‘You could as well wait for the town-crier as get any real news out of that.’

‘True. But I like to read a paper in the morning, even if it is a crock of shit. I’ve got into the habit.’ We were both silent for a moment or two. ‘There’s another one of those advertisements in here: “Rolf Vogelmann, Private Investigator, Missing Persons a speciality.”’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Sure you have. There was another ad in last Friday’s classified. I read it out to you. Don’t you remember?’ He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at me. ‘You know, maybe we should advertise, Bernie.’

‘Why? We’ve got all the business we can handle, and more. Things have never been better, so who needs the extra expense? Anyway, it’s reputation that counts in this line of business, not column inches in the Party’s newspaper. This Rolf Vogelmann obviously doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Think of all the Jewish business that we get. None of our clients reads that kind of shit.’

‘Well, if you don’t think we need it, Bernie . . .’

‘Like a third nipple.’

‘Some people used to think that was a sign of luck.’

‘And quite a few who thought it reason enough to burn you at the stake.’

‘The devil’s mark, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘Hey, maybe Hitler’s got one.’

‘Just as surely as Goebbels has a cloven hoof. Shit, they’re all from hell. Every damn one of them.’

I heard my footsteps ringing on a deserted Konigsplatz as I approached what was left of the Reichstag building. Only Bismarck, standing on his plinth, hand on sword, in front of the western doorway, his head turned towards me, seemed prepared to offer some challenge to my being there. But as I recalled he had never been much of an enthusiast for the German parliament — had never even set foot in the place — and so I doubted that he’d have been much inclined to defend the institution on which his statue had, perhaps symbolically, turned its back. Not that there was much about this rather florid, Renaissance-style building that looked worth fighting for now. Its façade blackened by smoke, the Reichstag looked like a volcano which had seen its last and most spectacular eruption. But the fire had been more than merely the burnt offering of the 1918 Republic; it was also the clearest piece of pyromancy that Germany could have been given as to what Adolf Hitler and his third nipple had in store for us.

I walked up to the north side and what had been Portal V, the public entrance, through which I had walked once before, with my mother, more than thirty years ago.