Carol flipped the file open. She found herself staring down at a 10 × 8 black-and-white photograph of a remarkably handsome man. It wasn’t a posed studio-shot, but had the graininess of something snatched while its subject wasn’t looking. He was in three-quarters profile, looking off at something to the right of the photographer, a slight frown provoking a line between his eyebrows. His glossy dark collar-length hair was swept back from a high forehead, falling over delicate ears in a slight wave. The eyes were deep-set above wide Slavic cheekbones. His nose had the curve of a hawk’s bill, and his full lips were slightly parted, giving a faint glimpse of white teeth. He looked as sharp and polished as a diamond.

‘Tadeusz Radecki. Tadzio to his friends,’ Morgan said. ‘He’s genetically Polish, though he was born in Paris and educated in England and Germany. Currently lives in a palatial apartment in Berlin. His grandmother was some sort of countess. Plenty of blue blood, but his old man had a gambling habit and there wasn’t much dosh left by the time Tadeusz finished with university. So he decided to become an entrepreneur. On paper, he owns a very successful chain of video-rental outlets in Germany. He moved in big time after the wall came down and cashed in on all those Ossies who’d been starved of Hollywood culture.’

Carol waited. She knew there was more, much more. But she’d never seen the point in asking questions simply for the satisfaction of hearing her own voice. Morgan leaned back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head. ‘Of course, that’s not the whole story. Our man Tadzio realized early on that there was more money to be made on the wrong side of the law than on the right side. Through his family contacts, he started doing a bit of gunrunning for the warlords in the former Yugoslavia after that all fell to bits. He had the contacts in the old Soviet Union to supply the material, and he set himself up as a middle man. Clean hands again. It worked out very nicely for him. He made a packet and he also acquired his right-hand man, a lethal little Serb called Darko Krasic.

‘With the profits from the gunrunning, Tadzio and Darko invested in some serious protection and started shifting large amounts of drugs. They always took care to stay far enough away from the street-level stuff to keep their hands out of the muck while making sure their noses stayed right in the trough. In the last few years, they’ve taken the lion’s share of the hard drugs market in central Germany, as well as financing some major international deals, including shipping heroin into the UK. They’ve stayed on top mostly because Darko has a reputation for being a totally ruthless bastard. You double-cross him, you die. And not in a nice way.’