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March called: “We’ve finished here, Herr Zaugg. Thank you.”

Zaugg reappeared with the security guard — a fraction too quickly, March thought. He guessed the banker had been straining to overhear them.

Zaugg rubbed his hands. “All is to your satisfaction, I trust?”

“Perfectly.”

The guard slid the box back into the cavity, Zaugg locked the door, and the girl with the weasel was re-interred in darkness. “We have boxes here which have lain untouched for fifty years or more…” Was that how long it would be before she saw the light again?

They rode the elevator in silence. Zaugg shepherded them out at street-level. “And so we say goodbye.” He shook hands with each of them in turn.

March felt he had to say something more, should try one final tactic. “I feel I must warn you, Herr Zaugg, that two of the joint holders of this account have been murdered in the past week, and that Martin Luther himself has disappeared.”

Zaugg did not even blink. “Dear me, dear me. Old clients pass away and new ones” — he gestured to them -’take their place. And so the world turns. The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that — whoever wins — still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland. Good day to you.”

They were out on the street and the door was closing when Charlie shouted: “Herr Zaugg!”

His face appeared and before he could withdraw it, the camera clicked. His eyes were wide, his little mouth popped into a perfect O of outrage.

ZURICH’S lake was misty-blue, like a picture from a fairy-story — a landscape fit for sea-monsters and heroes to do battle in. If only the world had been as we were promised, thought March. Then castles with pointed turrets would have risen through that haze.

He was leaning against the damp stone balustrade outside the hotel, his suitcase at his feet, waiting for Charlie to settle her bill.

He wished he could have stayed longer — taken her out on the water, explored the city, the hills; had dinner in the old town; returned to his room each night, to make love, to the sound of the lake … A dream. Fifty metres to his left, sitting in their cars, his guardians from the Swiss Polizei yawned.

Many years ago, when March was a young detective in the Hamburg Kripo, he had been ordered to escort a prisoner serving a life-sentence for robbery, who had been given a special day-pass. The man’s trial had been in the papers; his childhood sweetheart had seen the publicity and written to him; had visited him in gaol; agreed to marry him. The affair had touched that streak of sentimentality that runs so strong in the German psyche. There had been a public campaign to let the ceremony go ahead. The authorities had relented. So March took him to his wedding, stood handcuffed beside him throughout the service and even during the wedding pictures, like an unusually attentive best man.

The reception had been in a grim hall next to the church. Towards the end, the groom had whispered that there was a storeroom with a rug in it, that the priest had no objections… And March — young husband that he was -had checked the storeroom and seen there were no windows and had left the man and his wife alone for twenty minutes. The priest — who had worked as a chaplain in Hamburg’s docks for thirty years, and seen most things — had given March a grave wink.

On the way back to prison, as the high walls came into view, March had expected the man to be depressed, to plead for extra time, maybe even dive for the door. Not at all. He had sat smiling, finishing his cigar. Standing by the

Zurich See, March realised how he had felt. It had been sufficient to know that the possibility of another life existed; one day of it had been enough.

He felt Charlie come up beside him. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

A SHOP at Zurich airport was piled high with brightly coloured gifts — cuckoo clocks, toy skis, ashtrays glazed with pictures of the Matterhorn, and chocolates. March picked out one of the musical boxes with “Birthday Greetings to Our Beloved Fuhrer, 1964” written on the lid and took it to the counter where a plump middle-aged woman was waiting.

“Could you wrap this and send it for me?”

“No problem, sir. Write down where you want it to go.”

She gave him a form and a pencil and March wrote Hannelore Jaeger’s name and address. Hannelore was even fatter than her husband, a lover of chocolates. He hoped Max would see the joke.

The assistant wrapped the box swiftly in brown paper, with skilled fingers.

“Do you sell many of these?”

“Hundreds. You Germans certainly love your Fuhrer.”

“We do, it is true.” He was looking at the parcel. It was wrapped exactly like the one he had taken from Buhler’s mailbox. “You don’t, I suppose, keep a record of the places to which you send these packages?”

“That would be impossible.” She addressed it, stuck on a stamp, and added it to the pile behind her.