Untouched.”

“Key or combination?”

“Key.”

“You find the key?”

“In the cash register.”

“Did you check it?”

“Yes, after the fingerprint guy took a look. Eight pounds, a checkbook, and some papers.”

Neumann nodded again; March was doing well, learning his trade.

They arrived at the back of the shop. It was darker, the lamps suspended from the ceiling barely lighting the floor. The five or six policemen standing around seemed to dull it further still, sucking the light into their grimy raincoats, dark suits, police tunics, and cigarette smoke.

Nearly everyone turned to see who was arriving; Neumann gestured that they should all get behind him so he could see the scene inhabited by only the important person in the building.

The dead tailor.

Everyone silently filed past and took up station behind Neumann and March.

March made to speak, but Neumann shook his head.

Neumann looked at the tailor on the floor. He then turned and looked at the assembled officers, but he didn’t seem to see them.

His mind moved back in time, where he heard the report of the gun, smelled the cordite, and felt the thud of a falling man.

He looked at the register.

He lifted the curtain at the back of the shop, peered into the gloom of the sewing room, and then back at the man on the floor.

Neumann walked around the counter and took his position next to March, who finally spoke.

“Okay. I reckon the robber or robbers came in, found the tailor at the back of the shop or maybe closing up because of the weather. He’s pulled a gun. I’m guessing an accomplice was waiting in the car outside. There was a struggle and the shooter copped a round himself, hence the blood on the ground outside and the two shell casings we found.” March pointed to the blood on the floor, a small distance from the tailor’s body. “He shot the tailor, did a bit of first aid on himself, rifled the register, and fled the shop.”

“Who found the body?”

“The tailor obviously never went home. His wife waited a while and eventually called a friend who lived nearby to come take a look. She tried the door, found it was open, came in, and . . .” March held out his hands toward the body.

“Do we know how long he’s been here?”

“He’s pretty cold, and the blood is almost dry, even the pools.”

“A few hours,” Neumann said and March nodded.

“There was a case up in Coventry last year, do you remember?” March slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “A ­couple of Ukrainian SS privates robbing local businesses and selling whatever they got on the black market. That might explain how a robbery has happened in the German quarter of London.”

“I don’t think this was a robbery.”

“Why?”

“There is a jeweler’s shop next door. Why would you rob a tailor when a jeweler is next door?”

March nodded, disappointed he hadn’t thought of it first.

“Maybe the snow, sir? Maybe the jeweler closed early?” someone said behind Neumann, who half turned and responded, “Go find out.”

The policeman who had spoken dropped his shoulders and left the shop. Neumann crossed to the body of the tailor and looked at him.

The man had fallen straight down, crumpling on his legs. His eyes seemed to stare back at Neumann. Neumann looked at the wound. It was a good shot, center of the chest.

“Sudden death, probably gone before he hit the ground.” Neumann looked at March. “He dropped straight down. He wasn’t turning away—­no momentum except the one that gravity gave him. If he’d been pleading, fighting, or running I’d expect a defensive wound at least, possibly a raised hand.”

March looked at the corpse and then back at his boss.

“But the blood, on the carpet there.” March pointed to a spot to their left, next to the display cases. “I don’t think it’s his. There must have been a struggle.”

Neumann knelt down by the blood.

“Torch.” He raised his hand and clicked a finger.

Someone obliged and Neumann pointed it at the carpet, found the edge of the bloodstain, then traced it with the beam of the torch all the way around until he came to a stop, back at where he’d started.

He leaned forward, shone the beam into the middle of the stain, and then with his other hand placed his fingertip onto the carpet into the middle of the spotlight.

He pushed down and for a moment his finger cast a shadow like an actor on an empty stage. Around the tip, fresh wet blood was forced through and up to the surface; Neumann lifted his finger and looked at it, then held it up for March to see before wiping it next to his foot.

He stood up.

“Somebody else was hit. They might have even died here—­there is enough blood.”

“Someone else?”

“They bled out, or they were bleeding out. I’ll wager an artery. There’s no way they walked to a car.”

“But if there was no struggle?”

“I didn’t say there wasn’t a struggle; I said the tailor didn’t struggle.”

“But if you leave the tailor, why would you take the other person?”

Neumann looked at March and then back at the blood.

“I don’t know.” He stared at the stain and then called over his shoulder. “We need to check the hospitals, see if anyone has been brought in with a gunshot wound or bleeding heavily.”

Two of the detectives behind him, one English and one German, nodded and left the shop to make the inquiries.

Neumann knelt down again and then looked at the display case in front of the assistant.

“Why is that case open?”

All eyes turned to the case. Sure enough, the glass door hung open with keys still in its lock.

March looked into it.

“Handkerchiefs and ties.” He looked back at his boss.

Neumann stood up.

“They used a tie to stop the blood, a tourniquet.”

March looked back down, and then back at the blood before nodding.

“They used it to keep him alive.”

Neumann knelt, looking at the blood from the back of the shop, a new angle.