I walked back to the office. Frau Protze was polishing the glass on the yellowing print of Tilly that hung on the wall of my waiting room, contemplating with some amusement the predicament of the hapless Burgomeister of Rothenburg. As I came through the door the phone started to ring. Frau Protze smiled at me and then stepped smartly into her little cubicle to answer it, leaving me to look afresh at the clean picture. It was a long time since I’d really looked at it. The Burgomeister, having pleaded with Tilly, the sixteenth-century commander of the Imperial German Army, for his town to be spared destruction, was required by his conqueror to drink six litres of beer without drawing breath. As I remembered the story, the Burgomeister had pulled off this prodigious feat of bibbing and the town had been saved. It was, as I had always thought, so characteristically German. And just the sort of sadistic trick some S A thug would play. Nothing really changes that much.

‘It’s a lady,’ Frau Protze called to me. ‘She won’t give her name, but she insists on speaking to you.’

‘Then put her through,’ I said, stepping into my office. I picked up the candlestick and the earpiece.

‘We met last night,’ said the voice. I cursed, thinking it was Carola, the girl from Dagmarr’s wedding reception. I wanted to forget all about that little episode. But it wasn’t Carola. ‘Or perhaps I should say this morning. It was pretty late. You were on your way out and I was just coming back after a party. Do you remember?’

‘Frau — ’ I hesitated, still not quite able to believe it.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘less of the Frau. Ilse Rudel, if you don’t mind, Herr Gunther.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ I said. ‘How could I not remember?’

‘You might,’ she said. ‘You looked very tired.’ Her voice was as sweet as a plate of Kaiser’s pancakes. ‘Hermann and I, we often forget that other people don’t keep such late hours.’

‘If you’ll permit me to say so, you looked pretty good on it.’

‘Well, thank you,’ she cooed, sounding genuinely flattered. In my experience you can never flatter any woman too much, just as you can never give a dog too many biscuits.

‘And how can I be of service?’

‘I’d like to speak to you on a matter of some urgency,’ she said. ‘All the same, I’d rather not talk about it on the telephone.’

‘Come and see me here, in my office?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t. I’m at the studios in Babelsberg right now. Perhaps you would care to come to my apartment this evening?’

‘Your apartment?’ I said. ‘Well, yes, I’d be delighted. Where is it?’

‘Badenschestrasse, Number 7. Shall we say nine o’clock?’