It had been the day she had heard that the Ukrainian investigator Turchenko had been killed in a road crash that she had decided to gather all the information she could on Vitrenko and his organisation. Turchenko, a quiet, polite, highly intelligent lawyer turned investigator, had passed though Hamburg while on the trail of Vasyl Vitrenko. Turchenko had asked Maria to describe in detail the events that had led up to Vitrenko stabbing her. She had tried to explain to the Ukrainian detective, as she had tried to explain to the counsellors and psychologists after the event, that what had really destroyed any feeling of self-worth that she might have had was the way Vitrenko had not intended to kill her. Instead, he had used his expertise to place the knife where it would leave her hanging onto life by a thread. All Maria had represented to Vitrenko was a delaying tactic. Vitrenko had known that by leaving Maria alive but critically wounded Fabel would have to give up his pursuit. She had been used. Her body had been defiled by Vitrenko just as if she had been raped by him.

And now Maria couldn’t stand the sight of her own flesh, or the touch of others. The therapy hadn’t helped. Talk. Maria wasn’t someone who believed you could solve things by talking them to death.

Maria knew that, comprehensive as it was, the information she had compiled was not complete. She felt frustrated at the idea that, right now, there was a secret investigation going on that involved a number of Federal and local law-enforcement agencies. It had been brought to her attention when she had been reprimanded by the BKA in the presence of Fabel and Criminal Director van Heiden. Maria had been photographed by their surveillance operation talking to key figures. She had, they said, seriously compromised the operation. Maria had gained the partial trust of a young Russian prostitute working the rougher end of the Hamburg trade. Nadja had given Maria information and had disappeared immediately afterwards. The BKA had made a point of highlighting that Maria’s clumsiness had probably cost Nadja her life.

But she wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Maria knew that the surveillance operation was probably still active, but this time she would work around it. Large police operations like that always looked at the bigger picture, building connections, establishing command structures, identifying key locations; hundreds of experts working on the detail while the investigative management stood back to see the whole. But the core of Vitrenko’s operations was people trafficking. These weren’t stolen cars, the licence numbers of which could be logged and filed. These were people and at the heart of each statistic lay a human tragedy. That would be Maria’s way in. To start with the victims and work back. And because she was here unofficially – without authority or even legitimacy – she could work with the gloves off. It was something she had to do alone, but she found herself wishing that Anna Wolff was there. Anna was no great lover of rules, but Fabel and Werner were both sticklers for procedure. Anna would be willing to break heads and bend rules; Maria was going to have to work the same way.