But now there was something else to add to his stress. He had just over three weeks until Women’s Karneval Night. He knew that the Karneval Killer would strike again. Another woman would die unless they got a lead on the murders of the previous two years. Files lay scattered across his desk and in an untidy arc on the floor. Scholz had the feeling that there was something he wasn’t seeing in the available evidence. He had learned about serial killers. At least the theory. But this was the first time he’d ever been involved with a case and he felt out of his depth. He had called the Polizei Hamburg again, but had been told that the Murder Commission boss, Fabel, was leaving the force and really wasn’t interested in taking on Scholz’s case. He was going to have to think the Karneval Killer case through again, alone, without the assistance of some Hamburg supercop. Fuck him, thought Scholz, stuck-up Fischkopp. Scholz had been to Hamburg only a couple of times. Beautiful city, shame about the people. And the food was crap: all they ate was fish or that shit Labskaus.

He turned from the files and looked out of his office window in Cologne’s Police Presidium but didn’t see anything of the city that lay grey dark under the moody winter sky. Scholz turned his thoughts from the murders he was investigating back to his other problem: getting this bloody Karneval float and costumes organised. Scholz had studied so many books and researched so much stuff on the Internet about Karneval. Its origins, its significance, what had changed and what had stayed the same throughout the centuries. Maybe that was where he was going wrong: he was over-thinking it all.

It was while Scholz was in this doubly darkened mood that the phone rang. He was surprised to hear that it was the Hamburg cop, Fabel.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be leaving the force?’ said Scholz. ‘I didn’t think I’d hear from you.’

‘I am supposed to be leaving the force and you are hearing from me,’ said Fabel. That famous northern charm, thought Scholz.

‘Have you looked at the files I sent up, Herr Fabel?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And you’ve got a cannibal on your patch, in my opinion,’ said Fabel.

‘Shit …’ said Scholz. ‘So the piece of arse he takes away … it goes straight into the pan, you reckon?’

‘I would have put it a little more technically than that, Herr Scholz, but effectively yes. He’s probably cooking his trophy and consuming it. There are contradictions in his offending pattern, but my guess is that he is a sexual cannibal. His consumption of the flesh is probably accompanied by either involuntary ejaculation or active masturbation.’