He nodded, still drawing on the pipe. Through clenched teeth, he said: ‘That I did. I heard about what happened. Bruno was a good man.’ He removed the pipe from his leathery old mouth and surveyed the progress of his smoke. ‘Knew him quite well, really. We were both in the infantry together. Saw a fair bit of action, too. Of course, he wasn’t much more than a spit of a lad then, but it never seemed to bother him much, the fighting I mean. He was a brave one.’

‘The funeral was last Thursday.’

‘I’d have gone too if I could have got the time.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But it was all the way down in Zehlendorf. Too far.’ He finished his beer and opened another two bottles. ‘Still, they got the piece of shit who killed him I hear, so that’s all right then.’

‘Yes, it certainly looks like it,’ I said. ‘Tell me about this telephone call tonight. What time was this?’

‘Just before midnight, sir. Fellow asks for the duty sergeant. You’re speaking to him, I says. Listen carefully, he says. The missing girl, Irma Hanke, he says, is to be found in a large blue-leather trunk in the left-luggage at Zoo Bahnhof. Who’s this, I asks, but he’d hung up.’

‘Can you describe his voice?’

‘I’d say it was an educated sort of voice, sir. And used to giving an order and having it carried out. Rather like an officer.’ He shook his large head. ‘Couldn’t tell you how old, though.’

‘Any accent?’

‘Just the trace of Bavarian.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘My late wife was from Nuremberg, sir. I’m sure.’

‘And how would you describe his tone? Agitated? Disturbed at all?’

‘He didn’t sound like a spinner, if that’s what you mean, sir. He was as cool as the piss out of a frozen eskimo. As I said, just like an officer.’

‘And he asked to speak to the duty sergeant?’

‘Those were his actual words, sir.’

‘Any background noise? Traffic? Music? That sort of thing?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘What did you do then? After the call.’

‘I telephoned the operator at the Central Telephone Office on Französische Strasse. She traced the number to a public telephone box outside Bahnhof West Kreuz. I sent a squad car round there to seal it off until a team from 5D could get down there and have it checked out for piano players.’

‘Good man. And then you called Deubel?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I nodded and started on my second bottle of beer.

‘I take it Orpo knows what this is all about?’