‘Look,’ I said, ‘there’s something that I have to do. I won’t be long, but I’ll have to leave you for a short while. If there’s anything you want just ask the waiter.’ She looked at me anxiously as I accompanied her back to the table.

‘But where are you going?’

‘I have to see someone, someone here. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

She smiled at me, and said: ‘Please be careful.’

I bent forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Like I was walking on a tightrope.’

There was a touch of the Fatty Arbuckle about the solitary occupant of the end booth. His fat neck rested on a couple of doughnut-sized rolls pressed tight against the collar of his evening shirt. The face was as red as a boiled ham, and I wondered if this was the explanation behind the nickname. Red Dieter Helfferich’s mouth was set at a tough angle like it ought to have been chewing on a big cigar. When he spoke it was a medium-sized brown bear of a voice, growling from the inside of a short cave, and always on the edge of outrage. When he grinned, the mouth was a cross between early-Mayan and High Gothic.

‘A private investigator, huh? I never met one.’

‘That just goes to show there aren’t enough of us around. Mind if I join you?’

He glanced at the label on the bottle. ‘This is good champagne. The least I can do is hear you out. Sit down — ’ He lifted his hand and looked at my card again for effect ‘ — Herr Gunther.’ He poured us both a glass, and raised his own in a toast. Cowled under brows the size and shape of horizontal Eiffel Towers were eyes that were too wide for my comfort, each revealing a broken pencil of an iris.

‘To absent friends,’ he said.

I nodded and drank my champagne. ‘Like Kurt Mutschmann perhaps.’

‘Absent, but not forgotten.’ He uttered a brash, gloating laugh and sipped at his drink. ‘It would seem that we’d both like to know where he is. Just to put our minds at rest, of course. To stop us worrying about him, eh?’

‘Should we be worried?’ I asked.

‘These are dangerous times for a man in Kurt’s line of work. Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. You know all about that, don’t you, fleabite, you being an ex-bull.’ He nodded appreciatively. ‘I’ve got to hand it to your client, fleabite, it showed real intelligence involving you rather than your former colleagues. All he wants is his bells back, no questions asked. You can get closer. You can negotiate. Perhaps he’ll even pay a small reward, eh?’

‘You’re very well informed.’