nothing.' This was almost literally true.
'What was she wearing when she disappeared?'
Hildegard described her clothes.
'What about money?'
'A few marks. Her savings were untouched.'
'All right. I'll ask around and see what I can find out. You had better give me your address.'
I dictated it for him, and added the telephone number. When he'd finished writing he stood up, arched his back painfully, and then walked around a bit with his hands thrust deep into his pockets like an awkward schoolboy. By now I had guessed him to be no more than forty.
'Go home and wait to hear from me. I'll be in touch in a couple of days, or earlier if I find something.'
We stood up to leave.
'What do you think are the chances of finding her alive?' Hildegard said.
Vogelmann shrugged dismally. 'I've got to admit that they're not good. But I will do my best.'
'What's your first move?' I said, curious.
He checked the knot of his tie again, and stretched his Adam's apple over the collar stud. I held my breath as he turned to face me.
'Well, I'll start by getting some copies made of your daughter's photograph. And then put them into circulation. This city has a lot of runaways, you know. There are a few children who don't much care for the Hitler Youth and that sort of thing. I'll make a start in that direction, Herr Steininger.' He put his hand on my shoulder and accompanied us to the door.
'Thank you,' said Hildegard. 'You've been most kind, Herr Vogelmann.'
I smiled and nodded politely. He bowed his head, and as Hildegard passed out of the door in front of me I caught him glancing down at her legs. You couldn't blame him. In her beige wool bolero, dotted foulard blouse and burgundy wool skirt, she looked like a year's worth of war reparations. It felt good just pretending to be married to her.
I shook Vogelmann's hand and followed Hildegard outside, thinking to myself that if I were really her husband I would be driving her home to undress her and take her to bed.
It was an elegantly erotic daydream of silk and lace that I was conjuring up for myself as we left Vogelmann's offices and went out into the street. Hildegard's sexual appeal was something altogether more streamlined than steamy imaginings of bouncing breasts and buttocks. All the same, I knew that my little husband fantasy was short on probability since, in all likelihood, the real Herr Steininger, had he been alive, would almost certainly have driven his beautiful young wife home for nothing more stimulating than a cup of fresh coffee before returning to the bank where he worked. The simple fact of the matter is that a man who wakes alone will think of having a woman just as surely as a man who wakes with a wife will think of having breakfast.
'So what did you make of him?' she said when we were in the car driving back to Steglitz. 'I thought he wasn't as bad as he looked. In fact, he was quite sympathetic, really. Certainly no worse than your own men, Kommissar. I can't imagine why we bothered.'
I let her go on like that for a minute or two.
'It struck you as perfectly normal that there were so many obvious questions that he didn't ask?'
She sighed. 'Like what?'
'He never mentioned his fee.'
'I dare say that if he thought we couldn't have afforded it, then he would have brought it up. And by the way, don't expect me to take care of the account for this little experiment of yours.'
I told her that Kripo would pay for everything.
Seeing the distinctive dark-yellow of a cigarette-vending van, I pulled up and got out of the car. I bought a couple of packs and threw one in the glove-box. I tapped one out for her, then myself and lit us both.
'It didn't seem strange that he also neglected to ask how old Emmeline was, which school she attended, what the name of her dancing teacher was, where I worked, that sort of thing?'
She blew smoke out of both nostrils like an angry bull. 'Not especially,' she said. 'At least, not until you mentioned it.' She thumped the dashboard and swore. 'But what if he had asked which school Emmeline goes to? What would you have done if he'd turned up there and found out that my real husband is dead?
I'd like to know that.'
'He wouldn't have.'
'You seem very sure of that. How do you know?'
'Because I know how private detectives operate. They don't like to walk right in after the police and ask all the same questions. Usually they like to come at a thing from the other side. Walk round it a bit before they see an opening.'
'So you think that this Rolf Vogelmann is suspicious?'
'Yes, I do. Enough to warrant detailing a man to keep an eye on his premises.'
She swore again, rather more loudly this time.
'That's the second time,' I said. 'What's the matter with you?'
'Why should anything be the matter? No indeed. Single ladies never mind people giving out their addresses and telephone numbers to those whom the police believe to be suspicious. That's what makes living on one's own so exciting. My daughter is missing, probably murdered, and now I have to worry that that horrible man might drop round one evening for a little chat about her.' She was so angry she almost sucked the tobacco out of the cigarette paper. But even so, this time when we arrived at her apartment in Lepsius Strasse, she invited me inside.
I sat down on the sofa and listened to the sound of her urinating in the bathroom. It seemed strangely out of character for her not to be at all self-conscious about such a thing. Perhaps she didn't care if I heard or not.
I'm not sure that she even bothered to close the bathroom door.
When she came back into the room she asked me peremptorily for another cigarette. Leaning forwards I waved one at her which she snatched from my fingers. She lit herself with the table lighter, and puffed like a trooper in the trenches. I watched her with interest as she paced up and down in front of me, the very image of parental anxiety. I selected a cigarette myself, and tugged a book of matches from my waistcoat pocket. Hildegard glanced fiercely at me as I bent my head towards the flame.
'I thought detectives were supposed to be able to light matches with their thumbnails.'
'Only the careless kind, who don't pay five marks for a manicure,' I said yawning.
I guessed that she was working up to something, but had no more idea of what it could be than I had of Hitler's taste in soft-furnishings. I took another good look at her.
She was tall taller than the average man, and in her early thirties, but with the knock-knees and turned-in toes of a girl half her age. There wasn't much of a chest to speak of, and even less behind. The nose was maybe a bit too broad, the lips a shade too thick, and the cornflower-blue eyes rather too close together; and with the possible exception of her temper, there was certainly nothing delicate about her. But there was no doubting her long-limbed beauty which had something in common with the fastest of fillies out at the Hoppegarten. Probably she was just as difficult to hold on the rein; and if you ever managed to climb into the saddle, you could have done no more than hope that you got the trip as far as the winning-post.
'Can't you see that I'm scared?' she said, stamping her foot on the polished wood floor. 'I don't want to be on my own now.'
'Where is your son Paul?'
'He's gone back to his boarding-school. Anyway, he's only ten, so I can't see him coming to my assistance, can you?' She dropped on to the sofa beside me.
'Well I don't mind sleeping in his room for a few nights,' I said, 'if you really are scared.'
'Would you?' she said happily.
'Sure,' I said, and privately congratulated myself. 'It would be my pleasure.'
'I don't want it to be your pleasure,' she said, with just a trace of a smile, 'I want it to be your duty.'
For a moment I almost forgot why I was there. I might even have thought that she had forgotten. It was only when I saw the tear in the corner of her eye that I realized she really was afraid.
Chapter 18
Wednesday, 26 October.
