The exhibition was called Germany Crucified. Fabel had felt a fluttering in his chest as he looked at the photographic plates of the paintings. Each canvas was comprised of vivid splashes and smears of blood red, black and an orangey yellow: the colours of the German flag. Each canvas was slightly different, but all used the same colours and all displayed an indistinct figure, crucified and screaming. Fabel understood instantly why Maria had brought the programme to his attention: there was something vaguely but disturbingly reminiscent of the Blood Eagle murder scenes. He had nodded to Maria and had suggested they pay Frau Menzel a visit.

After the meeting, Fabel had spoken to Kolski and Buchholz at LKA7 Organised Crime and had told them about the BND operation and about Klugmann’s execution at the swimming pool. Fabel had watched them both as he spoke: their anger seemed genuine, but not as deep as he would have expected; perhaps when you’re in the business of dealing with organised crime, you become inured to deceit. At any rate, Fabel had no reason to doubt that Buchholz, just as Volker had claimed, had known nothing about the operation.

Fabel had been dog tired when he got home. He poured himself a glass of wine and slumped into the leather sofa without putting on his living-room lights. Through the picture windows of his apartment the city’s lights glittered on the mirror of the Alster. He tried not to think about Angelika Blüm’s voice on the phone, about her ripped-apart body, about Klugmann lying in the filth of a disused swimming pool, about a drugged girl staggering into the path of a truck. But the images danced randomly inside his head like bees trapped in a jar. He sipped the white wine and found it acid in his mouth. He placed the glass on the side table and resolved to make the gargantuan effort that would be involved in getting into bed. Before he got off the sofa the lead in his eyelids succumbed to gravity and Fabel drifted into a deep sleep.

He woke up with a start at one-thirty a.m. from a dream in which he’d been forced to watch the snuff movie he had seen as part of an earlier murder investigation. This time it was Sonja Brun’s face that had blackened and twisted in terror and instead of PVC bondage masks the men in the video wore masks of one-eyed Odin. Fabel stripped and went to bed, but found that his exhaustion was unable to drag his racing mind to a halt. After an hour of tossing and turning in his bed he rose and dressed again. He grabbed his car keys and went out into the night.

Fabel stopped by the Präsidium to pick up Blüm’s apartment keys. He didn’t know what he expected to find there, but he felt the need to be surrounded by her things, to walk through what had been her life. At the very least it was as good a place as any to think.