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Then this American girl turns up and asks me if I found a roll of film on the body. She tells me that this man Peter Thomas was going to get a roll of film for her last night…ugh! A girl like that would bring a gross of films with her. When she wanted more, she’d get films from a news agency, or from the American Embassy. Failing that, the German Press Bureau would give her as much as she asked for; you know what the propaganda officials will do for American newspaper people. She doesn’t have to get involved with the black market.’
    ‘Perhaps she
wanted
to get involved with the black market. Perhaps she is trying to make contact with the Resistance, in order to write a newspaper story.’
    ‘That’s just what I was thinking, Harry.’
    ‘What else is wrong?’
    ‘I took his keys downstairs. None of them fits any of the locks; not the street door or this door. The small keys look like the ones they use on filing cabinets and the bronze one is probably for a safe. There are no filing cabinets here, and if there is a safe, it’s uncommonly well hidden.’
    ‘Anything else?’ said Harry.
    ‘If he lives here, why buy a return ticket when he left Bringle Sands yesterday morning? And if he liveshere, where are his shirts, his underclothes and his suits?’
    ‘He left them at Bringle Sands.’
    ‘And he intended to go to bed here, and then get up and use the same shirt and underclothes, you mean? Look at the body, Harry. This was a man very fussy about his clean linen.’
    ‘You don’t think he lived here?’
    ‘I don’t think
anyone
lived here. This place was just used as somewhere to meet.’
    ‘Business you mean – or lovers?’
    ‘You’re forgetting what Resistance people call “safe houses,” Harry. It might have been a place where they met, hid or stored things. And we can’t overlook the way he was wearing his overcoat.’
    ‘You told the doctor it was cold.’
    ‘The doctor was trying to irritate me and he succeeded. That doesn’t mean he was wrong about someone sitting here waiting for Thomas to arrive. And it doesn’t explain him keeping his hat on.’
    ‘I never know what you’re really thinking,’ said Harry.
    ‘Watch your tongue when you are over at the Feldgendarmerie, Harry.’
    ‘What do you think I am – stupid?’
    ‘Romantic,’ said Douglas. ‘Not stupid – romantic.’
    ‘You think he got those burns from a sun-lamp?’ said Harry.
    ‘I never heard of anyone going to sleep under a sun-lamp,’ said Douglas, ‘but there has to be a first time for everything. And try to think why someone has taken the light bulb out of that adjustable desk light. There was nothing wrong with the bulb.’

Chapter Four
    The beer seemed to get weaker every day and anyone who believed those stories about the fighting having destroyed the hop fields had never tasted the export brands that were selling in German soldiers’ canteens. In spite of its limitations Douglas bought a second pint and smothered the tasteless cheese sandwich with mustard before eating it. There were several other Murder Squad officers in the ‘Red Lion’ in Derby Gate. It was Scotland Yard’s own pub, more crimes had been solved in this bar than in all the offices, path labs and record offices put together, or so some of the regulars claimed, after a few drinks.
    A newspaper boy came in selling the
Evening Standard
. Douglas bought a copy and turned to the Stop Press on the back page.
    MAN FOUND DEAD IN WEST END LUXURY FLAT
    Shepherd Market in Mayfair was visited by Scotland Yard officers today when the body of a man was discovered by a neighbour bringing the morning pint of milk. The dead man’s name has not yet been released by the police. It is believed that he was an antique dealer and a well-known expert in pearls. Scotland Yard are treating the death as murder, and the investigation is headed by ‘Archer of the Yard’ who solved the grisly ‘Sex-fiend murders’ last summer.
    Douglas saw the hand of Harry