Chapters (50)
- Praise
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- AUTHOR’S NOTE
- Teaser chapter
“I knew her husband,” I said. “Friedrich. Before the war. Before he—” I shrugged. “About a week ago I received a letter from her. At my home in Garmisch. It said that she was in trouble. It took me a while to get away from my medical practice. And I arrived in Vienna just a short while ago. I came straight here.”
“Do you still have the letter?” asked the cop with the scar.
“No, I’m afraid I left it in Garmisch.”
“What kind of trouble?” he asked. “Did she say?”
“No, but Britta isn’t—wasn’t the kind of person to say that kind of thing lightly. The letter was really short. It just asked me to come to Vienna as soon as I could. Well then. I telephoned before I left Garmisch. But there was no reply. So I came anyway.”
I started to wander across the parquet wooden floor like some ordinary Fritz, distracted with grief. Which in part I was, of course. Vera Messmann’s dead body was all too vivid in my memory. There were some nice rugs, a few elegant chairs and tables. Some good Nymphenburger porcelain. A vase of flowers that looked as if they had been dead for about as long as the woman in the bath. There were lots of framed photographs on a sideboard. I went to take a closer look at them. Many of them featured the woman in the bath. In one of them she was getting married to a face I recognized. It was Friedrich Warzok. I was quite sure it was him because he was wearing his SS uniform. I shook my head as if I was upset. But not in the way they imagined I was upset. I was upset because I had a very bad feeling about everything that had happened to me since a woman calling herself Britta Warzok had walked into my office.
“Who would have done such a thing?” I asked the two cops. “Unless.”
“Yes.”
“It’s no secret that Friedrich, her husband, is wanted for war crimes,” I said. “And of course, one hears things. About Jewish revenge gangs. Perhaps they came looking for her husband and killed her instead.”
The cop with the hat was shaking his head. “It’s a nice idea,” he said. “But it so happens we think we know who killed her.”
“Already? That’s amazing.”
“Did you ever hear her mention a man called Bernhard Gunther?”
I tried to contain my surprise and look thoughtful for a moment. “Gunther, Gunther,” I said, as if raking through the bottom drawer of my memory. If I was going to pump them for information I would have to give them something first.