“That’s right, I am. No, she’s not in any kind of trouble. I look after her personal security. Like a kind of bodyguard.” I smiled. “She flies. I go by train.”

“Such a good-looking woman,” said Frau Klingerhoefer, gouging the marrow out of the lamb bone with the tip of her knife.

“Yes, isn’t she?” I said. “Frau Warzok’s divorcing her husband,” I added. “As far as I’m aware, she’s undecided whether she’s going to stay on in Vienna. Or live here in Munich. Which is why I was a little surprised to hear that she mentioned living in Vienna to you.”

Klingerhoefer was looking thoughtful and shaking his head. “Warzok? No, I’m sure that wasn’t the name she used,” he said.

“I expect she was using her maiden name,” I suggested.

“No, it was definitely Frau something-else,” he insisted. “And not Fräulein. I mean, a good-looking woman like that. It’s the first thing you listen out for. If she’s married or not. Especially when you’re a bachelor who’s as keen to get married as I am.”

“You’ll find someone,” said his mother, licking the marrow off her knife. “You just have to be patient, that’s all.”

“Was it Schmidt?” I asked. That was the name she had used when first she had contacted Herr Krumper, my late wife’s lawyer.

“No, it wasn’t Schmidt,” he said. “I’d have remembered that, too.”

“My maiden name was Schmidt,” his mother explained, helpfully.

I hovered for a second in the hope that he might remember the name she had used. But he didn’t. And after a while, I apologized once again and made for the door.

The maître d’ rushed to my side, his elbows held high and pumping him forward like a dancer. “Was everything all right, sir?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, handing over her dollars. “Tell me something. Have you ever seen that lady before?”

“No, sir,” he said. “I’d have remembered that lady anywhere.”

“I just got the impression that maybe you had met her before,” I said. I fished in my pocket and took out a five-mark note. “Or maybe this was the lady you recognized?”

The maître d’ smiled and almost looked bashful. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m afraid it was.”

“Nothing to be afraid of,” I said. “She won’t bite. Not this lady. But if you ever see that other lady again, I’d like to hear about it.” I tucked the note and my card into the breast pocket of his cutaway.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

I went out onto Marstallstrasse in the vague hope that I might catch a glimpse of Britta Warzok getting into a car, but she was gone. The street was empty. I said to hell with her and started to walk back to where I had left my car.

All clients are liars.

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