‘I was sent a file. Background information more than anything. One of the photographs was of a guy called Christian Wohlmut. It was taken about nineteen-ninety, when German domestic terrorism was on its last legs. Wohlmut wanted to breathe new life into it. He sent parcel and letter bombs to US interests in Germany. Amateur stuff and most were intercepted or failed to go off. But one was professional enough to maim a young secretarial worker in an American oil company’s office in Munich. That’s where Wohlmut was based. Munich. And that’s where Susanne studied.’

‘It’s a big city, Jan,’ said his mother. But her frown indicated that she was already ahead of him.

‘There was a girl in the photograph with Wohlmut. It was blurred and she was only ever described as “unknown female”.’

‘Susanne?’ Fabel’s mother put her cup back in the saucer. ‘No! You can’t believe that Susanne could ever have been involved with terrorism?’

Fabel shrugged and took another sip of tea. He had forgotten the sugar at the bottom and got a mouthful of nauseous sweetness. ‘I don’t know what her involvement with Wohlmut was. But I do know she’s very defensive, almost secretive, about her student days. And there was some guy in her past who she says was manipulative and domineering. It was I who suggested we should move in together … Susanne was wary at first because of some bad experience she’d had.’

‘And you think it was this terrorist, Wohlmut?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So what if it was? What does that matter now? If she didn’t actually do anything wrong – I mean, break the law?’

‘But that’s exactly it, Mutti … I’ll never know for sure that she wasn’t actively involved.’

‘You’re not seriously thinking about confronting her with this?’

‘She knows something’s wrong. She keeps on at me to find out what it is. Things aren’t so good between us and she knows I’m stalling over moving in together.’

‘Susanne works with the police, Jan. If her political views in the past were so radical, I don’t see her doing that.’

‘People change, Mutti.’

‘Then accept her for who she is now Jan. Unless …’

‘Unless what?’

‘Unless you are simply using this as an excuse for you to get out of the relationship.’

‘It’s not that. It’s just that I’ve got to know. I have to know what the truth is.’

‘Like I said, Jan,’ his mother smiled at him in the same way she had when he had been ‘such a serious little boy’ and she had sought to reassure him about something, ‘knowledge isn’t always the answer to everything.’

3.