‘It’s good for her that she has someone around to anchor her into her real life,’ Petra said, swerving to avoid someone trying to cut in front of her. ‘Asshole,’ she muttered.

‘As long as I don’t pull her out of character too much,’ he said.

‘I’m more concerned with her getting stuck in Caroline Jackson. Radecki’s a charming bastard. That’s hard to resist when you’re feeling isolated. I think having you around will help her with that.’

‘I hope so. And her insights will be valuable to me when it comes to drawing up my profile too. She’s got a very unusual mind. She comes at things from odd tangents, sees things I don’t always see.’

‘When will you start work?’

‘As soon as possible. If it’s all right with you, I’ll drop my bags off and maybe you can take me back to your place?’

‘OK. I’ll give you a key so you can come and go as you please. Don’t worry about disturbing me. I’m hardly ever there and I sleep like the dead.’ Petra turned off the Ku’damm into the quiet side street with the apartment complex. ‘Here we are. Let me give you a hand.’

He followed Petra into the small concierge office next to the main entrance. She dealt with his registration, then led him through to the entrance hall. ‘You’re on the first floor. Carol is two floors above you, in 302. I’ll wait here for you while you drop your things off.’

Tony nodded and pressed the call button for the lift. He’d burned his bridges this time. For too long, he’d been telling himself he could be a chameleon, taking on the colouring of his surroundings, fitting in with other lives because in truth he had no fixed points in his own life. But it was slowly dawning on him that he’d been lying to himself. There was a core that was uniquely Tony Hill. And the harder he tried to escape its clutches, the stronger its grip became. Forget blandness, forget conventionality. This was who he was: the hunter, sniffing the air for the delicate scent of his prey. He was back where he belonged, and it felt wonderful.

Carol was alive to the ironies of the opera she was watching from the back of the stalls at the Berlin Staatsoper. Janácek’s Das Schlaue Füchslein, The Cunning Little Vixen. The drama that might have distracted her if a different opera had been before her served only to hammer home the dangers of her mission. The first act unfolded before her; the gamekeeper’s capture of the little vixen; her defence against the dog’s sexual advances and the tormenting of the children; her tempting of the hens into her ambit; her slaughter of the hens and her escape before retribution could be visited on her.