“Oh? How? What is it?”

“It’s nothing I’ve seen before. In chemical terms, it’s a sulfone group connected to an amine group. But the synthesis is new. I don’t even know what to call it, Bernie. Sulfanamine? I don’t know. It certainly doesn’t exist in the current pharmacopoeia. Not here. Not anywhere. Which means it’s new and experimental.”

“Have you any idea what it might be for?”

“The active sulfa molecule was first synthesized in 1906 and has been widely used in the dye-making industry.”

“Dye-making?”

“My guess is that there’s a smaller active compound that’s contained inside the dye-making molecule. About fifteen years ago the Pasteur Institute in Paris was using the sulfa molecule as the basis for some kind of antibacterial agent. Sadly, the work came to nothing. However, this pill would seem to indicate that someone, possibly here in Berlin, has successfully synthesized a sulfa-based drug.”

“Yes, but what could you use it for?”

“You could use it against any kind of bacterial infection. Any streptococci. However, you would have to test the drug on some volunteers before publishing any results. Especially given the Pasteur’s previous failures using dye-based drugs.”

“An experimental drug being tested at the state hospital, perhaps?”

“Could be.” Illmann finished his cigarette, stubbing it out in a little porcelain ashtray made for the Police Exhibition of 1926. He seemed about to say something and then checked himself.

“No, go on,” I said.

“I was only trying to think what might make Berlin interesting to someone conducting a drug trial.” He shook his head. “Because there are no drug companies based here in Berlin. And it’s not like we suffer from anything more than anywhere else in Germany.”

“Ah, well now, that’s where you’re wrong, Doc,” I said. “You want to read your police gazette, instead of worrying about the shit that’s in Der Angriff. There are more than one hundred thousand prostitutes working in Berlin today. More than anywhere else in Europe. And that’s just the straight ones. God knows how many warm boys there are in this city. My sergeant, Heinrich Grund, is always going on about it.”

“Of course,” said Illmann. “Venereal disease.”

“Since the war the figures have gone through the roof,” I said. “Not that I’d know, never having had a dose of jelly myself. But the current treatment is neosalvarsan, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. It contains organic arsenic, which makes its use somewhat hazardous. Even so, in its time it was such an important discovery and efficacious remedy-no proper remedy had existed before-that neosalvarsan was called ‘the magic bullet.’ That was a German discovery, too. Paul Ehrlich won the Nobel Prize for it in 1908. An exceptionally gifted man.”

“Could he-?”

“No, no, he’s dead, alas. Interestingly, salvarsan and neosalvarsan are dye-based compounds, too. Which is where the problem with them lies. In the color. And that must be where this new compound scores. Someone must have worked out how to remove the color without compromising the antibacterial activity.” He nodded, as if imagining the chemistry appearing on an invisible blackboard in front of his eyes. “Ingenious.”

“So let’s say we have a drug trial, here in Berlin,” I said. “For patients suffering from big jelly and little jelly? Syphilis and gonorrhea.”

“If it was effective against one, it might well be effective against the other, too.”

“How many patients would we be talking about? For a trial?”

“In the beginning? A few dozen. A hundred at the most. And all highly confidential, mind you. No doctor’s going to tell you which of his patients is suffering from a venereal disease. Not only that, but if it works, a drug like this could be worth millions. The clinical trials are very likely top secret.”

“How would you recruit your volunteers?”

Illmann shrugged. “Neosalvarsan treatment is no ice cream treat, Bernie. Its reputation precedes it. And most of the horror stories you’ve heard are true. So I’d have thought there would be no shortage of volunteers for a new drug.”

“All right. Suppose some T-girl gives our man a dose of jelly. Which makes him hate women enough to want to kill one. Meanwhile he volunteers for a drug trial to get his meat and two veg sorted.”

“But if a T-girl gives him a dose,” said Illmann, “then why not kill a T-girl? Why kill a child?”

“T-girls are too savvy. I saw one the other night. Built like a wrestler, she was. Some fritz came in and wanted her charged with assault. She’d hit the bastard with her riding crop.”

“Some men would pay good money for that kind of thing.”

“My point is this. He kills Anita Schwarz because she’s easier prey. She’s crippled. Makes it hard for her to get away. Could be he didn’t even notice it. After all, it was dark.”

“All right,” allowed Illmann. “That’s just about possible. Just.”

“Well then, here’s another thing. Something I haven’t told you yet. On account of the fact that I’ve only just remembered I can trust you. And this is hot stuff, mind. So keep it under your hat. Anita Schwarz may have been disabled. And she may have been just fifteen. But she wasn’t above earning herself some pocket money on the side.”

“You’re joking.”

“One of her neighbors told me the girl had a major morals problem. The parents won’t talk about it. And I didn’t dare mention it at the press conference after the lecture Izzy gave me about trying to keep the Nazis sweet. But we found quite a bankroll in her coat pocket. Five hundred marks. She didn’t get that from running errands to the local shop.”

“But the girl was crippled. She wore a caliper.”

“And there’s a market for that, too, believe me, Doc.”

“My God, there are some evil bastards in this city.”

“Now you sound like my sergeant, Grund.”

“Then maybe you are right. You know I never thought to test her for syphilis and gonorrhea. I’ll do it, immediately.”

“One more thing, Doc. What kind of dyes are we talking about here? Food dyes, cloth dyes, hair dyes, what?”

“Organic dyes. Direct or substantive dyeing. Direct dyes are used on a whole host of materials. Cotton, paper, leather, wool, silk, nylon. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know.” But somewhere, at the bottom of the sock drawer I called my mind, there was something important. I rummaged around for a moment and then shook my head. “No. It’s probably nothing.”

MY ROUTE BACK from Charlottenburg took me in a straight line all the way from Kaiserdamm to the Tiergarten. There were wild boars in the Tiergarten. You could hear them grunting as they wallowed in their enclosure, or sometimes squealing like the brakes on my old DKW as they fought with one another. Whenever I heard that sound, I thought of the Reichstag and German party politics. The Tiergarten was full of animal life-not just boars. There were buzzards and woodpeckers and pied wagtails and siskins and bats-there were lots of bats. The smell of cut grass and blossom that came through the open window of my car was wonderful. It was the clean, uncorrupted smell of early summer. At this time of year, the Tiergarten was open until early dusk, which also made it popular with grasshoppers-the amateur prostitutes with no room money, who did it with their fritzes lying down on the grass or in the shrubbery. Nature is wonderful.

I looked at my watch as I came through the Brandenburg Gate and onto Pariser Platz. There was time for lunch as long as lunch came in a brown bottle. I could have stopped almost anywhere south of Unter den Linden. There were lots of stand-ups around Gendarmen Market, where I might easily have got myself a sausage and a beer. But anywhere wasn’t where I wanted to go. Not when I was right outside the Adlon Hotel. It was true, I’d been there only a day or two before. And a day or two before that. The fact was, I liked the Adlon. Not for its ambience and its gardens and its whispering fountain and its palm court and its fabulous restaurant, which I couldn’t have afforded anyway. I liked it because I liked one of the house detectives. She was called Frieda Bamberger. I liked Frieda a lot.