arijke smiled. Already, Petra had reminded her that there was more to life than murder. At last, she could see a route that might take her to sleep.

The Wilhelmina Rosen sat unusually high in the water. She'd discharged her cargo that morning, but someone at the shipping agency had screwed up, and the load that should have been stowed that afternoon had been delayed till the following day. He wasn't unduly anxious. He could probably make up the day once they were under way, even if it meant bending the rules about how long their watches should be. And the crew were happy enough. They weren't going to complain about a night ashore in Rotterdam, since it wasn't a delay that would put a dent in their pay.

Alone in his cabin, he unlocked a small brass-bound chest that had belonged to his grandfather and contemplated its contents. The two jars had originally contained pickled gherkins, but what floated inside now was infinitely more grisly. Preserved in formalin he'd stolen from a funeral parlour, the skin had lost its flesh tints and assumed the colour of tinned tuna. Fragments of the small muscles were darker, standing out against the skin like a cross-section of tuna steak grilled rare. The hair remained curled, though now it had the harsh dullness of a bad wig. Still, there could be no doubting what he was looking at.

When he had first fantasized about this, he'd known he would need some souvenir to remind himself how well he'd done. He had read books about murderers who had excised breasts, removed genitalia, stripped the skin from their victims to clothe themselves. None of this seemed right. They were weirdos and perverts, whereas he was driven by a motive far more pure. But he wanted something, and he needed it to hold meaning for him alone.

He ranged over the indignities he'd been forced to suffer at the hands of the old man. There was no blurring at the edges of his memory. Even commonly repeated tortures failed to merge into one big picture. Every detail of every mortification was pinprick sharp. What could he take that would? keep his purpose fresh, clear and meaningful? M

Then he'd remembered the shaving. It had happened soon | after his twelfth birthday, a day unmarked by gifts or cards.* The only reason he knew it was his birthday was that he'd 1 caught a glimpse of his birth certificate a few months before when the old man had been sorting through some papers. b. Until then, he'd had no date to call his own. He'd never had

so much as a birthday card, never mind presents, cakes and parties. But who could have been invited to any party of his? He had no friends, he had no wider family. As far as he was aware, the only people who even knew his name were the | crew of the Wilhelmina Rosen. >i

He'd known he was born some time in the autumn, because around the turning of the leaves, the litany of rage that poured into his ears would alter. Instead of, 'You're eight years old, but you still act like a baby,' the old man would snarl, 'You're nine now, time you learned what it is to take some responsibility.'

Around the time he turned twelve, he'd noticed the changes. He'd grown taller, his shoulders straining the seams of his flannel work shirts. His voice had become unreliable, shifting registers as if he were possessed by a demon. And around his cock, dark wiry hairs had started to sprout. He'd imagined this would happen eventually. He'd spent too long living in close confinement with three adult males not to have grasped that at some point his body was going to duplicate theirs. But the reality was simply another source of anxiety. He was leaving childhood behind, without any clear idea of how he could ever become a man.

His grandfather had noticed the changes too. It was hard to imagine how he could be more brutal, yet he seemed to regard it as a challenge to find fresh sources of humiliation. Things had reached a new level of horror when a hawser snapped one morning as they were docking in Hamburg. It had been one of those things that was nobody's fault, but the old man had decided that someone had to pay the price.

When they'd got back to the apartment, he had ordered the boy to strip. He'd stood shivering in the kitchen, wondering which of the familiar agonies awaited him, while his grandfather had raged through to the bathroom, swearing and insulting him. When the old man had returned, he was carrying his cut-throat razor, the blade open and gleaming like silver in the dimness of the afternoon light. Terror had risen like bile in his throat. Convinced he was going to be castrated at the very least, he'd sprung at the old man, fists flying, desperate to escape whatever lay ahead.

He hadn't even seen the punch that hit the side of his head like a mallet. All he knew was a moment of crushing pain, then oblivion. When he'd opened his eyes, it was dark. There was a dribble of dried vomit running from his cheek to the floor and a burning pain in his groin that was sufficiently frightening to render insignificant the dull throb in his head. He lay for long minutes, curled on the cold linoleum, afraid to allow his hands to explore for fear of what they might find.

Eventually, he dared. His fingers crept down his stomach, tentative and slow. At first, he encountered only the cold, smooth flesh of his stomach. Then, just above the pubic bone, there was a sudden change in texture and a jagged stab of pain that made him suck his breath in sharply. He clenched his jaw and pushed himself up on one elbow. It was too dark to see anything, but he decided he'd risk turning on a light. It might bring even more wrath down on his head, but he couldn't bear not knowing what had happened to him.

