‘Naughty boy …’ he muttered and reached for the radio.

Anna pulled away from MacSwain, placing her hand on his chest and pushing: not hard, but firmly enough for him to get the message. As their faces parted, Anna made sure she was smiling.

‘What’s wrong, Sara?’ MacSwain’s voice suggested a concern that did not show in the cold, green eyes.

‘Nothing …’ said Anna. Then, almost coquettishly, ‘I just don’t want to rush anything. I hardly know you. I don’t know you.’

‘What’s to know?’ He made to kiss her again. Anna pulled back. This time the shunt of her hand’s heel into his chest was more businesslike.

Maria Klee turned to Paul Lindemann, still holding the radio handset halfway to her mouth. ‘The WSP launch commander says we have a way of ending this now, if we want, without alerting MacSwain to our surveillance.’

Paul’s eyes lit up. ‘How?’

‘MacSwain is doing a little “Hamburg by night” sightseeing. According to the launch commander, he’s switched his nav lights off. That’s against the law … he’s near enough to a main shipping lane to represent a hazard. Fortunately, our WSP guy has done the same. He reckons he can be on MacSwain before he knows it and escort him back to his berth and fine him. Let’s say it’ll ruin MacSwain’s evening … and it’ll get Anna back on dry land.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Anna hasn’t indicated that she wants out. And we’ve not picked up any information of any use. I think we should stick with it. But, on the other hand, once he’s switched on his navigational lights again our excuse becomes weaker. It’s your call, Paul.’

Friday 20 June, 9.40 p.m. Speicherstadt, Hamburg.

The untipped cigarette now burned perilously close to the Ukrainian’s lips, and he pinched them tight as he took a final draw. He made a pincer with his forefinger and thumb, retrieved the tiny stub and dropped it onto the floor, crushing it with his heel.

Fabel removed about a dozen photographs from the buff envelope. The first images kick-started a hammering in his chest. Three colour photographs, from different angles, showed the same woman, her abdomen split and ripped open and her lungs cast out from her body. A taste of bile rose in the rear of Fabel’s mouth. More horror. Fabel noticed the gold-haired girl turn her head to look out through the small window and into the empty whale belly of the warehouse, as if she were preventing her eyes from falling onto the pictures. The Ukrainian dismissed the images with a wave of his hand.

‘I’ll come to that case shortly …’ The Ukrainian indicated that Fabel should move on to the next set of images. The girl turned back from the window. The next images had been taken without extra lighting, instead relying on a camera flash to bleach a pool of intense light and vividity. Strangely, the amateurish flash photography gave each scene an immediacy and a reality lacking in the clinical objectivity of forensic photography. Fabel found himself looking, with each shuffle of horror, at a new image of women, some only girls, ripped apart in the same manner. But in each picture, lurking in the dark fringes of the camera flashes, Fabel could see there were other victims. He turned to the final image.