He was feeling his way through the trees, unaware of his direction or where he was. Somewhere, perhaps three or four hundred metres behind him, he saw the beam of the torch, scanning across a wide arc. It was supposed to pick out Seb as a target, but in fact it gave him a coordinate, something to work on. He moved to the left, at right angles to the path his pursuers seemed to be following.
Two minutes later he realised he had to stop. Their best hope of finding him was the sound he was making. They were following his footfalls. The more he moved, the more noise he would make.
He slid behind a tree, tried desperately to calm his pounding heart and his rasping breath. He mustn’t make a sound. He needed silence, absolute silence.
*
The air was cool, almost cold, but his body was boiling with a fever. He rested his arms on his thighs, breathed deeply and slowly, listened to the night. He heard voices, now a little closer, now further away. Occasionally he saw a distant spot of light.
How long did he stay here, perfectly still, perfectly silent? An hour? Two hours. It was the depths of the night in the heart of the forest and other sounds came to him. Animal sounds. Boar, deer, night owls.
Finally he heard the sound he had been waiting for. The car engine turning over and coming to life. He heard it driving away, back along the path towards the west of the forest, in the direction of Munich. Still he didn’t move.
*
He awoke with the dawn, his body now cold. God in heaven, had he really fallen asleep here? Had Fuchs and Matthäus really gone, or were they waiting for him, ready to ambush him as soon as he made a move?
He couldn’t go westwards, because they could be parked along the path. From the sun and the blue sky above the high green canopy, he worked out which way was north and began to walk slowly in that direction.
*
He arrived at a small and very beautiful farm village just after eight thirty. The sun was up now and it was a glorious day. He realised he must look a mess, his clothes, hair and face covered with dirt and dust, but he approached an old woman and asked her if there was anywhere he could make a telephone call.
She looked him up and down suspiciously until he showed her his Kripo badge, then she nodded and said, ‘I have a telephone, you can use that.’
Her house was nearby and she invited him in, then left him with the phone while she made ersatz coffee and buttered a slice of black bread for him.
Seb got through to Sergeant Winter at the Presidium and told him where he was without going into too much detail of what had befallen him.
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour, Inspector.’
*
The coffee and bread had tasted wonderful and Seb had given profuse thanks to the old woman who helped him. She had naturally been curious about the circumstances surrounding his arrival in the village, but he had merely said that it was a confidential police matter and he couldn’t say more.
Now he was being driven back towards Munich by Hans Winter, past the endless suburban streets and the factories, their chimneys belching out smoke into the blue sky.
‘Well, Inspector?’
‘Your friends, Matthäus and Fuchs, took me for a ride into the Ebersberger Forest. It was supposed to be a one-way ticket.’
‘Then it is a miracle you’re here. Are they still with us?’
‘Somewhere. But they’ll have hangovers and bruises. Maybe a bullet hole and a broken bone, but that might be too much to ask. Anyway, you had a task to perform for me, remember. Any results?’
‘Through talking to the dealers, I have found four cream-coloured Maybachs in Munich, but of course there could be more purchased elsewhere. One of them is particularly interesting. A Maybach Zeppelin.’
‘The one belonging to the young Englishman Adam Rock.’
‘No, I have no information on that one. I was thinking of the one belonging to Walter Regensdorf.’
*
Winter dropped Seb off at the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel, where his borrowed car was still parked. He thanked Winter and they agreed to meet later, then he drove home to Ainmüllerstrasse.
His mother was all over him, hugged him and offered him food and coffee. Surprisingly, Jurgen was at home, too.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’
‘Shouldn’t you be at work, catching murderers?’
‘I see you have regained your healthy disrespect for your father, Jurgen.’
‘You saved Silke, but that doesn’t mean we see eye to eye on other matters.’
‘Indeed not, and perhaps we never will.’
‘You have a short memory, old man. Do you not recall the failed economy just five years ago when almost every German subsisted on porridge and cabbage soup and veterans of the war starved in the street? Look at the food we eat now – pork, cheese, veal. And who do we have to thank for that? Who has stood up to the French and the Jews and the Bolsheviks and given us back our pride. You know the answer.’
‘Please, Jurgen, no politics today.’
‘You just want to avoid the truth, won’t admit you’re wrong.’
‘I’m not going to argue with you. Just tell me about Silke, how is she?’
‘I think she is very shaken up. Her parents won’t let her out of their sight. I don’t feel very welcome there at the moment. Perhaps they blame me for what happened, I don’t know.’
‘You have nothing to blame yourself for, Jurgen. You are both the same age – you didn’t force her to go on your adventure. It was the choice of both of you.’
‘Yet I was the man – I must take responsibility.’
