The snow was already starting to settle as she crossed the deserted street. There was no one else waiting at the bus stop, which thankfully had a canopy. Müller was glad she’d wrapped up warm, with her police overcoat, faux fur hat, gloves and boots. She stamped in them now, jumped up and down on the spot, and clapped her hands together – all in an attempt to keep the blood circulating in her extremities. Through the gloom of weak street lighting, which softly illuminated the slowly falling flakes of snow, she began to take in her surroundings. It looked much like a smaller version of Gorbitz, or even Halle-Neustadt – the new town so closely wrapped up in the birth of her twins, and where they’d been conceived during her ill-fated relationship with Emil. Most of the Plattenbauten – the rows of concrete slab apartment blocks – were identical squat cuboids of no more than five or six storeys in height. Here, though, as in Ha-Neu, the blocks were punctuated by what looked like four high-rises, towering into the snowy semi-darkness.

Her musings were interrupted by the headlights and rough diesel-engine sound of an approaching bus. Müller made sure she was visible to the driver, and it slowed to a halt.

The bus was almost empty, which for the sake of the inquiry was a godsend. If it had been the same on Monday evening, and the woman who bought the ticket had been the only passenger waiting at the stop – as Müller was – then she had half a chance of finding out something more about her.

As she climbed aboard, the driver was already launching into his patter.

‘Not the night for a pretty lady like you to be out and about on her own,’ he said, as she offered up some change for a ticket. The man – and the way he was lecherously looking her up and down – immediately gave her the creeps. Müller had to remind herself that she wanted to extract information from him, otherwise she might have been inclined to give him a piece of her mind. Nevertheless, he soon grew more serious when she showed him her Kripo ID card.

‘Hauptmann Karin Müller, Kriminalpolizei. I need to ask you a few questions.’

The man looked around nervously, as though to check no one else was watching or listening. The only other passengers were a couple of pensioners, a man and woman, and they didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Nevertheless, he made as though to stand and turned his engine off.

‘It’s all right,’ said Müller. ‘It’s nothing serious. Carry on driving. I can ask what I want at the bus stops or when there’s not much traffic.’

The man slumped back in his seat in relief, and restarted the engine. ‘I was scratching my head for a moment wondering what I’d done wrong to warrant a visit from the K.’