'Yes,' I said. 'A Rover 3500 saloon that a couple of tearaways souped up to do one hundred and fifty miles an hour.'

'With a V-8 engine that shouldn't be too difficult.' His eyes narrowed. 'You'll surprise a few Sunday drivers with that one, Bernard.'

'Yes, that's' what Tessa's husband said. But until it's ready I have to manage with the Ford. And in that I can't surprise anyone.'

Silas leaned close and his manner was avuncular. 'You've come out of the Kimber-Hutchinson business with a smile on your face, Bernard. I'm pleased.' I couldn't help noticing that his distant relative Fiona was now referred to by her maiden name, thus distancing both of us from her.

'I don't know about the smile,' I said.

He ignored my retort. 'Don't start digging into that all over again. Let it go.'

'You think that's best?' I said, to avoid giving him the reassurance he was asking for.

'Leave all that to the people at Five. It's not our job to chase spies,' said Silas and opened the door of his study to let me out onto the landing.

'Come along, children,' I called. 'Tea and cake and then we must leave.'

'The Germans have a word for the results of such over-enthusiasm, don't they,' said Silas, who never knew when to stop. 'Schlimmbesserung, an improvement that makes things worse.' He smiled and patted my shoulder. There was no sign of anger now. Silas had become Uncle Silas again.

5

'Why does anyone have to go to Berlin,' I asked Dicky resentfully. I was at home: warm and comfortable and looking forward to Christmas Day.

'Be sensible,' Said Dicky. 'They're getting this Miller woman's body out of the Hohenzollern Canal. We can't leave it to the Berlin cops, and a lot of questions will have to be answered. Why was she being moved? Who authorized the ambulance? And where the hell was she being moved to?'

'It's Christmas, Dicky,' I said.

'Oh, is it?' said Dicky feigning surprise. 'That accounts for the difficulty I seem to be having getting anything done.'

'Don't Operations know that we have something called the Berlin Field Unit?' I said sarcastically. 'Why isn't Frank Harrington handling it?'

'Don't be peevish, old boy,' said Dicky, who I think was enjoying the idea of ruining my Christmas. 'We showed Frank how important this was by sending you over to supervise the arrest. And you interrogated her. We can't suddenly decide that BFU must take over. They'll say we're unloading this one onto them because it's the Christmas holiday. And they'd be right.'

'What does Frank say?'

'Frank isn't in Berlin. He's gone away for Christmas.'

'He must have left a contact number,' I said desperately.

'He's gone to some relatives in the Scottish Highlands. There have been gales and the phone lines are down. And don't say send the local constabulary to find him because when I track him down, Frank will point out that he has a deputy on duty in Berlin. No, you'll have to go, Bernard. I'm sorry, but there it is. And after all, you're not married.'

'Hell, Dicky. I've got the children with me and the nanny has gone home for Christmas with her parents. I'm not even on standby duty. I've planned all sorts of things over the holiday.'

'With gorgeous Gloria, no doubt. I can imagine what sort of things you planned, Bernard. Bad luck, but this is an emergency.'

'Who I spend my Christmas with is my personal business,' I said huffily.

'Of course, old chap. But let me point out that you introduced the personal note into this conversation. I didn't.'

'I'll phone Werner,' I said.

'By all means. But you'll have to go, Bernard. You are the person the BfV knows. I can't get all the paperwork done to authorize someone else to work with them.'

'I see,' I said. That was the real reason, of course. Dicky was determined that he would not go back into the office for a couple of hours of paperwork and phoning.

'And who else could I send? Tell me who could go and see to it.'

'From what you say, it's only going to be a matter of identifying a corpse.'

'And who else can do that?'

'Any of the BfV men who were in the arrest team.'

'That would look very good on the documentation, wouldn't it,' said Dicky with heavy irony. 'We have to rely on a foreign police service for our certified identification. Even Coordination would query that one.'

'If it's a corpse, Dicky, let it stay in the icebox until after the holiday.'

There was a deep sigh from the other end. 'You can wriggle and wriggle, Bernard, but you're on this hook and you know it. I'm sorry to wreck your cosy little Christmas, but it's nothing of my doing. You have to go and that's that. The ticket is arranged, and cash and so on will be sent round by security messenger tomorrow morning.'

'Okay,' I said.

'Daphne and I will be pleased to entertain the children round here, you know. Gloria can come round too, if she'd like that.'

'Thanks, Dicky,' I said. 'I'll think about it.'

'She'll be safe with me, Bernard,' said Dicky, and did nothing to disguise the smirk with which he said it. He'd always lusted after Gloria. I knew it and he knew I knew it. I think Daphne, his wife, knew it too. I hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

And so it was that, on Christmas Eve, when Gloria was with my children, preparing them for early bed so that Santa Claus could operate undisturbed, I was standing watching the Berlin police trying to winch a wrecked car out of the water. It wasn't exactly the Hohen-zollern Canal. Dicky had got that wrong; it was Hakenfelde, that industrialized section of the bank of the Havel River not far from where the Hohenzollern joins it.

Here the Havel widens to become a lake. It was so cold that the police doctor insisted the frogmen must have a couple of hours' rest to thaw out. The police inspector had argued about it, but in the end the doctor's opinion prevailed. Now the boat containing the frogmen had disappeared into the gloom and I was left with only the police inspector for company. The two policemen left to guard the scene had gone behind the generator truck, the noise of which never ceased. The police electricians had put flood lamps along the wharf to make light for the winch crew, so that the whole place was lit with the bright artificiality of a film set.

I stepped through the broken railing at the place where the car had gone into the water. Looking down over the edge of the jetty I could just make out the wobbling outline of the car under the dark oily surface. The winch, and two steadying cables, held it suspended there. For the time being, the car had won the battle. One steel cable had broken, and the first attempts to lift the car had ripped its rear off. That was the trouble with cars, said the inspector – they filled with water, and water weighs a ton per cubic metre. And this was a big car, a Citroen ambulance. To make it worse, its frame was bent enough to prevent the frogmen from getting its doors open.

The inspector was in his mid-fifties, a tall man with a large white moustache, its ends curling in the style of the Kaiser's soldiers. It was the sort of moustache a man grew to make himself look older. 'To think,' said the inspector, 'that I transferred out of the Traffic Department because I thought standing on point duty was too cold.' He stamped his feet. His heavy jackboots made a crunching sound where ice was forming in the cracks between the cobblestones.

'You should have kept to traffic,' I said, 'but transferred to the Nice or Cannes Police Department.'

'Rio,' said the inspector, 'I was offered a job in Rio. There was an agency here recruiting ex-policemen. My wife was all in favour, but I like Berlin. There's no town like it. And I've always been a cop; never wanted to be anything else. I know you from somewhere, don't I? I remember your face. Were you ever a cop?'