“Right, right. Thanks a lot. I’m glad you did.”
“That’s a very nice-looking woman, you know. Frau Dorpmüller, I mean.”
“I suppose she is.”
“I certainly thought so. Sometimes I wonder if good-looking women know the effect they have on men. Mostly I try not thinking about them at all. For my sake and theirs. The women close to me have not had the best of luck, one way or another. Leaving the female of the species alone has, for me, come to seem like a kind of valor.”
“Is that so? You surprise me. Perhaps you’re more dangerous than you look.”
“I hope so.”
His smile was as thin as his parchment skin. Aspens are suited to colder climates and the wood is famously hard to burn but as I chatted Friedrich Jauch’s pale neck started to turn bright red, as if his whole body were slowly catching fire. Clearly our conversation was having the effect I’d hoped for. Any doubts about his guilt were now gone. In my time as a cop in Berlin I’d interrogated some of the great Grand Master Liars, and Friedrich Jauch wasn’t one of those. His guilt and greed for a share of the settlement made him more transparent to me than some bloodless deep-ocean fish. The fact was I’d only just returned from handing over the check to Ursula Dorpmüller at her apartment in Nymphenburg, but I wanted Jauch to suspect she might have double-crossed him and was holding out on whatever deal they’d previously made. Even if they’d agreed not to meet for a while he would probably insist on a meeting now, as a result of what I was telling him—had to, and he’d certainly assume she was lying when she told him that she’d only just received the check. As soon as that seed of doubt took root in his mind I was betting their conspiracy would start to unravel like the wool of a cheap sweater.
“Well, thanks for letting me know, Christof. I appreciate it. But I can’t stand here chatting. I’d better get on. Clients to meet. Sales to make.”
“Nice talking to you,” I said, and carried on up the stairs to where I’d left my coat lying on a hand-carved fauteuil. I grabbed it, went back down to the hall, watched him turn right out of the colonnade onto Königinstrasse, and then followed.
It had been a while since I’d tailed a suspect, and I was looking forward to repeating the experience. Frankly the chase made me feel young again, like I was a junior detective back at the Alex when the commissars used to train us like bloodhounds. It was the best training in the world, as a matter of fact. I once followed a man for three days without him knowing I was there, and he didn’t even have a letter M chalked on the back of his coat. Ideally I would have had a partner to follow Jauch effectively but then he was by now probably too much preoccupied with doubt and suspicions concerning his co-conspirator to be looking out for a tail. Besides, I had done this a thousand times, whereas for him this was probably his first time being followed by a trained detective. If I was right it would probably be the last time he was followed, too.
I shadowed him to the corner of Galeriestrasse, where he stepped into a telephone box and made a call. A few minutes later he came out, crossed onto Ludwigstrasse, and took a cab from the taxi rank. First rule if you think you’re being tailed: Never take a cab from the taxi rank unless it’s the only one free. Here there were three, which meant it was easy for me to jump in another and follow him to wherever he was going. A few minutes later, in the south part of central Munich, his cab stopped and he got out on Sendlinger Tor Platz. But I stayed in my cab for a moment and watched. This area, extending from the Marienplatz beyond Rindermarkt, had been almost entirely destroyed during the war and was being rebuilt on new and uniformly modern lines; recent demolitions had laid bare the Löwenturm, one of the towers of the old town wall, and clear views were to be had across several empty spaces. It was easy to keep Jauch in sight. He couldn’t have made it easier for me wearing a hat like that. It was a Gamsbart, a Tyrolean hat with a beard that was supposed to make the wearer look like a character. He might as well have been carrying a Nazi flag. After a few moments he ducked into a cinema and I followed.
At the ticket desk I smiled at the toucan-faced cashier behind the glass and said, “That fellow who came in with the stupid hat—the Gamsbart. Where’s he sitting? I want to make sure I’m not behind him.”
“Stalls,” she said.
I smiled again. “Give me a seat in the front dress circle, will you? Just in case he keeps it on.”
“Film’s just about to start,” she said, handing me my ticket before going back to her nails and her copy of Film Revue.
I went in and found my seat a few minutes before the lights went down, just in time to spot Friedrich Jauch, alone in the middle of the stalls, almost immediately beneath the front row of the dress circle where I’d positioned myself, not close enough to hear anything of what he might say, but close enough to notice if anyone sat anywhere near him. He put the hat on the seat next to him where it sat, quite noticeably, like a much-loved pet. I sat forward and, leaning my chin on the red velvet parapet, I found I was able to flick my eyes between the screen—the film was Bhowani Junction—and Friedrich Jauch without even moving my head. The cinema was more or less empty; a film
