‘Now I’m going home for a shower.’ Fabel had been around too much death in one day. His hair and skin were dusted with powder and his mouth and throat felt caked. ‘Let’s meet back here at the Präsidium at about ten.’

‘Okay, Chef. Shall I get the whole team together?’

Fabel smiled. Maria never complained. She just did whatever it took to get the job done.

‘Yes, please, Maria … but leave Anna out of it. I’ve given her twenty-four hours off. I think the whole MacSwain operation exhausted her.’

Maria nodded.

‘But would you contact Kriminaldirektor Van Heiden and see if he will come in for the meeting?’

‘Yes, Chef.’

Saturday 21 June, 9.30 p.m. Pöseldorf, Hamburg.

The three messages on Fabel’s answerphone were like life-lines to a world that lay beyond that of violence and murder: the first was from his daughter Gabi. As he listened to her message he heard the tinkle of laughter that had been spun through her voice since she uttered her first words. Hearing Gabi’s voice at a time like this was like someone tearing down heavy, dusty curtains in a dark and scary room, flooding it with light from outside. But tonight it was just one room within a mansion of darkness.

Gabi wanted to make up for their missed weekend by staying over next weekend, if that suited. There was a concert she wanted to go to, Die Fantastischen Vier. Fabel could never wrap his mind around the concept of rap – a musical form born in the ghettos of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and anchored in that particular form of street English – being performed in German. But it was Gabi’s thing: one of the countless points of divergence that grow in number as a child becomes a personality independent of its parent. He sighed heavily, it was by no means certain that this case’s insidious grip on his life would have eased any by the coming weekend.

The second message came from Susanne. She wanted him to give her a ring and let her know how he was. The third was from Fabel’s brother, Lex.

Lex was the elder brother chronologically, but Fabel often felt Lex’s irrepressibly, defiantly youthful spirit made him seem a decade younger. It wasn’t the only stark contrast: Lex was shorter than Fabel and dark-haired with a wickedly Celtic sense of humour that had crinkled the skin around his eyes into permanent creases. Lex ran a restaurant and hotel on Sylt, the North Frisian island that had once been famed only for fishing, but which now netted a much more profitable catch: the rich, the powerful and the famous from Hamburg and Berlin. Lex’s restaurant sat on a low ridge behind the dunes, with a spectacular view of a broad scythe of white sand and the changing palette of the North Sea beyond. Fabel had spent a lot of time at Lex’s. It had become something of a refuge for him. It had been there that Fabel had recuperated after being shot. It was there he retreated when trying to come to terms with the fact that he was no longer a member of a family. No longer a husband. No longer a full-time father.