It was a quarter past three when he pulled up outside the apartment block. Fabel parked just about where the girl from the apartment had said her male companion had pulled up. The lights of the lobby still burned brightly and anyone approaching the glass doors would be clearly illuminated. But, at this distance, any description would have had to be as general as the girl had given. A tall, well-dressed, blond man with broad shoulders. But was he the killer?

Fabel took the elevator to the third floor. He stood for a moment before opening the door to the apartment. He stared as if he could see through the wood of the door and into the darkness of the apartment. He found himself remembering the last time he had unlocked this door and opened up a gate to hell and how yet another image of grotesque death had been branded into the matter of his brain. He shook such thoughts free from his head and turned the key. Having switched on the hall’s downlighters, he made his way towards Blüm’s office. Again he found himself unconsciously bracing before switching on the lights. Once more the sudden illumination revealed an unexpected scene; not one of horror this time, but one of surprise. Blüm’s office had been very professionally ransacked. Drawers had been carefully removed from the desk and cabinets and books and files from the shelves that lined the wall; the furniture had been turned over so the undersides could be checked. The room could not be described as being in chaos; it was far too systematic for that. And Fabel knew that Brauner’s team had not left it in this state. Someone else had been here.

The thought sparked only for a millisecond before a sudden feeling ruffled the hairs on Fabel’s neck. Someone else was there.

Fabel became a statue. He listened to the stillness of the apartment with such intensity that it amplified the surge of blood in his ears and the sound of metal sliding against the stiff leather of his holster as he drew his Walther. He had his back to the office door and felt exposed. Turning swiftly and silently, he slipped back into the hall. Silence. He stood unmoving for half a minute, straining to hear any sounds from the other rooms. Still nothing. The tension eased, but only slightly, from his body and he moved silently along the corridor. Back against the wall, gun raised in his right hand, he pushed the door of the bedroom as wide open as it would go. He swung round into the frame and scanned the room along his gun sight. He took one hand from his gun and fumbled for the light switch. The room was empty. Fabel gave a small laugh: he was being an idiot. He led the gun hang by his side and turned back into the corridor.

The first thought Fabel registered was surprise. How had the man moved so silently and quickly? He must have been in the main living room, waiting to strike. Fabel’s gun arm shot up but he looked down in disbelief as it stopped dead in mid-arc. His attacker had a solid, unyielding grip and Fabel felt as if the bones of his wrist were being crushed into splinters. The pressure seemed to force his hand into an open palm and his Walther clattered onto the wooden flooring. The man was close now and Fabel tried to swing his other fist upwards, but his attacker fastened his free hand around Fabel’s throat. In the adrenalin-slowed time of the attack, Fabel realised that his airway was not blocked, but that his assailant was applying intense pressure to his neck, just below the angle of his jaw. Fabel tried to call out but found himself mute. As the world around him started to cloud into blackness, all Fabel could do was wonder if this was what it was to die, and gaze, fearful and helpless, into the cold, glittering green eyes of the man he had seen outside the Tina Kramer murder scene.