It was a quiet, well-ordered and leafy suburb consisting of medium to large-sized houses, with neat front lawns and well-clipped hedges. I spotted my car parked on the pavement, but could see no sign of Inge. I looked around anxiously for her while I waited for my change. Feeling something was wrong, I managed to over-tip the driver, who responded by asking me if I wanted him to wait. I shook my head, and then stepped back as he roared off down the road. I walked down towards my car, which was parked about thirty metres down the road from Haupthändler’s address. I checked the door. It wasn’t locked, so I sat inside and waited a while, hoping that she might come back. I put the desk diary that Marlene Sahm had given me inside the glove-box, and then felt around under the seat for the gun I kept there. Putting it into my coat pocket, I got out of the car.

The address I had was a dirty-brown, two-storey affair with a run-down, dilapidated look about it. The paint was peeling from the closed shutters, and there was a ‘For Sale’ sign in the garden. The place looked as though it hadn’t been occupied in a long time. Just the kind of place you’d choose to hide out in. A patchy lawn surrounded the house, and a short wall separated it from the pavement, on which a bright blue Adler was parked, facing downhill. I stepped over the wall, and went round the side, stepping carefully over a rusting lawnmower and ducking under a tree. Near the back corner of the house I took out the Walther and pulled back the slide to load the chamber and cock the weapon.

Bent almost double, I crept along beneath the level of the window, to the back door, which was slightly ajar. From somewhere inside the bungalow I could hear the sound of muffled voices. I pushed the door open with the muzzle of my gun and my eyes fell upon a trail of blood on the kitchen floor. I walked quietly inside, my stomach falling uncomfortably away beneath me like a coin dropped down a well, worried that Inge might have decided to take a look around on her own and been hurt, or worse. I took a deep breath and pressed the cold steel of the automatic against my cheek. The chill of it ran through the whole of my face, down the nape of my neck and into my soul. I bent down in front of the kitchen door to look through the keyhole. On the other side of the door was an empty, uncarpeted hallway and several closed doors. I turned the handle.