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 put the phone down and lit a cigarette with the butt of the one I was finishing, to help me think things over in detail. It’s what I do when I work a case that starts to interest not just me but other people as well. People like Friedrich Korsch, for example. Some people smoke to relax. Others to stimulate their imaginations, or to concentrate. With me it was a combination of all three at once. And the more I thought about it the more my imagination was telling me not only that I’d just been warned off a case, but also that this had been swiftly followed up by an attempt to buy me off, with a job offer. I took another drag on the cigarette and then stubbed it out in the ashtray. Nicotine was a drug, wasn’t it? I was smoking way too much. It was a crazy idea. Korsch trying to warn me and then buy me off? That was the drug talking, surely?
I went out to get a coffee and a cognac. They were drugs, too. Maybe that way I’d see things differently. It was worth a try.
THIRTEEN
THIRTEEN
Wagmullerstrasse ran onto Prinzregentenstrasse, between the National Museum and the House of Art. On the English Garden side, the House of Art was now being used as an American Officers’ Club. The National Museum had just reopened following extensive repairs and now, once again, it was possible to see the city treasures that no one really wanted to look at. Wagmullerstrasse was in a district of Munich called Lehel, which was full of quiet residential streets built for the well-to-do during Germany’s industrial revolution. Lehel was still quiet but only because half of the houses were in ruins. The other half had been or were still being repaired and lived in by Munich’s new well-to-do. Even out of uniform the new well-to-do were easily recognizable by their buzz-cut hairstyles; their busy, gum-chewing mouths; their loud braying laughs; their impossibly wide trousers; their handsome cigarette cases; their sensible English shoes; their Kodak folding Brownies; and, above all, their semi-aristocratic air—that sense of absolute precedence they all gave off like cheap cologne.