‘If I start to scowl it will be heartburn, all right?’

I lit a cigarette. Mentally I tossed a coin and lost. I would tell it to her straight. ‘You remember the dead man in the service-lift?’

‘Like I just found out I had leprosy,’ she said, shuddering visibly.

‘Hermann Goering hired me to try and find him.’ I paused, waiting for her comment, and then shrugged under her bemused stare. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘He agreed to put a tap on a couple of telephones - Jeschonnek’s and Haupthändler’s.’ I picked up the transcript and waved it in front of her face. ‘And this is the result. Amongst other things it means that I can now afford to tell his people where to find Von Greis.’

Inge said nothing. I took a long angry drag at my cigarette and then stubbed it out like I was hammering a lectern. ‘Let me tell you something: you don’t turn him down, not if you want to finish your cigarette with both lips.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Believe me, he’s not a client that I would have chosen. His idea of a retainer is a thug with a machine-pistol.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me about it, Bernie?’

‘When Goering takes someone like me into his confidence, the table stakes are high. I thought it was safer for you that you didn’t know. But now, well, I can’t very well avoid it, can I?’ Once again I brandished the transcript at her. Inge shook her head.

‘Of course you couldn’t refuse him. I didn’t mean to appear awkward, it’s just that I was, well, a bit surprised. And thank you for wanting to protect me, Bernie. I’m just glad that you can tell someone about that poor man.’

‘I’ll do it right now,’ I said.

Rienacker sounded tired and irritable when I called him.

‘I hope you’ve got something, pushbelly,’ he said, ‘because Fat Hermann’s patience is worn thinner than the jam in a Jewish baker’s sponge-cake. So if this is just a social call then I’m liable to come and visit you with some dog-shit on my shoes.’

‘What’s the matter with you, Rienacker?’ I said. ‘You having to share a slab in the morgue or something?’

‘Cut the cabbage, Gunther, and get on with it.’

‘All right, keep your ears stiff. I just found your boy, and he’s squeezed his last orange.’

‘Dead?’

‘Like Atlantis. You’ll find him piloting a service-lift in a deserted hotel on Chamissoplatz. Just follow your nose.’

‘And the papers?’

‘There’s a lot of burnt ash in the incinerator, but that’s about all.’

‘Any ideas on who killed him?’