The pubs at which he drank in London were made up of a number of rooms, and each of these rooms contained a number of small tables — little islands around which groups of mates could congregate. It was true that if the piano was playing, it would, for a while, become the centre of everyone’s attention, but mostly you stuck to your own island, and merely nodded to the residents of the others.
The Bayern Biergarten operated on an entirely different philosophy. It was a vast cavern of a place. It had been filled with long wooden tables, and at each table there were at least a couple of dozen men in leather shorts and Tyrolean hats, drinking frothy beer from heavy stone mugs and shouting good-naturedly to their friends across the room.
‘They’re mostly Bavarians — South German Catholics — in here,’ Meade said. ‘The Prussians, who come from the north of Germany, are Protestant, and have their own beer gardens.’
The bar ran the whole length of one wall, and as they approached it, Meade reached into his pocket for his detective’s shield.
The bartender, a broad man in his thirties, followed their progress with interest, but no signs of concern.
Meade showed the man his identification and said, ‘We’re investigating the shooting that happened last night.’
The barman nodded. ‘But why did you take so long?’ he asked, in a heavy accent.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Meade said.
The bartender shrugged. ‘In Chermany, we would already have the killer behind bars by now.’
‘Were you here in the biergarten when it happened?’ Meade asked, ignoring the criticism.
‘I was, but I was working, and so I did not see anything.’
Meade gave Blackstone a look which said, ain’t that just the way of the world? Whenever there’s a shooting — or any other serious incident — nobody’s ever seen anything.
The sergeant took his notebook out of his pocket. ‘I’ll need the names of anyone else who you remember seeing here at the time.’
‘Of course,’ the barman agreed, but instead of beginning to recite a list of names, he reached for a sheet of paper which was lying on one of the shelves behind him, and laid it down on the bar in front of Meade.
The piece of paper had two long columns of words written on it, and the barman pointed his finger at the first column.
‘These are the names of the people who were here,’ he said.
It was a very long list.
‘This is everyone who was here?’ Meade asked, incredulously.
‘Naturally,’ the barman replied, as if it were inconceivable to him that anyone who had been there at the time wouldn’t be on the list. ‘And these,’ he continued, pointing to the second column, ‘are their addresses.’
‘What do the stars that you’ve put against some of the names mean?’ Meade asked.
‘Ah, those are the men who think that they might have something useful to tell you,’ the barman explained.
Meade did his best to suppress a gasp of astonishment, and didn’t quite make it.
‘Are any of these people here now?’ he asked.
The barman looked around. ‘Several of them.’
‘I’ll need a room,’ Meade said. ‘Somewhere quiet, in which I can talk to them.’
‘Of course,’ the barman said. ‘You may use the manager’s office. It has been waiting for you since this morning.’
Meade abandoned any attempt to appear unimpressed.
‘You’ve been very efficient,’ he said admiringly.
‘Naturally,’ the barman agreed. ‘I am Cherman.’
‘So you saw Inspector O’Brien just before he was killed, Mr Schultz?’ Meade asked the fat German who was sitting at the opposite side of the table in the cramped manager’s office.
‘Yes, I saw him,’ Schultz agreed. ‘I was waiting for a friend to arrive, so I was watching the door. I noticed O’Brien because he was so different to the other customers.’
‘Different in what way?’
Schultz smiled. ‘In what way do you think? This is a German biergarten. I know most of the people who drink here, and if I do not, I know someone else who knows them. It is like one big club and we are not used to strangers. It is not that we have anything against them — it is simply that we have nothing to say to them, and they have nothing to say to us.’
‘I understand,’ Meade said.
‘The only non-Germans who ever enter this building are policemen. And they only come to pick up their. . their. .’
Schultz stopped speaking, and seemed to have developed a sudden fascination for the table top.
‘And they only come in to pick up their bribes?’ Meade supplied.
‘I know nothing of the reason for their visits,’ Schultz lied. He raised his head again, but would still not look Meade in the eye. ‘But to return to Herr O’Brien,’ he continued hastily, ‘I found myself wondering what he was doing here.’
‘And what was he doing here?’ Meade asked.
‘He went to the bar and bought himself a beer. Then he stood looking at the door, as I had done.’
‘You think he was waiting for somebody?’
‘He may have been.’
‘And how did he seem?’
‘Seem?’
‘What was the expression on his face? What sort of mood did he appear to be in?’
‘Ah, so! He seemed excited. Or perhaps nervous. I do not know which one it was.’
‘And what happened next?’
‘He sipped his beer very slowly — not in the German way at all — and he kept looking at the door and checking his pocket watch. But no one came to join him, and in the end, looking very disappointed, he left. And it was just after he had stepped outside that I heard the shots.
‘How many of them were there?’
‘Two, I think. Or it may have been three.’
‘But you didn’t see anything?’
‘There is frosted glass on the door to the street. Besides, I was not really looking.’
Meade thanked Schultz for his time, and when the German had left, he turned to Blackstone and said, ‘The way I see it is that O’Brien was planning to meet someone who could give him information connected with his investigation.’
‘Possibly,’ Blackstone said cautiously.
‘And the reason he chose to hold the meeting here was because he knew that both he and his informant were very unlikely to meet anyone they knew in the biergarten.’
The facts, as far as they had any facts at all, would easily support Meade’s theory, Blackstone thought. But then they would just as easily support any one of half a dozen other theories.
‘It’s possible that O’Brien was meeting an informant,’ he said, ‘but it’s also possible that-’
‘But the sons-of-bitches who he was investigating somehow managed to find out about the meeting. So they dealt with his contact first — which explains why he never turned up — and then they set up an ambush for when Patrick O’Brien left the biergarten.’
‘It seems a very public place to have decided to kill him,’ Blackstone said dubiously.
‘It was late at night. There wouldn’t have been many people out on the street,’ Meade argued.
‘But there was still a chance that there would have been some,’ Blackstone countered. ‘Look, say you were a professional assassin, how would you go about your work?’
‘Since I’m not a professional assassin, Sam, I have no idea,’ Meade said stubbornly.
You really don’t want to explore this possibility, do you? Blackstone thought. But it has to be explored, nevertheless.
‘I’ll tell you how it works,’ he said. ‘The killer waits for the right opportunity — for the moment when there is no one in sight but himself and his target. His chance may come down a dark alley. It could be in a park. It could even be in the target’s home. But he will wait for that opportunity because he knows it will come eventually — even in a big bustling city like New York. The one thing that the professional assassin will not do is expose himself to any unnecessary risks. And that’s exactly what the killer did in this case.’