LITMIR.BIZ

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looked at the docket. An anonymous phone call from a passer-by. You think it was a phony?’

      ‘Probably.’

      ‘While the prisoner was taken away somewhere else.’

      ‘It would be a way of getting our attention.’

      ‘And spoiling my Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill the bastards if I ever get hold of them.’

      ‘Them?’

      ‘At least two people. It wasn’t in gear, you notice, it was in neutral. So they must have pushed it in. That needs two people; one to push and one to steer.’

      ‘Three of them, according to what we heard.’

      He nodded. ‘There’s too much crime on television,’ said the police inspector. He signalled to the policeman to get another bucket of water for the rest of them to wash with. ‘That old English colonel with the kids’ football team … he was your father, wasn’t he?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘I realized that afterwards. I could have bitten my tongue off. No offence. Everyone liked the old man.’

      ‘That’s okay,’ I said.

      ‘He didn’t even enjoy the football. He just did it for the German kids; there wasn’t much for them in those days. He probably hated every minute of those games. At the time we didn’t see that; we wondered why he took so much trouble about the football when he couldn’t even kick the ball straight. He organized lots of things for the kids, didn’t he. And he sent you to the neighbourhood school instead of to that fancy school where the other British children went. He must have been an unusual man, your father.’

      Washing my hands and arms and face had only got rid of the most obvious dirt. My trench coat was soaked and my shoes squelched. The mud along the banks of the Havel at that point is polluted with a century of industrial waste and effluents. Even my newly washed hands still bore the stench of the riverbed.

      The hotel was dark when I let myself in by means of the key that certain privileged guests were permitted to borrow. Lisl Hennig’s hotel had once been her grand home, and her parents’ home before that. It was just off Kantstrasse, a heavy grey stone building of the sort that abounds in Berlin. The ground floor was an optician’s shop and its bright façade partly hid the pockmarked stone that was the result of Red Army artillery fire in 1945. My very earliest memories were of Lisl’s house – it was not easy to think of it as a hotel – for I came here as a baby when my father was with the British Army. I’d known the patched brown carpet that led up the grand staircase when it had been bright red.

      At the top of the stairs there was the large salon and the bar. It was gloomy. The only illumination came from a tiny Christmas tree positioned on the bar counter. Tiny green and red bulbs flashed on and off in a melancholy attempt to be festive. Intermittent light fell upon the framed photos that covered every wall. Here were some of Berlin’s most illustrious residents, from Einstein to Nabokov, Garbo to Dietrich, Max Schmeling to Grand Admiral Dönitz, celebrities of a Berlin now gone for ever.

      I looked into the breakfast room; it was empty. The bentwood chairs had been put up on the tables so that the floor could be swept. The cruets and cutlery and a tall stack of white plates were ready on the table near the serving hatch. There was no sign of life anywhere. There wasn’t even the smell of cooking that usually crept up through the house at night-time.

      I tiptoed across the salon to the back stairs. My room was at the top – I always liked to occupy the little garret room that had been my bedroom as a child. But before reaching the stairs I passed the door of Lisl’s room. A strip of light along the door confirmed that she was there.

      ‘Who is it?’ she called anxiously. ‘Who’s there?’

      ‘It’s Bernd,’ I said.

      ‘Come in, you wretched boy.’ Her shout was loud enough to wake everyone in the building.

      She was propped up in bed; there must have been a dozen lace-edged pillows behind her. She had a scarf tied round her head, and on the side table there was a bottle of sherry and a glass. All over the bed there were newspapers; some of them had come to pieces so that pages had drifted across the room as far as the fireplace.

      She’d snatched her glasses off so quickly that her dyed brown hair was disarranged. ‘Give me a kiss,’ she demanded. I did so and noticed the expensive perfume and the makeup and false eyelashes that she applied only for very special occasions. The heiliger Abend with her friends had meant a lot to her. I guessed she’d waited for me to come home before she’d remove the makeup. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ she asked. There was repressed anger in her voice.

      ‘I’ve been working,’ I said. I didn’t want to get into a conversation. I wanted to go to bed and sleep for a long time.

      ‘Who were you with?’

      ‘I told you, I was working.’ I tried to assuage her annoyance. ‘Did you have dinner with Mr Koch and your friends? What did you serve them – carp?’ She liked carp at Christmas; she’d often told me it was the only thing to serve. Even during the war they’d always somehow managed to get carp.

      ‘Lothar Koch couldn’t come. He had influenza and the wine people had to go to a trade party.’

      ‘So you were all alone,’ I said. I bent over and kissed her again. ‘I’m so sorry, Lisl.’ She’d been so pretty. I remember as a child feeling guilty for thinking she was more beautiful than my mother. ‘I really am sorry.’

      ‘And so you should be.’

      ‘There was no way of avoiding it. I had to be there.’

      ‘Had to be where – Kempinski or the Steigenberger? Don’t lie to me, Liebchen. When Werner phoned me I could hear the voices and the music in the background. So you don’t have to pretend you were working.’ She gave a little hoot of laughter, but there was no joy in it.

      So she’d been in bed here working herself up into a rage about that. ‘I was working,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll explain tomorrow.’

      ‘There’s nothing you have to explain, Liebchen. You are a free man. You don’t have to spend your heiliger Abend with an ugly old woman. Go and have fun while you are young. I don’t mind.’

      ‘Don’t upset yourself, Lisl,’ I said. ‘Werner was phoning from his apartment because I was working.’

      By this time she’d noticed the smell of the mud on my clothes, and now she pushed her glasses into place so that she could see me more clearly. ‘You’re filthy, Bernd. Whatever have you been doing? Where have you been?’ From her study there came the loud chimes of the ornate ormolu clock striking two-thirty.

      ‘I keep telling you over and over again, Lisl. I’ve been with the police on the Havel getting a car from the water.’

      ‘The times I’ve told you that you drive too fast.’

      ‘It wasn’t anything to do with me,’ I said.

      ‘So what were you doing there?’

      ‘Working. Can I have a drink?’

      ‘There’s a glass on the sideboard. I’ve only got sherry. The whisky and brandy are locked in the cellar.’

      ‘Sherry will be just right.’

      ‘My God, Bernd, what are you doing? You don’t drink sherry by the tumblerful.’

      ‘It’s Christmas,’ I said.

      ‘Yes. It’s Christmas,’ she said, and poured herself another small measure. ‘There was a phone message, a woman. She said her name was Gloria Kent. She said that everyone sent you their love. She wouldn’t leave a phone number. She said you’d understand.’ Lisl sniffed.

      ‘Yes, I understand,’ I said. ‘It’s a message from

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