I put my hand on the gas ring. It was still warm. A pile of half-smoked cigarettes lay in an ashtray as if put there by someone who was feeling nervous about something. No one in Gesundbrunnen would have wasted tobacco like that. I pictured a man sitting in a chair by the window. A man who’d been trying to occupy his mind with a book, perhaps, while he waited for a car to come and take him and Ziemer to a KPD safe house. I picked up the book that lay on the kitchen table. It was All Quiet on the Western Front.

“Do you know where your son might be now?” asked Heller.

“I haven’t a clue. Frankly, he could be anywhere. Never tells me anything about where he’s been or where he’s going. Well, you know what young men are like.”

I came back into the room and stood behind him. “You KPD?”

He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “It’s not illegal, is it? Yet?”

“Perhaps you were in Bülowplatz yourself last night.” While I spoke, I turned the pages of the book.

He shook his head. “Me? No. I was here all night.”

“Are you sure? After all, there were several hundred of your comrades there, including your son. Maybe as many as a thousand. Surely you wouldn’t have missed something as fun-packed as that?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I stayed at home. I always stay at home on a Sunday night.”

“Are you religious?” I said. “You don’t look religious.”

“On account of the fact that I have to go to work in”—he nodded at the little wooden clock on the tiled mantelpiece—“yes, in just two hours from now.”

“Any witnesses that you were here all night?”

“The Geislers, next door.”

“Is this your book?”

“Yes.”

“Good, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t have thought it was your taste,” he said.

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“I hear the Nazis want to ban it.”

“Maybe they do. But I’m not a Nazi. And neither is the police counselor, here.”

“All cops are Nazis in my book.”

“Yes, but this isn’t it. I mean your book.” I turned the page and removed the Ringbahn ticket that was marking the reader’s place. “This ticket says you’re lying.”

“What do you mean?”

“This ticket is for Gesundbrunnen Station, just a few minutes’ walk from here. It was bought at Schönhauser Tor at eight-twenty this evening, which is about twenty minutes after two policemen were murdered on Bülowplatz. That’s less than a hundred meters from the station at Schönhauser Tor. Which puts the owner of this book in the thick of it.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Herr Mielke,” said Heller, “you’re in enough trouble as it is without putting the brakes on your mouth.”