‘And we eat fish here. Did you know that Cologne used to be the biggest fish market in Germany? Because of the Rhine running through it like a sort of medieval motorway. It was a distribution centre for the whole of central Germany. Okay, then, how about the ragout of lamb with figs? It’s very good here. And what do you fancy – a nice Rhine wine or an even nicer Kölsch beer?’

They agreed on a bottle of Assmannshausen Spätburgunder red and placed their order.

‘It’s nice here,’ said Fabel. The restaurant lay beneath a white plastered vaulted ceiling and arched double doors looked out onto the street. He could see that it had started to snow a little more earnestly.

‘Yeah …’ Scholz surveyed the restaurant appreciatively. ‘Yeah … it’s not bad. Cologne is packed with cool places to eat. Almost any type of cuisine in the world. Even vegetarian. We’re a big conference and convention city now and we get all kinds of rich business types. I like this place, but sometimes I like to go somewhere a bit more … well, basic, I suppose you’d say. I like my food well cooked, not well designed if you know what I mean. You said you were going to tell me all about cannibalism,’ said Scholz. ‘Sounds like something you know a thing or two about.’

The waiter came with the wine and Scholz asked Fabel to taste it. He obviously expected Fabel’s knowledge of wine to be greater.

‘That’s very nice,’ said Fabel and the waiter filled both glasses. ‘To be honest, I did a bit of boning up on it before I came down,’ said Fabel.

Scholz shook his head. ‘I still can’t wrap my mind around it. Why would someone get off on eating someone else?’

‘Human sexuality is a very complex thing, Benni. I’m sure you’ve dealt with enough weird cases to know that. There are perversions that revolve around fantasies about eating a sexual partner or being eaten by one. Our mouths are secondary sexual organs. You could almost say that oral sex is a type of cannibalistic behaviour.’

‘We obviously date different types of women …’ Scholz grinned.

‘Anyway, there are several forms of cannibalism. Motives for it, if you like. But anthropologists and psychologists break it down into two main groups: ritual and nutritional cannibalism. In nutritional cannibalism you have straightforward epicurean cannibalism – people who eat human flesh simply for the taste of it or for the experience … but without getting a sexual kick out of it. By far the most common form of nutritional cannibalism is for survival, when there’s no other food source available. For example, I was reading about the Holodomor before I came down here: the forced starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviets in the nineteen-thirties. Food became so scarce that cannibalism became relatively common.’

‘So what’s this endocannibalism and exocannibalism I’ve heard about?’ asked Scholz.