Almost crying with the several pains that movement brought, he managed to get to his knees, where he paused to let a nauseating dizziness pass. Using the table as a prop, he dragged himself to his feet and tottered the few steps to the kitchen light switch. He leaned against the wall and flicked the switch with trembling ringers. Dim yellow light filled the dingy room, and he steeled himself for a glance. '

The skin around his genitals was red raw. Every trace of pubic hair had been erased, along with the top layer of skin. There were pinprick scabs of blood where the razor had gone deeper still, but the cruel scraping of the tender skin was the source of the burning pain that coursed through his groin. He'd been more than shaved, he'd been skinned. He'd been reminded forcibly that he wasn't fit to think of himself as a man. He hated himself then, contempt swallowing him like a black tide.

Looking back now, he realized his panicky rebellion had been a turning point. From then on, his grandfather had been less ready to inflict his tortures. The old man began to keep his distance, relying on the verbal flaying that could still reduce the teenage boy to quivering incompetence. He thought about running away, but where would he run to? The Wilhelmina Rosen was his only world and he doubted his ability to survive in any other. Gradually, as he had emerged into his twenties, he comprehended that there might be another way to gain freedom. It had been a painfully slow process, and in the end, he had won.

But that victory still hadn't been enough. He'd known that before Heinrich Holtz had told his story in the beer garden. What Holtz had given him was a glimpse of how he could finally get his own back He'd given him a way to be a man.

He picked up one of the jars and swirled it round, watching the contents move in a slow danse macabre. He smiled as he unzipped his jeans.

Tadeusz Radecki was far too smart to be nothing more than a gangster. He'd built a legitimate business empire of video rental stores that provided him not only with a justifiable income to keep the tax authorities happy, but also allowed enough leeway in its accounting procedures to permit a serious amount of money laundering. If his business rivals had ever seen his company's books, they'd have wondered how he could achieve such high rental levels per video and probably fired their own marketing teams out of pique. But that wasn't going to happen. Tadeusz made sure his public business was above reproach. Not for him the shady back street video stores with their under-the-counter hardcore, or the wraps of drugs that changed hands in the video boxes. It might be his wares they were peddling, but there was no way he wanted any official connection to them.

That afternoon, he'd been visiting his flagship store at the top of the Ku'damm, where they did as much business selling videos as they did renting them out. He'd gone to check out the revamp that the most stylish shopfitters in the city had been carrying out, and he'd been impressed with the result. Clean lines, moody lighting and a coffee bar hi the middle of the shop floor came together to produce the perfect ambience for browsing and spending.

After the tour of the shop, the manager had taken him up to his office for a celebratory glass of wine. As they'd entered, the TV screen had been showing a news channel. A reporter stood in a street Tadeusz recognized immediately as Friesenstrasse in Kreuzberg. Behind him was the unmistakable four storey building that housed the GeSa, the detention centre where all newly arrested criminals were brought. It wasn't somewhere Tadeusz was personally familiar with; he knew the street principally because he always bought his reading material at the Hammett crime bookshop there.

The reporter's mouth was opening and closing soundlessly, his frowning face indicating the seriousness of what he was revealing to the waiting world. Then the picture changed to amateur video footage of a man being hustled out of a car towards the heavy grey door of the GeSa, a uniformed officer on either side of him. Suddenly, a woman ducked under the barrier that prevented cars from driving straight into the yard from the street. The officers on duty in the guard post were caught unawares, only emerging from their booth as the woman ran up behind the prisoner and his escort, waving something in front of her. She stopped a couple of yards away from them, directly behind the prisoner. In an instant, his head blossomed scarlet, like a blob of spaghetti sauce splattered on a kitchen surface. The police officers peeled away from him as he crumpled. They hit the deck with their pale faces turning towards the woman. Even at that range, it was possible to see their eyes stretching wide in panic.

Tadeusz stared at the screen, appalled. He'd only seen the sniper's victim for a few seconds, and then only in three quarter profile. But he knew who the dead man was. He was aware of the shop manager saying something and he turned away from the screen. 'Sorry?' he said.

'I said, it's funny how real-life shootings never look half as dramatic as the ones we sell.' He reached for the open bottle of red wine on his desk and poured two glasses.

'I don't think I've ever seen a real-life shooting before,' Tadeusz lied. 'I'm quite shocked they're showing it in all its glory on the early evening news.' a {>-f^f|v

The manager laughed as he handed a glass to his boss. Tm sure the moral guardians of the nation's youth will be clogging the TV station switchboard with complaints as we speak. Cheers, Tadeusz. Good decision to choose those guys. They've made a great job of the shop floor.'

Tadeusz raised his glass mechanically, reaching for his mobile with his other hand. 'Yes. Now I need to find a way to justify the expense of doing up the rest of the chain. Excuse me.' He touched a couple of keys to speed-dial Krasic. 'It's me,' he said. 'We need a meeting. I'll see you at my place in half an hour.' He ended the call without waiting for Krasic's response, then sipped his wine. 'Lovely stuff, Jurgen, but I'm afraid I've got to run. Empires to build, new worlds to conquer -- you know how it is.'

