`Sure!' Kuhlmann waved his cigar like a conductor's baton. `He's crossing the bridge near the lock-gates. He climbs over the rail, then dives head first for the wall. Is that really what you're saying? That it is even physically possible?'
`It would seem unlikely…'
Newman intervened. 'He was a first-rate swimmer, too. If he had fallen in he'd have found a way out.'
`That information is useful,' Kosel responded primly.
`Your unofficial opinion would be also useful,' Kuhlmann pressed. 'Other people's lives may be at stake. Or do you want this place to be standing room only?'
`I can't be pressured…'
`Try me,' Kuhlmann challenged. 'We can take what's lying under that sheet away from you – bring someone in from Wiesbaden.'
`If he never drank… Kosel paused. He frowned as he looked at Tweed. 'It is beginning to seem someone made it look like an accident. The front of his clothes was soused with alcohol…'
`That's it,' said Kuhlmann. 'Take this card, keep it to yourself. Send your report to that address when you've done what you have to do.'
`Wiesbaden? It must be submitted to the Hamburg chief of police…'
`Hans Lenze, who is a close friend of mine, who knows I'm here, who told me about you. Do it any way you damn well wish – but that report goes to Wiesbaden. Now, let's get out of here and go look for fresh air.'
Seven
`Hans!' Newman waved his hand in a gesture of disgust. `There must be a million men with that name in Germany…'
`If that is what Fergusson really said,' Tweed replied and wandered over to the window, then stood there, sipping his glass of cognac. He drank rarely but the sight of Ian Fergusson lying in the morgue had shaken him.
Vier Jahreszeiten. The Four Seasons Hotel. One of the finest hostelries in all Germany. They were ensconced inside Room 412, Tweed's room, almost the size of a small de-luxe apartment. The view from the window was magnificent. The sun was shining in the late afternoon, reflecting with a glitter off the lake, the Binnenalster, beyond the road running below the window.
Tweed stared out over a line of trees in full foliage – a room on the fourth floor gave a clear view of the water where white single deck passenger craft cruised towards the landing-stage at the end of the lake. Little more than a few metres from where Fergusson's body had been found in the water at five in the morning.
`What else could he have meant?' Newman asked and finished off his cognac. It gave off a better aroma than bloody hospitals and all things medical he disliked so much.
'That could be the key to the mystery,' Tweed replied. `Maybe we shall know more tonight when we visit St Pauli…'
`The Reeperbahn? Anything can happen there after dark. I'll stick close to you. No argument.'
`Agreed.' Tweed had a dreamy look as he continued to watch the fussy water-buses plying back and forth. Fergusson came here to see Ziggy Palewska. I think he saw him the night he was killed.'
`What makes you think so? And who is this Ziggy person?'
`Because of this.' Tweed produced a small black notebook, one of the personal effects handed to him at the morgue. It had been found inside Fergusson's buttoned back trouser pocket and its pages were crinkled from exposure to water. He prised apart two pages and showed them to Newman. The notation, written in small neat script, was brief.
Ziggy. Berlin. Hotel Jensen.
`So, Ziggy told him something about the Hotel Jensen in Berlin. I've never heard of it.'
`Neither have I. And you asked about Ziggy. His father came from Poland. He married a girl from East Prussia – that is, Ziggy's mother. Both parents are dead. Near the end of the war they fled from Konigsberg – as it was called then – with Ziggy who was only ten years old. They ended up in Schleswig- Holstein, the German province – or Land – which was flooded with refugees. That fact has dominated Ziggy's life – not always for the best.'
`Which means?'
`The positive side – from my point of view – is he has always kept in touch with the underground network which links the refugees. He can be an invaluable source of information. But hi is very tricky. Thinks only of money. He'll work for anyone who pays – sometimes for both sides at the same time.'
`Sounds like a one-way ticket to eternity…'
`Oh yes, he walks a tightrope. So far with great cunning and skill. The time may come when he falls off…'
`That could be a long drop,' Newman commented.
`The final drop, I fear. Tonight I intend to put more pressure on him than I've ever done before. He must know something.' `And the negative side?'
`He's mixed up in various squalid activities. Porno movies.
Even drug-trafficking. Swears he only trades in marijuana – but I have my doubts.'
`A piece of the world's flotsam. Floating on the surface. Like scum? The Reeperbahn sounds just his cup of tea. Kuhlmann said he'd have a gun for me when we meet later…'
`I don't like guns. I don't know why I agreed when Kuhlmann made the suggestion on the phone to London. On the other hand…'
`You don't know what you're walking into. Maybe Kuhlmann does. Has he really told us everything?'
`I doubt it. Likes to hold something back. As bad as me,' Tweed remarked, and Newman knew the cognac was working. It was the first time since he'd returned from Paris that Tweed had cracked anything approaching a joke. 'Let's go for a walk. I always find when I get abroad I have to force myself out of a hotel. It's too easy to act the hermit…'
Newman had the room next to Tweed's. He made the remark as they went down in the elevator.
`It's in a hotel like this I'm glad I made all that money out of my bestseller, Kruger: The Computer That Failed. A foreign correspondent can work a whole career and never see money like that. I really got lucky…'
In the reception hall Tweed paused to examine the tapestries on the walls, the fine long-case clocks adorning the place, the superb rugs laid on the floor. They walked out of the entrance, turned right along the Neuer Jungfernstieg, the tree-lined promenade by the lake.
`It really is the most beautiful city,' Tweed commented. 'Look back at that colonnade which runs behind the hotel. We cross here.'
`We're going somewhere definite?'
`My feet seem to be heading in one direction – towards the Rathaus…'
In the pure warmth of a sun shining out of clear skies the two men strolled past the end of the lake, past the landing-stage where tourists queued for giant ice-cream cones. A holiday atmosphere, thought Tweed, and Ian Fergusson lying in the morgue.
They turned down the Alsterarkaden, an arcaded walk alongside a canal-like stretch of water leading from the lake.
Fashionably-dressed women stood gazing into high quality shops. Tweed crossed half-way over the bridge and stopped in the middle, looking down.
`It's such a clean city,' he observed.
`Show me,' the growly voice behind them said, 'show me how any man could dive in there at five in the morning and hit the side of his head on the wall. He'd have to be a bloody acrobat…'
It was Kuhlmann, of course. Newman had an idea they'd better get used to the Federal policeman surprising them. He stood gazing into the water, holding a brief-case in his right hand.
`These goddamn pathologists,' Kuhlmann continued. 'If they'd stop playing God for a while, get out in the fresh air, even take a look at the scene of the crime. Then they might understand what this business is all about. And in the fresh air you can smoke a cigar. Tweed, it was murder. I don't have to wait for that dumbo's report. Even you can see that, Newman.'
