‘Okay. You can call me Frau Doctor Schilling.’ She nodded in the direction of the departed detective. ‘Shouldn’t you check that he’s okay?’

‘He’ll be fine. If not, he’s in the wrong job. Anyway, I’m not insensitive to human suffering. I feel for the victim. Horrible death. But I don’t lose my lunch every time I look at a stiff. Like I said, they’re not people any more. Just meat. No one knows that better than you.’

‘You’re right,’ said Simone Schilling. ‘A corpse isn’t a person to me. It’s a store of evidence. But it took years to become accustomed to it. Now I look at them professionally, not emotionally. But you … you’re just an insensitive pig.’

Scholz smiled. He liked it when she insulted him. ‘I’m not insensitive. Just practical.’

The young detective reappeared.

‘You okay, Kris?’ asked Scholz. He turned to Simone Schilling. ‘See? Sensitive.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Kris. But he still looked pale.

‘Right, then tell me about what happened here. Were you able to get any more out of the Somalian or the restaurant owners?’

‘Not a lot,’ said Tansu. ‘The Somalian was being very helpful but then he suddenly dried up. I reckon the two Ukrainians told him who they thought the hatchet men were. Probably Ukrainian Mafia. Anyway, the three of them have been taken into custody by Immigration. The restaurant owners aren’t too chatty either. Immigration is all over them as well.’

‘So the answer’s nothing?’ Scholz asked impatiently.

‘Not completely,’ Kris said. ‘Before the Somalian shut up, he said that there had been a woman around talking to Dmytruk. Tall, thin, expensively dressed. He got the impression she was Immigration. Or police.’

9.

Maria woke at six a.m. and listened to the sounds of the city sluggishly stirring in the dark winter Tuesday morning. She hadn’t eaten since her binge on Sunday evening and her gut ached from having been force-fed and then forcibly emptied. She still felt chilled. But something had changed.

She placed herself in another place and another time. Maria never fully understood why she did this. So much of her recent past had been devoted to trying to put what had happened behind her. But she did this regularly: lay in the dark and imagined herself back in the field that night near Cuxhaven.