Twenty minutes later, he was pacing the floor in front of his TV screen, flipping channels to see if he could find a local news station that was running the footage of Kamal's assassination. Finally, he caught the tail end of the video and immediately raised the volume. The studio anchorman took up the story. 'The dead man, whose name has not yet been released, had been arrested in connection with the seven heroin deaths in the city in the past week. Sources close to the investigation say that the woman who fired the fatal shot was the girlfriend of one of the addicts who died after shooting up with contaminated drugs. Already, there are calls for an inquiry into how the woman found out about the arrest before the prisoner had even been taken into formal custody.' He glanced down at his papers. 'And now over to our correspondent at the Reichstag, where representatives have been debating new measures to combat the spread of BSE...'

Tadeusz hit the mute button. He'd heard all he needed to know. When Krasic finally arrived five minutes late, complaining about the traffic, he launched straight in. 'What the hell are you playing at?'

'What do you mean, Tadzio?' Krasic stalled. It was clear from the troubled look in his eyes that he knew exactly what his boss meant.

'Fuck it, Darko, don't play stupid games with me. What possessed you? Having Kama! taken out on the steps of the fucking police station? I thought we were trying to take the limelight off this investigation, not turn it into the lead story across the country? Jesus, you couldn't have gone for a more public display.' 'What else was I supposed to do? There wasn't enough time to stage a convenient road accident...' His voice tailed off as he realized what he'd said.

The colour drained from Tadeusz's face. He looked terrifying in the shadows cast by the subtle lighting of the room. 'You insensitive bastard,' he snarled. 'Don't think you can divert me away from this fiasco by reminding me of Katerina.'

Krasic turned away and scowled. 'That's not what I meant. I just meant that I didn't have enough time to set something up that would look accidental. So I reckoned if it was going to end up looking like murder, it needed to look like a domestic, not something to do with the business. So I got Marlene to do the dirty. She's been working for us, shifting product in Mitte for the past couple of years. She's not a user herself. And she's smart enough to play the distraught girlfriend, deranged with grief. She'll get away with next to nothing when it comes to court. And she won't grass us up. She's got a six-year-old girl I've promised we'll take care of.

She knows me well enough to understand what that means. One word out of place and the kid gets taken care of, though not in the way she wants. Boss, it was the only way. It had to be done, and it had to be done like this.' There was no plea in Krasic's voice, just a convinced finality. *

Tadeusz glared at him. 'It's all going to shit,' he complained. 'This was supposed to go away. Instead, Kamal's whole life is going to come under the microscope.'

'No, boss, you're wrong. It's Marlene they're going to be looking at. Before we're done, we'll have turned her into the heroine who rid the city of some vile drug-dealing scum. Like I told you, she's not a user. Her life looks clean. And we can put up plenty of people who'll make her sound like Mother fucking Teresa. Photographs of the six-year-old looking lost. Stuff about how she was trying to get her boyfriend off the junk. Besides, now they've seen how we dealt with Kamal, nobody else is going to say a thing to the cops. Trust me, Tadzio, it's for the best.'

'It had better be, Darko. Because if it all goes to shit, I know exactly who to blame.'

Tony glanced at the clock as he left the seminar room. Five past eleven. Carol would almost certainly have embarked on her quest by now. He wondered where she was, how she was doing, what she was feeling. Her visit had unsettled him more than he cared to admit. It wasn't just that she had disturbed him on a personal level; he'd been expecting that and had done what he could to armour himself against the turbulent currents he knew would be swirling beneath the surface of any encounter between the pair of them.

What he hadn't anticipated was how she would stir him up on a professional level. The pleasure he'd taken in the preparation they'd done had been the mental equivalent of a cold shower. It had snapped his synapses to attention in a way that no interaction with undergraduates had ever done. It had reminded him that he was operating at about half his capacity here at the university, and while that might have been sensible as a kind of convalescence from the harrowing he'd undergone at the hands of Jacko Vance, it was no way to spend the rest of his life. If he'd needed further reinforcement, it had just fallen into his lap.

He'd always feared this moment. Deep down, he'd known the siren call of what he did best might rise again to waken him from the slumberous existence he'd chosen. And he'd done everything in his power to guard against that moment.

But the combination of the news of Jacko Vance's appeal and the return of Carol Jordan had been too strong for his fortifications.

