I knocked on the door. I heard it echo in the hall and, seeing the closed shutters, I wondered if I’d had a wasted journey. I lit a cigarette and stood there, just leaning on the door, smoking and listening. The place was about as quiet as the sap in a gift-wrapped rubber tree. Then I heard some footsteps, and I straightened up as the door opened to reveal the Levantine head and round shoulders of the butler, Farraj.

‘Good morning,’ I said brightly. ‘I was hoping that I’d find Herr Haupthandler in.’ Farraj looked at me with the clinical distaste of a chiropodist regarding a septic toenail.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ he asked.

‘Not really,’ I said, handing him my card. ‘I was hoping he might give me five minutes, though. I was here the other night, to see Herr Six.’ Farraj nodded silently, and returned my card.

‘My apologies for not recognizing you, sir.’ Still holding the door, he retreated into the hall, inviting me to enter. Having closed it behind him, he looked at my hat with something short of amusement.

‘No doubt you will wish to keep your hat again, sir.’

‘I think I had better, don’t you?’ Standing closer to him, I could detect the very definite smell of alcohol, and not the sort they serve in exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.

‘Very good, sir. If you’ll just wait here for a moment, I’ll find Herr Haupthändler and ask him if he can see you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Do you have an ashtray?’ I held my cigarette ash aloft like a hypodermic syringe.

‘Yes, sir.’ He produced one made of dark onyx that was the size of a church Bible, and which he held in both hands while I did the stubbing out. When my cigarette was extinguished he turned away and, still carrying the ashtray, he disappeared down the corridor, leaving me to wonder what I was going to say to Haupthändler if he would see me. There was nothing in particular I had in mind, and not for one minute did I imagine that he would be prepared to discuss Ilse Rudel’s story about him and Grete Pfarr. I was just poking around. You ask ten people ten dumb questions, and sometimes you hit a raw nerve somewhere. Sometimes, if you weren’t too bored to notice, you managed to recognize that you were on to something. It was a bit like panning for gold. Every day you went down to the river and went through pan after pan of mud. And just occasionally, provided you kept your eyes peeled, you found a dirty little stone that was actually a nugget.