‘What do you mean – something happen?’

‘Oh, I mean perhaps there’ll be another war, or I’ll die, or the Russians will take me.’

‘You’ll forget him in time. You’ll fall in love again.’

‘I know, but I don’t want to. Don’t you see I don’t want to?’

So Rollo Martins came back from the window and sat down on the divan again. When he had risen half a minute before he had been the friend of Harry, comforting Harry’s girl; now he was a man in love with Anna Schmidt who had been in love with a man they had both once known called Harry Lime. He didn’t speak again that evening about the past. Instead he began to tell her of the people he had seen. ‘I can believe anything of Winkler,’ he told her, ‘but Cooler – I liked Cooler. He was the only one of his friends who stood up for Harry. The trouble is, if Cooler’s right, then Koch is wrong, and I really thought I had something there.’

‘Who’s Koch?’

He explained how he had returned to Harry’s flat and he described his interview with Koch, the story of the third man.

‘If it’s true,’ she said, ‘it’s very important.’

‘It doesn’t prove anything. After all, Koch backed out of the inquest; so might this stranger.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she said. ‘It means that they lied: Kurtz and Cooler.’

‘They might have lied so as not to inconvenience this fellow – if he was a friend.’

‘Yet another friend – on the spot. And where’s your Cooler’s honesty then?’

‘What do we do? Koch clamped down like an oyster and turned me out of his flat.’

‘He won’t turn me out,’ she said, ‘or his Ilse won’t.’

They walked up the long road to the flat together; the snow clogged on their shoes and made them move slowly like convicts weighed down by irons. Anna Schmidt said, ‘Is it far?’

‘Not very far now. Do you see that knot of people up the road? It’s somewhere about there.’ The group was like a splash of ink on the whiteness, a splash that flowed, changed shape, spread out. When they came a little nearer Martins said, ‘I think that’s his block. What do you suppose this is, a political demonstration?’

Anna Schmidt stopped. She said, ‘Who else have you told about Koch?’

‘Only you and Colonel Cooler. Why?’

‘I’m frightened. It reminds me …’ She had her eyes fixed on the crowd and he never knew what memory out of her confused past had risen to warn her. ‘Let’s go away,’ she implored him.

‘You’re crazy. We’re on to something here, something big …’

‘I’ll wait for you.’

‘But you’re going to talk to him.’