Things had changed since he'd last been in the front line, he knew that. Quietly, privately, the Home Office had taken a sideways step from using professional psychologists as consultants on complex serial murder investigations. The publicity that had been generated by their earlier policy had given them too many sweaty-palmed moments for them to be willing to continue it indefinitely. Not everyone was as talented as Tony; and few were as close-mouthed. Although there were still a handful of experts who were called in on an ad hoc basis, the police had been busy behind the scenes building their own skills base at the National Crime Faculty at Bramshill. Now there was a new breed of criminal analyst, officers trained in an impressive mixture of psychological skills and computer navigation. Like the FBI and the Canadian RCMP, the Home Office had decided that it was better to rely on police officers trained in specialist areas than to call on the sometimes questionable skills of clinicians and academics who, after all, had no direct experience of what it took to catch a criminal. So, in one sense, there was no longer a place for Tony doing what he believed he had a unique talent for. And after the last debacle there was no way any politician would agree to give him any training or developmental role.

But perhaps there was something else he could offer. Perhaps he could find a niche that would allow him occasionally to flex his analytical muscles in pursuit of the profoundly disturbed minds who committed the most unreadable of crimes.

And perhaps this time, with Carol almost certainly moving to some new role in Europol, he could escape the turmoil that had accompanied his last two excursions into the minds of serial killers. It was certainly worth thinking about.

The only question now was who he could reach out to in a tentative approach. The Vance appeal would have reminded people of his existence. Maybe this was the perfect time to jog their memories a little more, to persuade them that he alone had something to throw into the ring that nobody else had. Not only did he understand how the mind of the serial offender worked; he was one of the few people on the planet who had actually been responsible for putting some of them where they could do no more harm.

It wouldn't hurt to try.

That Monday morning in Berlin, Petra Becker was also thinking about serial offenders. It would be a terrific boost to her career if she managed to be the person who made the links that demonstrated there was a serial killer working across European borders.

But first she had to find the case she'd been reminded of. Petra sat and frowned at her computer, the severity of her expression a sharp contrast to the spiky exuberance of her short dark hair. Parallel lines furrowed her broad forehead and her eyebrows shadowed her blue eyes, turning them navy. She knew she'd read about it relatively recently, but she'd dismissed it as being of no interest. Petra worked in intelligence. Her team were responsible for gathering information on organized crime, building a basic case, then passing it on to the appropriate law enforcement bodies. With European borders allowing free passage to the criminal as well as the law-abiding following the Schengen Agreement, that frequently meant colleagues in other countries, often using Europol as a conduit. In the past three years, Petra had investigated areas as diverse as product tampering, drug running, credit-card fraud and human trafficking. Murder wasn't normally on her beat, except when the investigating officers thought there might be a connection to organized crime. It was, she thought cynically, a way of handing off any difficult case that looked remotely like a scum-on-scum killing, the sort of scuzzy case that most police forces didn't lose any sleep over if they couldn't nail a culprit.

So the case she was looking for would have come in as a possible gangland killing. But if it had been tossed aside because it didn't fit any of their parameters, it wouldn't be in any of the holding files on the computer. It might even have been deleted from the main system, on the basis that it was just clutter.

Petra, however, was too anally retentive to dump case information without a trace. You never knew when something written off by everyone else might just feed into a subsequent investigation. So she'd developed the habit of taking brief notes even on the apparently irrelevant. That way, she could always go back to the original investigating officers and pull the details again.

She called up the folder that contained her notes and checked the recent files. There were four murder cases from the past seven weeks. She dismissed a drive-by shooting in a small town between Dresden and the Polish border and the murder of a Turk in Stuttgart. He'd bled to death following the amputation by machete of both hands. Petra had thought it was probably more to do with some domestic settling of scores than any organized criminal activity, since the local cops hadn't come up with a single thing to connect the dead man to anything more illegal than an expired visa.

That left two cases. A very strange murder in Heidelberg and the crucifixion of a known drug dealer in Hamburg. Her notes said nothing about pubic scalping, but she seemed to recall it had featured in one or other of those cases. She checked the reference numbers and sent e-mails to both police divisions involved. With luck, she'd have an answer by the end of the day.

Petra headed for the coffee machine, feeling very pleased with herself. She was emptying a sachet of sugar into her cup when her boss, Hanna Plesch, joined her. 'You're looking cheerful,' she said.

'And you're going to put a stop to that, right?' She cocked an eyebrow at her.

'That shooting over at the GeSa on Friesenstrasse -1 want you to do a bit of digging, see what you can come up with.' Plesch leaned past her and pressed the button for a black coffee.

Petra stirred her coffee thoughtfully. 'It's hardly our area, is it? I heard it was being written up as a personal thing. The shooter was the girlfriend of one of the doctored heroin victims, wasn't she?'

Plesch gave a sardonic smile. 'That's the official line. Me, I think it stinks. She's on our files, you know, the woman who did the shooting. Marlene Krebs. We had intelligence that she was dealing in Mitte. Small fry, so we left her alone. But we heard she's tied in to Darko Krasic.'

'Which means she might be a way through to Radecki,' Petra continued. 'So you want me to talk to her?'

