He took off his jacket and handed it to the woman, then mounted the chair. Reaching into the shaft, he found something hard to hold on to, and pulled himself in. The filters and the fan had both been removed. By working his shoulders against the metal casing he was able to move slowly forwards. The darkness was complete, He choked on the dust. His hands, stretched out in front of him, touched metal, and he pushed. The outside cover yielded and crashed to the ground. The night air rushed in. For a moment, he felt an almost overpowering urge to crawl out into it, but instead he wriggled backwards and lowered himself into the basement shelter. He landed, dusty and grease-smeared.
The woman was pointing his pistol at him.
“Bang, bang,” she said. “You’re dead.” She smiled at his alarm: “American joke.”
“Not funny.” He took the Luger and put it back in his holster.
“Okay,” she said, “here’s a better one. Two murderers are seen by a witness leaving a building and it takes the police four days to work out how they did it. I’d say that was funny, wouldn’t you?”
“It depends on the circumstances.” He brushed the dust off his shirt. “If the police found a note beside one of the victims in his own handwriting, saying it was suicide, I could understand why they wouldn’t bother looking any further.”
“But then you come along and you do look further.”
“I’m the curious type.”
“Clearly.” She smiled again. “So Stuckart was shot and the murderers tried to make it look like suicide?” He hesitated. “It’s a possibility.”
He regretted the words the moment he uttered them. She had led him into disclosing more than was wise about Stuckart’s death. Now a faint light of mockery played in her eyes. He cursed himself for underrating her. She had the cunning of a professional criminal. He considered taking her back to the bar and going on alone, but dismissed the idea. It was no good. To know what had happened, he needed to see it through her eyes.
He buttoned his tunic. “Now we must inspect Party Comrade Stuckart’s apartment.”
That, he was pleased to see, knocked the smile off her face. But she did not refuse to go with him. They climbed the stairs, and it struck him again that she was almost as anxious to see Stuckart’s flat as he was.
They took the elevator to the fourth floor. As they stepped out, he heard, along the corridor to their left, a door being opened. He grabbed the American’s arm and steered her round the corner, out of sight. When he looked back, he could see a middle-aged woman in a fur coat heading for the elevator. She was carrying a small dog.
“You’re hurting my arm.”
“Sorry.” He was hiding from shadows. The woman talked quietly to the dog and disappeared into the lift. March wondered whether Globus had retrieved the file from Fiebes yet, whether he had discovered that the keys were missing. They would have to hurry.
The door to Stuckart’s apartment had been sealed that day, close to the handle, with red wax. A note informed the curious that these premises were now under the jurisdiction of the Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, and that entry was forbidden. March pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and broke the seal. The key turned easily in the lock.
He said: “Don’t touch anything.”
More luxury, to match the building: elaborate gilt mirrors, antique tables and chairs with fluted legs and ivory damask upholstery, a carpet of royal blue with Persian rugs. The spoils of war, the fruits of Empire.
“Now tell me again what happened.”
“The porter opened the door. We came into the hall.” Her voice had risen. She was trembling. “He shouted and there was no reply, so we both came right in. I opened that door first.”
It was the sort of bathroom March had seen only in glossy magazines. White marble and brown smoky mirrors, a sunken bathtub, twin basins with gold taps… Here, he thought, was the hand of Maria Dymarski, leafing through German Vogue at the Ku-damm hairdressers, while her Polish roots were bleached Aryan white.
Then, I came into the sitting room…”
March switched on the light. One wall consisted of tall windows, looking out over the square. The other three had large mirrors. Wherever he turned, he could see images of himself and the girl: the black uniform and the shiny blue coat incongruous among the antiques. Nymphs were the decorative conceit. Fashioned in gilt, they draped themselves around the mirrors; cast in bronze, they supported table lamps and clocks. There were paintings of nymphs and statues of nymphs; wood nymphs and water nymphs; Amphitrite and Thetis.
“I heard him scream. I went to help…”
March opened the door of the bedroom. She turned away. Blood in half-light looks black. Dark shapes, twisted and grotesque, leapt up the walls and across the ceiling, like the shadows of trees.
They were on the bed, yes?”
She nodded.
“What did you do?”
“Rang the police.”
“Where was the porter?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Did you look at them again?”
“What do you think?” She brushed her sleeve angrily across her eyes.
“All right, Fraulein. It’s enough. Wait in the sitting room.”
The human body contains six litres of blood: sufficient to paint a large apartment. March tried to avoid looking at the bed and the walls as he worked — opening the cupboard doors, feeling the lining of every item of clothing, skimming every pocket with his gloved hands. He moved on to the bedside cabinets. These had been unlocked and searched before. The contents of the drawers had been emptied out for inspection, then stuffed back haphazardly — a typical, clumsy Orpo job, destroying more clues than it uncovered.
Nothing, nothing. Had he risked everything for this?
He was on his knees, with his arm stretched beneath the bed, when he heard it. It took a second for the sound to register.
“I’m sorry” she said, when he rushed in. “I shouldn’t have touched it.”
He took the chocolate box from her, carefully, and closed the lid on its tune.
“Where was it?”
“On that table.”
Someone had collected Stuckart’s mail for the past three days and had inspected it, neatly slicing open the envelopes, pulling out the letters. They were heaped up next to the telephone. He had not noticed them when he came in. How had he missed them? The chocolates, he could see, had been wrapped exactly as Buhler’s had been, postmarked Zurich, 16.00 hours, Monday afternoon.
Then he saw she was holding a paper knife.
“I told you not to touch anything.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Do you think this is a game?” She’s crazier than I am. “You’re going to have to leave.” He tried to grab her, but she twisted free.
“No way.” She backed away, pointing the knife at him. “I reckon I have as much right to be here as you do. You try and throw me out and I’ll scream so loudly I’ll have every Gestapo man in Berlin hammering on that door.”
“You have a knife, but I have a gun.”
“Ah, but you daren’t use it.”
March ran his hand through his hair. He thought: You believed you were so clever, finding her, persuading
