Six laughed and lit his cigar. ‘A gangster,’ he said. ‘Really, Herr Gunther, your imagination is running away with you. Now, if you don’t mind, you’ve been very handsomely paid, so if you will please leave I would be most grateful. I’m a very busy man, and I have a lot of things to do.’

‘I guess things are difficult without a secretary to help. What if I were to tell you that the man calling himself Teichmüller, the one that Red’s thugs are probably beating the shit out of right now, is really your private secretary, Hjalmar Haupthandler?’

‘That is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Hjalmar is visiting some friends in Frankfurt.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s a simple matter to get Red’s boys to ask Teichmüller what his real name is. Perhaps he’s already told them; but then, Teichmüller is the name on his new passport, so they could be forgiven for not believing him. He purchased it from the same man he was planning to sell the diamonds to. One for him and one for the girl.’

Six sneered at me. ‘And does this girl have a real name too?’ he said.

‘Oh yes. Her name is Hannah Roedl, although your son-in-law preferred to call her Eva. They were lovers, at least they were until she murdered him.’

‘That’s a lie. Paul never had a mistress. He was devoted to my Grete.’

‘Come off it, Six. What did you do to them that made him turn his back on her? That made him hate you bad enough to want to put you behind bars?’

‘I repeat, they were devoted to each other.’

‘I admit it’s possible that they might have become reconciled to each other not long before they were killed, with the discovery that your daughter was pregnant.’ Six laughed. ‘And so Paul’s mistress decided to get her own back.’

‘Now you really are being ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You call yourself a detective and you don’t know that my daughter was physically incapable of having children.’

I felt my jaw. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Good God, man, do you think it’s something that I might have forgotten? Of course I’m sure.’