‘You wanna fuck with Anna?’ she said in a coquettish voice, tilting her head from side to side and pouting her lips.

Bull-Neck stared at her with terror in his eyes, searching her face as if to assess the extent of her madness and the consequent extent of his danger. Anna swung the gun around at the other two skinheads, stretching her arm out, bolt stiff.

‘What about you boys? You wanna fuck with Anna?’

Bull-Neck’s companions held up their hands and backed away for a few paces before breaking into a run. Anna turned back to Bull-Neck and rammed the muzzle back into his nose, twisting and rotating it as if toying with it. His face started to smear with the blood that had begun to trickle from his nose. Anna made a girlish, disappointed face.

‘They don’t want to fuck with Anna …’ She dropped the cute voice. ‘What about you, dickless? You wanna play?’

The skinhead shook his head vigorously. Anna’s eyes narrowed and darkened.

‘If I ever hear you’ve laid hands on a woman like that again, I’ll come after you personally. Where’s your ID?’

He scrabbled in the pockets of his jerkin and took out his identification card. Anna released his crushed testicles and examined the card.

‘Okay Markus, now I know where you live. Maybe I’ll come visit and we can play some more.’ She leaned forward into his face and hissed. ‘Now fuck off!’ She threw his ID onto the ground so that he had to stoop to pick it up, clutching his bruised groin, before running off in the opposite direction to that taken by his companions. Anna holstered her sidearm and turned to the stallholder.

‘Is there a problem, tubby?’ she said, smiling her sweetest schoolgirl smile.

The stallholder shook his head and held up his hands. ‘No problem at all, Fräulein.’

‘Then give me another coffee, fatboy.’ Anna turned back to look at the apartment block. MacSwain’s lights had gone out. She scanned the exits and the street outside. Nothing. She slipped her radio out from her jacket pocket.

‘Paul … I think MacSwain is moving … you see him come out?’

‘No. You?’

‘No. Got tied up.’ She released the button on her radio and depressed it immediately again when she saw a silver Porsche angle up and out of the exit of the Tiefgarage. ‘We’re on the move. Pick me up, Paul, and zack, zack!’

In a matter of seconds, Paul pulled up in the battered old Mercedes used for surveillance. Battered on the outside, tuned to peak performance under the hood.

The muscles of Paul’s usually expressionless face were struggling with a wry grin as Anna climbed into the car. With her spiky hair, her meticulous make-up and her oversized leather jacket, she looked like a schoolgirl not yet accustomed to the subtleties of cosmetics, going out on her first night clubbing.

‘What’s so funny, Schlaks?’ she asked, using the north-German dialect word for ‘lanky’.

‘You’ve been playing again, haven’t you?’