‘Your personal missing-person hunt isn’t a case. Mine is.’

‘Whatever way you want to put it. But we are beginning to make progress in this Karneval Cannibal case. Do you really want me to be tied up in some inquiry?’

‘What are you proposing?’

‘My priority here is just the same as yours – to catch this lunatic before he kills again. But your resources would make it much easier for me to track down Maria before she gets herself into serious trouble. But the deal is that we nail this son of a bitch first.’ Fabel grinned. ‘Come and have a drink at the bar and we can discuss it.’

Scholz stared ahead, his hands still resting on the steering wheel. ‘Okay … and you’re paying.’

2.

As he had done every morning, Fabel took a taxi from his hotel across the Severinsbrücke bridge and into the Kalk area of the city where the Cologne Police Presidium was situated. It was a brighter morning and, as the taxi crossed the Rhine, Fabel was able to look along the river’s length to the ironwork arches of the Südbrücke rail bridge. Several long barges drifted along the Rhine, some heading south into the heart of Europe, others north to Holland and the rest of the world. He tried to imagine a time before cars, high-speed trains or lorries: Scholz’s analogy of a medieval version of an autobahn was fitting. There was something timeless about this river, today’s barges carrying on a tradition that was almost as old as European civilisation.

When Fabel arrived at the Presidium, the security-desk officer smiled and sent him straight up without an escort. He found it odd to walk into a different Murder Commission without being fully a visitor any more. It was almost, but not quite, as if he worked here and the thought brought to mind the offer that Wagner and van Heiden had made: is this what it would be like to have a Federal Republic-wide brief?

Tansu was on the phone when Fabel arrived. She had gathered her rich coppery curls up in a clasp on the back of her head and it exposed the line of her neck. Tansu was not particularly pretty and her figure was more than full, but there was something about her that Fabel, in spite of himself, found attractive. Sexy. She indicated Scholz’s office with a jab of her head and covered the mouthpiece of the phone for a second.

‘He’s waiting for you,’ she said. ‘But make sure neither of you leave until I have a chance to talk to you.’

‘Okay,’ said Fabel.