bigger on the inside than on the outside, and this by virtue of an arena that was several metres below ground level.
I took my seat, which was close to the edge of the cinder track and next to a matronly woman who smiled and nodded politely as I sat down. The seat to my right, which I imagined was to be occupied by Marlene Sahm, was for the moment empty, although it was already past two o'clock. Just as I was looking at my watch the sky released the heaviest shower of the day, and I was only too glad to share the matron's umbrella. It was to be her good deed of the day. She pointed to the west side of the stadium and handed me a small pair of binoculars.
'That is where the Fuhrer will be sitting,' she said. I thanked her, and although I wasn't in the least bit interested, I scanned a dais that was populated with several men in frock-coats, and the ubiquitous complement of S S officers, all of them getting as wet as I was. Inge would be pleased, I thought.
Of the Fuhrer himself, there was no sign.
'Yesterday he didn't come until almost five o'clock,' explained the matron.
'Although with weather as atrocious as this, he could be forgiven for not coming at all.' She nodded down at my empty lap. 'You don't have a programme. Would you care to know the order of events?' I said that I would, but found to my embarrassment that she intended not to lend me her programme but to read it aloud.
'The first events on the track this afternoon are the heats of the 400-metre hurdles. Then we have the semi- finals and final of the 100-metres. If you'll allow me to say so, I don't think the German has a chance against the American negro, Owens. I saw him running yesterday and he was like a gazelle.' I was just about to start out on some unpatriotic remark about the so-called Master Race when Marlene Sahm sat down next to me, so probably saving me from my own potentially treasonable mouth.
'Thank you for coming, Herr Gunther. And I'm sorry about yesterday. It was rude of me. You were only trying to help, were you not?'
'Certainly.'
'Last night I couldn't sleep for thinking about what you said about ' and here she hesitated for a moment. 'About Eva.'
'Paul Pfarr's mistress?' She nodded. 'Is she a friend of yours?'
'Not close friends, you understand, but friends, yes. And so early this morning I decided to put my trust in you. I asked you to meet me here because I'm sure I'm being watched. That's why I'm late too. I had to make sure I gave them the slip.'
'The Gestapo?'
'Well, I certainly don't mean the International Olympic Committee, Herr Gunther.' I smiled at that, and so did she.
'No, of course not,' I said, quietly appreciating the way in which modesty giving way to impatience made her the more attractive. Beneath the terracotta-coloured raincoat she was unbuttoning at the neck, she wore a dress of dark blue cotton, with a neckline that allowed me a view of the first few centimetres of a deep and well-sunburnt cleavage. She started to fumble inside her capacious brown-leather handbag.
'So then,' she said nervously. 'About Paul. After his death I had to answer a great many questions, you know.'
'What about?' It was a stupid question, but she didn't say so.
'Everything. I think that at one stage they even got round to suggesting that I might be his mistress.' From out of the bag she produced a dark-green desk diary and handed it to me. 'But this I kept back. It's Paul's desk diary, or, rather, the one he kept himself, his private one, and not the official one that I kept for him: the one that I gave to the Gestapo.' I turned the diary over in my hands, not presuming to open it. Six, and now Marlene, it was odd the way people held things back from the police. Or maybe it wasn't. It all depended on how well you knew the police.
'Why?' I said.
'To protect Eva.'
'Then why didn't you simply destroy it? Safer for her and for you too I would have thought.'
She frowned as she struggled to explain something she perhaps only half understood herself. 'I suppose I thought that in the proper hands, there might be something in it that would identify the murderer.'
'And what if it should turn out that your friend Eva had something to do with it?'
Her eyes flashed and she spoke angrily. 'I don't believe it for a second,' she said. 'She wasn't capable of harming anyone.'
Pursing my lips, I nodded circumspectly. 'Tell me about her.'
'All in good time, Herr Gunther,' she said, her mouth becoming compressed. I didn't think Marlene Sahm was the type ever to be carried away by her passion or her tastes, and I wondered whether the Gestapo preferred to recruit this kind of woman, or simply affected them that way.
'First of all, I'd like to make something clear to you.'
'Be my guest.'
'After Paul's death I myself made a few discreet inquiries as to Eva's whereabouts, but without success. But I shall come to that too. Before I tell you anything I want your word that if you manage to find her you will try to persuade her to give herself up. If she is arrested by the Gestapo it will go very badly for her. This isn't a favour I'm asking, you understand. This is my price for providing you with the information to help your own investigation.'
'You have my word. I'll give her every chance I can. But I have to tell you: right now it looks as though she is
