‘Oh fuck …’ Werner was now beside Fabel and spoke between nausea-suppressing gasps. ‘Oh fuck.’

Maria and Anna Wolff entered too. Anna suppressed a gagging sound and ran back along the hall. Fabel could hear her vomiting into the toilet bowl in Blüm’s bathroom. The Tatort scene-of-crime team would love that: contamination of a primary scene in a murder. Fabel couldn’t blame tough little Anna, though. He himself had to close his eyes for a moment and tried to wipe the image from his retina until he regained his composure. The thought of whether Anna was finished in the toilet flashed through his mind. He took a long, slow breath. He did not move closer to the body, again mindful of the need to preserve the primary locus, and when others started to crowd the doorway he ordered them back and out of the apartment.

Within an hour, the entire building was thronging with people. Fabel had asked the Uhlenhorst Polizeikommissar to order up more uniforms to carry out door-to-door enquiries. The Tatort team had arrived, headed up by Holger Brauner, along with Dr Möller, the pathologist. Fabel knew Brauner from previous investigations and regarded him highly. The only problem was that that arrogant asshole Möller always seemed to feel he was in competition with Brauner. The truth was, much as Fabel hated to admit it, that Möller was also an excellent pathologist and had a scalpel-sharp mind.

Fabel had secured the scene of crime and handed it over to the Tatort team. The protocol was that Brauner examined the scene first, without the body being disturbed, and only once he and his team were finished could Möller move in to do his examination. As a result Möller stood at the threshold of the apartment, fuming. For Fabel, it was the only high spot in the day.

Brauner emerged eventually. Ignoring Möller, he asked Fabel to come back inside. ‘There’s something you should see before we bag it for examination back at the lab.’

Brauner led him into the murder scene. Fabel had to pass the body, squeezing past two overalled Tatort scene-of-crime technicians. The team’s photographer was packing up his equipment and it was a tight squeeze in the room. Brauner led Fabel over to the desk and indicated the laptop computer. There was a recently sent e-mail open on the screen. It was the one the Präsidium had received just after eleven p.m. and which had led them here. Not only had the killer sent it from Angelika Blüm’s own computer, he had left it open and waiting for them to arrive.

‘The bastard!’ Fabel felt a black fury surge up from somewhere deep inside. He always prided himself on keeping calm, staying in control, but this guy had burrowed so far under his skin that all his usual defences had been totally overwhelmed. ‘The bastard’s taunting us. This is what he wanted, this is the precise scene he had in his head … me in this room with her body reading this fucking e-mail for the second time!’ Fabel turned to Brauner. ‘So he was here about eleven?’