‘I need to be anonymous for a while,’ Maria had explained. The flat was in the Belgian Quarter near one of the gates that were remnants of Cologne’s old city wall. Liese had told Maria that the Dresslers, the only neighbours on the same floor, were a young professional couple without kids who were out at work all day and were also often out in the evening. There were a couple of families on the floor below and on the ground floor there was a younger man whom Liese never really ran into, as well as another young professional couple. It was perfect. But it would not be enough on its own: she would need more than one safe house. In any case, Liese would not be leaving until the end of the week. Maria had decided to check into the budget hotel for a few days. She might even keep the hotel room for a while after she moved into the flat.

She took her laptop from her briefcase.

Sitting on the bed, Maria opened up the files she had accessed from the BKA database before she took her sick leave. There had been a limit to what her clearance as a Hamburg Murder Commission detective had allowed her to access and the information was general, but there were enough pieces of the picture to give her a starting point. She had even endured a lunch appointment with a woman she had been at the Landespolizeischule academy with and who was now a hotshot with the BKA Federal Crime Bureau. Maria had noticed the look of alarm on her table companion’s face when she saw how changed Maria was. Maria had been able to establish the existence of a much more detailed dossier on Vitrenko, but then the BKA woman had become reluctant to discuss it further. Maria suspected that she had become concerned about Maria’s state of mind.

Maria knew she was not well. It had only been after several sessions with Dr Minks that she had come to recognise that her behaviour had become odd; that she had slipped into a world of bizarre rituals and obsessions, one laid over the other and obscuring her view of what was normal in life. Since the stabbing she had struggled most with aphenphosmphobia, a morbid fear of physical contact with other human beings. Since the affair with Frank she had suffered a severe depression and had developed an eating disorder. Now, Maria could barely look at herself in a mirror without a sense of revulsion. But she did look in a mirror often: she would strip naked and stand before a full-length glass for an hour, her self-loathing intense and vast. She would look at herself and despise the flesh of which she was composed. And, most of all, she would stare at her image and wish she could be someone else. Anyone else. It was all part of the mental chaos through which she had to stumble just to get through each day. But enough of the old Maria, the organised, meticulous, efficient Maria had still been there for her to assemble her own detailed dossier before she took her sick leave.