The young man, a pleasant, fresh-faced fellow with a buttonhole, blocked my path. ‘It can’t wait until tomorrow,’ he said, and then smiled winningly. ‘Please speak to him, just for a minute, I beg you.’

‘Speak to whom?’ I growled, looking over at the car.

‘Here’s his card.’ He handed it over and I stared stupidly at it like it was a winning raffle-ticket. He leaned over and read it for me, upside-down. “‘Dr Fritz Schemm, German Lawyer, of Schemm & Schellenberg, Unter den Linden, Number 67.” That’s a good address.’

‘Sure it is,’ I said. ‘But a lawyer out at this time of night and from a smart firm like that? You must think I believe in fairies.’ But I followed him to the car anyway. The chauffeur opened the door. Keeping one foot on the running board, I peered inside. A man smelling of cologne leaned forward, his features hidden in the shadows, and when he spoke, his voice was cold and inhospitable, like someone straining on a toilet-bowl.

‘You’re Gunther, the detective?’

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and you must be -’ I pretended to read his business card, ‘ — Dr Fritz Schemm, German Lawyer.’ I uttered the word ‘German’ with a deliberately sarcastic emphasis. I’ve always hated it on business cards and signs because of the implication of racial respectability; and even more so now that — at least as far as lawyers are concerned - it is quite redundant, since Jews are forbidden to practise law anyway. I would no more describe myself as a ‘German Private Investigator’ than I would call myself a ‘Lutheran Private Investigator’ or an ‘Antisocial Private Investigator’ or a ‘Widowed Private Investigator’, even though I am, or was at one time, all of these things (these days I’m not often seen in church). It’s true that a lot of my clients are Jews. Their business is very profitable (they pay on the nail), and it’s always the same - Missing Persons. The results are pretty much the same too: a body dumped in the Landwehr Canal courtesy of the Gestapo or the SA; a lonely suicide in a rowboat on the Wannsee; or a name on a police list of convicts sent to a KZ, a Concentration Camp. So right away I didn’t like this lawyer, this German Lawyer.

I said: ‘Listen, Herr Doktor, like I was just telling your boy here, I’m tired and I’ve drunk enough to forget that I’ve got a bank manager who worries about my welfare.’ Schemm reached into his jacket pocket and I didn’t even shift, which shows you how blue I must have been. As it was he only took out his wallet.