The Janus Man by Colin Forbes Read Free Book Online

know more tonight when we visit St Pauli …'
    `The Reeperbahn? Anything can happen there after dark. I'll stick close to you. No argument.'
    `Agreed.' Tweed had a dreamy look as he continued to watch the fussy water-buses plying back and forth. Fergusson came here to see Ziggy Palewska. I think he saw him the night he was killed.'
    `What makes you think so? And who is this Ziggy person?'
    `Because of this.' Tweed produced a small black notebook, one of the personal effects handed to him at the morgue. It had been found inside Fergusson's buttoned back trouser pocket and its pages were crinkled from exposure to water. He prised apart two pages and showed them to Newman. The notation, written in small neat script, was brief.
    Ziggy. Berlin. Hotel Jensen .
    `So, Ziggy told him something about the Hotel Jensen in Berlin. I've never heard of it.'
    `Neither have I. And you asked about Ziggy. His father came from Poland. He married a girl from East Prussia — that is, Ziggy's mother. Both parents are dead. Near the end of the war they fled from Konigsberg — as it was called then — with Ziggy who was only ten years old. They ended up in Schleswig- Holstein, the German province — or Land — which was flooded with refugees. That fact has dominated Ziggy's life — not always for the best.'
    `Which means?'
    `The positive side — from my point of view — is he has always kept in touch with the underground network which links the refugees. He can be an invaluable source of information. But hi is very tricky. Thinks only of money. He'll work for anyone who pays — sometimes for both sides at the same time.'
    `Sounds like a one-way ticket to eternity...'
    `Oh yes, he walks a tightrope. So far with great cunning and skill. The time may come when he falls off...'
    `That could be a long drop,' Newman commented.
    `The final drop, I fear. Tonight I intend to put more pressure on him than I've ever done before. He must know something.' `And the negative side?'
    `He's mixed up in various squalid activities. Porno movies.
    Even drug-trafficking. Swears he only trades in marijuana — but I have my doubts.'
    `A piece of the world's flotsam. Floating on the surface. Like scum? The Reeperbahn sounds just his cup of tea. Kuhlmann said he'd have a gun for me when we meet later...'
    `I don't like guns. I don't know why I agreed when Kuhlmann made the suggestion on the phone to London. On the other hand...'
    `You don't know what you're walking into. Maybe Kuhlmann does. Has he really told us everything?'
    `I doubt it. Likes to hold something back. As bad as me,' Tweed remarked, and Newman knew the cognac was working. It was the first time since he'd returned from Paris that Tweed had cracked anything approaching a joke. 'Let's go for a walk. I always find when I get abroad I have to force myself out of a hotel. It's too easy to act the hermit...'
    Newman had the room next to Tweed's. He made the remark as they went down in the elevator.
    `It's in a hotel like this I'm glad I made all that money out of my bestseller, Kruger: The Computer That Failed . A foreign correspondent can work a whole career and never see money like that. I really got lucky...'
    In the reception hall Tweed paused to examine the tapestries on the walls, the fine long-case clocks adorning the place, the superb rugs laid on the floor. They walked out of the entrance, turned right along the Neuer Jungfernstieg, the tree-lined promenade by the lake.
    `It really is the most beautiful city,' Tweed commented. 'Look back at that colonnade which runs behind the hotel. We cross here.'
    `We're going somewhere definite?'
    `My feet seem to be heading in one direction — towards the Rathaus...'
    In the pure warmth of a sun shining out of clear skies the two men strolled past the end of the lake, past the landing-stage where tourists queued for giant ice-cream cones. A holiday atmosphere, thought Tweed, and Ian Fergusson lying in the morgue.
    They turned down the Alsterarkaden, an