‘I wanted to see you because it’s about yesterday but further along than before.’
‘As I remember, Mr Browne, you were there then to visit a client. Did your client’s needs bring you across the city a second time?’
‘Actually, I was there to see whether extortion was alive and well in Savignyplatz, whether street violence could flourish in Charlottenburg. Do you want to know, or do you know already?’
The investigator did not. ‘I am not in direct contact with the operations room.’
‘I did the good-citizen bit yesterday when I made a report to you.’
‘Which provoked an appropriate response.’
‘As I remember it, “Go home, forget the world outside, go to a disco, get laid, go to work.” Seems close to your response.’
‘The incident didn’t happen where you live or where you work. What’s your interest?’
‘I thought it important and . . .’
The investigator peered at him. Perhaps, for close work, he wore spectacles.
‘Or was it because you were dumped on your backside yesterday – and apparently on your face this morning? A pity – that looks like an expensive suit and “invisible mending” won’t fix the tear in the knee. “Important” has already cost you at least five hundred euros. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘You can check with your operations room for a report on a young woman so badly injured by a blow to the face that she’ll be scarred for the rest of her life. Try that for a start.’
The investigator swivelled away and spoke into his mobile phone.
For Jago, the girl’s face was clear. Blood oozed from the wound and there was shock in her eyes. He saw the man who had been behind her, cringing. He saw the money held out in a wad. It was a game of control.
The phone was snapped off. ‘There is no report of any incident in the place you have described, not yesterday and not today.’
He took the policeman’s arm. If he’d done that in Canning Town, he’d have had his fingers rapped, hard, with a collapsible baton. Not here. They walked back into the fresh air of the morning. On the way to the square, Jago explained what had happened to the girl, his intervention and failure. The policeman did not interrupt. At the end of his description of the events, he’d stumbled. He couldn’t answer the investigator’s final question: ‘What the hell were you doing there?’ Jago thought himself a victim – his chin was grazed, his knee was bruised and his clothes were torn and dirtied.
They were at the square.
Jago led the other man into the small garden with the benches. Across the street, the door to the pizzeria was shut and the closed sign hung at an angle. He could see the pavement – there should be bloodstains on it. He spotted a dark patch on the concrete, with a trickle line to the gutter – it was there that he had been tripped. The woman with the mismatched shoes was there, reading the Berliner Morgenpost. Jago had told the investigator about her and her shoes. He pointed her out, then hung back.
The investigator went up to her, bent so that his head was level with hers and spoke to her with what seemed deference and respect. What had she seen? He was answered decisively. She looked up, saw Jago, seemed to peer through him, then turned to the policeman and shook her head decisively. She had seen nothing.
Jago and the investigator walked away, into the heart of Charlottenburg and towards the hospital that had an Accident and Emergency department. Jago had to scurry to keep up with him. Left to himself he might have given up.
Giulietta knelt in front of her father. Bernardo had rolled up his trouser leg and his wife watched as his daughter massaged the knee, more effective than if he took the powerful painkillers their doctor – always discreet, always well rewarded – would have prescribed. When the ache in his knee was relieved, his hip hurt less. He loved Giulietta as if she had been a son.