Saturday 21 June, 9.00 p.m. Eimsbüttel, Hamburg.

Anna had soaked herself in a deep, dark and warm lake of dreamless sleep. When she had returned to her apartment from the Präsidum she had not expected to sleep: she felt overtired and scenes from her evening with MacSwain re-ran themselves out of sequence through her mind, like randomly switching TV channels. A thick-fingered, lead-limbed tiredness had slowed all Anna’s movements as she had carried out the tasks that lay like an obstacle course between her and sleep. She had fed Mausi, her ragged tigerstripe cat, wiped the makeup from her face and stripped for bed.

It was nearly five p.m. before she awoke, Mausi sitting at the foot of the bed, watching her with an arrogant detachment. The lead had melted from her limbs, but a band of pain had tightened itself around her head while she had slept. She rose and took two codeine before immersing herself in a tepid bath. She lay unmoving, a soaked facecloth over her eyes, and allowed the bathwater around her to cool and chill her skin to goosebumps. There was an almost perfect silence in the bathroom, broken only by the echoing sound of the water when she moved and, once, by her calling out ‘Mausi!’ in as stern a voice as she could muster and without removing the cloth from her face, when she heard sounds from the kitchen.

Anna examined her pruned and whitened fingertips and reluctantly rose from her bath. She towelled her hair and body dry and made her way through to the kitchen, where Mausi sat in a corner, looking uncharacteristically sheepish.

‘What have you done, Spitzbube?’ Anna cast her eyes around the kitchen to check for evidence of feline felony. She swung open the kitchen window that allowed Mausi access to the apartment’s small balcony and he darted out. Anna shrugged and took some chilled water from the fridge, taking several refreshing gulps. She moved back through to the bedroom and had just finished dressing when she heard a knock at her door. It would have to be one of the neighbours, because visitors to the apartments used the electronic entry system. Anna knew, before she opened the door, that it would be Frau Kreuzer, the old woman who lived immediately above. Frau Kreuzer, aware of the nature of Anna’s occupation, would often come to her door with stories of suspicious characters she had seen at the Mini-Markt supermarket, in the library or hanging around in the street outside the apartment building. Anna always listened patiently, offering the old woman a cup of green tea and allowing her to drift from her supposed motive of good citizenship and towards general gossip and chit-chat. Anna was well aware that her elderly neighbour’s concerns were a ruse to create an oasis of companionship in the lonely desert of her day, but she didn’t mind. Tonight, however, she could do without the distraction. In fact, despite her long sleep, Anna felt decidedly dizzy as she made her way to the door.