Schreiber looked at first surprised, then a little worried. ‘God … I don’t know … not for years. Not since we worked together on Zeitgeist and certainly not since she got involved with terrorism.’

‘You haven’t been in touch since she was released from Stuttgart-Stammheim?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’ And Fabel knew he was telling the truth.

The same liveried attendant escorted Fabel and Van Heiden out into the main Rathaus hall. The sun dazzled them both as they stepped through the Gothic arch out into the wide expanse of the Rathaus square.

‘What do you think?’ asked Van Heiden.

‘He’s not our man,’ said Fabel, taking his sunglasses from his breast pocket and donning them. ‘I have to take a trip to Bremen. Can I buy you a coffee in the Alsterarkaden before I head off, Herr Kriminaldirektor?’

Thursday 19 June, 2.20 p.m. Kunstgalerie Nordholt, Bremen.

Fabel had estimated that the journey to Bremen would take about an hour and a half, but halfway there the traffic on the A1 began to thicken and slow. Facing a long stretch of autobahn, he decided to put a CD into the player of his car: Herbert Grönemeyer, Bleibt alles anders. He had just turned up the volume when his cell phone rang. It was Maria Klee; they had the autopsy findings on Klugmann. He had been killed by a single bullet that had passed through his cerebrum and pulped his medulla oblongata, exiting, as Brauner had pointed out, above the top lip and below the nose. The estimated time of death was between 6.00 p.m. on Friday the 13th and 6.00 a.m. on Saturday the 14th. Fabel flinched when Maria told him that the autopsy had revealed signs of torture and beating in the period immediately pre-mortem. Tests had also revealed traces of amphetamine in Klugmann’s blood. Living the life. The ultimate cover. And it had failed.

Maria also had a ballistics report. Brauner had been right: the bullet casing belonged to a non-standard weapon. Fabel gave Maria a snapshot of his interview with Schreiber and asked that she update Werner.

The traffic eased. Fabel found himself further along the road than he had been aware of driving. He had been on automatic pilot, his mind in some dark, lonely place with an undercover policeman who knew, as he was being tortured, that death was waiting for him with an immediate and ineluctable certainty. For a split second Fabel was able to mentally place himself there and felt a nauseous fluttering in his chest. A feeling he recognised as the pale shadow of an unimaginable terror.

The signs indicated he was approaching Bremen Kreuz and he took the exit from the A1 onto the A27 towards Bremen.

Nordholt art gallery was just off the main Marktplatz in Bremen. It was housed in a fine late-nineteenth-century building with huge bow-fronted windows. When Fabel entered, Marlies Menzel was supervising the hanging of one of her paintings. A woman of about fifty, she wore a long dark skirt and a loose black jacket with padded shoulders. Her dull brown hair was cut short with dyed highlights. She wore a pair of small, square wire-framed glasses. She looked more like a librarian than a recently released terrorist, thought Fabel as he made his way across the gallery. He stopped halfway. The blank white walls of the gallery were punctuated by huge canvases. Fabel had already been aware, having seen them in the exhibition brochure, of the bizarre similarity of the paintings with the Blood Eagle murder scenes. What he had not been prepared for was the powerful visual impact of the artworks. Each canvas was two metres tall by one wide. The paint screamed from the canvas in vivid, visceral colours. The brushwork was forceful and confident. Each painting was violence in two dimensions.