The English Assassin

Mario Delvecchio was a man given to panic. “How did you get from the Zürichberg to the Hauptbahnhof?”
    “I took the tram.”
    Baer made a careful inspection of Gabriel’s seized possessions. “I don’t see a tram ticket among your things. Surely you purchased a ticket before you boarded the streetcar?”

    Gabriel shook his head: guilty as charged. Baer’s eyebrows shot up. The notion that Gabriel had boarded a tram ticketless seemed more horrifying to him than the possibility that he had shot an old man in the head.
    “That’s a very serious offense, Signore Delvecchio! I’m afraid you’re going to be fined fifty francs!”
    “I’m deeply sorry.”
    “Have you been to Zurich before?”
    “No, never.”
    “Then how did you know which tram would take you to the Hauptbahnhof?”
    “It was a lucky guess, I suppose. It was heading in the right direction, so I got on.”
    “Tell me one more thing, Signore Delvecchio. Did you make any purchases while you were in Zurich?”
    “Purchases?”
    “Did you buy anything? Did you do any shopping?”
    “I bought a pair of shoes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because while I was waiting to get into the villa, my shoes became soaked in the rain.”
    “You were panicked. You were afraid to go to the police, desperate to get out of Zurich, but you took time to get new shoes because your feet were wet?”
    “Yes.”
    He leaned back in his chair and knocked on the door. It opened, and an arm appeared, holding an evidence bag containing Gabriel’s shoes.
    “We found these in a toilet at the Hauptbanhof, buried in a rubbish bin. I suspect they’re yours. I also suspect that they will match the set of bloody footprints we found in the entrance hall and the walkway of the villa.”

    “I’ve already told you I was there. The footprints, if they do match those shoes, prove nothing.”
    “Rather nice shoes to simply toss away in the toilet of a rail station. And they don’t look that wet to me.” He looked up at Gabriel and smiled briefly. “But then, I’ve heard it said that people who panic easily often have sensitive feet.”
     
    ITwas three hours before Baer entered the room again. For the first time he was not alone. It was obvious to Gabriel that the new man represented higher authority. It was also obvious that he was not an ordinary detective from the Zurich murder squad. Gabriel could see it in the small ways that Baer deferred to him physically, the way his heels clicked together when, like a headwaiter, he seated the new man at the interrogation table and moved unobtrusively into the background.
    The man called himself Peterson. He provided no first name and no professional information. He wore an immaculately pressed suit of charcoal gray and a banker’s tie. His hair was nearly white and neatly trimmed. His hands, folded on the table in front of him, were the hands of a pianist. On his left wrist was a thick silver watch, Swiss-made of course, with a dark blue face, an instrument that could withstand the pressure of great depths. He studied Gabriel for a moment with slow, humorless eyes. He had the natural arrogance of a man who knows secrets and keeps files.
    “The security codes.” Like Baer, he spoke to Gabriel in English, though almost without a trace of an accent. “Where did you write them down?”
    “I didn’t write them down. As I told Sergeant-Major Baer—”

    “I know what you told Sergeant-Major Baer.” His eyes suddenly came to life. “I’m asking you for myself. Where did you write them down?”
    “I received the codes over the telephone from Mr. Isherwood in London, and I used them to open the security gate and the front door of the villa.”
    “You committed the numbers to memory?”
    “Yes.”
    “Give them to me now.”
    Gabriel recited the numbers calmly. Peterson looked at Baer, who nodded once.
    “You have a very good memory, Signore Delvecchio.”
    He had switched from English to German. Gabriel stared back at him blankly, as if he did not understand. The interrogator resumed in English.
    “You don’t speak German, Signore Delvecchio?”
    “No.”
    “According to the taxi driver, the one who took you from the Bahnhofstrasse to the villa on the Zürichberg, you speak German quite well.”
    “Speaking a few words of German and actually speaking German are two very different things.”
    “The driver told us that you gave him the address in rapid and confident German with the pronounced accent of a Berliner. Tell me