‘All nice and neat. Kill him, and make it look like Hering did it, and then get Hering to hang himself in a fit of remorse. Not forgetting to take away the letters of course. Who killed the man in the car? Was that your idea?’

‘No, I didn’t want to be there.’

I grabbed him by the lapels, picked him off his chair and started to slap him. ‘Come on, I’ve had just about enough of your whining. Tell me who killed him or I’ll have you shot within the hour.’

‘Lanz did it. With Rahn. Otto held his arms while Kindermann — he stabbed him. It was horrible. Horrible.’

I let him back down on the chair. He collapsed forward on to the table and started to sob into his forearm.

‘You know, Reinhard, you’re in a pretty tight spot,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Being there makes you an accomplice to murder. And then there’s you knowing about the murders of all these girls.’

‘I told you,’ he sniffed miserably, ‘they would have killed me. I never went along with it, but I was afraid not to.’

‘That doesn’t explain how you got into this in the first place.’ I picked up Lange’s statement and glanced over it.

‘Don’t think I haven’t asked myself the same question.’

‘And did you come up with any answers?’

‘A man I admired. A man I believed in. He convinced me that what we were doing was for the good of Germany. That it was our duty. It was Kindermann who persuaded me.’

‘They’re not going to like that in court, Reinhard. Kindermann doesn’t play a very convincing Eve to your Adam.’

‘But it’s true, I tell you.’

‘That may be so, but we’re fresh out of fig-leaves. You want a defence, you better think of something to improve on that. That’s good legal advice, you can depend on it. And let me tell you something, you’re going to need all the good advice you can get. Because the way I see it, you’re the only one who’s likely to need a lawyer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ll be straight with you, Reinhard. I’ve got enough in this statement of yours to send you straight to the block. But the rest of them, I don’t know. They’re all SS, acquainted with the Reichsfuhrer. Weisthor’s a personal friend of Himmler’s, and, well, I worry, Reinhard. I worry that you’ll be the scapegoat. That all of them will get away with it in order to avoid a scandal. Of course, they’ll probably have to resign from the SS, but nothing more than that. You’ll be the one who loses his head.’

‘No, it can’t be true.’

I nodded.