I won the break and missed the opening shot. After that I might just as well have been baby-sitting. Becker hadn’t been in the Boy Scouts when he was young, that much was certain. After four games I tossed a twenty on to the felt and begged for mercy. Becker threw it back.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You let me lay you down.’

‘That’s another thing you’ve got to learn. A bet’s a bet. You never ever play for money unless you mean to collect. A man that lets you off might expect you to let him off. It makes people nervous, that’s all.’

‘That sounds like good advice.’ He pocketed the money.

‘It’s like business,’ I continued. ‘You never work for free. If you won’t take money for your work then it can’t have been worth much.’ I returned my cue to the rack and finished my beer. ‘Never trust anyone who’s happy to do the job for nothing.’

‘Is that what you’ve learnt as a private detective?’

‘No, it’s what I’ve learnt as a good businessman. But since you mention it, I don’t like the smell of a private investigator who tries to find a missing schoolgirl and then waives his fee.’

‘Rolf Vogelmann? But he didn’t find her.’

‘Let me tell you something. These days a lot of people go missing in this town, and for lots of different reasons. Finding one is the exception, not the rule. If I’d torn up the bill of every disappointed client I had, I’d have been washing dishes by now. When you’re private, there’s no room for sentiment. The man who doesn’t collect, doesn’t eat.’

‘Maybe this Vogelmann character is just more generous than you were, sir.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t see how he can afford to be,’ I said, unfolding Vogelmann’s advertisement and looking at it again. ‘Not with these overheads.’

16

Tuesday, 18 October

It was her, all right. There was no mistaking that golden head and those well-sculpted legs. I watched her struggle out of Ka-De-We’s revolving door, laden with parcels and carrier-bags, looking like she was doing her last-minute Christmas shopping. She waved for a taxi, dropped a bag, bent down to retrieve it and looked up to find that the driver had missed her. It was difficult to see how. You’d have noticed Hildegard Steininger with a sack over your head. She looked as though she lived in a beauty parlour.

From inside my car I heard her swear and, drawing up at the curb, I wound down the passenger window.

‘Need a lift somewhere?’