Seb nodded. He understood the boy. He had felt responsibility for Ulrike all those years ago, even though in post-war Germany women had been given the vote equal with men. Even though it was Ulrike who made the first move in their love affair. It was simply the way he was brought up: the world belonged to man, the home to woman.
Not that he agreed with the idea of man’s superiority, simply that it was deeply ingrained in the culture and in the church and in his upbringing. Such presumptions were difficult to cast off, even though Hexie had done her best to disabuse him of his outdated attitudes and re-educate him.
He washed and shaved and changed and felt a great deal better. Mutti looked at the bruises to his head where Matthäus had hit him and sighed in resignation.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The other man came off worse.’
‘Why don’t you get an office job, Seb? I’m sure Christian would be happy to find you something in one of his concerns. You have a good brain – you could learn accounting, perhaps.’
‘Maybe I will.’ Maybe he would have no option. He didn’t bother telling her that he had been dismissed from the police force. There was time enough for that when things became calmer.
He settled down at the kitchen table with his pen and a blank sheet of paper and began writing down words and names, joining them with lines when he saw a connection: Rosie Palmer, Anglo-German Naval Agreement, Karl Friedlander, Otto Raspe, Heidi Raspe, Adam Rock, Thule, Hesselberg, Herzogpark, rune, lipstick, Persian rug, Unity Mitford, Walter Regensdorf, Maria Regensdorf, Irmgard Huber, Caius Klammer, 175, Walther PPK, Hildegard Heiden, geblōt, cream-coloured Maybach, brake fluid, Fritz Mannheim, Frances de Pole, Silke Stutz, sex magic, Clarice Goodall, Lukas Matthäus, Rudi Fuchs, the BPP, Ernst Hanfstaengl . . .
Outside the front door, on the landing, the telephone was ringing, then stopped. There was a knock at the door. Seb put down his pen and opened it to their neighbour, Frau Miedler.
‘There is a telephone call for you, Herr Wolff.’
‘Thank you.’
It was Winter on the line. ‘Ruff demands your presence.’
‘I’m not sure he has the power to demand anything of me anymore.’
‘I’m just the messenger, Inspector. He told me to get you here sharpish.’
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
*
What, he wondered as he drove southwards towards the Police Presidium, was he to do with the new information that Walter Regensdorf was in possession of a cream-coloured Maybach Zeppelin? What did it amount to?
Such a car had been used to pick up Hildegard Heiden in Nuremberg, almost certainly driven by her killer. Such a car had cut him up on the road home to Munich when the brakes failed.
That evidence was merely circumstantial. But there was something else: the similarities between the deaths of Hildegard Heiden – who had been last seen accepting a lift from a cream-coloured Maybach – and Rosie Palmer, whose hosts, the Regensdorfs, owned such a car.
*
‘If it was up to me, you would never be allowed in the Munich police again,’ Thomas Ruff said. ‘But it appears that it is not up to me, so you are to have your badge back, Wolff.’
‘Thank you, sir, but I am not certain that I want it.’
‘What you want and what I want are beside the point. This is an order from the Brown House. And not just that. It seems you are to accept promotion to Captain of Detectives. Should I now congratulate you, or commiserate with you?’
‘Is there a pay rise?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I suppose as I am about to get married and will need the money I have no option but to accept the post, and also your congratulations, sir.’
‘Have you ever heard of an American escape artist named Harry Houdini, Wolff?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think you must be related to him in some way, because I have no other explanation for your ability to wriggle out of impossible situations.’
Seb smiled. This was nothing to do with Houdini, and everything to do with Uncle Christian and his influence with the very highest level of Nazidom. Perhaps with a little extra help from Putzi Hanfstaengl who wanted nothing to reflect badly on his publicity coup in finding the right cop to clear up the Rosie Palmer case and keep both the English government and the Führer happy.
‘However,’ Ruff said, ‘I suggest that you bear in mind that Houdini’s final trick did not end well. So collect your badge and gun and get back to work. Solve the murder of that 175 to start with.’
‘I think I know who killed him, but you might not like to hear it, sir.’
Ruff began to twitch nervously. ‘Go on.’
‘Two members of the Bavarian Political Police.’
‘Ah. And you’re certain of this?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And do you have names and evidence?’
‘Names but no evidence.’
‘Well then nothing can be done. Time for you to move on to another case, perhaps.’
‘Don’t you want to know the names, Herr Ruff?’
‘Not without solid evidence, no. Consider the case closed.’
Seb bowed obediently. He had known exactly what Ruff would say.
‘And for a short while you will remain with the rank of inspector,’ Ruff continued, ‘pending the retirement of Captain of Detectives Erler, who will leave his post at the end of July.’
‘Heil Hitler, sir.’
‘Heil Hitler, Wolff, you lucky bastard.’