Krasic cast a glance over his shoulder. There was still one attachment to open. He read the text, his heart sinking even further. ‘Fuck,’ he said under his breath, then quickly exited from the e-mail program and turned off the computer. He jumped up and hurried after his boss, ignoring the shopkeeper’s angry shout of, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to switch them off like that.’

He found Tadeusz leaning against the locked car, the rain streaming down his face like tears. ‘I’m going to kill the bitch,’ he said as Krasic approached. ‘I’m going to fucking kill the treacherous lying bitch.’ He pushed himself upright. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘Hang on, Tadzio. Look, we’ve come this far. Another hour will see us in Köln, we can pick up the drugs and head back then. It’s not like she’s going anywhere. She doesn’t know we’ve rumbled her. And neither does that bastard she’s shagging.’

‘I want to go back now.’

‘We need to think about this. Because there’s more.’

‘What do you mean, there’s more?’

‘Hill went to an apartment this morning. I got Hansi the hacker to check that out too. It belongs to a woman called Petra Becker. She’s a cop. She works for the criminal intelligence unit. The bastards who have been trying to get something on us for years.’

Tadeusz smacked the flat of his hand against the side of the car. ‘Let’s go back. We pick him up, then we kill the bitch.’

‘He’s not in Berlin any more. Rado called me from Tempelhof, Hill was catching a flight to Bonn and Rado was trying to get on it.’ Krasic pulled out his phone and dialled Rado’s number. ‘Where are you?’ He listened intently, then said, ‘Fine. Call me with an update every fifteen minutes.’

He turned back to Tadeusz. ‘He’s been driving around boatyards in Köln. Now he’s heading down towards Koblenz. We’re a lot nearer him than her. And she’s going to be waiting for you to come back. If you want to pick him up, we can do it. And we can send Rado on to Köln to pick up the heroin.’

Tadeusz slumped against the car again. ‘I suppose.’

Krasic unlocked the car and opened the passenger door. All the fight had gone out of Tadeusz. He collapsed into the seat. Krasic settled in behind the wheel and put the car in gear. They hit the autobahn at 120kph and the needle kept rising. Tadeusz stared straight ahead, his expression unreadable. After about twenty minutes, he finally spoke. ‘You know what this means, don’t you, Darko?’ There was an agonized note in his voice that Krasic had last heard after Katerina’s funeral.

‘It means we could be fucked,’ Krasic said.