The Odessa File

‘Did he say where he was going?’ he asked.

‘No. Nothing. Just said he was going to the Austrian Alps.’

‘No forwarding address? No way of getting in touch with him?’

‘No, that’s what’s so strange. I mean, what about the printing works? I just rang them before you came. Very surprised they were, with all those orders to be completed.’

&nbs

p; Miller calculated fast. Winzer had a half-hour start on him. Driving at 80 mph he would have covered forty miles. Miller could keep up a hundred, overtaking at twenty miles an hour. That would mean two hours before he saw the tail of Winzer’s car. Too long. He could be anywhere in two hours. Besides, there was no proof he was heading south to Austria.

‘Then could I speak to Frau Winzer please?’ he asked.

Barbara giggled and looked at him archly.

‘There ain’t no Frau Winzer,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know Herr Winzer at all?’

‘No. I never met him.’

‘Well, he’s not the marrying kind, really. I mean very nice, but not really interested in women, if you know what I mean.’

‘So he lives here alone, then?’

‘Well, except for me. I mean, I live in. Mind you, it’s quite safe. From that point of view.’ She giggled.

‘I see. Thank you,’ said Miller, and turned to go.

‘You’re welcome,’ said the girl, and watched him go down the drive and climb into the Jaguar, which had already caught her attention. What with Herr Winzer being away, she wondered if she might be able to ask a nice young man home for the night before her employer got back. She watched the Jaguar drive away with a roar of exhaust, sighed for what might have been and closed the door.

Miller felt the weariness creeping over him, accentuated by the last and, so far as he was concerned, final disappointment. He surmised Bayer had wriggled free from his bonds and used the hotel telephone in Stuttgart to ring Winzer and warn him. He had got so close, fifteen minutes from his target, and almost made it. Now he felt only the need for sleep.

He drove past the medieval wall of the old city, followed the map to the Theodor Heuss Platz, parked the Jaguar in front of the station and checked into the Hohenzollern Hotel across the square.

He was lucky, they had a room available at once, so he went upstairs, undressed and lay on the bed. There was something nagging in the back of his mind, some point he had not covered, some tiny detail of inquiry he had left unasked. It was still unsolved when he fell asleep at half past ten.

Mackensen made it to the centre of Osnabrück at half past one. On the way into town he had checked the house in Westerberg, but there was no sign of a Jaguar. He wanted to ring the Werwolf before he went there in case there was more news.

By chance the post office in Osnabrück flanks one side of the Theodor Heuss Platz. A whole corner and one side of the square is taken up by the main railway station, and a third side is occupied by the Hohenzollern Hotel. As Mackensen parked by the post office, his face split in a grin. The Jaguar he sought was in front of the town’s main hotel.

The Werwolf was in a better mood.

‘It’s all right. Panic over for the moment,’ he told the killer. ‘I reached the forger in time and he got out of town. I just phoned the house again. It must have been the maid who answered. She told me her employer had left barely twenty minutes before a young man with a black sports car came inquiring after him.’

‘I’ve some news too,’ said Mackensen. ‘The Jaguar is parked right here on the square in front of me. Chances are he’s sleeping it off in the hotel. I can take him right here in the hotel room. I’ll use a silencer.’

‘Hold it, don’t be in too much of a hurry,’ warned the Werwolf. ‘I’ve been thinking. For one thing he must not get it inside Osnabrück town. The maid has seen him and his car. She would probably report to the police. That would bring attention on our forger, and he’s the panicking kind. I can’t have him involved. The maid’s testimony would cast a lot of suspicion on him. First he gets a phone call, then he dashes out and vanishes, then a young man calls to see him, then the man is shot in a hotel room. It’s too much.’

Mackensen’s brow was furrowed.

‘You’re right,’ he said at length. ‘I’ll have to take him when he leaves.’

‘He’ll probably stick around for a few hours checking for a lead on the forger. He won’t get one. There’s one other thing. Does Miller carry a document case?’

‘Yes,’ said Mackensen. ‘He had it with him as he left the cabaret last night. And he took it with him when he went back to his hotel room.’

‘So why not leave it locked in the boot of his car? Why not in his hotel room? Because it’s important to him. You follow me?’

‘Yes,’ said Mackensen.