'Somebody local?' asked Carlos.
'She's not a local girl. The contact addresses for Catarina Oliveira are Lisbon and Cascais. And anyway, what's local? There's quarter of a million people living within a kilometre of where we're standing. But if she did come here and meet a creep, why kill her in the pine trees and dump her on the beach? Why kill her in any pine woods in the Lisbon area and bring her here to this spot?'
'Is it relevant that you live near here?'
'I suppose you don't know why you said that either?'
'Possibly because you were thinking it.'
'And you can read my thoughts… all on your first day?'
'Maybe you're revealing more than you think now your beard's gone.'
'That's a lot to read off any man's cheeks, agente Pinto.'
Chapter III
15th February 1941, SS Barracks, Unter den Eichen, Berlin-Lichterfelde Even for this time of year night had come prematurely. The snow clouds, low and heavy as Zeppelins, had brought the orderlies into the mess early to put up the blackout. Not that it was needed. Just procedure. No bombers would come out in this weather. Nobody had been out since last Christmas.
An SS mess waiter in a white monkey jacket and black trousers put a tea tray down in front of the civilian, who didn't look up from the newspaper he wasn't reading. The waiter hung for a moment and then left with the orderlies. Outside the snowfall muffled the suburb to silence, its accumulating weight filled craters, mortared ruins, rendered roofs, smoothed muddied ruts and chalked in the black streets to a routine uniform whiteness.
The civilian poured himself a cup of tea, took a silver case out of his pocket and removed a white cigarette with black Turkish tobacco. He tapped the unfiltered end on the lid of the case, gothically engraved with the letters 'KE', and stuck the dry paper to his lower lip. He lit it with a silver lighter, engraved 'EB', a small and temporary theft. He raised the cup.