Petra nodded approvingly. ‘Good thinking. By the way, I read your overnight report. I have to say, you handled Radecki well on the boat. You seem to be making real progress.’

‘I’m cautiously pleased myself. But yesterday afternoon was a real warning to me not to get over-confident.’

Petra stood up and dripped some citrus oil on the coals. The sharp intensity of the fumes seemed to shift her brain up a gear. ‘It’s working because you look like Katerina. However much his conscious mind wants to distrust you, his emotions are dragging him in the opposite direction. I’m surprised he hasn’t made a move on you yet.’

‘Are you? I’m not. He had Katerina on a pedestal. She was his angel, his goddess. He’s not going to jump on someone who reminds him that strongly of her. He’s going to court me,’ she said. ‘Tony and I talked about this beforehand, and he reckoned that was what would happen. And, speaking of Tony, he told me about the murder in Köln.’

Petra groaned. ‘It’s terrible. I get so angry because it feels like the whole investigation is snarled up in bureaucratic nonsense. Apparently, Heidelberg have got on their high horse. They’re insisting on being the lead investigators because theirs was the first case. This is the same bunch of fuckwits who tried to hand it off to my unit because they couldn’t solve it.’

‘I thought everything was going through Europol?’

‘They’re exchanging information, but there’s a mountain of case notes and nobody really to take an overview except Tony. It’s very frustrating. But I thought his profile came up with some interesting leads. At least the lead detective in Köln seems to have half a brain. He cottoned on right away to the idea of having a computer expert look at the victim’s hard drive, just like Marijke’s doing. But that could take days, weeks even, to produce results. Marijke has also asked the German teams to check out your idea about a campaign of academic criticism.’

Carol shook her head. ‘It’s not my finest idea. I hope they don’t waste too much time on it.’

‘It might just be the lead they need,’ Petra said. ‘God, I hate not being able to be involved in the investigation.’ She stood up. ‘Time for a shower. Then I better get back to the office.’

Carol groaned. ‘And I have to tour Radecki’s video shops and try to look interested.’

‘Rather you than me,’ Petra said as she walked out of the sauna cabin. ‘You take care, Carol.’

Yeah, right. Like that’s an option, Carol thought wryly. If taking care was her first priority, she’d never have accepted this assignment. Taking risks was the name of the game. That and survival. And she was determined to survive.

Chapter 28

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