“Ah.” The inspector was delighted to find the bullet, sitting where the cobblestones met the brick wall. He picked it up carefully with a tissue. It was only slightly dented. He recognized immediately that it was a 9mm slug. This meant it most likely came from an automatic pistol, which would have ejected the spent brass cartridge.

He said to the third Schupo, “Please, Officer, look over the ground there, every centimeter. Look for a brass shell casing.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pulling his magnifying monocle from his waistcoat pocket and squinting through it, Kohl examined the projectile. “The bullet is in very good shape. That’s encouraging. We’ll see what the lands and grooves tell us back at the Alex. They’re quite sharp.”

“So the killer has a new gun,” Janssen offered, then qualified his comment. “Or an old gun that has rarely been fired.”

“Very good, Janssen. Those were to be my very next words.” Kohl put the slug in another brown envelope and sealed this one too. Writing more notes.

Janssen again looked over the corpse. “If he wasn’t robbed, sir, then why are they turned out?” he asked. “His pockets, I am referring to.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean he wasn’t robbed. I simply am not sure that robbery was the primary motive… Ah, there. Open the jacket again.”

Janssen pulled open the garment.

“See, the threads?”

“Where?”

“Right here!” Kohl pointed.

“Yes, sir.”

“The label has been cut out. Is that true of all his garments?”

“Identification,” the young man said, nodding, as he looked at the trousers and shirt. “The killer doesn’t want us to know whom he has killed.”

“Markings in the shoes?”

Janssen took them off and examined them. “None, sir.”

Kohl glanced at them and then felt the deceased’s jacket. “The suit is made of… ersatz fabric.” The inspector had nearly made the mistake of using the phrase “Hitler fabric,” a reference to fake cloth made of fibers from trees. (A popular joke: If you have a tear in your suit, water and expose it to sunlight; the cloth will grow back.) The Leader had announced plans to make the country independent of foreign imports. Elastic, margarine, gasoline, motor oil, rubber, cloth – all were being made from alternative materials found in Germany. The problem, of course, was the same with substitutes everywhere – they simply weren’t very good, and people sometimes referred to them disparagingly as “Hitler” goods. But it was never wise to use the term in public; one could be reported for uttering it.

The import of the discovery was that the man was probably German. Most foreigners in the country nowadays had their own currency to convert, which meant their buying power was quite strong, and none would willingly purchase cheap clothing like this.

But why would the killer wish to keep his victim’s identity secret? The ersatz clothing suggested there was nothing particularly important about him. But then, Kohl reflected, many senior people in the National Socialist Party were poorly paid, and even those who had decent salaries often wore substitute clothing out of loyalty to the Leader: Could the victim’s job within the Party or the government have been the motive for his death?

“Interesting,” Kohl said, rising stiffly. “The killer shoots a man in a crowded part of the city. He knows someone might hear the report of the gun and yet he risks detection to slice the labels out of his clothing. This makes me all the more intrigued to learn who this unfortunate gentleman is. Take his fingerprints, Janssen. It will be forever if we wait for the coroner to do so.”

“Yes, sir.” The young officer opened his briefcase and removed the equipment. He started to work.

Kohl gazed at the cobblestones. “I have been saying ‘killer,’ singular, Janssen, but of course there could have been a dozen. But I can see nothing of the choreography of this event on the ground.” In more open crime scenes the infamously gritty Berlin wind conveniently spread telltale dust on the ground. But not in this sheltered alley.

“Sir… Inspector,” the Schupo officer called. “I can find no casings here. I have scoured the entire area.”

This fact troubled Kohl, and Janssen caught his boss’s expression.

“Because,” the inspector explained, “he not only cut the labels from his victim, he took the time to find the shell casing.”

“So. He is a professional.”

“As I say, Janssen, when making deductions, never state your conclusions as if they are certainties. When you do that, your mind instinctively closes out other possibilities. Say, rather, that our suspect may have a high degree of diligence and attention to detail. Perhaps a professional criminal, perhaps not. It could also be that a rat or bird made off with the shiny object, or a schoolboy picked it up and fled at the terrifying sight of a dead man. Or even that the killer is a poor man who wishes to reuse the brass.”

“Of course, Inspector,” Janssen said, nodding as if memorizing Kohl’s words.

In the short time they’d worked together, the inspector had learned two things about Janssen: that the young man was incapable of irony and that he was a remarkably fast learner. The latter quality was a godsend to the impatient inspector. Regarding the former, though, he wished the boy joked more frequently; policing is a profession badly in need of humor.

Janssen finished taking the fingerprints, which he’d done expertly.

“Now dust the cobblestones around him and take photographs of any prints you find. The killer might’ve been clever enough to take the labels but not so smart to avoid touching the ground when he did so.”

After five minutes of spreading the fine powder around the body, Janssen said, “I believe there are some here, sir. Look.”

“Yes. They’re good. Record them.”

After he photographed the prints the young man stood back and took additional pictures of the corpse and the scene. The inspector walked slowly around the body. He pulled his magnifying monocle from his vest’s watch pocket again and placed around his neck its green cord, braided for him as a Christmas present by young Hanna. He examined a spot on the cobblestones near the body. “Flakes of leather, it seems.” He looked at them carefully. “Old and dry. Brown. Too stiff to be from gloves. Maybe shoes or a belt or old satchel or suitcase that either the killer or victim was carrying.”

He scooped these flakes up and placed them in another brown envelope then moistened the gum and sealed it.

“We have a witness, sir,” one of the younger Schupo officers called. “Though he’s not very cooperative.”

Witness. Excellent! Kohl followed the man back toward the mouth of the alley. There, another Schupo officer was prodding forward a man in his forties, Kohl estimated. He was dressed in worker’s clothes. His left eye was glass and his right arm dangled uselessly at his side. One of the four million who survived the War but were left with bodies forever changed by the unfathomable experience.

The Schupo officer pushed him toward Kohl.

“That will do, Officer,” the inspector said sternly. “Thank you.” Turning to the witness, he asked, “Now, your card.”

The man handed over his ID. Kohl glanced at it. He forgot everything on the document the instant he returned it, but even a cursory examination of papers by a police officer made witnesses extremely cooperative.

Though not in all cases.

“I wish to be helpful. But as I told the officer, sir, I didn’t actually see much of anything.” He fell silent.

“Yes, yes, tell me what you actually did see.” An impatient gesture from Kohl’s thick hand.

“Yes, Inspector. I was scrubbing the basement stairs at Number forty-eight. There.” He pointed out of the alley to a town house. “As you can see. I was below the level of the sidewalk. I heard what I took to be a backfire.”

Kohl grunted. Since ’33 no one but an idiot assumed backfires; they assumed bullets.