‘I also want you to try to find out if any of the neighbours saw a policeman in the area prior to the killing. But for God’s sake be careful … I don’t want anyone to think we suspect one of our own.’

‘Of course,’ said Maria, ‘it could be that he isn’t in uniform. Maybe he’s simply got hold of a Kriminalpolizei ID or shield.’

‘I know … as you say, that’s even if he is impersonating a policeman at all. But a uniform would get him unquestioned entry, probably. It’s worth a try.’

* * *

After Werner and Maria left his office, Fabel tried to get Mahmoot on his cell phone. A full-scale gang war was about to erupt and Fabel had sent Mahmoot out unarmed into the front line. The phone rang out until, eventually, Mahmoot’s answering service cut in.

‘It’s me. Phone me. And forget all about that favour I asked.’ Fabel hung up.

Thursday 5 June, 10.00 a.m. Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven.

Max Sülberg’s uniform didn’t fit him very well. In fact, in his twenty-five-year service with the Polizei Niedersachsen, most of which had been spent at the Polizeiinspektion Cuxhaven, no uniform had ever fitted him that well. He had, in that time, slowly metamorphosed from skinny and scruffy to paunchy and scruffy. Now, his mustard-yellow short-sleeved service shirt was stretched taut around the belt line and wrinkled across the chest and back, and his uniform trousers looked as if they had had only a passing and none too recent acquaintance with an iron. He was the kind of scruffy policeman that would normally be hauled up before the boss – were it not for the two gold pips on his green and white shoulder flashes, that showed that Max was, in fact, the boss.

He was a short, balding man with an amiable face that was well lived-in and almost always on the verge of a smile. It was a familiar and trusted face among those who lived on the low, flat lands contained by the sandy arc of the Cuxhaven coastline that swept from Berensch-Arensch to Altenbruch.

Now, Max’s ready smile was absent, bleached from his face by the mortuary’s stark lighting. Next to him stood Dr Franz Stern, a lean, handsome physician with a thick mane of black hair who towered immaculately above the crumpled SchuPo officer. Before them, on the cold steel of a mortuary trolley, lay the smashed body of Petra Heyne, a nineteen-year-old student from Hemmoor. Max Sülberg had been a policeman for a long time and that meant, even in Cuxhaven, he had seen his fair share of death and violence. But, as he looked down at the lifeless face of a girl barely a year older than his own daughter, he felt an overpowering instinct to find a pillow, something, anything, to put beneath her head. And to say something to her. To comfort her. But she was beyond comfort. He shook his head heavily.

‘What a waste.’