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take hold of his hand. ‘Come. There’s nobody round there this time of day.’
    Against his better judgement, he let the girl lead him to a small wooden door set in the side of the short tunnel that connected courtyard and street. To his surprise it was unlocked. Inside, a steep, open staircase led up to the second floor, while the corridor bent ahead of them, turning sharply into the building’s wing. There were signs of a recent fire, and a blackened mattress leaned against one wall. Beer remembered no fire but supposed it explained why the yard remained abandoned: its new owners would have to repair the building before business could be resumed.
    The girl led him down the corridor, past broken windows and shattered light bulbs, angry slogans scrawled across the floor. Beer wondered for a moment what the neighbours made of this gutted building in their midst, then reminded himself that they were the same people who had witnessed the windows being smashed and the symbols being daubed, and done nothing about it. People like him. Some of them might even have lent a hand. In a month or two, the property would have new tenants, and a new lick of paint. Their name wouldn’t be Pollak, but that was all: there’d be another kind of name – no different really, yet somehow better all the same – and a row of motor cars standing polished in the yard.
    The girl let go of his hand and cut into a hallway on their right in a lopsided gallop. The corridor was narrow and so cluttered with broken furniture that for a moment Beer lost sight of her. When he caught up with the girl, he found her standing at the top of a staircase of three steps that led up to what must have been a service entrance to the workshop and was now blocked off by two large pieces of plywood, one of them stained by what seemed to be old blood. She stuck a finger into the wood’s cracked lower corner, wrinkling her nose at the stains, and lifted the board up like a flap.
    ‘It’s loose, see. We can go in here.’
    ‘We really shouldn’t,’ he protested. ‘Besides, I’ll get my trousers dirty.’
    ‘I come here all the time.’ She ducked through, then turned in the entryway, still holding up the piece of wood. Her body, in this hunched position, seemed intolerably twisted: bent double over the crooked line of her waist, her head and left shoulder fused at the seams. Her little arms were shaking with the strain.
    ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me help you.’
    Before he knew what he was doing, he had mounted the steps and taken hold of the loose board. He crouched down low to do so, one knee pressed into the dirty floor. The little girl was close now, looking him straight in the eye: he could see the fine web of crystalline ridges that threaded her iris; the pink curve of her lip.
    ‘What’s your name?’ she asked quickly, her breath sweet in his face.
    ‘Dr Beer.’
    ‘And otherwise?’
    ‘Otherwise? Anton. Anton Beer.’
    ‘Anneliese Grotter,’ she said, then turned on her heel and ran ahead into the darkness beyond. He really had very little choice but to follow.
    Getting past the plywood wasn’t as easy as he had thought. He tried to duck through as the girl had done, but didn’t seem able to make himself fit; straightened up again and began pulling at the board in an effort to widen the gap. It wouldn’t budge, then came loose with sudden violence and flew nail-studded into his arms. He almost lost his footing and slipped off the stairs; threw the board behind himself in a temper, then stood peering about as though to check whether anyone had witnessed the mishap. But the corridor remained as deserted as before, and Beer quickly slid through the narrow doorway he had created, hoping his clothing wouldn’t catch on any edges.
    The part of the building that lay on the other side seemed unaffected by the fire and the vandalism. Within a few steps, the whitewashed passage Beer had entered opened into a sort of tea kitchen, roughly furnished