‘And do you have contacts at Sachsenshausen?’

‘No, but I could find one.’ Fritz took a pencil and small notebook from the pocket of the green loden breeches he favoured whenever he was off duty. ‘Here is the name of a friend of mine in the Berlin Gestapo. If you use my name, you’ll be safe in speaking to him.’

Max took the piece of paper and put it in his pocket. ‘And what if she hasn’t been arrested as Volksschädling, Fritz? What if she’s been arrested because she is guilty of treason to the state?’

Fritz roared with laughter, showing a mass of misshapen teeth. ‘Then in that case, dear friend, you’ll never hear of her again. She’ll be dead within days.’ He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. ‘Shall we get some schnapps to chase the beer down? Then you can tell me about your women. I miss Berlin women. Munich women are as big as carthorses.’

Lotti finished her set, stepping off the stage to loud applause and wolf whistles. Minutes later, still wearing the slinky, silver lamé gown she had performed in, she was seated with a Gestapo agent who had long been pestering her for a dinner date.

There was champagne in a bucket beside the table and a gleam of intense satisfaction in her dinner date’s eyes.

‘I’ve been looking forward to this for hours,’ she said huskily, looking across at him smoulderingly from beneath batwing false eyelashes. ‘Backstage has been absolute hell tonight.’

Her date, a personable-looking man in his early thirties, poured the champagne. ‘In what way?’ he asked, his eyes on the deep cleavage of her breasts.

Lotti gave a careless shrug, well aware that doing so ensured her breasts bounced erotically. ‘One of the chorus girls was demented because a friend of hers had a run-in with one of your friends a night or so ago. Apparently, she was in an area of Mitte she had no reason to be in—lost, I expect. When she tried to interrupt a couple of Gestapo agents making an arrest they misconstrued the interruption and taught her how foolish it is to interfere when men are carrying out their duty. They hurt her pretty badly and, as the girl in question has to rely on her looks to earn a living, her friend is in despair about it.’

She gave another shrug to indicate that her interest in the matter was not very great. And waited.

‘So she was a chorus girl. That explains a lot. I heard she was a looker.’

Lott felt her heart miss a beat. She took a languid sip of her champagne and, beneath the table, let her knee slip beneath his. ‘Were the arresting agents friends of yours?’ she asked, hardly able to believe her luck.

‘Colleagues. The arrest was quite a coup for them. A German Jewess guilty of treason to the state, but a German Jewess with a British passport. She had to be lured back from England in order for the arrest to be made.’