Fabian thought about whether he had any other questions to ask, but decided all that was left to do was to unbuckle his seat belt, climb out of the car and hope it wouldn’t take too long to get a taxi.

57

Fabian put the frozen block of mince in the pan; it began to sizzle and sputter in the hot olive oil. He’d assumed Sonja would already have started dinner when he got home. Instead, he’d found a kitchen in which bread crusts, open jars of marmalade and sweaty cheeses jostled for space with dirty plates, half-melted butter and glasses filled with juice residue, eggshells and old teabags.

He’d found Sonja asleep in their bedroom, as though she hadn’t been up since he’d left her that morning. He’d woken her up gently and asked how she was feeling. But she had just shaken her head and asked to be left alone, so after twenty minutes of cleaning up, he was now scraping layer after layer off the frozen lump of mince in an attempt to make something edible.

Even though he was in the middle of a murder investigation, he had decided to try to come home for dinner so the family could come together at least once a day. And this particular evening, it hadn’t been much of a challenge since every lead they found invariably led them straight to one dead end after another.

He pushed the chopped onion off the cutting board, crushed the garlic cloves, which were really too dried up, and seasoned with paprika, chilli and a stock cube.

Someone had kept Molly Wessman’s home under surveillance. And this person now had a name. A name that was unusual enough that it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate him. But a search for Christofer Comorowski hadn’t generated so much as one hit in any of their databases. The same thing was true of Wessman’s concealed tattoo, which had supposedly been put there by some mythical sex athlete who called himself Columbus.

He gave up his search for tinned tomatoes and instead filled the pan with water, tomato puree, what was left in a jar of sundried tomatoes, five tired carrots he peeled and grated, and an expired can of kidney beans.

Then it hit him. As he was tasting his improvised sauce, which needed another stock cube and a few dashes of cayenne, he suddenly saw a possible connection between the two leads.

Christofer Comorowski and Columbus.

Was that the link they needed to move forward?

Christofer Columbus.

Was that how the two things fitted together? Were the two of them in fact the same person?

It was only when the toaster snapped up behind him that he noticed Theodor was in the kitchen, about to spread Nutella on his freshly toasted bread.

‘Hi, Theo. It’s nice to see you. I didn’t hear you come in.’