on his back by the empty hearth in the front bedroom, one arm at his side, the other twisted beneath him. His uniform tunic was unbuttoned, the jackbooted legs splayed out. A dark corona of blood surrounded the head, and his face had been battered beyond recognition.
'It was an accident,' she said.
Russell looked at her with disbelief.
'Not the face,' she admitted. 'But he fell. Honestly. He...I'd been reading some of Richard's poems, and I forgot to hide them away. He found them, and started reading one out loud, like it was all a huge joke... I tried to take the book away from him and he fell back across the arm of the chair and cracked his head on the edge of the fireplace. And then...I don't know, I just went out of my mind. I knew he was dead but I could still hear him laughing and I started hitting him with the poker and I couldn't stop.'
Russell ran fingers through his hair. Even if it had been an accident - and there was, he noticed, blood on the tiled surround of the fireplace - there was no way they could pass it off as one now. Even without her Jew-tainted past, she would be facing a murder trial and execution. With it, the process would be that much quicker. What could she do? He stood there staring at the body and its red mess of a face, trying to get his mind in gear.
'Who knows he's here?' Russell asked.
'The maid let him in. The neighbours on that side' - she gestured towards one wall - 'have left for the country, but the couple on the other side may have heard us arguing. I doubt it though - they're both quite deaf, and they sleep at the back.'
She could tell any investigators that the man had left, Russell thought. As long as the body wasn't found, no one could prove she was lying. Ah, but who was he kidding? This was Nazi Germany - they'd investigate her past, and once they knew who they were dealing with they'd get a confession. She might have money, but there was no way someone with her past could brazen it out. She had to disappear.
He asked when the maid would be back.
'At eight o'clock.'
'What will she do if no one answers the door?'
'She has a key.'
Russell exhaled noisily. 'Okay. First things first. We need to wrap him up and get rid of the blood.'
'A blanket?'
She looked better, he thought. The shock was wearing off. 'A thin one if possible,' he answered. 'He's going to be heavy enough as it is.'
They got to work. Russell rolled the body into a brown blanket, tying the ends with some twine until the whole ensemble resembled a giant Christmas cracker. Sarah mopped up the blood and got to work on the stain, scrubbing and scrubbing until it made no difference. The patch no longer attracted attention, but anyone who knew what they were looking for would find it.
Russell was already wondering where to take the body. It was a pity there was no locomotive depot nearby, no glowing firebox to cremate it in. 403 Eisenacher Strasse came to mind, but only for a moment - the Standartenfuhrer might still be unconscious but Sternkopf would have smelled a rat hours ago. And the moon would be up, making it much easier for the police to see what was going on. The shorter the distance he had to drive with a dead body in the car the better.
Which ruled out a trip to the country, and a clandestine burial in the woods. It had to be the Spree or the Landwehrkanal, he told himself. The simple option. The canal, he decided - the river bridges were too exposed. The spot where they had said goodbye to the ambulance earlier that evening.
'Time you got dressed,' he told her. 'And you can't come back here, so pack yourself a suitcase - nothing too big. Just a few changes of clothes and whatever else you want to keep.'
She didn't argue. As she began gathering things together Russell slid the wrapped body down the stairs and into the kitchen. Slipping out through the back door he found the sky had lightened, but the alley was still cloaked in darkness. There were no signs of life in any of the neighbouring houses.
He opened the passenger's side door, tipped the seat forward, and went back for the body, dragging it as quietly as he could across the stone, ears alert for the sound of any curious onlooker opening a window. He propped the legs up in the opening, walked around, pushed the driver's seat forward, and laboriously levered the whole bundle into the back seat. By the time he'd finished his breathing seemed loud enough to wake half the neighbourhood.
Back indoors, he stood in the hall thinking about the maid. 'You should leave a letter on this table,' he told Sarah when she came downstairs. 'Tell her you've gone away for a while and leave her a couple of weeks' wages. With any luck she'll just take it and go.'
Sarah did as he suggested, taking the required Reichsmarks from a healthy-looking bundle. 'I was afraid this day would come,' she said, leaving Russell to wonder whether her expectation had included these particular circumstances. She took a last wistful look around, and turned off the light.
Russell squeezed her suitcase into the boot and got in behind the wheel. 'Can we get out this way?' he asked.
'No. But there's a space at the end for turning.'
He started the engine, which sounded deafening. He told himself it didn't matter if people saw and heard them. As long as no one stopped them...
He drove slowly forward, the dark wall of the Stadtbahn viaduct looming to meet them, and turned the car in the circular space beneath it. The drive back down the pitch-black alley felt like an epic voyage, and Russell's shirt was slick with sweat when they reached the street beside the Spree. Everything seemed quiet, and dropping the body off the nearest bridge seemed, for a few moments, a more tempting prospect than driving round Berlin with a high-ranking corpse in the back seat. He told himself to be sensible. The quarter-moon had risen above the buildings to the west, greatly increasing visibility. And while a body dumped in the Spree would float and be found within hours, it might take days to arrange Sarah's escape from Berlin. Stick to the plan, he told himself. Schoneberger Ufer would be dark and deserted. They could take their time, do it right.
Assuming they reached it. As he drove back down Altonaer Strasse Russell had enough butterflies in his stomach to start a collection. He half expected to find police cars drawn up outside Sarah's front door, but the street was mercifully empty. Crossing Hansa-Platz, they headed into the Tiergarten, and as they arced round the Grosserstern circle a car went by in the opposite direction. Russell found he was approaching each bend as if the enemy was hidden around it, and almost gasping with relief at finding another stretch of empty road.
Sarah Grostein sat silent beside him, hands clasped together in her lap. What she was feeling he could hardly imagine - a few moments' loss of control had cost her everything but her life, and that still needed saving. He remembered her saying she liked the man, and tried to square that admission with the obliterated face. Maybe liking him had been the last straw.
Russell realized he didn't even know the man's name. He asked what it was.
'Rainer,' she said. 'Rainer Hochgesang.'
They reached the canal above Lutzow-Platz and drove along the southern bank towards Schoneberger Ufer. A car pulled out in their slipstream and stayed behind them for several blocks, before vanishing down a side street. Heart thumping, Russell checked the mirror several times to convince himself it was gone.
Finally they were there. Schoneberger Ufer was certainly deserted, though less dark than it had been a few hours earlier. He asked Sarah to stay where she was and walked across to the wall. The moon had turned from yellow to cream, and the waters of the Landwehrkanal were glistening with a beauty they hardly deserved. The usual red light was shining atop the distant Funkturm, which seemed like a sensible breach of black-out regulations. He wondered if they'd turn it off in a real air raid, and sacrifice the tower for an English bomber.
All was silence and stillness. The street on the far side of the canal was lined with old workshops, most of which now served as offices. On this side the overgrown site of a ruined synagogue lay between two warehouses. They should all be empty, give or take the odd night-watchman.
There was no point in waiting. Russell gestured Sarah to get out, pushed her seat forward, and pulled the blanket-bound body out onto the pavement. He dragged it quickly across to the wall and left it there. 'We need to weigh him down,' he said. 'You untie the strings while I find something.'
He hurried across the road and into the site of the burnt-out synagogue, searching for ballast. The remains of a fallen wall were scattered along one side. Somewhat appropriate, Russell thought, sending a dead Nazi to the bottom of the Landwehrkanal with Jewish bricks. He could almost hear the celestial applause.