Plesch nodded. 'It could be worth our while. She probably thinks she's looking at a light sentence if she plays the sympathy card - woman insane with grief takes revenge on the evil drug pusher who destroyed her lover. If we can persuade her that's not going to happen...'

'She might just give us something we can use to build a case against Krasic and Radecki.' Petra sipped her coffee, wincing at the heat.

'Exactly.'

'Leave it with me,' she said. 'I reckon as soon as she finds out who I am and what I know about her, she'll realize she hasn't got a cat in hell's chance of making the deranged lover defence work. Can you let me have whatever we've got on her?'

'It's already on your desk.' Plesch began to move away.

'Oh, and Hanna... ?'

She paused and glanced over her shoulder. 'You want something else.' It was a statement, not a question.

'Someone else. I need someone out on the street in Mitte. We need to establish that the dead guy really wasn't Marlene's man.'

'Hard to prove a negative.'

'Maybe so. But if we can nail down who Marlene has been shagging, it might rule out a connection to the dead guy. Likewise, if we can establish whether he was involved with anyone on a long-term basis...'

Plesch shrugged. 'Probably worth a try. The Shark's got nothing pressing on his plate. Send him out for some red meat.'

Petra's heart sank as she walked back to her desk. The Shark was an ironic nickname for the most junior member of the squad. He'd earned it because he had no taste for blood and was incapable of moving backwards to reassess new data in the light of experience. Nobody thought he would last long on the squad. He wasn't the person she would have chosen to trawl the bars and cafes of Mitte, probing their sources to find out what was to be learned about Marlene Krebs. It showed what a waste of time Plesch thought that was. Still, it was better than nothing. And she could always head out there herself that evening if she'd not managed to pry something useful out of Krebs in exchange for a deal on her sentence.

It wasn't as if she had anything better to do.

Even though it was a raw, damp day, Carol was sweating. She'd carried out the first part of her assignment without a hitch, but she knew she was a long way off being home and dry. The detailed brief had arrived by courier just after seven. She'd ripped open the thin envelope, almost tearing the contents in her haste. There was a single sheet of paper inside. It informed her that she should be at the address she had previously been given by ten a.m. There, she would be provided with the rest of her instructions.

Her first instinct was to arrive right on time at the rendezvous, an anonymous terraced house in Stoke Newing ton. But that might be the first test in itself. Perhaps she was supposed not to do what was expected of her. Hurriedly, she showered and dressed in the clothes she'd decided Janine Jerrold would have worn for such an assignment. A short black lycra skirt, a white T-shirt with long sleeves and a scoop neck under a fitted fake leather jacket. In her shoulder bag she carried everything she needed to change her look. A baseball cap, aviator frames with clear glass lenses, a pair of denim leggings and a lightweight waterproof kagoule in a nasty shade of pale blue. Also in the shoulder bag was an illegal CS gas spray and a metal comb with a sharpened tail. They were both relics of her days in CID in the port of Seaford, items she'd confiscated and never got round to handing in. She wasn't quite sure how her watchers would react if she had to resort to them, but she was supposed to be showing initiative and acting like a real drugs courier. She could always argue the point afterwards.

Having decided to arrive early, Carol set out from her flat just after eight. She took a circuitous route to her destination. There would, she was sure, be followers, but she had no intention of making it easy for them. Taking advantage of the rush-hour commuters would be one way of improving her edge. Even so, she still jumped off the tube at the last possible moment, doubling back three stops before emerging at street level and catching a bus.

When she turned into the quiet side street, there was no one on her heels. But that didn't mean there weren't keen eyes on her. She climbed the three steps to the front door she'd been directed to. The paintwork was filthy with London grime, but it looked in reasonably good condition. She pressed the doorbell and waited. Long seconds passed, then the door opened a couple of inches. A pale face smudged with stubble and topped with a spiky crest of black hair peered at her. 'I'm looking for Gary,' she said, as instructed.

'Who are you?'

'Jason's friend.' Again, following her orders.

The door swung open, the man taking care to stay out of sight of the street as he let her in. 'I'm Gary,' he said, leading the way into the front room. He was barefoot, wearing faded 50is and a surprisingly clean white T-shirt. Dingy net curtains hung at the window, obscuring the street. The carpet was an indeterminate shade between brown and grey, worn almost to the backing in front of a sagging sofa that faced a wide-screen NICAM TV complete with DVD player. 'Take a seat,' Gary said, waving a hand at the sofa. It wasn't an appetizing prospect. Til be right back.'

He left her alone with the home entertainment centre. There was a stack of DVDs by the player, but that was the only personal touch in the room, which otherwise was about as welcoming as a police interview room. Judging by the titles, Gary was a fan of violent action movies. There wasn't a single movie Carol would have paid money to see, and several she'd have parted with hard cash to avoid.

