‘As comfortable as can be expected.’ It had been fully dark by the time they got back to Braunlage and another hour before Jamie located the local police office. The patrolman who had listened to their story had been first annoyed, then perplexed and finally bewildered, before they produced the Raphael. That was when he decided to hedge his bets and arrested Jamie on suspicion of something and told Sarah to go back to the hotel and stay there.
Lotte Muller produced a thin smile. ‘Perhaps you are surprised that you are to be freed?’
He shook his head. ‘No, as I explained to the officer last night, we did nothing wrong. This is just a misunderstanding.’
‘Of course, a misunderstanding.’ She had a policeman’s way with words. Disbelief was her default position. ‘Naturally, there will be certain conditions to your release.’
‘Naturally.’
‘My colleague from the Landespolizei had dismissed you and your . . . travelling companion as publicity-seeking fantasists, but then there was the question of the painting.’ What might have been a twinkle appeared in Lotte Muller’s hard little eyes and a slight uplift at the corners of her mouth accompanied the word painting. Clearly, the Raphael had made a suitable impression. ‘He did not dare open the package, of course, but the more he studied it the more concerned he became. So concerned that he rather belatedly found the courage to disturb my sleep. Since dawn, I have spent a rather trying morning in the Oder gorge attempting to verify, or otherwise, your unlikely story. Fortunately, I found no terrorists with machine guns. No dead men among the trees, or bodies in the river. No blood trails or spent cartridges.’ The dark eyes held Jamie’s. ‘But then my officers discovered the entrance to the bunker precisely where you and Miss Grant said it would be.’
‘May I ask how Miss Grant is?’
Lotte Muller’s expression softened. ‘As far as I know she is well. She should be here in a few minutes. Perhaps you would like to freshen up a little and we can continue this conversation in the interview room when she arrives?’
Sarah Grant might have spent the previous day at a spa rather than being chased around a forest by machine-gun-toting killers. She had relinquished her usual jeans and leather jacket for a candy-striped summer dress that made her look about eighteen. When Jamie rose to give her a restrained hug her perfume smelled of crushed lilac.
‘I didn’t even know you owned a dress,’ he whispered.
‘A girl has to have some secrets, Saintclair.’
‘May we begin?’ Lotte Muller interrupted.
They took their seats on the other side of the desk. The room was like police interview rooms everywhere: small, sparse and functional.
‘I understand you are comfortable in German, Miss Grant?’
Sarah nodded.
‘You slept well?’
‘Very.’ The accompanying smile hid the fact that she’d spent the night with a chair jammed behind the door of the hotel room wishing Jamie hadn’t persuaded her to dump the pistol she had carried since Wewelsburg. She had passed the time working on a synopsis of the Raphael story that she’d e-mailed to a selection of newspapers and magazines and eventually fallen asleep to wake up to an inbox full of offers that took her breath away.
The policewoman adjusted her reading glasses as she studied a piece of paper on the desk. ‘I have read your statements and I must admit to being somewhat perplexed. You say you were hunted through our forest by men with guns, but, as I have already informed Mr Saintclair, there is no evidence of this. No reports of gunshots. No shell cases. No bodies. No signs of any violence whatsoever.’
‘That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,’ Sarah interrupted.
‘No, it does not,’ Muller agreed. ‘But I would have preferred some further evidence. However, we also have the painting . . . and the bunker. You say that you were led to the bunker by indicators provided in this journal left by your grandfather, but only stumbled upon the entrance when you were being pursued.’ She turned a page and Jamie recognized a photocopy of the tightly written text of Matthew Sinclair’s diary. ‘A remarkable document, and even more remarkable that you were able to decipher the clues, if clues they are.’ The long pause that followed was an invitation to provide an explanation, but neither Jamie nor Sarah responded and she was forced to continue. ‘Still, what matters is that the bunker does exist, and that it provides us with a crime scene for which there is substantial evidence.’
‘You mean the dead prisoners?’
‘That is correct, Mr Saintclair. Just because a murder was committed many decades ago does not mean we can ignore the fact that it happened. I visited the site this morning. Quite astonishing. One does not expect to be confronted with such barbarity. Perhaps one should not be surprised that these things emerge from time to time, but still . . . Even for someone like myself, who has seen many difficult things, it was an emotional moment. To think that this could happen so close to this beautiful place is disturbing. There must be a full investigation, even though the perpetrators are most probably dead themselves. It may be many months before we can even identify the victims.’