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sense of smell and the gutted cadaver that was laid out in front of us like something on an abattoir floor. Actually, the smell was mostly formaldehyde, but whenever I caught it in my nostrils, it dislodged memories of the many unpleasant things I’d seen in my time as a Berlin homicide detective. There were two things I remembered in particular, but I saw no reason to mention these to Colonel Montalbán.
    Whatever it was he wanted from me, I wanted no part of it. After a while, I turned away.
    “And?” I said.
    “I just wondered. If this might jog any memories.”
    “Nothing that ought to be in my photograph album.”
    “She was fifteen years old.”
    “It’s too bad.”
    “Yes,” he said. “I have a daughter myself. A little older than her. I don’t know what I’d do if something like this happened.” He shrugged. “Everything. Anything.”
    I said nothing. I imagined he was coming to the point.
    He walked me back to the mortuary door. “I told you before that I studied jurisprudence in Berlin,” he said. “Fichte, von Savigny, Ehrlich. My father wanted me to be a lawyer. And my mother, who is German, she wanted me to become a philosopher. I myself wanted to travel. To Europe. And after my law degree I was offered the opportunity to study in Germany. Everyone was happy. Me, most of all. I loved Berlin.”
    He pushed open the door and we went back into the corridor outside.
    “I had an apartment on the Ku-damm, near the Memorial Church and that club with the doorman who dressed up as the devil, and where the waiters dressed as angels.”
    “The Heaven and Hell,” I said. “I remember it very well.”
    “That’s right.” The colonel grinned. “Me a good Roman Catholic boy. I’d never seen so many naked women before. There was one show: ‘Twenty-five Scenes from the Life of the Marquis de Sade,’ it was called. And another called ‘The Naked Frenchwoman: Her Life Mirrored in Art.’ What a place. What a city. Is it really all gone?”
    “Yes. Berlin itself is a ruin. Little more than a building site. You wouldn’t recognize it.”
    “Too bad.”
    He unlocked the door to a little room opposite the judicial mortuary. There was a cheap table, a few cheap chairs, and some cheap ash-trays. The colonel drew up a blind and opened a dirty window to let in some fresh air. Across the street I could see a church, and there were people going in the door who knew nothing about forensics and murder and whose nostrils were filled with something better than the smell of cigarettes and formaldehyde. I sighed and looked at my watch, hardly caring to conceal my impatience now. I hadn’t asked to see the body of a dead girl. I was irritated with him for that and for what I knew was surely coming.
    “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m just getting to it now. What I wanted to talk to you about, Herr Gunther. You see, I’ve always been interested in the darker side of human behavior. That is why I became interested in you, Herr Gunther. You are one of the reasons I became a policeman rather than a lawyer. In a sense you helped to save me from a very dull life.”
    The colonel drew up a chair for me and we sat down.
    “Back in 1932 there were two sensational murders in the German newspapers.”
    “There were a lot more than two,” I said sourly.
    “Not like these two. I remember reading about them in some lurid detail. These were lust murders, were they not? Two girls similarly mutilated. Just like poor Grete Wohlauf. One in Berlin and one in Munich. And you, Herr Gunther. You were the investigating detective. Your picture was in the paper.”
    “Yes. I was. Only I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
    “The murderer was never caught, Herr Gunther. He was never caught. That’s why we’re talking.”
    I shook my head. “That’s true. But look, it was almost twenty years ago. And several thousand miles away. You’re surely not suggesting that these three murders might be connected.”
    “Why