That was the first clue. 'I need to ask you about Berlin. They told you, didn't they?

'Yes. But that's all right.' She moved at last, walking across to one of the garden chairs, her suede boots leaving streaks on the frost; she walked with a slight sway, as if through water. 'I don't mind talking about Berlin. I expect I seem a little distrait. Everything was rather sudden. And of course beastly.'

She perched on the arm of the chair, throwing her hair back and looking at me a little defensively, I thought. No one likes questions about something they'd rather forget. I said, 'We want to know what happened over there. Your husband was -'

'His name is George. Was George. You can call him that.'

'All right. He was well into the scene in Berlin, knew a lot of people. He did a good job at the embassy, so I imagine he was pretty popular there.'

'Not very.'

'People tend to envy success, don't they?' I dragged a chair over and hitched myself onto the arm.

'I don't think it was that, quite. He was rather cocky, you see.'

'He wasn't too well-liked outside the embassy, either? Would you say?'

'Not enormously.'

There was a face over there in the hedge, in a gap in the hedge. 'But not so unpopular,' I said, 'that people would want to… harm him?'

'Oh, no. He was just – I mean he was just George. Rather supercilious. No, I think it was the Red Army Faction that killed him. The police think so.'

'Do you?'

She seemed surprised. 'I've never thought otherwise.' Then she said, 'He was provoking them, I believe.'

'Oh really. How?