I hung up and shoved some papers inside some old newspapers and then dumped them in one of the desk drawers that still had a bit of space. After that I doodled on the blotter and then picked up one of the several paperweights that were lying on the desk. I was rolling its cold bulk around my hands when there was a knock at the door. Frau Protze edged into the room.

‘I wondered if there was any filing that needed to be done.’ I pointed at the untidy stacks of files that lay on the floor behind my desk.

‘That’s my filing system there,’ I said. ‘Believe it or not, they are in some sort of order.’ She smiled, humouring me no doubt, and nodded attentively as if I was explaining something that would change her life.

‘And are they all work in progress?’

I laughed. ‘This isn’t a lawyer’s office,’ I said. ‘With quite a few of them, I don’t know whether they are in progress or not. Investigation isn’t a fast business with quick results. You have to have a lot of patience.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ she said. There was only one photograph on my desk. She turned it round to get a better look at it. ‘She’s very beautiful. Your wife?’

‘She was. Died on the day of the Kapp Putsch.’ I must have made that remark a hundred times. Allying her death to another event like that, well, it plays down how much I still miss her, even after sixteen years. Never successfully however. ‘It was Spanish influenza,’ I explained. ‘We were together for only ten months.’ Frau Protze nodded sympathetically.

We were both silent for a moment. Then I looked at my watch.

‘You can go home if you like,’ I told her.

When she had gone I stood at my high window a long time and watched the wet streets below, glistening like patent leather in the late afternoon sunlight. The rain had stopped and it looked as though it would be a fine evening. Already the office workers were making their ways home, streaming out of Berolina Haus opposite, and down into the labyrinth of underground tunnels and walkways that led to the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn station.

Berlin. I used to love this old city. But that was before it had caught sight of its own reflection and taken to wearing corsets laced so tight that it could hardly breathe. I loved the easy, carefree philosophies, the cheap jazz, the vulgar cabarets and all of the other cultural excesses that characterized the Weimar years and made Berlin seem like one of the most exciting cities in the world.