‘I’ve got a better idea. Get on to the propaganda boys at the Muratti. Ask them to supply you with a nice photograph of Streicher. Better ask for one of all the Gauleiters so as not to draw too much attention to yourself. Say it’s for security up at the Reichs Chancellery, that always sounds good. When you’ve got it, I want you to go and talk to the Hirsch girl. See if she can’t identify Streicher as the man in the car.’

‘And if she does?’

‘If she does, then you and I are going to find that we have made a lot of new friends. With one notable exception.’

‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

Thursday, 29 September

Chamberlain returned to Munich. He wanted to talk again. The Sheriff came too but it seemed that he was only going to look the other way when the shooting started. Mussolini polished his belt and his head and turned up to offer support to his spiritual ally.

While these important men came and went, a young girl, of little or no account in the general scheme of things, disappeared while doing the family shopping at the local market.

Moabit Market was on the corner of Bremerstrasse and Arminius Strasse. A large red-brick building, about the same size as a warehouse, it was where the working class of Moabit–which means everyone who lived in the area – bought their cheese, fish, cooked meats and other fresh provisions. There were even one or two places where you could stand and drink a quick beer and eat a sausage. The place was always busy and there were at least six ways in and out of the place. It’s not somewhere that you just wander round. Most people are in a hurry, with little time to stand and stare at things they cannot afford; and anyway, there is none of those sort of goods in Moabit. So my clothes and unhurried demeanour marked me out from the rest.

We knew that Liza Ganz had disappeared from there because that was where a fishmonger had found a shopping bag which Liza’s mother later identified as belonging to her.

Apart from that, nobody saw a damn thing. In Moabit, people don’t pay you much attention unless you’re a policeman looking for a missing girl, and even then it’s just curiosity.

Friday, 30 September

In the afternoon I was summoned to Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrecht Strasse.