Gary was gone less than a minute. He returned with a plastic-wrapped package of white powder in one hand and a roll-up trailing a streamer of unmistakable dope smoke in the other. 'This is the merchandise,' he said, tossing the package towards her. Carol grabbed it without thinking, then realized this meant her fingerprints were now all over it. She made a mental note to wipe the surface as soon as she got the chance. She had no idea whether she'd be carrying the real thing, although she doubted it. But the last thing she needed was to get a tug from some eager copper who wasn't part of the operation and be nailed with a half-kilo of cocaine with her prints all over it.

'So where am I supposed to deliver it?'

Gary perched on the arm of the sofa and took a deep drag from the skinny joint. Carol studied his narrow face, itemizing the features as she habitually did. Just in case. Thin, long nose; hollow cheeks. Deep-set brown eyes. A plain silver ring through the left eyebrow. A jutting jaw with a definite overbite. 'There's a caf?bar in Dean Street,' he said. 'Damocles, it's called. The guy you're meeting will be at the corner table at the back by the toilets. You hand over the package and he'll give you a wad. You bring the cash back here to me. That clear?'

'How will I know it's the right guy? I mean, what if he can't get that table.'

Gary rolled his eyes. 'He'll be reading Q magazine. And he smokes Gitanes. That enough? Or do you want his inside leg measurement?'

'A description would help.'

'Dream on.'

'Or a name?'

Gary's grin was crooked, revealing even teeth stained ivory. 'Yeah, right, that'll happen. Look, just do it, huh? I'll be expecting you back here by two.'

Carol tucked the drugs away in her shoulder bag, placing the package between the folds of the denim leggings then rubbing the surface clean through the cloth. She didn't care if Gary saw her. It wouldn't hurt to have a witness to her prudence if he was, as she suspected, one of Morgan's watchers. 'See you later, then,' she said, trying not to show the antagonism she felt. After all, there was no point. He was almost certainly someone like her, a cop thrust into an alien role for some purpose neither of them was allowed to know.

She returned to the street and shivered as a chill gust of wind cut through her thin clothes! The quickest way to Soho would mean turning left and heading back to the mam road where she could pick up a bus. Which would be what they were expecting her to do. So she turned right and walked briskly towards the end of the street. From her earlier reconnaissance, Carol knew she could cut through the warren of back streets to a short alley between some shops that would bring her out on the other side of Stoke Newington, from where she could catch a train. They wouldn't be expecting that, she reckoned.

sAt the corner, she quickened her pace to a trot, hoping to make the next corner before whoever was on her tail could catch up with her. She crossed into the next street, pulling the kagoule out of her bag as she went. Her next turning was almost upon her, and she swung quickly into a gateway, pulling the kagoule over her head and jamming the baseball cap over her blonde hair. Then she walked back into the street, this time adopting a slow, swaggering walk, as if she had all the time in the world.

When she reached the junction, she glanced over her shoulder. Nobody in sight apart from an elderly man clutching a supermarket carrier bag and shuffling down the opposite side of the street. Which meant nothing, she knew.

She couldn't allow herself to act as if she'd shaken off her pursuit.

Now the entrance to the alley was in sight. It was a narrow passage between high brick walls, easy to miss if you didn't know it was there. With the adrenaline surge of relief, Carol turned into its gloomy mouth.

She was about a third of the way down when she realized she'd made a bad mistake. Heading towards her were two young men. There wasn't quite enough room for them to walk side by side, but they were so close together she couldn't possibly pass them. They looked like thugs; but these days, most men in their late teens and early twenties did. Carol found herself wondering, idiotically, when exactly it had become fashionable for respectable lads to look like potential muggers. This pair fit the identikit mould perfectly. Heads shaved to stubble, waterproof Nike jackets over football shirts, chinos and Doc Martens. There was nothing to distinguish them from thousands of others. Maybe that's the point, she thought as they approached inexorably.

She desperately wanted to look behind her, to check her avenue of escape, but knew that would instantly be seen as a sign of weakness. The gap between her and the two men closed by the second and she could see their gait change almost imperceptibly. Now they were moving more cautiously on the balls of their feet, a pair of predators sizing up the prey. She had to assume they were part of the game. Which meant they'd stop short of doing her serious damage. To think otherwise was too disturbing. Carol was far too accustomed to being a woman in control of her environment to contemplate how easily she'd turned herself into a potential victim.

Suddenly they were upon her, jostling her from either side, backing her into the wall. 'What have we got here, then?' the taller of the two said, his voice a guttural North London taunt.

'Yeah, what's your name, darlinT the other leered.

Carol chanced a look at the far end of the alley. It was clear. There were only the two of them.

Her moment's inattention had given them then* chance. The taller one grabbed at her bag. 'Give it up,' he demanded. 'Save yourself a beating.' on

Carol clung on grimly, leaning against the wall and adjusting her weight. Her left leg shot out in a savage kick, catching him on the inside of the kneecap. He howled in pain and rage, stumbling back and away from her, releasing the bag strap to grab his knee as he crumpled to the ground.

