‘Was there any suggestion of her investigation placing her in danger?’

Frau Kessler’s brow furrowed. ‘I don’t think it occurred to her. It didn’t occur to me, either. You don’t suspect Eitel’s lot, do you?’

‘Not specifically. Was there anything else she was working on?’

‘I know she was doing something on BATT101. But I don’t think that it was a major project.’

Fabel frowned. Before and during the Second World War, Police Reserve Battalion 101 had been drawn from ordinary, mainly middle-aged and working-class men from Hamburg, considered one of the least Nazified cities in Germany. In 1942, these ordinary men of Police Reserve Battalion 101 massacred nearly 2,000 Jews in Otwock, Poland. By the war’s end, BATT101 had exterminated more than 80,000 Jews and other ‘undesirables’. Fabel remembered the owl-eyed old woman, Frau Steiner, who lived beneath the apartment where Tina Kramer had been murdered. He remembered the old black-and-white photographs of a man wearing the uniform of a Police Reserve Battalion.

‘BATT101? It’s hardly current affairs.’

Erika Kessler shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe she had another angle on it. She said something about comparisons with Soviet police actions in Afghanistan and Chechnya.’

‘What about relationships?’ asked Fabel. ‘Was Frau Blüm involved with anyone?’

There was a pulse beat of a hesitation. ‘No … I don’t think there was anyone special recently. She was involved with another journalist for a while. Paul Thorsten.’ Fabel noted the name. ‘But they broke up about a year ago. I don’t think there’s been a significant relationship since then.’

Fabel looked into Erika Kessler’s arctic blue eyes. They held his gaze resolutely. She had almost got away with it, but in that split second before answering with the too-natural response and the too-steady gaze, she had revealed to Fabel her first lie. But why would Kessler lie about Blüm’s boyfriends?

‘Do you know Marlies Menzel?’

‘The painter?’

‘The terrorist.’

Kessler laughed, but the ice in her eyes frosted and hardened a little more. ‘Shall we say the former terrorist turned painter? I know of her, but no, I don’t know her personally.’

‘But Angelika Blüm did.’

‘I believe they worked together at one time.’

‘On Zeitgeist, the left-wing magazine. I believe the editor at the time was a young Hans Schreiber. Frau Blüm and he were involved at the time?’

‘I believe so. I think they lived together for a while,’ said Kessler. Again Fabel detected a defence slide down behind the eyes. The art of the interrogator is to put together not just that which is said, the truth and the lies, but to assemble the silences, the gestures, the directions taken by the eyes. Fabel felt the thrill of a small epiphany as he made a connection. He considered challenging her, but decided to keep his thought locked up tight for the moment.

The rest of the interview yielded nothing of any significance. Fabel thanked Erika Kessler for her time and her nod was somewhere between courtesy and curtness. She led Fabel and Werner to the door, through the tile-floored atrium which was a few palpable degrees cooler than the temperature out on the south-facing deck.