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that...'
    `Noted for the record. The pathologist showed resentment. Now, let's get to it. When we checked his personal effects his passport was hardly damp...'
    `It was inside the breast pocket of his jacket,' Kosel pointed out. 'And he was wearing a raincoat buttoned to the neck.. `A lightweight raincoat. His wallet, tucked inside his other breast pocket wasn't even moist. And the police patrol dragged him out when he was half-submerged under the water. I'd say he was found within five minutes of being dumped into that outlet from the Binnenalster. They came as close as that to catching the killer.'
    `Killer?' Kosel protested. 'I haven't established the cause of death..
    `You think he walked off the edge for an early morning swim? He was found floating by the lock-gates not five minutes' walk from the Jungfernstieg landing-stage on the Binnenalster. That whole area is well-lit by street lamps...'
    `Maybe he was drunk...'
    Tergusson never touched alcohol,' Tweed remarked mildly. 'So cancel that one,' Kuhlmann said.
    The corpse smells strongly of alcohol — whisky I would say.'
    'So, we can make some educated guesses?' Kuhlmann grasped Kosel by the arm and smiled grimly. 'You're doing fine. Keep it up. Now, let's come to the blow on the side of the head.'
    `Encrusted with dried blood. He could have hit his skull on the stone wall when he went in.'
    `Sure!' Kuhlmann waved his cigar like a conductor's baton. `He's crossing the bridge near the lock-gates. He climbs over the rail, then dives head first for the wall. Is that really what you're saying? That it is even physically possible?'
    `It would seem unlikely...'
    Newman intervened. 'He was a first-rate swimmer, too. If he had fallen in he'd have found a way out.'
    `That information is useful,' Kosel responded primly.
    `Your unofficial opinion would be also useful,' Kuhlmann pressed. 'Other people's lives may be at stake. Or do you want this place to be standing room only?'
    `I can't be pressured...'
    `Try me,' Kuhlmann challenged. 'We can take what's lying under that sheet away from you — bring someone in from Wiesbaden.'
    `If he never drank... Kosel paused. He frowned as he looked at Tweed. 'It is beginning to seem someone made it look like an accident. The front of his clothes was soused with alcohol …'
    `That's it,' said Kuhlmann. 'Take this card, keep it to yourself. Send your report to that address when you've done what you have to do.'
    `Wiesbaden? It must be submitted to the Hamburg chief of police...'
    `Hans Lenze, who is a close friend of mine, who knows I'm here, who told me about you. Do it any way you damn well wish — but that report goes to Wiesbaden. Now, let's get out of here and go look for fresh air.'
    Seven
    `Hans!' Newman waved his hand in a gesture of disgust. `There must be a million men with that name in Germany...'
    `If that is what Fergusson really said,' Tweed replied and wandered over to the window, then stood there, sipping his glass of cognac. He drank rarely but the sight of Ian Fergusson lying in the morgue had shaken him.
    Vier Jahreszeiten. The Four Seasons Hotel. One of the finest hostelries in all Germany. They were ensconced inside Room 412, Tweed's room, almost the size of a small de-luxe apartment. The view from the window was magnificent. The sun was shining in the late afternoon, reflecting with a glitter off the lake, the Binnenalster, beyond the road running below the window.
    Tweed stared out over a line of trees in full foliage — a room on the fourth floor gave a clear view of the water where white single deck passenger craft cruised towards the landing-stage at the end of the lake. Little more than a few metres from where Fergusson's body had been found in the water at five in the morning.
    `What else could he have meant?' Newman asked and finished off his cognac. It gave off a better aroma than bloody hospitals and all things medical he disliked so much.
    "That could be the key to the mystery,' Tweed replied. `Maybe we shall