‘It started after the attack. I had to have a lot of physiotherapy. I needed to build my strength up and the physio involved some weight work. It was then that I got the idea. To rebuild myself. To create someone new.’

‘But there was nothing wrong with the old you,’ said Tansu. ‘You were a victim. Do you blame yourself for what happened?’

‘No,’ said Andrea defiantly. ‘I know it was that bastard who’s to blame. But pretty little Vera Reinartz was too soft and weak, too pliant. She was too afraid. Maybe that’s why he picked her. Because she had victim written all over her.’

‘But your medical career …’ said Tansu. ‘According to what I’ve read you showed enormous promise. You could have excelled as a doctor.’

‘There are other ways to excel,’ said Andrea. ‘That was all part of the past. Of Vera Reinartz. Now I excel at something else. I started bodybuilding in 2000. I mean seriously. I am an expert on it, you know. Not just the sport or the techniques – the history, too. The philosophy of it. Do you know that the father of modern bodybuilding was a German? Eugen Sandow. He started out as a circus strongman and ended up setting the standards for all bodybuilding. He organised and judged the world’s first bodybuilding competition. His fellow judge was Arthur Conan Doyle, the British author who invented Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Sandow …’ said Fabel. ‘That’s the name you took … Why?’

‘I needed to be someone else. That’s why I became a bodybuilder, Herr Fabel. Like I said, a total metamorphosis. I needed a new name for a new body.’

Andrea leaned back and braced herself against the kitchen counter. As she did so, the veins in her upper arms protested hard and blue against the brown skin. Fabel saw the spasmodic twitch of a bicep, as if it had a life independent of its host body. Andrea caught him looking.