‘Good day, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar. I’m Kriminalkommissar Lothar Kolski, I work with Hauptkommissar Buchholz.’

Fabel stood up and found himself still looking up at Kolski as they shook hands.

‘Please follow me, Herr Fabel, I’ll take you along.’

Kolski made small talk as they walked along the corridor. Fabel found the experience surreal: walking along beside a heavily armed hulk who chatted about the weather and how he was looking forward to taking some late leave. Gran Canaria, probably.

Buchholz’s office was one of a uniform row that lined the corridor. Whereas the other offices in the row had two work-station desks facing each other, obviously shared by teams of two officers, Buchholz had an office to himself. Kolski held the door open for Fabel to enter, and Fabel felt like an insignificant satellite orbiting a vast planet as he slipped past Kolski’s bulk into the room. Behind a large desk with a computer terminal was a man in his mid-fifties. He was balding, and what was left of his dark hair was trimmed to bristle that, in turn, extended into stubble which darkened the lower half of a tough face. His nose looked as if it had been broken more than once. Fabel had heard that Buchholz had been a boxer in his younger days and he noticed framed photographs on the wall behind him: the same face but more youthful; a slimmer but still-powerful build. Each photograph showed the youthful Buchholz at a different stage of his amateur boxing career and his nose at a different stage of destruction. One photograph showed a teenage Buchholz, in boxing kit, holding aloft a trophy. It was captioned ‘Hamburg-Harburg Junior Light-Heavyweight Champion, 1964’.

‘Come in and sit down, Herr Fabel.’ Buchholz half rose from his seat and indicated one of the two chairs opposite him. Fabel sat down and was surprised to see Kolski pull up the other chair. ‘Kriminalkommissar Kolski leads the Ulugbay team,’ Buchholz explained, ‘he can probably tell you more than I can.’

‘There may be nothing to this,’ Fabel began, ‘but as part of this murder inquiry I would ideally like to set up a liaison with the LKA7 – that would obviously be yourself, Herr Kolski. The victim was, we believe, a prostitute, and possibly working for Ulugbay – through a man called Klugmann … an ex-Polizei Hamburg officer.’

Buchholz and Kolski exchanged knowing looks.

‘Ah yes,’ said Kolski, ‘we know Herr Klugmann rather well. Is he a suspect in your inquiry?’

‘No. Not at the moment. Should he be?’

‘This is a serial killer, you reckon. A psycho?’ Buchholz asked.

‘Yes …’ Fabel flipped open the file and handed a scene-of-crime photograph to Buchholz. Buchholz studied the picture in silence before passing it to Kolski, who gave a long, low whistle as he took in the image. ‘That’s our guy’s handiwork,’ continued Fabel. ‘Is there any reason at all why we should be looking more closely at Klugmann?’

Buchholz shook his head and looked across to Kolski, who gave a dismissive shrug of his vast shoulders. ‘No, I know Klugmann of old. He’s a cop that went crooked … and Ulugbay does use his muscle sometimes, but I don’t see Klugmann doing anything like this. He’s a thug, not a psycho.’