Nice try, thought Fabel. He looked over the whole sordid scene. Really nice try. This was a murder masquerading as a drug death that would slip swiftly and quietly into a statistic. It was the kind of anonymous, unsurprising death that passed by with nothing other than a perfunctory official recording by the police: another junkie succeeds in finally poisoning himself to death. Except this junkie had a story to tell and someone had silenced him before he could tell it.

‘You informed the local boys yet?’

Werner shook his head. ‘I wanted you to see it first. Very convenient, isn’t it?’

‘And one hell of a coincidence. I want Holger Brauner’s team to do their thing. Inform the local Polizeidirektion, but tell them we are treating this as a suspected murder, and that means it’s a Mordkommission case.’

Fabel looked back down at Hansi. Again he couldn’t help seeing past the corpse, past the junkie, to someone’s son, to a person who must once have had dreams and hopes and ambitions.

‘You said that Hansi seemed to get suddenly uneasy at the Präsidium?’ he asked Werner. ‘In the canteen?’

‘Yes, he did. I thought it was really odd the way he suddenly seemed uncomfortable and desperate to get away.’

‘And I told you that he was probably just itching for his next fix. But what if that wasn’t it? What if, after we make him trudge through mug shot after mug shot, he sees one or both of the killers right there in the Präsidium?’

‘He was okay to start with … there were a few uniforms in the canteen, some KriPo. The usual mix. He didn’t start to get jumpy until we sat at the table. In fact we were sitting there a while before he started …’ Werner’s face emptied of expression and his eyes moved as if the images from his recall were playing out in front of him. ‘That’s it!’ Then the sudden illumination of his expression faded just as quickly. He looked at Fabel grimly. ‘Oh shit …’

Saturday 21 June, 5.30 p.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.

Fabel and Werner made their way directly to Van Heiden’s office as soon as they got back from the squalor of Hansi Kraus’s squat. Even as they were shown into Van Heiden’s office, Fabel thought he could still smell a hint of the musty, unclean odour that had lurked heavily in the air, as if it had partially invested itself into the fabric of his jacket. He felt the urge, almost an obsessive compulsion, to get home to shower and change.

Van Heiden was clearly in no mood for chit-chat. ‘Are you sure about this, Fabel?’ The Kriminaldirektor asked the question almost before the office doors had closed behind him and Werner. Volker, who was already seated in front of Van Heiden’s desk, didn’t rise from his chair but nodded in Fabel’s direction when he and Werner entered. Fabel noticed there were two red folders – personnel files – on the desk. ‘This is a very serious allegation …’