I stepped back into the room. ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise,’ I said. ‘We were just talking about you. We thought you might have gone to your Bible class in Wewelsburg. Incidentally, I’d be careful with that gun if I were you. My men have got this place under surveillance. They’re very loyal, you know. That’s the way we are in the police these days. I’d hate to think what they’d do if they found out that some harm had come to me.’

Kindermann glanced at Lange, who hadn’t moved, and then at the files under my arm.

‘I don’t know what your game is, Herr Steininger, if that is your real name, but I think that you had better put those down on the desk and raise your hands, don’t you?’

I laid the files down on the desk and started to say something about having a warrant, but Reinhard Lange had already taken the initiative, if that’s what you call it when you’re misguided enough to throw yourself on to a man who is holding a 45-calibre pistol cocked on you. His first three or four words of bellowing outrage ended abruptly as the deafening gunshot blasted the side of his neck away. Gurgling horribly, Lange twisted around like a whirling dervish, grasping frantically at his neck with his still-manacled hands, and decorating the wallpaper with red roses as he fell to the floor.

Kindermann’s hands were better suited to the violin than something as big as the 45, and with the hammer down you need a carpenter’s forefinger to work a trigger that heavy, so there was plenty of time for me to collect the bust of Dante that sat on Kindermann’s desk and smash it into several pieces against the side of his head.

With Kindermann unconscious, I looked round to where Lange had curled himself into the corner. With his bloody forearm pressed against what remained of his jugular, he stayed alive for only a minute or so, and then died without speaking another word.

I removed the handcuffs and was transferring them to the groaning Kindermann when, summoned by the shot, two nurses burst into the office and stared in terror at the scene that met their eyes. I wiped my hands on Kindermann’s necktie and then went over to the desk.

‘Before you ask, your boss here just shot his pansy friend.’ I picked up the telephone. ‘Operator, get me Police Headquarters, Alexanderplatz, please.’ I watched one nurse search for Lange’s pulse and the other help Kindermann on to the couch as I waited to be connected.

‘He’s dead,’ said the first nurse. Both of them stared suspiciously at me.