'Fucking cunt,' the other one said in a low voice that was far more frightening than a shout. He sprang towards her, right arm pulling back for a punch. Carol saw it all with slow motion clarity. As he brought his fist towards her, she let herself drop and his momentum carried him forward into the wall.

It gave her a couple of precious seconds to grab the gas canister from her bag. As her first assailant scrambled to his feet, she let him have the CS gas straight in the face. Now he was really howling, screaming like an animal in a trap.

His mate swung round, ready for a second attack. When he saw her grinning like a madwoman, the spray can at arm's length, pointing straight at him, he raised both hands, palms facing her, in the universal gesture of surrender. 'Fucking take it easy, bitch,' he shouted.

'Get out of my fucking way,' Carol snarled.

Obediently, he flattened himself against the wall. She edged past him, careful to keep the spray pointing at him all the time. His friend was still yelling, his eyes streaming and his mouth contorted in pain. Carol walked backwards in the direction of the street, never taking her eyes off them. The one who had punched the wall had his arm round the other now, and they were staggering towards the far end of the alley, all the bravado knocked out of them like the air from a punctured balloon. She allowed herself a small, private smile. If that was the best Morgan could throw at her, she was going to come out of this with flying colours.

She turned her back on her assailants and walked out into the busy street. It was hard to believe that only a matter of yards from this mid-morning bustle of shoppers and strollers she'd stared physical danger in the face. As the adrenaline surge receded, she became aware of the state she was in. Her upper body was drenched, the double skin of the vinyl jacket and the kagoule acting like a sweatbox on her skin. Her hair under the baseball cap felt plastered to her head. And she was starving. If she was going to complete this mission, she'd be crazy to ignore her body's messages.

Up ahead, she saw the golden arches of a McDonald's. She could get something to eat then use the toilet to clean herself up and switch from the skirt into her denim leggings. With luck it would have a functioning hot-air hand drier. She could maybe even alter her hairstyle, thanks to the sweat of panic.

Twenty minutes later, Carol was back on the street. Her hair was off her face, slicked back with a smear of hair wax. The aviator frames subtly altered the shape of her face. The jacket was zipped up, hiding the T-shirt underneath. She looked different enough from the woman who had rung Gary's doorbell to confuse most casual observers. She knew it wasn't enough to fool the sort of scrutiny she expected to be under, but it might be sufficient to buy her a few extra seconds when it counted.

She took her time getting to the station, browsing shop windows as if she was just another idle shopper wondering what to buy for dinner. But once there, she trotted up the steps to the platform just in time to catch the train. Good thing I checked out the timetable, she congratulated herself as she slumped into a corner seat in a carriage that smelled of dust. It was a breathing space. Time to figure out what came next.

Petra walked into the squad room of the GeSa. It was as depressing as every other one she'd been in. The net curtains that blurred the bars over the three windows were the dirty yellow of second-hand nicotine, the walls and floor the same graded shades of grey that characterized the rest of the GeSa. That fascinating gamut from dove to anthracite, Petra thought wryly The Wachpolizisten stationed at the GeSa had tried to r brighten up the room with the usual kitsch array of postcards,

cartoons and photographs of their pets. A couple of tired plants struggled to cope with the absence of any direct sunlight. It only served to make the place even more depressing.

The room was empty except for a solitary female WaPo who was putting a plastic box full of a prisoner's personal effects on one of the shelves. She turned as Petra leaned on the counter and cleared her throat. Tm Petra Becker from Criminal Intelligence. I'm here to see Marlene Krebs,' Petra said. 'You've still got her, right?'

The WaPo nodded. 'She's due to see the judge in a couple of hours, then she'll be transferred, I guess. Don't you want to wait till then?'

'I need to talk to her now. I can use the lawyer's room, yeah?'

The WaPo looked uncertain. 'You better talk to the boss. He's in the report room.'

'That's down at the end of the cell block, right?'

'Behind the fingerprint room, yes. You'll need to leave your gun here.'

Petra took her pistol from its holster in the small of her back and locked it into one of the lockers for visiting officers. Then she headed out of the squad room towards the cell corridor. She glanced up at the electronic alert system the cops sarcastically called the room-service board. None of the alarm lamps was lit; for once the prisoners were being well behaved, not driving the GeSa team crazy with constant summonses.

The cell block itself was surprisingly sterile and modern. The usual linoleum gave way to red brick tiles on floor and walls. Most of the doors were closed, indicating that they were occupied. A couple were open, revealing a small vestibule, beyond which wall-to-wall bars enclosed four square metres of cell equipped with a bed and a rectangular hole in the floor covered with a chrome grid in case the inmates decided not to ring for a toilet visit and just fouled the cell. It was a mistake most of them made only once; the cost of cleaning the cell after such acts of defiance was billed directly to the prisoners.

