‘Well, what do you know? They still let Jews drink booze. I was almost feeling sorry for you back there when you told me about those books. Things are never as bad as they seem, just as long as there’s a drink about.’

‘That’s the truth, my friend.’ He opened a corner cabinet, found the bottle of schnapps and poured it carefully but generously. Handing me my glass he said, ‘I’ll tell you something. If it wasn’t for all the people who drink, this country really would be in a hell of a state.’ He raised his glass. ‘Let us wish for more drunks and the frustration of an efficiently run National Socialist Germany.’

‘To more drunks,’ I said, watching him drink it, almost too gratefully. He had a shrewd face, with a mouth that wore a wry smile, even with the chimneystack. A large, fleshy nose separated eyes that were rather too closely set together, and supported a pair of thick, rimless glasses. The still-dark hair was brushed neatly to the right of a high forehead. Wearing his well-pressed blue pin-striped suit, Weizmann looked not unlike Ernst Lubitsch, the comic actor turned film director. He sat down at an old rolltop and turned sideways to face me.

‘So what can I do for you?’

I showed him the photograph of Six’s necklace. He wheezed a little as he looked at it, and then coughed his way into a remark.

‘If it’s real -’ He smiled and nodded his head from side to side. ‘Is it real? Of course it’s real, or why else would you be showing me such a nice photograph. Well then, it looks like a very fine piece indeed.’

‘It’s been stolen,’ I said.

‘Bernie, with you sitting there I didn’t think it was stuck up a tree waiting for the fire service.’ He shrugged. ‘But, such a fine-looking necklace - what can I tell you about it that you don’t already know?’

‘Come on, Weizmann. Until you got caught thieving you were one of Friedlaender’s best jewellers.’

‘Ah, you put it so delicately.’

‘After twenty years in the business you know bells like you know your own waistcoat pocket.’

‘Twenty-two years,’ he said quietly, and poured us both another glass. ‘Very well. Ask your questions, Bernie, and we shall see what we shall see.’

‘How would someone go about getting rid of it?’

‘You mean some other way than just dropping it in the Landwehr Canal? For money? It would depend.’

‘On what?’ I said patiently.

‘On whether the person in possession was Jewish or Gentile.’

‘Come on, Weizmann,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to keep wringing the yarmulke for my benefit.’