‘That’s right. It occurred to me that the bike might have taken a bit of damage itself. A couple of the witnesses said they thought it might have caught the wing of the car. And it occurred to me that, if the biker wasn’t supposed to be tooling around Berlin on his machine, he might have got it repaired here. So I’ve been checking all the little back-street garages that specialize in motorbikes. And a balls-acher of a job it’s been too.’ He paused, like a child waiting for praise.

‘You got a result?’ Krasic demanded, unwilling to indulge him further. Useful though Karl Hauser was, at the end of the day he was a dirty cop, and Krasic had no time for people who couldn’t manage loyalty.

‘Eventually. I found a couple of mechanics out at Lichtenberg who replaced the front forks on a bike answering this description. They remembered it for two reasons. It took them a week to get the spare part from BMW for one, and for another, the driver was a Brit. They reckoned the bike had fake plates, but they made a note of the engine number, just to be on the safe side.’

‘Why didn’t they come forward at the time?’ Krasic asked suspiciously.

‘They say they didn’t know about the accident. They don’t read the papers and they never watch the local TV news.’

‘Arseholes,’ Krasic muttered. ‘I don’t suppose this biker paid for the repairs with a credit card?’

‘Nothing so convenient,’ Hauser admitted. ‘Cash on the nail.’

‘We’re no further forward, then.’ Krasic lowered the window again and lit a cigar without offering one to Hauser.

Hauser smirked. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Darko. With the engine number, I was able to find out from BMW who the bike was sold to. And this is where it gets very strange.’ He paused expectantly.

‘Strange how?’

‘The bike was sold to the National Crime Squad in the UK. And, according to the British licensing authorities, that’s who owns it still.’ Hauser shifted in his seat to gauge the impact of his words on Krasic.

The Serb’s expression didn’t change. He put the cigar in his mouth, inhaled, then turned his head to let the smoke trickle out of the gap between the window and the frame. He didn’t want Hauser to have any idea how disturbing he found this information. There was altogether too much British shit flying around right now. Krasic didn’t believe in coincidences. Katerina’s death caused by a British bike; the British business going pear-shaped after another nasty and mysterious death; and now a British stranger charming the socks off his boss. It made him very, very uneasy. ‘That’s strange, right enough,’ he finally acknowledged. ‘Any way of finding out who was riding it?’