‘Any particular kind of girl, sir?’

‘Aged about fifteen or sixteen, blonde, blue-eyed, BdM and,’ I said, feeding him the line, ‘preferably a virgin.’

‘That last part might be a bit difficult, sir.’

‘She’ll have to have plenty of nerve.’

‘Are you thinking of staking her out, sir?’

‘I believe it’s always been the best way to hunt tiger.’

‘Sometimes the goat gets killed though, sir,’ said Korsch.

‘As I said, this girl will have to have guts. I want her to know as much as possible. If she is going to risk her life then she ought to know why she’s doing it.’

‘Where exactly are we going to do this, sir?’ said Becker.

‘You tell me. Think about a few places where our man might notice her. A place where we can watch her without being seen ourselves.’ Korsch was frowning. ‘What’s troubling you?’

He shook his head with slow distaste. ‘I don’t like it, sir. Using a young girl as bait. It’s inhuman.’

‘What do you suggest we use? A piece of cheese?’

‘A main road,’ Becker said, thinking out loud. ‘Somewhere like Hohenzollerndamm, but with more cars, to increase our chances of him seeing her.’

‘Honestly, sir, don’t you think it’s just a bit risky?’

‘Of course it is. But what do we really know about this bastard? He drives a car, he wears a uniform, he has an Austrian or Bavarian accent. After that everything is a maybe. I don’t have to remind you both that we are running out of time. That Heydrich has given me less than four weeks to solve this case. Well, we need to get closer, and we need to do it quickly. The only way is to take the initiative, to select his next victim for him.’

‘But we might wait for ever,’ said Korsch.

‘I didn’t say that it would be easy. You hunt tiger and you can end up sleeping in a tree.’

‘What about the girl?’ Korsch continued. ‘You don’t propose to keep her at it night and day, do you?’

‘She can do it in the afternoons,’ said Becker. ‘Afternoons and early evenings. Not in the dark, so we can make sure he sees her, and we see him.’

‘You’re getting the idea.’

‘But where does Vogelmann fit in?’

‘I don’t know. A feeling in my socks, that’s all. Maybe it’s nothing, but I just want to check it out.’

Becker smiled. ‘A bull has to trust a few hunches now and then,’ he said.

I recognized my own uninspired rhetoric. ‘We’ll make a detective out of you yet,’ I told him.