'You seem to have thought of everything,' I said pointedly.
Six stood up, followed by Schemm, and then, stiffly, by me. 'When will you start your investigations?' he said.
'First thing in the morning.'
'Excellent.' He clapped me on the shoulder. 'Ulrich will drive you home.' Then he walked over to his desk, sat down in his chair and settled down to go through some papers. He didn't pay me any more attention.
When I stood in the modest hall again, waiting for the butler to turn up with Ulrich, I heard another car draw up outside. This one was too loud to be a limousine, and I guessed that it was some kind of sports job. A door slammed, there were footsteps on the gravel and a key scraped in the lock of the front door. Through it came a woman I recognized immediately as the U F A Film Studio star, Lise Rudel. She was wearing a dark sable coat and an evening dress of blue satin-organza. She looked at me, puzzled, while I just gawped back at her. She was worth it. She had the kind of body I'd only ever dreamed about, in the sort of dream I'd often dreamed of having again. There wasn't much I couldn't imagine it doing, except the ordinary things like work and getting in a man's way.
'Good morning,' I said, but the butler was there with his cat-burglar's steps to take her mind off me and help her out of the sable.
'Farraj, where is my husband?'
'Herr Six is in the library, madam.' My blue eyes popped a good deal at that, and I felt my jaw slacken. That this goddess should be married to the gnome sitting in the study was the sort of thing that bolsters your faith in Money. I watched her walk towards the library door behind me. Frau Six I couldn't get over it was tall and blonde and as healthy-looking as her husband's Swiss bank account. There was a sulkiness about her mouth, and my acquaintance with the science of physiognomy told me that she was used to having her own way: in cash.
Brilliant clips flashed on her perfect ears, and as she got nearer the air was filled with the scent of 4711 cologne. Just as I thought she was going to ignore me, she glanced in my direction and said coolly: 'Goodnight, whoever you are.'
Then the library swallowed her whole before I had a chance to do the same. I rolled my tongue up and tucked it back into my mouth. I looked at my watch. It was 3.30. Ulrich reappeared.
'No wonder he stays up late,' I said, and followed him through the door.
Chapter 3
The following morning was grey and wet. I woke with a whore's drawers in my mouth, drank a cup of coffee and went through the morning's Berliner Borsenzeitung, which was even more difficult to understand than usual, with sentences as long and as hard-to-incomprehensible as a speech from Hess.
Shaved and dressed and carrying my laundry bag, I was at Alexanderplatz, the chief traffic centre of east Berlin, less than an hour later. Approached from Neue K/nigstrasse, the square is flanked by two great office blocks: Berolina Haus to the right, and Alexander Haus to the left, where I had my office on the fourth floor. I dropped off my laundry at Adler's Wet-Wash Service on the ground floor before going up.
Waiting for the lift, it was hard to ignore the small notice-board that was situated immediately next to it, to which were pinned an appeal for contributions to the Mother and Child Fund, a Party exhortation to go and see an anti-Semitic film and an inspiring picture of the Fuhrer. This noticeboard was the responsibility of the building's caretaker, Herr Gruber, a shifty little undertaker of a man. Not only is he the block air-defence monitor with police powers (courtesy of Orpo, the regular uniformed police), he is also a Gestapo informer. Long ago I decided that it would be bad for business to fall out with Gruber and so, like all the other residents of Alexander Haus, I gave him three marks a week, which is supposed to cover my contributions to whichever new money-making scheme the D A F, the German Labour Front, has dreamed up.
I cursed the lift's lack of speed as I saw Gruber's door open just enough to permit his peppered-mackerel of a face to peer down the corridor.
'Ah, Herr Gunther, it's you,' he said, coming out of his office. He edged towards me like a crab with a bad case of corns.
'Good morning, Herr Gruber,' I said, avoiding his face. There was something about it that always reminded me of Max Schreck's screen portrayal of Nosferatu, an effect that was enhanced by the rodent-like washing movements of his skeletal hands.
'There was a young lady who came for you,' he said. 'I sent her up. I do hope that was convenient, Herr Gunther.'
'Yes '
'If she's still there, that is,' he said. 'That was at least half an hour ago.
Only I knew FrSulein Lehmann is no longer working for you, so I had to say that there was no telling when you would turn up, you keeping such irregular hours.'
To my relief the lift arrived and I drew open the door and stepped in.
'Thank you, Herr Gruber,' I said, and shut the door.
'Heil Hitler,' he said. The lift started to rise up the shaft. I called: 'Heil Hitler.' You don't miss the Hitler Salute with someone like Gruber. It's not worth the trouble. But one day I'm going to have to beat the crap out of that weasel, just for the sheer pleasure of it.
I share the fourth floor with a 'German' dentist, a 'German' insurance broker, and a 'German' employment agency, the latter having provided me with the temporary secretary who I now presumed was the woman seated in my waiting room.
Coming out of the lift I hoped that she wasn't battle-scarred ugly. I didn't suppose for a minute that I was going to get a juicy one, but then I wasn't about to settle for any cobra either. I opened the door.
'Herr Gunther?' She stood up, and I gave her the once-over: well, she wasn't as young as Gruber had led me to believe (I guessed her to be about forty-five) but not bad, I thought. A bit warm and cosy maybe (she had a substantial backside), but I happen to prefer them like that. Her hair was red with a touch of grey at the sides and on the crown, and tied back in a knot. She wore a suit of plain grey cloth, a white high-necked blouse and a black hat with a Breton brim turned up all around the head.
'Good morning,' I said, as affably as I could manage on top of the mewling tomcat that was my hangover. 'You must be my temporary secretary.' Lucky to get a woman at all, and this one looked half-reasonable.
'Frau Protze,' she declared, and shook my hand. 'I'm a widow.'
'Sorry,' I said, unlocking the door to my office. 'What part of Bavaria are you from?' The accent was unmistakable.
'Regensburg.'
'That's a nice town.'
'You must have found buried treasure there.' Witty too, I thought; that was good: she'd need a sense of humour to work for me.
I told her all about my business. She said it all sounded very exciting. I showed her into the adjoining cubicle where she was to sit on that backside.
'Actually, it's not so bad if you leave the door to the waiting room open,' I explained. Then I showed her the washroom along the corridor and apologized for the shards of soap and the dirty towels. 'I pay seventy-five marks a month and I get a tip like this,' I said. 'Damn it, I'm going to complain to that son-of-a-bitch of a landlord.' But even as I said it I knew I never would.
Back in my office I flipped open my diary and saw that the day's only appointment was Frau Heine, at eleven o'clock.
'I've an appointment in twenty minutes,' I said. 'Woman wants to know if I've managed to trace her missing son. He's a Jewish U-Boat.'
'A what?'
'A Jew in hiding.'
'What did he do that he has to hide?' she said.
'You mean apart from being a Jew?' I said. Already I could see that she had led quite a sheltered life, even for a Regensburger, and it seemed a shame to expose the poor woman to the potentially distressing sight of her country's evil-smelling arse. Still, she was all grown-up now, and I didn't have the time to worry about it.
'He just helped an old man who was being beaten up by some thugs. He killed one of them.'
'But surely if he was helping the old man '
