Werner nodded his assent.

‘Secondly,’ continued Fabel, ‘I want every Ukrainian informant turned over and worked on. Hard. I want operational locations for Vitrenko’s outfit and I want them before the end of today. And, just to be clear, I do not give a rat’s ass if you step on the toes of our Organised Crime colleagues over at LKA7. I will be doing a little of that myself, as well as squeezing our BND colleagues.’ Fabel’s expression darkened even more. ‘No one is telling us what we need to know. And that ends right now. Oberkommissarin Klee and Oberkommissar Meyer will assign your tasks. Werner, hang around a moment, I want a word.’

‘Sure, Chef …’

It took a few minutes for the room to clear. Werner remained seated and Anna Wolff walked round the conference table to face Fabel. Her eyes were shadowed, but something akin to defiance smouldered in them.

‘So what do I say if he calls me?’

‘Who?’

‘MacSwain. I’ve given him the allocated cell phone number.’

‘Cancel the number. I don’t want you having close contact with him again. And I can’t justify to Van Heiden any more expensive undercover ops. We need to check him out more, but he’s a low priority.’

‘I think he’s our man, Chef.’

Fabel frowned. ‘Why, Anna? You’ve seen what we’ve got on Vitrenko.’

‘MacSwain is a predator. It’s in the way he observes you … the way he moves around you. Like you’re prey.’ She shook her head slightly, as if irritated by the inadequacy of her description. Then she fixed Fabel with a bright, hard, resolute gaze. ‘He is a rapist, Chef. And, I suspect, a killer. Our killer.’

Fabel stared silently at his subordinate for a moment. He could not condemn a junior officer for responding to her instincts about a case or a suspect: it was how he operated himself, processing, in some deep part of his brain, the smallest details of how someone moves or talks or the minutiae of a scene. And from these deep processes would come forth a conclusion of which, like Anna, he would be certain, although he could not rationalise it with a solid piece of evidence. After all, it was just such a feeling, a judgement on the way MacSwain had reacted to finding two Hamburg policemen on his threshold that had led Fabel to suspect MacSwain.

‘Okay, Anna. I trust your judgement, but I can’t say I agree with your conclusion.’ The stubble rasped under rubbing fingers once more. ‘I’ll keep someone on MacSwain, just to make sure. But I definitely don’t want you seeing him again – especially if your instincts about him are right. Werner and I may pay him an official visit just to check out his whereabouts on the key dates. Of course that’ll alert him to the fact that we’re watching him.’ Fabel sighed. ‘But I have to say I think you’ve got it all wrong, Anna. We may not have a smoking gun, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty conclusive against Vitrenko.’