Petra wondered which door concealed Marlene Krebs, and how she was coping. Badly, she hoped. It would make her job that much easier.

She found the shift commander in the Schreibzimmer, frowning at one of the Berliner Modell computers. She explained her mission, and he asked her to wait while he organized an interview. 'We shouldn't really have her here,' he grumbled. 'She should have gone straight to KriPo, but since it happened on our doorstep, they told us to hang on to her.'

'It is only for twenty-four hours max,' Petra pointed out.

'That's about twenty-three too many for me. She's been bleating since she arrived. She wants a lawyer, she wants to * use the toilet, she wants a drink. She seems to think this is a hotel, not a detention centre. She acts like we should be treating her like a hero instead of a criminal.' He pushed himself to his feet and made for the door. Til send someone for you in a few minutes. You can take a look at the paperwork - it's in the tray over there.' He gestured with his thumb to a pile of files stacked high above the edges of a filing tray.

He was as good as his word. Within ten minutes, she was sitting in the Anwaltsraum, facing Marlene Krebs across a table bolted to the floor. Krebs could have been any age between thirty and forty, though Petra knew from the report she'd read that the woman was only twenty-eight. Her hair I was dyed a harsh black, tousled from a night in the cells. Her make-up was smudged, presumably from the same cause. Krebs had the puffy face and hands of a drinker, and the whites of her pale green eyes were tinged with yellow. However, she also possessed the sleepy sensuality of a woman who is attractive to men and who knows it.

'Marlene, I'm Petra Becker from Criminal Intelligence.' Petra sat back and let the words sink in. ?

Krebs' face revealed nothing. 'Have you got any cigarettes?' she asked.

Petra took a half-empty pack from her pocket and pushed it towards Krebs. She snatched at it and thrust a cigarette between full lips. 'What about a light, then?' she demanded.

'The cigarette was free. The light will cost you.'

Krebs scowled. 'Bitch,' she said. ?

Petra shook her head. 'Not a good start.'

'What's this about, anyway? What have I got to do with Criminal Intelligence?'

'It's a bit late to be asking that, Marlene. That really should have been your first question.'

Krebs took the cigarette from her mouth and flicked the tip as if there was ash to be deposited. 'Look, I admit I shot that dope-dealing bastard Kamal.'

'It's not like there's much room for doubt.'

'But I had good reason. He sold my Danni the junk that killed him. What can I say? I was crazy with grief.'

Petra slowly shook her head. 'You're never going to cut it as an actress, Marlene. That routine needs a lot of work before you go in front of a judge. Look, we both know your story is bullshit. Why don't we cut the crap and see what I can do for you?'

'I don't know what you're talking about. I told you. Kamal killed Danni. I loved Danni. Something in me snapped when I heard Kamal had been arrested and I wanted to take revenge for what he had taken from me.'

Petra smiled. It was the lizard smile of a predator who smells the first hint of blood. 'See, Marlene, there's the first problem. The guys who brought Kamal in, they didn't hang around. They went straight to his restaurant, they pulled him out of the front door and into their car. Then they drove here. I've seen the logs. There was barely enough time for you to hear about the arrest, never mind get hold of a gun and get to Friesenstrasse in time to put a bullet in his head.' Petra let Marlene think about that. 'Unless of course someone tipped you the wink that the arrest was about to go down. Why would anyone do that, unless they wanted Kamal dead? So, how did you hear about Kamal's arrest?'

'I don't have to answer you.'

'No, you don't. But you do need to listen to me, because everything I'm saying to you is a stick of dynamite blowing a hole in your mitigation. Marlene, this isn't going to play the way whoever set you up for it said it would. Your story is going to fall to bits as soon as the KriPo start poking around.

Now, I know you think they're not going to bother too much with this because it's saved them the hassle of a difficult prosecution with Kamal, not to mention one less scuzzy middle ranking dealer on the streets. But me, you see, I'm bothered. Because I'm interested in the people above Kamal.'

'You're not making any sense,' Krebs said obstinately. 'Are you going to light this rucking cigarette or what?'

'I told you. Not for free. Come on, Marlene. Face it, you're going away for a very long time. This wasn't a crime of passion, it was an assassination. And we're going to prove it. You're going to be a grandmother before you see freedom again.'

For the first time, there was a flicker of something behind Krebs' cold eyes. 'You can't prove what isn't true.'

Petra laughed out loud. 'Oh, please, Marlene. I thought your sort believed that's what us cops do all the time? OK, proving what isn't true can sometimes be ... demanding. But compared to that, proving what we know to be true is a piece of piss. I know you were put up to this. And I know the people who did that gambled on us not caring too much about who took Kamal down or why. But they weren't gambling with their own stake. They were using you for chips. So, we already have a hole in your story about time. I think the next hole will be where you got the gun from.'