“It’s too bad,” said one of the other detectives. “His wife died three weeks ago.”

“What did she die of?” I heard myself ask.

“A kidney ailment,” said Heller. “This leaves three daughters orphaned.”

“Someone’s going to have to tell them,” said someone.

“I’ll do that.” The man who spoke was in uniform, and everyone straightened up when we realized it was the commander of the Berlin Schupo, Magnus Heimannsberg. “You can leave that to me.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Heller.

“Who’s the other man? I don’t recognize him.”

“Captain Lenck, sir.”

Heimannsberg leaned down to take a closer look.

“Franz Lenck? What the hell was he doing here? This kind of police work wasn’t his sort of thing at all.”

“Every available man in uniform was summoned here,” Heller said. “Anyone know if he was married?”

“Yes,” said Heimannsberg. “No children, though. That’s something, I suppose. Look, Reinhard, I’ll tell her, too. The widow.”

Lenck was also about forty. His face was leaner than Anlauf’s, with deep smile lines that were no longer being used. A pince-nez was still on his face, just about, and the shako remained on his head, with the strap tight under his chin. He had been shot in the back and, like Anlauf, had his weapon holstered, a fact that Heimannsberg now remarked upon.

“They didn’t even have a chance to get their weapons out,” he said bitterly. Nodding at a Luger by his boot, he added, “I assume this is Sergeant Willig’s gun.”

“He got off a whole clip, sir,” said Heller. “Before they ran in here.”

“Hit anything?”

Heller looked at me.

“I don’t think so, sir,” I said. “Mind you, it’s a little hard to tell in there. Everything’s red. Carpet, walls, curtains, you name it. Hard to see any bloodstains. They ran out the rear exit on Hirtenstrasse. Sir, I’d like a couple of men with flashlights to help me search the length of the street. People have chucked away red flags and placards; it’s possible they might have thrown the guns, too.”

Heller nodded.

“Don’t worry, lads,” said Heimannsberg, who, having started his career as an ordinary patrolman, was enormously popular with everyone in the police. “We’ll catch the bastards who did this.”

A few minutes later, I was walking along Hirtenstrasse with a couple of uniformed men. As we went farther west toward Mulack Strasse and the territory of the Always True, a notorious Berlin gang, they started to become nervous. We stopped next to Fritz Hempel, the tobacconists. It was closed, of course. I pointed my flashlight one way and then the other. The two Schupo men came toward me, relaxing a little as, in the distance, a police armored car pulled up on the corner.