‘Susanne, I wanted to talk,’ he explained. ‘I think we need to straighten things out.’

‘I thought we had,’ she said flatly. ‘At least, I thought you had. I mean when you phoned me before you went off to Cologne.’

Fabel pushed his beer bottle around the table top contemplatively. He thought back to those three calls he had made weeks before: to Wagner at the Federal Crime Bureau, to Roland Bartz, and to Susanne.

‘Listen, Susanne,’ he said gently, ‘when I was down in Cologne things were supposed to be confused. The whole point of Karneval, I suppose. But they weren’t for me. They weren’t for me as soon as I found out Maria had gone off on this personal crusade that’s cost her her sanity. Down there I was surrounded by people who were being someone else … Vera Reinartz who had become Andrea Sandow who claims to become this killer clown whom she has no control over … then there was Vitrenko, stealing one identity after another and manipulating everyone around him. But me … I knew who I was. The funny thing is I didn’t know who I was before. Or I denied it, I don’t know.’

‘So who are you?’

‘I am a policeman. Just like that poor kid Breidenbach who got shot rather than let a gunman walk onto the street … just like Werner or Anna or Benni Scholz in Cologne. It’s who I am. It’s what I am. It’s my job to stand there between the bad guys and the innocent. What I didn’t realise until now is that it’s more than a job. It’s often ugly and it’s invariably unrewarding, but it’s what I was meant to do. I’ve always pretended to myself that I’m a historian or an intellectual who’s stumbled into this job and who doesn’t really fit. But that’s wrong, Susanne. Whether I found the job or the job found me, it was meant to be.’

‘So you’ve accepted this nationwide brief? This Super-Murder-Commission thing?’

‘Not really. I’ve said I’ll help out elsewhere if I’m needed. Lend my “expertise”. But that’s the other thing I’ve learned. I belong here. Hamburg is my city. These are the people I want to protect.’

‘So where does that leave us?’ Susanne’s voice was cold and hard. Fabel reached over the table and took her hands in his.

‘That’s rather what I wanted to ask you …’

Cologne. Six months later

Andrea sat on the edge of the bed. No make-up, no lipstick, platinum hair scraped severely back in a ponytail and dark at the roots.