‘Of course he doesn’t give a damn about these Sudeten Germans. This nationalist thing is just a cover. Everyone knows it. It’s all that Austro-Hungarian heavy industry that he wants. That he needs, if he’s going to fight a European war. God, I wish he had to deal with someone stronger than Chamberlain. He brought his umbrella with him you know. Bloody little bank manager.’

‘Do you think so? I’d say the umbrella denotes quite a sensible sort of man. Can you really imagine Hitler or Goebbels ever managing to stir up a crowd of men carrying umbrellas? It’s the very absurdity of the British which makes them so impossible to radicalize. And why we should envy them.’

‘It’s a nice idea,’ he said, smiling reflectively. ‘But tell me about this fellow you’ve arrested. Think he might be our man?’

I glanced around the room for a moment, hoping to find greater conviction on the walls and the ceiling, and then lifted my hands almost as if I meant to disclaim Gottfried Bautz’s presence in a cell downstairs.

‘From a circumstantial point of view, he could fit the laundry list.’ I rationed myself to one sigh. ‘But there’s nothing that definitely connects him. The rope we found in his room is the same type as the rope that was used to bind the feet of one of the dead girls. But then it’s a very common type of rope. We use the same kind here at the Alex.

‘Some cloth we found underneath his bed could be stained with blood from one of his victims. Equally, it could be menstrual blood, as he claims. He has access to a van in which he could have transported and killed his victims relatively easily. I’ve got some of the boys checking it over now, but so far it appears to be as clean as a dentist’s fingers.

‘And then of course there is his record. We’ve locked his door once before for a sexual offence — a statutory rape. More recently he probably tried to strangle a snapper he’d first persuaded to be tied up. So he could fit the psychological bill of the man we’re looking for.’ I shook my head. ‘But that’s more “could-be” than Fritz fucking Lang. What I want is some real evidence.’

Nebe nodded sagely and put his boots on the desk. Tapping his fingers’ ends together, he said: ‘Could you build a case? Break him?’