‘I kept on thinking that if I had been given a hundred from Gustav for showing up with an envelope then I might make at least another ten or twenty from Paul for handing it over. And when eventually he turned up that’s what I suggested. But Paul didn’t like that and started to get rough with me. He searched my coat pockets for the envelope. And my bag. He even searched my underwear. Took my hundred marks. And that’s when you showed up, Parsifal. You see he wasn’t trying to rape me. He was only trying to find his damned envelope.’
‘Where was it? The envelope?’
‘I didn’t have it on me when I tried to brolly him. Well, that would have been foolish. I’d already hidden it in some bushes near the taxi rank.’
‘That was clever.’
‘I thought so, too. Right up until the moment he punched me.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘The envelope? When I went back the next day to look for it, the envelope was gone.’
‘Hmm.’
She shrugged. ‘Now I really don’t know what to do. I’m scared to go to the cops and tell them. Naturally I’m worried about what was in that envelope. I’m worried that I’ve landed myself in the middle of something dangerous.’ She closed her eyes. ‘It seemed so easy when we were in the Romanisches Café. Just hand it over in the blackout and walk away. If only I’d done that.’
‘This Gustav. Have you seen him in here since?’
‘No.’
‘Does anyone else know him?’
‘No. It turns out that Magda thought his name was Josef, and that’s all she remembers. Am I in trouble, Parsifal?’
‘You might be. If you went to the police and told them about this, yes, I think you would be.’
‘So you don’t think I should tell them.’
‘With a story like yours, Arianne, the police – the real police – are the least of your worries. There’s the Gestapo to consider.’
She sighed. ‘I thought as much.’
‘Have you told your story to anyone else?’
‘God, no.’
‘Then don’t. It simply never happened. You never met anyone called Gustav or Josef in this place. And no one ever asked you to be a cut-out for them at the S-Bahn on Nollendorf Platz.’
‘A cut-out?’
‘That’s what you call it when someone wants to give something to someone else without actually meeting them. But that’s all right, too, because there was no something. No envelope. You don’t even have a hundred marks to show for it, right?’
She nodded.
I sipped the beer and wondered how it and the cigarette could taste so good and how much truth there was in what Arianne Tauber had told me. It was just about possible that Franz Koci had taken a hundred marks out of her underwear, although he’d been carrying only half as much when the cops had found him in Kleist Park. Of course, they could easily have helped themselves to half his cash. And it was just about possible that some Foreign Office type who had an envelope for a Three Kings agent might have been spooked off a meeting and subcontracted the job to a money-hungry girl from the Jockey Bar. Stranger things had happened.
‘But I have a question for you, angel. Why are you telling me all this?’
‘In case you didn’t know, Parsifal’s not exactly a common name around here.’ She bit her thumbnail. ‘Look, in spite of what I told you, about getting all that perfume, I’m not the most popular girl around town. There are a lot of people who don’t like me very much.’
‘Sounds like we have a lot in common, angel.’
She let that one go. She was too busy talking about herself. That was good, too. To me she looked like a more interesting subject than I was.
‘Oh, sure, I’m attractive to look at. I know that. And there are a lot of men who want me to give them what men usually want women to give them but, beyond a cigarette and a drink and a tip, and maybe the odd present or two, I don’t want anything from anyone. You should know that about me. Maybe you’ve worked that out already. You seem bright enough. But what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have many friends and certainly none that are possessed of what you might call wisdom and maturity. Otto – Otto Schulze – the Fritz who runs this place, I couldn’t tell him. I can’t tell him anything. He’d tell the Gestapo, for sure. Otto likes to keep in with the Gestapo. I’m almost certain he pays them off with information: Magda, too, I think. And you’ve met Frau Lippert. So there’s no one else, see? My mother is old and lives in Dresden. My brother is on active service. But frankly he wouldn’t know what to say or do. He’s my younger brother and he looks to me for advice. But you, Parsifal. You strike me as the type who always knows what to say or do. So, if you’re interested, there’s a part-time job going as my special counsel. It doesn’t pay very much but maybe you can think of me as someone who is in your debt.’
‘Suddenly I feel every one of my forty-three years,’ I said.
