“This all happened over forty years ago,” said Erin. “What if there was something here then? Something that was meant to be permanent, but it got moved?”

I pulled out the burner phone and started searching. It took a while, but I eventually found some photos of the park from back in the eighties. And it looked totally different. Crowds of people eating Bratwurst and drinking beer as they strolled through—

“A funfair,” breathed Erin. She twisted around in her seat and looked through the rear window. “Look, those three trees: they’re the ones in the photo, just forty years’ bigger. God, it was right where they’re digging!”

I squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the German text. “It was here for over thirty years. But something happened in 1989…”

“The wall came down,” said Yuri. “Whole city became a construction site.”

I tapped away at the phone, following links. “God, it’s still here. They just moved it.” I started up the car and drove on a little way. “There!”

We were still alongside the park, less than half a mile from where Becker was digging. Through the trees, we could see the shape of a helter skelter and a Ferris wheel.

We parked up, called the other car and told them to wait while we checked it out. Gabriel stayed with the car and the rest of us jumped out, gasping as the cold hit us. The funfair was closed for the winter, the rides dark and silent. We hurried inside, looking around. Across the park, I could see the bright orange overalls of the construction workers and the dark blobs that were Becker and his men.

The rides had been replaced over the years. Most of them were far too new to have been in the park when the general was around. We picked our way between sausage stands and souvenir booths and then—

We all stopped as we saw the carousel. A huge, vintage thing, the heart of the funfair. The sort of tourist favorite no one would ever get rid of.

We climbed aboard. There were the classic horses to sit on but there were other animals, too, all lovingly carved from wood. In the center was the operator’s cabin and the revolving spindle that powered the whole thing. JD marched straight towards it. “It’s gotta be in there, somewhere.”

It felt right, that it would be in the center. Romantic: X marks the spot. But Erin stopped him. “It’s been forty years. This thing must get serviced every year. If it was in there, where all the mechanical parts are, they’d have found it years ago.”

She was right. “So where is it?” I asked.

“Somewhere it wouldn’t need to move,” she muttered, gazing around. “Somewhere big enough to hide a suitcase.”

The horses were too skinny. There was a carriage, but that was mostly empty space for kids to sit inside.