‘Claims to have information about an old case of mine. A missing person that stayed missing.’

‘Sure, I remember them like I remember dogs with tails. Very unusual. Are you going?’

I shrugged. ‘Lately I’ve been sleeping badly, so why not?’

‘You mean apart from the fact that it’s a burnt-out ruin, and it isn’t safe to go inside? Well, for one, it could be a trap. Someone might be trying to kill you.’

‘Maybe you sent it, then.’

He laughed uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps I should come with you. I could stay out of sight, but within earshot.’

‘Or gunshot?’ I shook my head. ‘If you want to kill a man you don’t ask him to the sort of place where naturally he’ll be on his guard.’ I tugged open the drawer of my desk.

To look at there wasn’t much difference between the Mauser and the Walther, but it was the Mauser that I picked up. The pitch of the grip, the general fit of the pistol made it altogether more substantial than the slightly smaller Walther, and it lacked for nothing in stopping-power. Like a fat cheque, it was a gun that always endowed me with a feeling of quiet confidence when I slipped it into my coat pocket. I waved the gun in Bruno’s direction.

‘And whoever sent me the party invitation will know I’m carrying a lighter.’

‘Supposing there’s more than one of them?’

‘Shit, Bruno, there’s no need to paint the devil on the wall. I can see the risks, but that’s the business we’re in. Newspapermen get bulletins, soldiers get dispatches and detectives get anonymous letters. If I’d wanted sealing-wax on my mail I’d have become a damned lawyer.’

Bruno nodded, tugged a little at his eyepatch and then transferred his nerves to his pipe — the symbol of our partnership’s failure. I hate the paraphernalia of pipe-smoking: the tobacco-pouch, the cleaner, the pocket-knife and the special lighter. Pipe-smokers are the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting, and as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a boxful of brassieres. It wasn’t Bruno’s fault, for, in spite of his drinking and his irritating little habits, he was still the good detective I’d rescued from the obscurity of an out-of-the-way posting to a Kripo station in Spreewald. No, it was me that was at fault: I had discovered myself to be as temperamentally unsuited to partnership as I would have been to the presidency of the Deutsche Bank.

But looking at him I started to feel guilty.

‘Remember what we used to say in the war? If it’s got your name and address on it, you can be sure it’ll be delivered.’

‘I remember,’ he said, lighting his pipe and returning to his Völkischer Beobachter. I watched him reading it with bemusement.