‘Call me Berndt,’ said the man. ‘Everyone here does. We can’t stand stuffiness here. We just get on with our jobs to the best of our abilities. And yes, of course they’re welcome to stay.’

‘So,’ said Müller, ‘what can you tell us so far?’

‘Well, I can tell you the victim was male.’

There was a harrumph from Tilsner. ‘I think we managed to work that one out for ourselves.’

Giesler didn’t seem to take offence, and just chuckled. ‘You’d be surprised at some of the ones we get on here. It’s not always obvious straight away – especially if they’ve been crushed, or in a fire.’

Müller found herself grimacing and fighting to hold her breath even more strongly than she’d been doing since they entered the mortuary room.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘male, late fifties or early sixties I’d say. Reasonably well-nourished . . .’ Müller saw Tilsner raise his eyebrows towards Schmidt. It was their little joke when they reached this part of a pathologist’s speech – Tilsner perhaps implying that ‘well-nourished’ would be an understatement should his corpulent forensic officer colleague ever have the misfortune to find himself on the slab. ‘No obvious sign of injury—’

Müller frowned. ‘But I thought—’

‘Aah, patience, my esteemed People’s Police Comrade. No obvious sign of injury except –’ Giesler paused and gave a slightly devilish smile – ‘for a rather obvious blow to the back of the head, caused by a blunt object wielded with considerable force. All of which I think you already knew, because it was all fairly obvious. In fact, the People’s Police captain at the scene—’

‘Hauptmann Schriver,’ prompted Tilsner.

‘That’s the one. Well, he gave me all that information before I’d had to so much as lift a finger or scalpel. So I suppose what you good people want to know is what else I can tell you, eh?’ The pathologist started poking at the cranium of the body now, parting the still slightly matted hair, then lifting the neck. Rigor mortis had clearly already dissipated. Müller did a quick calculation in her head – so the victim must have been killed at least forty-eight hours previously. That seemed too long. She’d need to check.

‘Here is the wound caused by the blunt object,’ said Giesler.

‘Enough force to be lethal?’ asked Müller.

The pathologist shrugged, and then waved his arms about in a slightly theatrical fashion. ‘Well, yes and no. Enough force to kill, probably. Did it kill him? Probably not, at least not directly. See here?’ Dr Giesler was pointing to some cement-like smudges around the wound. The three Berlin detectives craned their heads forward to see, almost bumping into each other in the process. ‘Very interesting. They’re cement or concrete-covered finger imprints, surrounded by bruising. That’s consistent with what else I found.’

‘Which is?’ asked Müller.