The kneeling figure’s scream of ‘No!’ was extinguished in mid-flow by the thud of the silenced automatic. He toppled over and fell into the pool.

‘A decent neighbourhood …’ the older man said as he walked towards the door.

Saturday 14 June, 11.00 a.m. Cuxhaven.

It took nearly two hours to reach Cuxhaven, but the drive had been pleasant: it was a bright, gently warm day and the time in the car gave Fabel a chance to talk with Susanne, who had leapt at the chance of a change of scenery. It had also given him a chance to finalise their dinner date. They had become more relaxed in each other’s company and there was now an unspoken intimacy between them.

Fabel made only one stop on the way, pulling over at the Aussendeich rest station about which Sülberg had given details over the phone. There was a dense wedge of trees screening the rest station from the road and from the wind that sliced across the flatlands all around. It was from these trees that the dead girl had staggered out into the path of the truck. Fabel swept his gaze across the parking area. His BMW was the only car there, and he could imagine it was an even lonelier spot at night. The other girl had been dumped on the same road, but about twenty kilometres back in the direction of Hamburg.

The seven-storey hospital building of the Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven lay in a verdant square of grass and trees off the Altenwalder Chaussee. Fabel and Susanne were conducted to a bright waiting room with large windows that looked out onto immaculately arranged flower beds and a small square of lawn. They had been waiting about ten minutes when the door opened and a short, crumpled-looking SchuPo came in. His entire face seemed arranged around a broad, genuine smile.

‘Hauptkommissar Fabel? Frau Doktor Eckhardt? I’m Hauptkommissar Sülberg.’ Sülberg shook hands with them both and apologised that Dr Stern would not be available for another twenty minutes, so he suggested they went straight up to interview the girl.

Michaela Palmer was tall and long-limbed. Fabel knew from the report he had received from Sülberg that she was twenty-three. Her hair was a buttery blonde that looked natural. She would have been beautiful had her nose not been a touch too long, disrupting the otherwise perfect balance of her features. Her skin was tanned golden; not, Fabel reckoned, by the north-German sun and not, from what he had gathered about her, from frequent trips to sunnier climes. It was a sun-salon tan that gave her an exaggerated look of health and contrasted with the pad of white gauze taped to her forehead. It was only beneath the blue eyes that the unnatural tan failed to hide the dark shadows of what had happened to her over the last forty-eight hours. Her room was on the third floor of the Stadtkrankenhaus Cuxhaven, and Fabel could not help thinking how lucky she was that she had not ended up in the basement. In the morgue.