‘I’ve been thinking about the letter I received from Vranken’s father, in the Netherlands. And how Paul Thummel was the character reference Geert gave the police when he was a potential suspect in the S-Bahn murders. Well, because Thummel had had some sort of relationship with Vranken’s sister, he must have found out from her, I suppose, that Vranken was working on Berlin’s railways. That must have been the reason the Abwehr asked to see the files on the S-Bahn murders; which they did; and in particular the interviews with all the foreign workers. The official excuse was that they were on the lookout for spies; but in reality, Thummel must have been on the lookout for Geert Vranken. He was the only person in Germany who could connect him with his Czech controller in The Hague. And when he saw Vranken’s statement, which mentions knowing a German officer who might vouch for him, Thummel must have panicked. Most likely Vranken was killed by Franz Koci at Paul Thummel’s specific request.’
Heydrich was nodding now. ‘Yes, that makes sense, I suppose.’
‘Either he radioed the request to UVOD here in Prague or, as seems more likely, he told Arianne. Probably she was the cut-out between Thummel and Franz Koci, who she knew better as Victor Keil.’
Heydrich continued nodding. This was a good sign. But an even better one was to come.
‘Horst.’ Heydrich waved at Colonel Bohme. ‘Release him.’
A little reluctantly – he still hadn’t forgiven me for being a better detective than he was – Bohme produced a key from the pocket of his riding breeches and unlocked my manacles.
I rubbed my wrists and muttered a thank you. I didn’t say anything about Arianne, who remained strapped to the bascule balanced over the bath of water. It was crucial that Heydrich believe that his revelation about her part in the plot to kill me meant I was now indifferent to her immediate fate; and it was equally crucial that my story was both plausible and authoritative, even though a lot of it was based on sheer guesswork, so that it would seem there was little real point in torturing Arianne any more; at least for the present.
To my enormous relief he now came to this conclusion.
‘Take the woman back to her cell,’ he told Sergeant Soppa.
‘Yes sir.’
Soppa and the other man laid the bascule down on the wet floor and started to unstrap Arianne. She groaned slightly as the buckles were released, but it was hard to tell if her heavily bruised eyes were open, so I had no way of knowing if she saw me.
Either way, it was certainly the last time I ever saw her.
‘Let’s continue this conversation in your office upstairs, Horst,’ said Heydrich. ‘Gunther?’ Now he was ushering me out of the interrogation cell, ahead of him.
I walked toward the door. My heart was on the floor alongside Arianne’s bedraggled, half-drowned body, twisting over and over like a dying trout.
Heydrich held my arm for a moment and then smiled a sarcastic smile. ‘What? No fond goodbyes for your poor lover? No last words?’
I didn’t turn around to look back at her. If I had he’d have seen the truth in my face. Instead I met Heydrich’s chilly, wolf-blue eyes, turned a deep sigh into a wry laugh and shook my head silently.
‘To hell with her,’ I said.
It was, I thought, the only place Arianne and I were ever again likely to meet up with each other.
In a large office on an upper floor of the Pecek Palace, Heydrich told an orderly to bring us schnapps.
‘I think we all need one after that ordeal, don’t you, gentlemen?’
I couldn’t argue with this. I was desperate for a drink to put a little iron in my soul.
A bottle arrived. A proper one containing real liver glue but none of the deer or elk blood that Germans sometimes said it contained. That was just a story like the one I was getting ready to tell Heydrich and Bohme. I drank a glassful of the stuff. It was ice-cold, the way it’s supposed to be. But I was colder. Nothing’s been invented that’s as cold as how I felt at that moment.
I went and sat on the windowsill and looked out at the old medieval city of Prague. Somewhere, under one of those dark, ancient roofs, was a fatal creature of death and destruction that was exactly like my own twin brother. Indeed, if the Golem had looked in my eye at what was elusively called the soul, he might well have concluded that I was a man to be shunned, just as people in the street below avoided the Pecek Palace front door like it was a Jaffa pesthouse. Given the wicked, monstrous, inhuman events that I’d just witnessed in the basement, they weren’t so far wrong.
Unbidden, I fetched the bottle and poured another glass of the embalming fluid that helps make Germans like me more German than before and I lit a cigarette half-hoping that it might set fire to my insides and turn me to ashes like everything else that was almost certain to be turned into ashes in due course.
‘I expect you’re wondering how we got onto her,’ said Heydrich.
‘No, but I would have got around to it before long.’
