‘And Pavlo Klimenko is one of Vitrenko’s men.’ Fabel thought for a moment. ‘What do we know about this American?’

‘Not a lot, but I’m getting an e-mail translated into English for sending to the FBI and Interpol.’

‘I think we should have another little chat with the Eitels,’ said Fabel. ‘And this time I think instead of us enjoying their corporate hospitality, they should enjoy ours.’

Anna Wolff stood up. She still wore the smart dress she had for her date with MacSwain but had donned her trademark leather jacket over it. Her face looked drawn and wan under her make-up.

‘What about MacSwain?’

‘What about him?’

‘Is he still a suspect or not?’ Despite her tiredness there was a defiance in her voice.

‘Not for these killings … no. But we’ll keep him under observation anyway. I still think he may have something to do with the abductions, which I now feel are unrelated to this main case. But I’ve got to be careful, Anna. Kriminaldirektor Van Heiden is becoming uneasy about more than the expenditure: he feels that if MacSwain twigs that we’ve been watching his every move without substantive evidence to indicate why he’s a suspect, we could end up with an embarrassing claim on our hands.’

Anna sat down.

Fabel, still standing, paused before addressing the whole assembly again.

‘Now for a history lesson …’ He had set a box file on the chair next to the one on which he had hung his Jaeger jacket. He flipped open the lid and took out a sheaf of papers. There was impatient shuffling from his audience. He froze them with a cold stare. ‘This is necessary. We are dealing with a ritualised method of killing that has a thousand-year history. Our killer – Vitrenko – lives as much in the past as he does in the here and now. We have to understand what perverted sense of history and destiny drives him. I have found out quite a bit that should interest us …’

Fabel did not mention that he had woken up Mathias Dorn with a phone call. Professor Dorn had furnished him with the key facts he needed or the directions in which to look. More importantly, Dorn had remembered the name of the Viking king who had replaced King Inge the Elder when he refused to commit the nine-fold sacrifice at Uppsala. Fabel lifted a photocopy from the papers and taped it to the incident board, next to and almost overlapping the image of Vitrenko. The photocopy was of a nineteenth-century copperplate illustration. It showed an improbably broad-shouldered warrior mounted on a fierce-looking steed. He had long flowing light-haired locks and a huge moustache and a beard that was braided and beaded. He wore a mail tunic and a vast rug of fur sat as a cloak on the unlikely shoulders. His head was topped by an eagle-winged helm.

‘This,’ said Fabel, ‘is Vasyl Vitrenko’s true father. Not the Ukrainian who has been tracking him. At least, I suspect that is how Vitrenko sees it.’