In the distance, he could hear the growing whine of sirens approaching the Speicherstadt. Fabel got to his feet, pressing the palms of his hands against the wall and pushing himself up. Dust had invaded his nose and mouth and he coughed to free his throat of it. He clung to the wall as if moving from it would mean becoming lost in the swirl of dust and darkness, closed his eyes and saw again the horror that Vasyl Vitrenko had painted for him in flesh and blood on the wall in the warehouse; he saw the old man strapped to a pillar and forced to watch the horror and hear the screams of a young woman being dismembered before him. This had been Vitrenko’s masterwork. And Fabel had been intended to see it. With that thought came the realisation that Vitrenko had intended Fabel to live. He had arranged and timed it to perfection: allowing Fabel time to witness his masterpiece, to agonise futilely about how to extricate the old man from the ineluctability of his death and then to escape. That way, Vitrenko had placed two indelible images in Fabel’s mind to haunt him for the rest of his life: the butchered girl; the old man’s resignation to death. And having placed the images safely in Fabel’s mind he blasted them into nothing. Expunged them from reality, leaving them to live only in the gallery of Fabel’s memory.

He slid back down the wall into a sitting position and felt a sob begin to rise in his throat. He forced it back down and rested his head back against the brickwork and waited for help to come.

Saturday 21 June, 8.30 p.m. Polizeipräsidium, Hamburg.

The Feuerwehr fire commander’s report told Fabel what he already knew: ‘In addition to the explosive charge on the pillar we found evidence of some kind of accelerant in or near to the office cabin … my guess is petroleum. There was nothing much left of the cabin after the blast and whatever was inside it ignited immediately. We found a couple of open five-litre containers. Anyway, it very efficiently destroyed all forensic traces from the murder scene.’

Fabel thanked the Feuerwehr captain bleakly and the fireman left the office. There was a despondent silence that Maria tried to fill. ‘Holger Brauner and his forensics team are there now,’ she said. ‘But there’s not much for them to pick through.’

Fabel spoke without looking up at Maria, Werner or Paul. ‘He’s playing with us. With me. He wanted me to see it and to live to tell about it. That’s why he left those women hanging like exhibits in that bloody barn in Afghanistan, for others to bear witness.’ Fabel looked up at his colleagues, and, for the first time, they saw their boss lost and helpless. ‘This is his art. Just like those canvases Marlies Menzel is displaying in Bremen.’

‘What now, Chef?’ Werner’s tone was that of a challenge, not a question.