For a lot of detectives lacking the skills or the patience to do the job properly, it was the only way they could ever secure a conviction. I’d never done it myself but there’s a first time for everything and, in the absence of the evidence that was legally held by the Gestapo in the death of Franz Koci, I decided to ‘find’ some new evidence that hitherto was held only by me. But first I had to make Lehnhoff’s earlier on-the-scene inquiry seem like what it was: incompetent, only more so, and when I reviewed his case notes I discovered that no fingertip search of the area in Kleist Park where Koci’s body was discovered had ever been conducted. So I telephoned Sachse at Gestapo headquarters to prick his ears with this new ‘information’. ‘I thought you told me that all of the evidence at the scene of the crime had been collected.’ ‘I did. It was.’ ‘Like hell. With a homicide, especially an important homicide like this one, it’s standard practice to have ten or fifteen police officers on their hands and knees in a line to comb the general area.
