‘Did you see that old guy, Werner?’

‘What old guy?’

‘What about you?’ Fabel asked Anna and Paul over his shoulder.

‘Sorry, Chef,’ answered Anna.

‘What about him?’ asked Paul.

‘Nothing …’ Fabel shrugged and drove through to where the other police cars huddled around the entrance to the building.

There were three flights of stairs up to the apartment. The stairwell was bathed in the bleak glow of wall-mounted half globes, one on each landing. As they climbed, Fabel and his team had to stop and flatten themselves against the stairwell walls to allow uniformed officers and forensic technicians to pass. On each occasion they noticed the grim seriousness on the silent faces, some of which were blanched by something more than the dismal electric light. Fabel could tell that something pretty bad waited for them at the top of the stairs.

The young uniformed policeman stood half bent over in a posture like that of an athlete who had just completed a marathon run: the tail of his spine resting against the door frame, his legs slightly bent, his hands spread out over his knees and his head forward and down. He breathed slowly and deliberately, staring intently at the floor at his feet as if absorbing every scratch and scuff on the concrete. He was unaware of Fabel’s presence until the last moment. Fabel held out his oval Kriminalpolizei shield and the young policeman pulled himself stiffly upright. When he pushed back his mop of unruly red-blond hair it revealed a face that was pale behind its constellation of freckles.

‘Sorry, Herr Kriminalhauptkommissar, I didn’t see you.’

‘That’s okay. Are you all right?’ Fabel looked into the younger man’s face and rested his hand on his shoulder. The young policeman relaxed a bit and nodded. Fabel smiled. ‘This your first murder?’

The young Polizeimeister looked directly into Fabel’s eyes. ‘No, Herr Hauptkommissar. Not the first. The worst … I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘I’m afraid I probably have,’ said Fabel.

By now, Paul Lindemann and Anna Wolff had arrived at the top of the stairs and joined Fabel and Werner. A scene-of-crime officer, wearing his Tatort tabard, handed each of them a pair of pale blue forensic overshoes and a pair of white surgical gloves. After they had slipped on the gloves and overshoes, Fabel indicated the door of the flat with a movement of his head.

‘Shall we?’

The first thing Fabel noticed was the freshness of the decoration. It was as if the short hall had only recently been painted. The colour was like pale butter: pleasant but bland, neutral, anonymous. There were three doors off the hall. Immediately to Fabel’s left was a bathroom. A brief glimpse inside revealed it to be compact and, like the hall, clean and fresh. It seemed almost unused. Fabel noticed that the scant surfaces and shelves were uncluttered by the knick-knacks that tend to personalise a bathroom. The second door was opened wide and revealed what was obviously the main room in the apartment: a bedroom and living area combined. It too was small, and made even more cramped by the cluster of police and forensics in it; each doing his job in a bizarre dance with the others, arms raised, squeezing past each other in a clumsy ballet. As Fabel entered, he noticed that each face wore a solemnity that one would expect in such a situation but which is, in reality, rare. Normally there would be an element of gallows humour: that inappropriate black levity that somehow allows those who deal with death to remain untouched by it. But not these people. Not here. Here death had reached out and seized them, gripping their hearts with fingers of bone.