But now all he could do was wait.

The owner of this apartment was a Yugoslav aged about sixty. Klugmann had assumed he was probably an illegal, but had since found out that he worked for the city as a gardener over at the Sternschanzen-Park, manicuring the flower beds and picking up the used syringes. He was on a permanent day shift that started at eleven. It would be after eight p.m. before the Yugoslav got back. Klugmann had until then to make a break for it.

There would be a cop on the street all the time now. That would make getting out difficult. The main advantage he had was that they thought he was already out of the building and would be watching for him coming back, not leaving. He sat with his back pressed against the door and scanned the room. Maybe there was something in here he could wear. Make himself look older. The plod outside wouldn’t make the connection. He’d be too busy looking for a young man going in, not an old guy going out. He heard voices in the hall: Fabel was chewing out the surveillance team for having lost him. Klugmann allowed himself a smile. He heard footsteps and pressed himself hard against the door. Knocking: the flat-fisted knock of a policeman. Klugmann breathed slow and even. Another knock.

‘Police. Anyone at home?’

It seemed like an age before he heard their feet scuff on the landing and then make their way echoingly down the stone steps. They knocked on the door downstairs. Klugmann knew that apartment would be empty just now as well. He heard a woman say ‘Shit’, and then the sound of the main door’s spring. Two outside and Fabel and Meyer upstairs. He scanned the apartment again for anything to help him disguise his departure later. And waited.

Thursday 5 June, 2.45 p.m. Vierlande, outside Hamburg.

The traffic had been heavy in the city and Fabel was glad he’d allowed himself extra time to negotiate the B5 through the centre and down towards Billbrook. Now the city no longer clung to the roadside and the landscape rolled out like the flat, smooth baize of a billiard table. Fabel had left Klugmann’s cell phone with Maria Klee to have Technical Section get as much information as possible out of it. Anna Wolff and Paul Lindemann were probably still knocking on doors trying to heat up Klugmann’s cold trail. They were good officers, both of them. Klugmann must have pulled a fast one to get past them.

Just after Bergedorf, Fabel turned south towards Neuengamme. It could have been Holland: a landscape so flat it was as if nature had steam-ironed it, smoothing out every wrinkle. Any potential monotony in the scenery was dispelled by the dense clumps of trees, the red-roofed churches, Dutch-style windmills and meticulously restored and maintained Fachwerk houses with their exposed beams and groomed thatched roofs. The low, green expanse of land was threaded through by the network of dykes and canals that stitched it into a patchwork.