Fabel laughed. ‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘You lot down here make a joke about us in the North eating nothing but fish. Truth is, we tend to eat fish because we’re coastal people and that’s the most immediate source of food. And the way we connect with other cultures plays a part. You know there’s a Hamburg dish called Labskaus?’

‘I believe I’ve heard of it,’ said Scholz with a straight face.

‘Scandinavian sailors brought it to Hamburg. Then we took the recipe across to England. The British don’t have a clue if you ask them about Labskaus, yet they call people from Liverpool scousers because it was so popular there. My point is that our diets are shaped by what’s available and the contacts we have. Obviously nowadays you can go into any supermarket and buy whatever type of food you like, but the old, generations-long traditions tend to stay in place. It’s like we inherit a prejudice for or against certain foods. Which brings me back to our Karneval Cannibal … what I find strange is that we have always had a concept of taboo foods. Take pork. Even here, where you eat so much meat, and further south too, there are many people who have a problem with eating pork.’

‘What?’ Scholz looked dubious. ‘South of the “White Sausage Equator” …?’

‘Even there, amongst dedicated meat-eaters there are those who will not eat any part of a pig. Pork is the most common taboo food on the planet. The Muslims won’t eat it, the Jews are forbidden it, and there was even supposedly an ancient injunction against it amongst Highland Scots. It must have something to do with the similarity between pork and human flesh. I mean, we live in an age of xenotransplantation where genetically modified pig organs are being transplanted into humans. Tribes in Papua New Guinea talk about human flesh as “the long pig”.’

‘So you think it’s because it’s like eating human flesh?’

‘I think we maybe have some deep cultural memory of cannibalism. And our rejection of cannibalism is a part of how we define ourselves as civilised. Nineteenth-century European colonisation was often justified as saving the natives from themselves. And cannibalism was cited as the prime example of savage behaviour.’

Scholz sipped his beer. ‘We’ve deliberately kept the details of both murders away from the press. We told them there were elements that only we and the killer would know. We haven’t even confirmed a definite link. Like you say, there’s something about the whole concept of a cannibal being on the loose that scares the shit out of people. And the press would just love it.’

‘So you really had considered the possibility of the killer being a cannibal before I mentioned it?’