Clarity came to her just before the truck hit her. She heard the scream of tyres and gazed, with wide but undazzled eyes, into the headlights as they hurtled towards her. Her overwhelming feeling was one of surprise: she could not understand why, knowing that she was going to die, she was so totally free of fear.

Wednesday 4 June, 11.50 p.m. Altona, Hamburg.

With most of the office workers and shoppers long gone, the basement Parkhaus was almost empty of cars. The tyres of the Saab yielded a restrained screech as it took the steep sharp turn from the down ramp onto the pillared square of parking places. Instead of parking, it stopped on the main throughway; the headlamps dimmed to side lights.

A Mercedes, which had been concealed in a parking place behind a pillar, pulled out suddenly and drove up to the Saab, stopping when the two cars were almost nose to nose. Neither could now make a quick exit. The Turks got out first, from the Mercedes. Three; heavily built. Two stood on either side of the car, leaving the doors open and resting their arms on them, using them as shields before their bodies.

The third Turk, older and more expensively dressed than the other two, walked up to the Saab, leant down and tapped with his knuckles on the driver’s window. There was the buzz and clunk of an opening electric window.

Then a sound like a loud pop.

The two Turks standing by the Mercedes saw an explosive plume of blood spurt from the back of the older man’s head as the bullet, fired from inside the Saab, exited his skull. Before they could react there was a series of more loud pops, in rapid succession like hailstones hitting off a roof, this time from behind them.

Like the older Turk, they too were dead before they hit the ground.

Two tall men, both blond, emerged from the shadows behind the Turks’ Mercedes. As one methodically picked up the spent shells from the Parkhaus floor, the other calmly walked across to the bodies of the three Turks, firing a single conclusive shot into the head of each; again picking up the spent shells and placing them in the pocket of his thigh-length leather coat. Both men then made their way towards the Saab, simultaneously unscrewing the silencers from their Heckler and Koch semi-automatics. They casually stepped over the bodies, and climbed into the rear passenger seats of the Saab, which carefully reversed into a parking place to complete a three-point turn before driving towards the up ramp.

Thursday 5 June, 10.00 a.m. Pöseldorf, Hamburg.

There was now a solid, dreamless wedge of sleep between Fabel and the events of the day before; yet when he woke, a bone-aching tiredness clung to him. He dragged himself through the routine of a shave and a shower and dressing. A Hamburger Morgenpost lay on his doormat; he placed it on the hall table without opening it.