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the NS League of Wearers of the Lifesaving Medal.
    "That's nonsense."
    "Uncle Erich says it's true."
    Erich Helfferich. So he had become "Uncle" Erich now, had he? A zealot of the worst sort, a full-time bureaucrat at the Party's Berlin headquarters. An officious, bespectacled scoutmaster ... March felt his hands tightening on the steering wheel. Helfferich had started seeing Klara a year ago.
    "He says you don't give the Führer salute and you make jokes about the Party."
    "And how does he know all this?"
    "He says there's a file on you at Party headquarters and it's only a matter of time before you're picked up." The boy was almost in tears with the shame of it. "I think he's right."
    "Pili!"
    They were drawing up outside the house.
    "I hate you." This was delivered in a calm, flat voice. He got out of the car. March opened his door, ran around and followed him up the path. He could hear a dog barking inside the house.
    "Pili!" he shouted once more.
    The door opened. Klara stood there in the uniform of the NS-Frauenschaft . Lurking behind her, March glimpsed the brown-clad figure of Helfferich. The dog, a young German shepherd, came running out and leapt up at Pili, who pushed his way past his mother and disappeared into the house. March wanted to follow him, but Klara blocked his path.
    "Leave the boy alone. Get out of here. Leave us all alone."
    She caught the dog and dragged it back by its collar. The door slammed on its yelping.
    Later, as he drove back toward the center of Berlin, March kept thinking about that dog. It was the only living creature in the house, he realized, that was not wearing a uniform.
    Had he not felt so miserable, he would have laughed.

4

    "What a pig of a day," said Max Jaeger. It was 7:30 in the evening and he was pulling on his coat in Werderscher-Markt. "No possessions handed in; no clothing. I've gone back on the missing list to Thursday. Nothing. So that's more than twenty-four hours since estimated time of death and not a soul has missed him. You sure he's not just some derelict?"
    March gave a brief shake of the head. "Too well fed. And derelicts don't own swimming trunks. As a rule."
    "To cap it all off—" Max took a last puff on his cigar and stubbed it out "—I've got to go to a Party meeting tonight. 'The German Mother: Warrior of the Volk on the Home Front.'"
    Like all Kripo investigators, including March, Jaeger had the SS rank of Sturmbannführer. Unlike March, he had joined the Party the previous year. Not that March blamed him: you had to be a Party member to gain promotion.
    "Is Hannelore going?"
    "Hannelore? Holder of the Honor Cross of the German Mother, Bronze Class? Naturally she's going." Max looked at his watch. "Just time for a beer. What do you say?"
    "Not tonight, thanks. I'll walk down with you."
    They parted on the steps of the Kripo building. With a wave, Jaeger turned left toward the bar in Oberwall-Strasse, while March turned right, toward the river. He walked quickly. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp and misty. The prewar street lights gleamed on the black pavement. From the Spree came the low note of a foghorn, muffled by the buildings.
    He turned a corner and walked alongside the river, enjoying the sensation of the cold night air against his face. A barge was chugging upstream, a single light at its prow, a cauldron of dark water boiling at its stern. Apart from that, there was silence. There were no cars here; no people. The city might have vaporized in the darkness. He left the river with reluctance, crossing Spittel-Markt to Seydel-Strasse. A few minutes later he entered the Berlin city morgue.
    Dr. Eisler had gone home. No surprise there. "I love you," breathed a woman's voice in the deserted reception, "and I want to bear your children." An attendant in a stained white tunic reluctantly turned away from his portable television and checked March's ID. He made a note in his register, picked up a bunch of keys and gestured to the detective