'Those people don't bring a body up the service stairs to a third-floor room without watching to see who is using the room. They must have seen me check in. They must have seen you arrive. Then they brought the body.'

'They'd have to be bloody quick. I didn't know I was coming here myself until half an hour before I arrived.'

'Didn't you really, Bernard? How you do deceive yourself. They guessed you'd show up here, don't you see that?'

'How could they have guessed?' I said, allowing my irritation to show.

'I guessed you'd come here,' said Gloria sadly. 'It wouldn't be beyond others to do the same.'

She was right. No matter about how and what they'd guessed: they'd put him there for my benefit. I'd killed one of their hoodlums by accident; a shot on a dark night in Magdeburg. It went a trifle low and took the top of his head off. And I suppose they thought the bomb under the pastor's Trabbie was my doing. Oh well, I couldn't take a full-page advert in the Herald Tribune to deny it.

I gently pulled her away from the connecting door. It was giving me the creeps to see her standing there looking at the corpse as if she still couldn't believe he was dead. Even after I'd closed the door, she leaned against it as if on the point of fainting. I raided the minibar. 'Have another drink,' I suggested.

'No, I feel sick.'

'It's better you go back to London,' I said. 'I'll get someone to drive you over to the airport. Was there anything for you still to do here?'

'Nothing that can't be done on the fax. But I'd rather stay. Why don't I move into another apartment here? I know they are only half full.'

'No, not here. They know their way around in this place. They probably have contacts and their own people working inside. Let's not take chances on them trying another little joke. Go back to London: it's what Bret would advise.'

'They thought you'd take me to bed. You see that don't you? We would have gone in there . . . maybe in the dark. It was a macabre little joke.'

'Maybe. Maybe not. They are not noted for their jokes: even little macabre ones.'

I poured another little drink and had hardly started on it before Lida knocked at the door. She was wearing a short fur coat and shiny high-boots. With her she had Picard the army doctor, an Engineer major with his corporal assistant, a couple of men without badges and two military policemen. They were all in uniform. So Lida was playing it like that: the high-profile way.

'I told you to stay in bed,' said Picard.

'I had a bad dream,' I said, 'and this was it.' He went towards the bedroom. 'Better let the bomb squad go first, Doc,' I said. 'This one's not going to respond to aspirin, vitamin C and glucose.'

Picard gave a grim little smile and we watched the Engineer officer and his soldier assistant flick a metal detector quickly around the bed. Knowing we were watching him he turned round and said, 'You'd better go back into the drawing room. The next bit is very technical.'

We withdrew a pace and he tied a ball of twine to the comers of the bedclothes and stood well away from the bed while pulling the covers back inch by inch, watching all the while to see if there were wires or any attachments. It was a damned dangerous way of checking for booby traps, but I suppose you become instinctive after a long time with the bomb squad: instinctive or suicidal, or dead.

'Nothing there,' said the Engineer officer and laughed. His corporal smiled dutifully.

The kid had been dead for a long time. His upper body was bare and obviously unharmed, so that only the softness of it proclaimed that life was extinct. He was still wearing his trousers but they were crumpled; the upper part of them stiff and shiny like plastic. It was dried blood — he must have lost gallons of it. But now it was completely dry, so that it had left a dusty reddish-brown powder all across the starched white sheets.

'I suppose you want a time of death?' said Dr. Picard.

'I'm not the investigator,' I said. 'I'm just a passerby.'

'Over twenty-four hours. We'll do a postmortem first thing in the morning, and have something for your office by midday tomorrow.'

'Thanks, Doc.'

'One of your boys, was it?'

'I knew him.'

'I'm sorry,' said Picard. 'But at least the family will have him to bury. That means a lot to parents. I can tell you that from personal experience with next-of-kin.'

'I know.'

'A word in your ear,' said Picard lowering his voice. 'This one has been eviscerated.'

'Literally?' The bleeding of victims was an old Mafia device, done to make the disposal of bodies easier, neater and tidier. But this was a new one for our pals across the Wall.

'It would increase a cadaver's shelf-life,' said Picard. 'They could have stored him indefinitely and plonked him anywhere at any time.'

I nodded my thanks to the doctor and plucked at Lida's sleeve. 'Lida. Was there a plane tonight?'

'Yes, and London wants you to go there too. Something has happened at the other end.'

'Do you know what it is?'

'They said you should take any warm winter clothing you have here with you. You are going on somewhere after the briefing. Mr. Harrington is cutting short his stay and coming back here.'

'Just as we were getting to know each other, Lida.'

'Mind your back, Herr Samson. Here they come.' The kid was zipped into a body bag and maneuvered out into the corridor on a stretcher. No worries now about his career after fifty.

*

The RAF plane that took me and Gloria to England that night did not provide an opportunity for intimate chat. Traveling with us there was an RAF football team returning after winning a friendly game against a Berlin police team. They were exhilarated, a condition helped by the hour's delay they'd suffered waiting for us to arrive. The time had been spent drinking, and having exhausted their celebrations and recollections of the football match they settled down and began singing: 'Home on the Range.'

The flight crew provided a seat for Gloria up front, with a door between her and the noise. But I was seated between the football team's captain, a physical training instructor, and an elderly civilian meteorologist who was going to see his seriously sick daughter. In my pocket I found the large shiny pills that Picard said contained only glucose, vitamin C and aspirin: whatever they contained I needed them. I swallowed a couple without water. They left a bitter taste in my mouth; I suppose they were cutting back on the glucose.

From under the cloth-covered freight behind my seat there came regular sniffing and scratching noises. I suspected that someone was smuggling a pet dog back to England and avoiding the quarantine laws. I wondered if this animal's proximity to me was so that I could take the blame for it if the customs men found it. 'Do you play football?' the man beside me asked, but I closed my eyes and pretended I was already sleeping. The gusty winds we met over the North Sea made the plane lurch and slew, picking off the singing footballers one by one until all were quiet.

At the other end, separate cars were waiting for us. Gloria went directly home. I helped her with her bag, and when she said good-bye she gave me a kiss. 'Stay well,' she said. If Gloria had been looking for a way of gently breaking the news to me that our love affair was finally over, then that kiss did the trick. So did the way she sank thankfully into the back seat of the car and smiled her sad good-bye. She didn't lower the window.

Stay well? As Gloria's car moved forwards the bus carrying the football team rolled past, gathering speed. They were once more joined in jovial song: 'She'll be Coming Round the Mountain.'

'Mr. Samson?' It was my driver. Despite the lateness of the hour I was due at Dicky's home for a meeting with Dicky and one of our SIS people from the Warsaw embassy.