Fabel heard his own voice high and tight. ‘Police! Place your hands on top of your heads and get down onto your knees.’ The three men didn’t move. MacSwain from shock and indecision. The other two, Fabel guessed, as some kind of strategy. Paul Lindemann obviously shared the thought.

‘Pull anything and I’ll blow your fucking heads off. I mean it.’ Paul’s voice had the same spring-loaded tension in it that Fabel had heard in his own. And he had no doubt that Paul meant exactly what he said.

‘I’m sure you do,’ said Vasyl Vitrenko, the green eyes locking with Paul’s.

It happened so fast that Fabel barely registered it. Solovey dropped as if a trapdoor had opened beneath him, his hand disappearing underneath his black leather jacket as he fell. There was the loud crack of a pistol and Fabel heard a sound like a slap beside him. In that instant, and without turning his head to see, Fabel knew that Paul was dead. Vitrenko made a swift move sideways, seemed to bounce on the balls of his feet, and dived at the window. Fabel fired at the floor where Solovey had dropped. The air fumed with the smell of cordite and filled with a deafening chorus of shots as Werner and Sülberg opened fire as well. MacSwain threw himself into a corner, where he curled up in a foetal pose.

Fabel turned to where Paul had fallen. He lay staring blankly up at the ceiling, the fury swept from his face by death. His broad, pale forehead was punctured dead centre by the entry wound made by Solovey’s bullet.

Werner and Sülberg rushed forward. Sülberg kicked the prone Solovey, who lay face down on the dirt-covered floor; he eased his foot under the Ukrainian’s shoulder and took a couple of heaves before flipping him over. He was clearly dead. Werner was already over to where Anna lay. He ran his hands swiftly and firmly over her body, his eyes searching frantically for any signs of blood. He looked up at Fabel, then briefly down at Paul.

‘She’s okay, Jan. She’s not been hit.’

Fabel snatched the radio from his inside coat pocket. The aerial snagged on his jacket and he wrestled with it in a pointless fury that ripped the lining. Once it was free he pressed the transmit button.

‘Maria … Vitrenko is making a run for it. He’s jumped from the west window and is heading your way.’

‘I see him! I see him!’ The shrillness of Maria’s voice was accentuated by the radio’s static hiss.

‘Maria, watch out for yourself. I’m on my way. All units assist Oberkommissarin Klee.’

He released the radio button and walked swiftly across to MacSwain, who still cowered in the corner. There was a deadly decisiveness in Fabel’s movements. When he reached MacSwain he snapped his arm out rigid, jabbing the muzzle of his Walther into the flesh of MacSwain’s cheek. MacSwain whimpered and squeezed his eyes tight shut, waiting for Fabel’s shot to blast his face and his life to nothing.