‘Do you think we have a copycat?’

‘No. Kroll wasn’t exactly an inspirational figure. He had a near-idiot IQ and was a pathetic loser type. He died in ’ninety or ’ninety-one. The similarities are coincidental. But I do think there’s a chance the Karneval Killer started off small. Assaults on women. Particularly involving biting.’

‘Yeah …’ Scholz poked his lamb thoughtfully with his fork. ‘You could be right. One of my officers, Tansu Bakrac, has a theory about that.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ll let her explain tomorrow. Basically she’s put a question mark over a couple of cases in the past. One in particular. I’m not so sure, though.’

There was a pause and the two men concentrated on their meals.

‘I was surprised when you turned up, Jan,’ said Scholz at last. ‘I was told you were packing the job in.’

‘That’s the idea,’ Fabel said. Suddenly he felt like talking about it. There was something about Scholz’s open, honest demeanour that invited confidence. A good thing to have if you were a policeman. ‘Officially I’m working out my notice. But I really don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. It all seemed so straightforward. Now I’m not so sure.’ He told Scholz about his experience on the way down: eating the salami roll while examining the photographs of Sabine Jordanski’s disfigured body and it not even crossing his mind that it wasn’t normal behaviour.

‘I get that all the time,’ laughed Scholz. ‘I put it down to being accustomed to it all. I say I benefit from professional objective detachment. Everyone else says it’s because I’m a pig.’

‘But that’s exactly what bothers me,’ said Fabel. ‘I’ve become too accustomed to it all. Too detached.’

‘But it’s what you do …’ said Scholz. ‘Think about what it’s like to be a doctor, or a nurse. It’s supposed to be all about saving lives, but the truth is that medicine is all about death. Every day a doctor will deal with a patient who is on their way out of this world. Some of them suffering terribly. But it’s their job. If they got emotionally involved with every patient, or spent their free time thinking about the inevitability of the same thing happening to them, they’d go mad. But they don’t. It’s their stock in trade. You can’t beat yourself up because you’ve become used to murder.’

‘That,’ said Fabel, with a grin, ‘would have been a very well-put point, if it weren’t for the fact that, as we both know, the medical professional comes right at the top of serial-killer occupations. Statistically, anyway. Also alcoholism … suicide …’