“I like coming here,” he said. “It makes you think of what we used to be. And what we will be again.”

I looked at him blankly.

“You know, German history,” he said.

“German history is nothing more than a series of ridiculous mustaches,” I said.

Bömer smiled a crooked, bashful smile, like a schoolboy. “My uncle would love that one,” he said.

“I take it you don’t mean Liebermann von Sonnenberg.”

“He’s my wife’s uncle.”

“As if having the head of KRIPO holding a sponge in your corner wasn’t enough. So your uncle. Who’s he? Hermann Goering?”

He looked sheepish. “I just want to work homicides. To be a good policeman.”

“One thing I learned about being a good policeman. It doesn’t pay nearly as well as being a bad one. So who’s your uncle?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s only that Liebermann wanted me to be your uncle, so to speak. And I’m the jealous type. If you’ve got another uncle as important as me, I want to know about it. Besides, I’m nosy, too. That’s why I became a detective.”

“He’s someone at the Ministry of Propaganda.”

“You don’t look like Joey the Crip, so you must be talking about someone else.”

“Bömer. Dr. Karl Bömer.”

“These days it seems everyone needs a doctorate to lie to people.”

He grinned again. “You’re just doing this, aren’t you? Because you know I’m a Party member.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“You’re not.”

“Somehow I never got around to it. There was always a big line of people outside Party headquarters when I went to apply.”

“It should have told you something. That there’s safety in numbers.”

“No, there isn’t. I was in the trenches, my young friend. A battalion can be killed just as easily as a single man. And it was the generals, not the Jews, who made sure of that. They’re the ones who stabbed us in the back.”

“The chief said I should try to avoid talking politics with you, Gunther.”

“That’s not politics. That’s history. You want to know the real truth of German history? It’s that there’s no truth in German history. Like me at the Alex. None of what you’ve heard about me is true.”

“The chief said you were a good detective. One of the best.”

“Apart from that.”

“He said it was you who caught Gormann, the strangler.”

“If that had been difficult, the chief would have put me in his book. Did you read it?”

He nodded.

“What did you think?”

“It wasn’t written for other cops.”

“You’re in the wrong job, Richard. You should be working in the diplomatic corps. It was a lousy book. It tells you nothing about being a detective. Not that I can tell you much. Except this, perhaps. It’s easy for a cop to recognize when a man is lying. What’s harder is to know when he’s telling the truth. Or maybe this: A policeman is just a man who’s a little less dumb than a criminal.”