I knocked on the door, and eventually it opened, to reveal a tall, slim man in his thirties with a plentiful head of hair that was high at the front and almost nonexistent at the back. It was like finding a chaise longue on top of someone’s head.

“Do you ever get used to that noise?” I asked.

“What noise?”

“I guess you do. Emil Linthe?”

“Gone away. On holiday. Rügen Island.”

There was ink on his fingers. Enough to make me suspect I was talking to the right man after all.

“My mistake,” I said. “Maybe you’re going by a different name these days. Otto Trettin said it might be Maier, or maybe Schmidt. Walter Schmidt.”

Linthe’s persona deflated like a balloon. “A copper.”

“Relax. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists. I’m here on business. Your kind of business.”

“And why would I want to do business with the Berlin polenta?”

“Because Otto still hasn’t found your file, Emil. And because you don’t want to give him any reason to start looking for it again. Or you might find yourself back in the Punch. His words, not mine. But I’m like a brother to that man.”

“I always thought coppers killed their brothers when they were still in their cradles.”

“Ask me in. There’s a good fellow. It’s a bit noisy out here, and you wouldn’t want me to raise my voice, now, would you?”

Emil Linthe stepped aside. At the same time he drew up his suspenders and picked up a cigarette he’d left burning in an ashtray on a ledge inside the door. As I came inside, he closed the door and then quickly moved ahead of me along the corridor to close the sitting room door. But not soon enough to prevent me from seeing what looked like a printing press. We went into the kitchen.

“I told you, Emil. I’m not here to squeeze your wrists.”

“The leopard doesn’t change its spots.”

“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. I hear you can do exactly that. For the right money. I want you to give me what Otto Trettin called an Aryan transfusion.”

I told him the problem about my grandmother.

He smiled and shook his head. “It makes me laugh,” he said. “All those people who got on the Nazi train, now running back down the aisle to look for the station they started from.”

I might have told him I wasn’t one of those people. I might have admitted I wasn’t a cop, but I didn’t want to deliver myself into his potentially blackmailing hands. Linthe was a crook after all. I needed to hold on to the whip, or else I might lose control of a horse I planned to ride for as long as I needed it.