Fabel absorbed the information. Another mention of Eitel. ‘Were you present when this happened?’

‘No. I think that kind of undermined his plan. I think he had it in mind to go toe to toe with me in front of the cameras.’

Fabel sipped his tea. Menzel turned her head towards the light and looked out of the window. Fabel noticed that the candour of daylight revealed a greyish tinge to her skin.

‘Why did you do what you did? Why did you follow Svensson?’

The question surprised Fabel almost as much as it did Menzel. She looked at him curiously, as if trying to establish whether there was any malice behind the question. Then she shrugged.

‘It was a different time and a different place. We believed in something and we believed in someone. Karl-Heinz Svensson was an incredibly powerful presence. He was also highly manipulative.’

‘Is that why you followed him with such … well, fanaticism?’

‘Fanaticism!’ Menzel gave a low, bitter laugh. ‘Yes, you’re right. We were fanatical. We would have died for him. And most of us did.’

‘For him? Not for your beliefs?’

‘Oh, in those days we convinced ourselves that we were bringing the world socialist revolution to Germany; that we were soldiers fighting the capitalist inheritors of the Nazi mantle.’ She took another long draw on her cigarette. ‘The fact is we were all in Karl-Heinz’s thrall. Did you never think about how many of our group were women? Young women? After the trials the press called us “Svensson’s Harem”. The fact is that we had all slept with him. We were all in love with him.’

‘A lot of people died for the sake of schoolgirl crushes.’ Fabel couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. He thought of twenty-five-year-old Franz Webern, married, the father of an eighteen-month-old baby, lying dead on the street. He thought too of Gisela Frohm sinking slowly down through the murky waters of the Elbe.

‘Christ, don’t you think I know that?’ retorted Menzel. ‘I’ve had fifteen long years sitting in a cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim to think it over. What you have to understand is the power he had over us. He demanded total commitment. That meant cutting ourselves off from our families, from our friends, from every sane and rational influence. His voice was the only one we heard. He was mother, father, brother, comrade, lover … everything to us.’ The passion seemed partially to rekindle in her and then died. ‘He was a manipulative bastard.’

Menzel lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. Fabel noticed again the yellow staining on her fingertips.

‘Was Gisela as fanatical as the rest of you?’

Menzel’s smile was laden with sadness. ‘More than anyone. Karl-Heinz was her first lover. She was besotted with him. What you said earlier was right. You had no choice other than to shoot her. Karl-Heinz had conditioned her to kill. You were only the instrument of her death: he was the engineer.’