‘You should know already. Because we’re all supposed to read the stuff that is referred to us by our regional colleagues here in Germany. Just like we’re all supposed to read whatever Europol sends us.’

He rolled his eyes back in his head and groaned. ‘Yeah, yeah. Look, I skim it, OK?’

‘Sure, we all do that sometimes. But there’s stuff in there that we should be paying attention to. Like a murder five weeks ago in Heidelberg? Ring any bells?’

He frowned. ‘Some small-time drug dealer, wasn’t it?’

‘That was their excuse for handing it on to us. But it was obvious that it wasn’t a drugs hit.’

‘That’d be why I didn’t pay much attention,’ The Shark interrupted defensively. ‘No interest to us.’

‘Murder should always interest a cop. I did read it, Shark. And that’s what makes me think that the man who killed in Leiden had done it before in Heidelberg. And he’s done it since in Bremen.’ She got busy with the mouse and pulled up the Leiden report, then sent a command to the printer to make a hard copy of the file. ‘Which is why I am going to earn myself some Brownie points by bringing it to the attention of the boss.’ She got to her feet, picking up her coffee, and walked across to the common printer. She gathered together the sheets of paper and waved cheerfully to The Shark. ‘Don’t let me keep you from Krasic,’ she offered as a parting shot.

She found Plesch in her office, going through expenses claims. She gave Petra a grateful smile. ‘Petra. Bringing me facts, instead of these fictions, I hope?’

She shrugged and dropped into the chair facing Plesch. ‘More speculation than hard fact, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh well, never mind. It’s still a welcome distraction. What’s on your mind?’

She placed the print-outs in front of her boss. ‘Europol bulletin this morning. The Dutch police are looking for possible connections to a murder they’ve got in Leiden. It so happens that I was reviewing unsolved murders last week, in the run-up to this undercover operation. Just to see if there were any we might be looking to connect to Radecki and Krasic. I came across a case in Heidelberg that looked vaguely promising, so I asked them to send me a full report. When I went through it, it was clearly not one of ours. But then when I read the details of the Dutch murder, all the bells started ringing. I checked it out, and there are some very striking points of similarity.’

Plesch picked up the papers and read them, her expression deepening to a frown as she noted the common ground between the two cases. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said when she got to the end.