Möller leaned back again in his chair. ‘I would think that that should narrow things down a little in identifying her … I mean, how many young women in Hamburg have been treated for gunshot wounds over the last ten years?’

It rained heavily. Despite the downpour Fabel felt the urge to get out into the open, to allow the rain and the moist air to purge his clothes and his lungs of the musty odour of the morgue. His car was parked a couple of streets away and by the time he reached its shelter his blond hair was plastered to his scalp. He drove down towards the docks of the Hafen district. Within a few minutes the vast cranes that lined the banks and quaysides of the Elbe started to dominate the skyline. Fabel called his office on his cellular phone and asked to speak to Werner, but got Maria Klee instead, who explained that Werner was checking in with the surveillance team who were tracking Klugmann. Fabel told Maria about the gunshot wound on the body and asked her to carry out a thorough search of records covering all Hamburg hospitals and clinics from about fifteen to five years ago. By law any hospital or medical professional treating a gunshot injury was obliged to report it to the police. Maria pointed out that there was a chance that, if this girl was a prostitute and had been injured in some kind of underworld shoot-out, then the wound may have been treated unofficially by some bent medic. Fabel told Maria that he thought that was possible, but not likely.

‘Any other messages?’ he asked Maria.

‘Werner left a message to tell you that an appointment with Professor Dorn has been set up for tomorrow. Three p.m.’ Maria paused. ‘Is Professor Dorn some kind of forensics expert?’

‘No,’ said Fabel, ‘he’s a historian.’ He paused for a heartbeat before adding, ‘I thought he was history. Anything else?’

Maria told him that a journalist had called a couple of times: an Angelika Blüm. The name meant nothing to Fabel.

‘Did you refer her to the press department?’

‘Yes. I did. But she was quite insistent that it was you she needed to talk to. I told her that all press enquiries had to be handled by the Polizeipressestelle, but she said she wasn’t looking for a story, that she needed to discuss a matter of great importance with you.’

‘Did you ask what this matter was?’

‘Of course I did. She basically told me to mind my own business.’

‘You get a number?’

‘Yep.’

‘Okay, I’ll see you when I get back. I’ve got an appointment with the Organised Crime Division at two-thirty.’

The Schnell-Imbiss snack stand was by the docks on the Elbe, dwarfed by the huddle of cranes that loomed above it. It comprised a caravan with a wide, open serving window and bright canopy. It was surrounded, at regular intervals, by parasol-topped, waist-high tables at which a handful of scattered customers stood consuming Bockwurst or drinking beer or coffee. There was a small newspaper stand next to the serving window. Despite the drabness of its surroundings and the weather, the Schnell-Imbiss managed to look both cheerful and scrupulously clean.