'It's still the same as when my father was alive,' I said.

She liked to be complimented on the room. 'It's still exactly as it was when my father was alive,' she said. She looked round to be sure she was telling the truth. 'For a few years, we had a photo of the Führer over the fireplace – a signed photo – but it was a relief to put Kaiser Wilhelm back there.'

'Even if it's not signed,' I said.

'Naughty!' Lisl admonished, but she permitted herself a small smile. 'So, your work is complete and now you go home to your gorgeous wife and your dear children. When are you going to bring them to see me, darling?'

'Soon,' I said, helping myself to coffee.

'It had better be,' she said, and chuckled. 'Or your Tante Lisl will be pushing up the daisies.' She tore a piece from her bread roll and said, 'Werner says we Germans have too many words for death. Is that true?'

'In English we say "dead shot", "dead letter", a "dead fire", "dead calm", and so on. German is more precise, and has a different word for each meaning.'

'Werner says the Germans have a thousand different words for death, just as the Eskimos are said to have so many different words for snow. And the Jews have so many different words for idiot.'

'Do they?'

' "Schmo", "schlemiel", "schnook", "schmuck".' She laughed.

'Do you see a lot of Werner?'

'He's a good boy. I get lonely now I'm unable to get about on my feet, and Werner pops in to see me whenever he's passing. He's about the same age as you, you know.'

'He's a bit older, but we were in the same class at school.'

'I remember the night he was born. It was the 1st of March 1943. It was a bad air raid – fires in Bachstrasse and the Sigismundhof. Unter den Linden suffered and the passage through to the Friedrichstrassse was ruined. There were unexploded bombs in the grounds of the Italian Embassy and the house of the Richthofen family. A bomb stopped the church clock on Ku-Damn and it's stayed at seven-thirty ever since. Sometimes I say to him, 'You stopped that clock the night you were born.' Werner's mother was the cook for us. She lived with her husband in an attic just four doors along from here. I went and got her just before her contractions began. Werner was born in this house, did you know that? Of course you did. I must have told you a thousand times.'

'Werner,' I said. 'What kind of name is that for a nice Jewish boy?'

'One name for the world, another name for the family,' said Lisl. 'That's always the way it is for them.'

'Did you hide all the family, Lisl? What about his father?'

'His father was a big strong man – Werner inherited his build – and he worked as a gravedigger at the Jewish cemetery at Weissensee all through the war.'

'And was never arrested?'

She smiled the sort of smile I'd seen on other German faces, a look reserved for those who would never understand. 'So that the Nazis would have to assign Aryans to look after Jewish graves and bury Jewish dead? No, the workers at Weissensee cemetery were never arrested. When the Russians got here in '45 there was still a rabbi walking free. He was working there as a gravedigger with Werner's papa.' She laughed but I didn't. Only people who'd been here when the Russians arrived were permitted to laugh about it.

'It was after the war that Werner's father died. He died of not getting enough to eat for year after year.'

'Werner was lucky,' I said. 'Five-year-old orphans did not have much chance.'

'Is he in some sort of trouble?' said Lisl. She'd caught some careless inflection of my voice.

I hesitated. 'Werner can be headstrong,' I said.

'I've given him half my savings, Liebchen.'

'He wouldn't swindle you, Lisl.'

Her mascaraed eyelashes fluttered. 'I can't afford to lose it,' she said. 'I had it invested, but Werner said he could make more for me. I have it all in writing. I'm easy to handle, Werner knows that.' It was typical of her that she used the fashionable word 'pflegeleicht', usually applied to non-iron clothes. But Lisl was not pflegeleicht: she was old-fashioned linen, with lots of starch.

'He won't swindle you, Tante Lisl. Werner owes you more than he can ever repay, and he knows it. But if he loses your money, there is nothing in writing that will get it back for you.'

'It's something to do with exports,' said Lisl, as if a measure of confession would persuade me to help her.

'I have to come back here,' I said. 'I'll talk to him on my next visit. But you should be more careful with your money, Lisl.'

She blew air through her teeth in a gesture of contempt. 'Careful? We have some of the oldest, biggest, richest corporations in Germany facing bankruptcy and you tell me to be careful. Where am I to invest my savings?'

'I'll do what I can, Lisl.'

'A woman on her own is helpless in these matters, darling.'

'I know, Lisl, I know.' I found myself thinking about Fiona again. I remembered phoning her from Berlin on the previous trip. I'd phoned her three or four times in the middle of the night and got no reply. She said the phone was out of order, but I went on wondering.

Watery sunshine trickled over the Persian carpet and made a golden buttress in the dusty air. Lisl stopped talking to chew her bread roll; the phone rang. It was for me: Frank Harrington. 'Bernard? I'm glad I caught you. I'm sending a car to take you to the airport this afternoon. What time do you want to leave Frau Hennig's? Do you want to stop off anywhere?'

'I've fixed up a car, Frank. Thanks all the same.'

'No, no, no. I insist.'

'I can't cancel it now, Frank.'

There was a pause at the other end before Frank said, 'It was like old times, seeing you again last night.'

'I should have thanked you,' I said, although I had already arranged for Mrs Harrington to receive a bunch of flowers.

'That conversation we had… about you know whom… I hope you won't be putting any of that in writing in London.'

So that was it. 'I'll be discreet, Frank,' I said.

'I know you will, old boy. Well, if you won't let me arrange a car…'

I knew 'the car' would turn out to be Frank, who would 'just happen to be going out that way' and would bend my ear until takeoff time. So I made regret noises and rang off.

'Frank Harrington?' said Lisl. 'Wanting some favour, no doubt.'

'Frank's always been a worrier. You know that.'

'He's not trying to borrow money, is he?'

'I can't imagine him being short of it.'

'He keeps a big house in England and his spectacular place here. He's always entertaining.'

'That's part of the job, Lisl,' I said. I was long since accustomed to Lisl's complaints about the wasteful ways of government servants.

'And the little popsie he's got tucked away in Lübars – is she part of the job too?' Lisl's laugh was more like a splutter of indignation.

'Frank?'

'I get to hear everything, darling. People think I am just a stupid old woman safely locked away up here in my little room, rubbing embrocation on my knees, but I get to hear everything.'

'Frank was in the Army with my father. He must be sixty years old.'

'That's the dangerous age, darling. Didn't you know that? You've got the dangerous sixties to look forward to too, Liebchen.' She spilled coffee trying to get it to her mouth without laughing.

'You've been listening to Werner,' I said.

Her lashes trembled and she fixed me with her steely eyes. 'You think you can get me to tell you where I heard it. I know your little tricks, Bernard.' A waggling finger. 'But it wasn't Werner. And I know all about Frank Harrington, who comes in here looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.' She used the equivalent Berlin expression about looking as if he wouldn't dirty a stream, and it seemed so apt for the impeccable Frank and his scrubbed-looking son. 'His wife spends too much time in England, and Frank has found other amusements here in town.'