“Heil Hitler!”

March ignored him and slithered down the muddy bank to inspect the corpse.

It was an old man’s body — cold, fat, hairless and shockingly white. From a distance, it could have been an alabaster statue dumped in the mud. Smeared with dirt, the corpse sprawled on its back half out of the water, arms flung wide, head tilted back. One eye was screwed shut, the other squinted balefully at the filthy sky.

Tour name, Unterwachtmeister?” March had a soft voice. Without taking his eyes off the body, he addressed the Orpo man who had saluted.

“Ratka, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.”

Sturmbannfuhrer was an SS title, equivalent in Wehrmacht rank to major, and Ratka — dog-tired and skin-soaked though he was -seemed eager to show respect. March knew his type without even looking round: three applications to transfer to the Kripo, all turned down; a dutiful wife who had produced a football team of children for the Fuhrer; an income of 200 Reichsmarks a month. A life lived in hope.

“Well, Ratka,’said March, in that soft voice again. “What time was he discovered?”

“Just over an hour ago, sir. We were at the end of our shift, patrolling in Nikolassee. We took the call. Priority One. We were here in five minutes.”

“Who found him?”

Ratka jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

The young man in the tracksuit rose to his feet. He could not have been more than eighteen. His hair was cropped so close the pink scalp showed through the dusting of light brown hair. March noticed how he avoided looking at the body.

“Your name?”

“SS-Schutze Hermann Jost, sir.” He spoke with a Saxon accent — nervous, uncertain, anxious to please. “From the Sepp Dietrich training academy at Schlachtensee.” March knew it: a monstrosity of concrete and asphalt built in the 1950s, just south of the Havel. “I run here most mornings. It was still dark. At first, I thought it was a swan,” he added, helplessly.