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should, then spit it out.’
    This Scheisskerl wasn’t going to like the answer to that simplest of his questions. ‘Untersturmführer Ludwig Mohnke and Oberführer Wolfgang Thomsen, his senior officer. Brigadier Thomsen wanted to show the young man the Drachenhöhle, to go over tactics he had used here during the Great War.’
    La Caverne du Dragon had been a quarry on the other side of the Chemin des Dames. Enlarged into a bunker, the Wehrmacht had then made rooms and rooms for the boys to sleep, relax and take their meals in until the French had finally mined their own way in and the two sides had bricked off each other while still shooting. It wasn’t any more than a kilometre or two to the south of the ruins, but that second lieutenant was related to the SS Major­ General Wilhelm Mohnke, the commander of Heinrich Himmler’s bodyguard.
    â€˜They came on here yesterday afternoon, Kohler, and found the van and the bodies at between 1430 and 1530 hours, reporting it to the General Hans von Boineburg-Lengsfeld directly on their return to Paris, since the van’s head office is located in his city.’
    Louis would be thinking, Merde , now they really were in it! That Kommandant von Gross-Paris had been a cavalry officer in the Great War and was a stickler for protocol, a dyed-in-the-wool Prussian of the old school just like his predecessor.
    â€˜Kriminalkommissar Ludin will be your liaise, Kohler. At 0800 hours tomorrow, you will present yourself at 84 avenue Foch. A full report.’
    And never mind the Führer’s having put France on Central European Time in June 1940 and recently having added an hour of daylight saving time in autumn and winter, making that 0800 really 0600 the old time. ‘Not if we have to spend the night here, Colonel, and haven’t finished our preliminary examination and are still awaiting Coroner Joliot and his clean-up crew.’
    The first sprinklings of the next deluge had arrived. As if he had plenty of tobacco, this ‘Ludin’ passed his cigarette over.
    â€˜Contact me when you’re ready, Kohler, but don’t leave it too long. Full details, nothing left out, everything to myself.’
    â€˜Then be so good as to tell us why the hell you lot should even be interested?’
    â€˜That’s for us to know, and not yourselves. Just do as I’ve said and we’ll get along fine.’
    Skidding in the mud, the tourer departed, and as they watched, that feeling of being alone against the world returned. In spite of the partnership’s desperate need, Hermann crumbled the cigarette and let the deluge take it.
    â€˜ Merde alors , Louis, what has Boemelburg dropped us into this time?’
    â€˜A fetid shell crater full of water and hidden by barbed wire. Let’s deal with our garde champêtre while there’s still some semblance of daylight. We’ll visit his campfire, pick up the necessary, and let him stand guard while we question him from the shelter of the van.’
    â€˜Why hasn’t the bank shown up?’
    â€˜A good question, but perhaps no one has thought to tell them or they simply got word of the other visitors and decided it would be better to wait. That Kriminalrattenfänger is trouble, Hermann. Didn’t the RAF firebomb Hamburg on the night of 27 July last, and the USAAF during the day, the two then carrying on the visit for a few more nights and days?’
    With winds said to have been at temperatures of up to 1000°C and speeds of 240 kph, there had been more than 40,000 dead, up to 100,000 injured and countless left homeless. And since Kriminalkommissar and Kriminalrattenfänger meant the same, the latter’s shortened form of ‘criminal rat-catcher’ would do. ‘Maybe that Kriminalrat is just out for blood, Louis, and feels we’ll slake his thirst, but whoever killed those two didn’t bother with the big bills and left virtually all of the food and