‘No, seriously, Bernie. Right now the market for gems is at rock bottom. There are lots of Jews leaving Germany who, to fund their emigration, must sell the family jewels. At least, those who are lucky enough to have any to sell. And, as you might expect, they get the lowest prices. A Gentile could afford to wait for the market to become more buoyant. A Jew could not.’ Coughing in small explosive bursts, he took another, longer look at Six’s photograph and gave a chesty little shrug.

‘Way out of my league, I can tell you that much. Sure, I buy some small stuff. But nothing big enough to interest the boys from the Alex. Like you, they know about me, Bernie. There’s my time in the cement for a start. If I was to step badly out of line they’d have me in a KZ quicker than the drawers off a Kit-Kat showgirl.’ Wheezing like a leaky old harmonium, Weizmann grinned and handed the photograph back to me.

‘Amsterdam would be the best place to sell it,’ he said. ‘If you could get it out of Germany, that is. German customs officers are a smuggler’s nightmare. Not that there aren’t plenty of people in Berlin who would buy it.’

‘Like who, for instance?’

‘The two-tray boys - one tray on top and one under the counter - they might be interested. Like Peter Neumaier. He’s got a nice little shop on Schlüterstrasse, specializing in antique jewellery. This might be his sort of thing. I’ve heard he’s got plenty of flea and can pay it in whatever currency you like. Yes, I’d have thought he’d certainly be worth checking out.’ He wrote the name down on a piece of paper. ‘Then we have Werner Seldte. He may appear to be a bit Potsdam, but he’s not above buying some hot bells.’ Potsdam was a word of faint opprobrium for people who, like the antiquated pro-Royalists of that town, were smug, hypocritical and hopelessly dated in both intellectual and social ideas. ‘Frankly, he’s got fewer scruples than a backstreet angelmaker. His shop is on Budapester Strasse or Ebertstrasse or Hermann Goering Strasse or whatever the hell the Party calls it now.

‘Then there are the dealers, the diamond merchants who buy and sell from classy offices where a browser for an engagement ring is about as popular as a pork chop in a rabbi’s coat pocket. These are the sort of people who do most of their business on the gabbler.’ He wrote down some more names. ‘This one, Laser Oppenheimer, he’s a Jew. That’s just to show that I’m fair and that I’ve got nothing against Gentiles. Oppenheimer has an office on Joachimsthaler Strasse. Anyway, the last I heard of him he was still in business.