Fabel nodded. What they had been looking at was detailed but peripheral. The solid core of Maria’s research had gone with her to Cologne. He scanned the small bedroom-office for a bag or holdall. ‘Help me pack up some of these files. Then I’ve got a few calls to make.’

4.

Fabel broke the four-hour journey to Cologne under a slate sky at a Raststätte on the A1 and filled up his BMW. A few unconvinced fluffs of snow drifted into his face as he did so. Instead of going into the service-station restaurant, Fabel bought a coffee and a salami roll to take out. He sat in the car with the heater on and consumed his lunch without tasting it, reading through the notes he had made on the information that Scholz had supplied. For Fabel, this process was not unlike reading a novel. It took him to a different time, a different place and a different life. He had all the details of the night when the first victim had died, two years ago. The strange thing was that Fabel found it difficult to place himself in the context of Karneval. The Cologners seemed obsessed with its forced jollity and irreverence. He read about the first victim’s movements on the night she had died. Sabine Jordanski had not officially been working that day, but had spent most of it doing exactly the same kind of thing that she would have done if she had been at work. As it was Women’s Karneval Night she and a group of female friends had planned to take part in a procession through the city before hitting a few of the bars where exuberant Kölsch bands would be playing. Sabine had spent the day colouring first her friends’ hair, then her own. The dyes differed from the ones she normally used: vivid pinks, reds, electric blues and yellows, and often more than one colour was used on a single head. There seemed to be an element of becoming someone else at Karneval, a belief that true release from everyday order only came with a mask, a costume or a radical change of look.