I pushed through the heavy doors and went up the front stairs. The carpet was new, a rich ruby red, and the brass handrail was polished so it shone like gold. There was a sparkling chandelier over the stairs, and the elaborate mirrors on the walls had been cleaned so that they repeated my reflections a thousand times. No sooner had I started up the stairs than I heard the piano. 'Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you…' And then a sudden cascade of improvised harmonies. It was Werner at the keys. I would recognize his silky ebullient style anywhere. Something almost spiritual happened to Werner when he sat at the piano.

'… my irreplaceable you.' Someone had moved the grand piano so that it was in the centre of the 'salon'. And either it had been painted white or it was a new piano. There were comfortable soft brown leather armchairs too. And all Lisl's signed souvenir photos of Berlin personalities of long ago had been cleaned and newly arranged, one close upon the other, to cover the whole wall. Who wasn't represented there? Here were Einstein, Furtwangler, Strauss, Goebbels, Dietrich, Piscator, Brecht, Weil, and the photos were signed with extravagant declarations of affection for Lisl or for her mother – Frau Wisliceny – who'd once played hostess to all Berlin.

There were not many hotel guests to be seen. Just a party of four Danes who were chatting animatedly as if unaware of the music, and a desiccated couple sitting at the bar, drinking colourful cocktails and glaring at each other. I caught a brief glimpse of Ingrid Winter as she came down the stairs with a tray. She was wearing another of her stylish 'farmer's wife goes to church' dresses. This one had a high lacy neckline and long ankle-length skirt. She smiled at me.

Werner looked up from the keyboard. He saw me and stopped playing. 'Bernie! I told you to phone. I was going to come and fetch you. The rain is terrible…' He looked at my wet coat.

'Frank arranged a car.'

From her chair in the corner Lisl called imperiously, 'What are you doing, Bernd? Come and give your Lisl a kiss!' She was in good voice whatever her infirmities. She was dressed in a flowing red robe. Her face was carefully painted and she had false eyelashes which she fluttered like a schoolgirl. As I leaned over her, the smell of perfume was almost overwhelming. 'Your coat is wet, Bernd,' she said. 'Take it off. Tell Klara to dry it in the kitchen.'

'It's all right, Lisl,' I said.

'Do as I say, Bernd. Don't be so stubborn.' I took the coat off and gave it to the aged Klara who appeared from nowhere. 'And then go down to the boiler room. The pump is giving trouble again. I told them you were always able to mend it.'

'I'll try,' I promised without conviction. Lisl was determined to believe that I had spent my childhood performing all kind of mechanical miracles with the antiquated electricity system and the heating. It wasn't true of course. The idea that Bernd would fix it had been Tante Lisl's way of deferring as long as possible the inevitable replacement of aged and broken machinery.

'The hotel is looking wonderful, Lisl.'

She grunted as if she hadn't properly heard me, but the one-sided little smile she gave was enough to tell me how pleased she was with Werner's refurbishment.

I could not really be expected to cure the pump of its chronic arrhythmias: it was too far gone. Werner came with me to the subterranean boiler room and we examined the incontinent old brute with its dribbled rust and flaking insulation. In an attempt to justify Lisl's confidence in me I gave the meter a tap, rapped upon the pump casing and repeatedly touched warm pipes that should have been hot enough to scorch the flesh. 'It's not just the boiler. The whole system will have to be renewed,' said Werner. 'But I'm praying that it will last out till next year.'

'Yes,' I said. We continued to look at it in the hope that it would suddenly come to life. Then Ingrid Winter joined us. She said nothing. She just stood with us staring at the boiler. I stole a look at her. She was a handsome woman with a lovely complexion and clear eyes that shone when she looked at you. She glowed with the quiet vocational self-assurance that you hope to see in a nurse.

'It's not only the money,' explained Werner to no one in particular. 'We'll have to change all the pipes and radiators. There will be dust and noise in every room. If we had to do that in the winter it would mean closing the hotel completely…'

'Couldn't you change the boiler first?' I suggested. Then do the plumbing and piping piece by piece?'

'The plumber says we can't,' said Werner. He knew my ignorance about such matters was profound, and the look he gave me let me know that he knew. 'The sort of boiler we'll need for all the new bathrooms just wouldn't operate with the old plumbing. It's very old.'

Ingrid Winter said, 'Perhaps we should talk to some other heating engineer, Werner.'

Her accent was the rounded one of southern Bavaria: not one of those raw back-country accents, just a slight burr. But there was some inflection of Ingrid Winter's voice, some tiny change of pitch or of tone, that made me look at Werner. He stared back at me and gave the same mirthless smile that I remembered from our schooldays together. Werner once confided that it was his 'inscrutable' expression but 'guilty' would have been a better description.

Werner said, 'Old Heinmuller knows the system very well, Ingrid. It was him and his father who got it going again after the bombing in the war.'

'We'll have to do something, Werner dear,' she said, and this time was unable to conceal the intimacy in her voice. There existed between them that intuitive sympathy and unspoken understanding for which Goethe coined the word Wahlverwandtschaft.

'While we're here alone, Ingrid, tell Bernie about the Hungarian.' He touched her arm. 'Tell him what you told me, Ingrid.'

She hesitated and then said, 'Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything… But the other evening I was telling Werner about my mother and about that awful Hungarian man who lives nearby.'

'Dodo?' I said.

'Yes. He calls himself Dodo.'

'What about him?'

'He's a pathetic little man,' said Ingrid. 'I've never liked him. I wish Mother wouldn't invite him to the house. He's always leering at me.' She paused and looked closely at the lagging on the boiler pipes. 'It should be cleaned away,' she said. 'I hate dirt.'

'When was it last cleaned and serviced?' I said. She seemed ill at ease. I wanted to give her a chance to compose herself. 'I remember once a fellow came and replaced a nozzle or something, and it started working perfectly again.'

'We've tried nozzles,' said Werner impatiently. To Ingrid he said, 'Tell Bernie what they said about his father. And your father. It's better that he knows.'

Ingrid looked at me, obviously not wanting to tell me anything at all.

'I'd like to hear, Ingrid,' I said, trying to make it easier for her.

'You remember what I told you when you visited my mother?'

'Yes,' I said.

'I upset you. I know I did. I'm sorry.'

'No matter.'

'Most of what I know comes from Dodo: he's not a reliable source.'

'But tell me anyway.'

'All we've ever been told officially is that Paul Winter was killed after the war ended. An accidental shooting.'

'By the Americans,' said Werner.

'Let me tell it, Werner.'

I'm sorry, Ingrid.'

'They said he was escaping,' she said. 'But they always say that, don't they?'

'Yes,' I said. 'They always say that.'

'It was Dodo who brought it all up again. He kept on at my mother about it. You probably know how he goes on. She listens to him. He was a Nazi; that's why he gets on so well with Mother.'

'A Nazi?' I said.

Werner said, 'He worked for Gehlen. The Abwehr recruited him at Vienna University. When the war ended, and Gehlen started working for the Americans, Dodo worked for Lange.'