“Here’s what I think happened. After his career as a boxer was outlawed by the Nazis, Isaac Deutsch and his uncle got a job on the Olympic building site. In spite of the official policy about hiring only Aryan workers. Given how much there is to do before the Olympiad starts, in 1936, someone decided it might be best to cut a few corners. And not just with the racial origins of the workforce. With safety, too, I suspect. Isaac Deutsch was probably involved in some kind of underground excavation when he ruptured one of those water chambers Blitz told us about. He had an accident, and he was drowned in seawater, only no one knew it was seawater. Someone figured it might be best if his body was found drowned a long way from Pichelsberg. Just in case some nosy cop started asking questions about illegal Jewish workers. Which is how the body ended up in a freshwater canal, on the other side of Berlin.”

Noreen searched her empty cigarette case for a smoke. “Damn,” she said again.

I gave her mine. “Much as I’m reluctant to admit it, Noreen, this little investigation is over. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to spin this out and keep on driving you around Berlin. But I think honesty’s best. Especially since I’m a little out of practice in that area, what with one thing and another.”

She lit the cigarette and stared out of the window as we came into Steglitz.

“Pull up,” she said, sharply.

“What?”

“Pull up, I said.”

I stopped the car close to the town hall, at the corner of Schlossstrasse, and started to apologize on the assumption that she had taken offense at something I had said. Even before I had switched off the engine, she had got out of the car and was walking swiftly back down the street. I followed.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “But there’s still a story you can write here. Maybe if you found Isaac Deutsch’s uncle Joey—the guy who was his trainer—then perhaps he’d talk. You could get his story. That would be a good angle. How Jews are forbidden to compete in the Olympics but how one who gets an illegal job building the stadium ends up dead. That could be a great story.”