arol shrugged. 'There's some quirk in my brain that lets me replay conversations word for word. I don't know why. No one else in the family can do it. Just me.'

'That's an amazing gift for a cop,' Petra said.

'It does come in handy,' Carol admitted. 'So you see, there's never any fear that I'm going to be exposed wearing a wire. Because I don't need one.'

'I thought your written report was very comprehensive,' Petra said.

'Only trouble is, it takes forever to transcribe.' Carol rolled over on to her stomach. 'Thanks for sorting out an apartment for Tony in my building.'

'It was the least I could do after you arranged for him to come over and help us. He doesn't waste any time, does he?'

Carol smiled. 'He's very driven. When he commits to something, he sleeps, eats and breathes it.'

'I just hope that together we can come up with something before he kills again.' Petra clenched her hands into fists. 'I'm starting to take this very personally.'

Krasic walked into the Einstein Caft just offUnter den Linden and scanned the room. He saw Tadeusz sitting alone in one of the wooden booths beyond the bar counter. He shouldered his way past staff and customers and slid in opposite his boss.

Tadeusz looked up and gave him a preoccupied smile, 'Hi, Darko,' he said. 'How was the trip?'

The noise level in the caf?was high enough to make their booth as private as Tadeusz's sitting room. Krasic shrugged out of his overcoat and made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. 'Sweet,' he said. 'I don't know, you'd think every fucker in the Balkans who wanted a gun would have half a dozen by now, but their appetite's endless.' The waiter approached and Krasic ordered a black coffee and a large Jack Daniels. 'There are a couple of nutters looking for something more serious. I said I'd see what we could do.'

'We've got that shipment coming in from our friends in the east next week. There should be something there to satisfy them,' Tadeusz said. 'Nice work, Darko.'

'Oh, and I checked with my cousin - Marlene's kid is still tucked up tight. No sign of anyone looking for her out there. Everything quiet at this end?' the Serb asked, wondering what was on his boss's mind, hoping nothing else had gone up in smoke in his absence. ^

'Yes, no problems at all/ Tadeusz stirred his hot chocolate, ^ j the lines between his eyebrows deepening. 'But something very strange happened to me last night.'

Krasic was suddenly on the alert, like a guard dog who senses the air has changed. 'What's that?'

'I was at the opera. And a woman came to my box at the first interval.'

'Most blokes would see that as a welcome distraction from fl all that screaming.'

'I don't think this is grounds for humour, Darko,' Tadeusz chided him. 'This woman was English. Her name is Caroline Jackson. She claims to have known Colin Osborne. She says she was about to do some business with him when he was killed. She also says she can step into his shoes and do a better job of dealing with our illegals at that end.'

'Sounds like good news to me, if she is who she says she is. Did you get enough details to check her out?'

'I made a couple of calls last night, and she seems to be on the level. And I met her again today and got a lot more out of her. But I want her turned over top to bottom before we even think about doing any business with her.'

'You don't trust her?' Krasic scowled.

'I trust her far too much, Darko. That's the dangerous thing.'

Krasic looked bemused. 'I don't get it.'

Tadeusz opened the silver case sitting in front of him and drew out a cigar. He took his time clipping and lighting it. Krasic waited, the years having taught him that his boss couldn't be budged until he was good and ready. An unreadable expression crossed Tadeusz's face, then he said, 'She's Katerina's double.'

The waiter arrived with Krasic's order, temporarily silencing him. He took a mouthful df Jack Daniels while he wondered how to react. Had his boss finally lost it? 'What do you mean?* he stalled.

'Exactly what I say. She could be Katerina's twin. I nearly had a heart attack when she walked into my box last night. I thought I was seeing a ghost till she opened her mouth and this English voice came out. So you see, Darko, I can't be responsible for making any decisions about whether we trust this woman or not. Because every time I look at her, my heart stops.'

'Shit.' Krasic poured the rest of his drink into his coffee and drained half of it in one. 'You sure you're not suffering from some kind of delusion?'

'No. That's why I arranged to see her again today, to confirm that I wasn't dreaming. But it's not just me she freaks out. I saw the way people's heads were turning last night outside the Staatsoper and today at lunch. Like they couldn't believe their eyes. It's a complete mind fuck, Darko.'

'So you want me to check her out?'

'Till the pips squeak.' Tadeusz reached into his inside pocket and drew out an envelope. 'Inside here, there's an Italian passport she gave me as proof that she can do the business. Also, her address in Berlin. I got the car to take her home last night. And I've made a note of everything I can remember that she told me about herself. I want you to find out all you can about her. Either this is the weirdest fucking coincidence or else there's something very dangerous going on here. Find out which one it is, Darko.'

'I'm on it already, boss.' Krasic finished his drink and slid to the edge of the booth, gathering his coat as he went. 'If she's dodgy, we'll nail her. Don't you worry about it.

Tadeusz nodded, satisfied. He watched Krasic leave, butting through the crowd like a bull with a destiny. Darko would sort it out. Either Caroline Jackson was up to something shady. Or else she was possibly, just possibly his salvation.

The Rhine was in spate. The skipper of the Wilhelmina Rosen stood on the massive steps of the Deutsches Eck monument at the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel and glared at the racing brown flood tide, now closed to commercial traffic. If he was honest, he'd been expecting it. These days, it was a regular spring occurrence, not like in his youth. Global warming, he supposed. But it felt like another element in a giant conspiracy to thwart him.

He'd planned to get as far as Koln that afternoon and moor up in the basin just off the main river. Instead they were stuck here at Koblenz. For the first time in his life, he felt oppressed by living at close quarters with two other men. He'd suggested to Manfred and Gunther that they might as well go home for a few days, since the river showed no sign of falling and there was nothing useful for them to do on board. He'd even offered to pay them for the days they were gone. But neither had felt like taking him up on his proposal.

Gunther kept pointing out monotonously that it was a bloody long way from Koblenz to Hamburg and by the time they got there, it would be time to come back, and none of this would have happened if they'd been working the Oder and the Elbe, where they'd have practically been on their own doorstep.

Manfred didn't want to go because he was enjoying himself too much. With so many boats marooned there, he was in his element. He could sit around in bars all day and half the night, swapping stories with other boatmen. His capacity for drink was legendary, and he didn't often get the chance to indulge it like this, his wife being a woman who believed that when her man was in his home port, home was where he should be.

iSo he was stuck with the pair of them, driving him mad with their conversations as they compared notes about where they'd been, who they'd seen, what gossip they'd picked up and where they were going next. All he wanted was peace and quiet, the chance to restore his equilibrium after Bremen. He wanted to be alone so nobody would ask him why he was buying all the papers every day and scanning their columns for details of one story in particular. With Gunther and Manfred underfoot, the only way he could search the news to see if he'd been seen and described was to read the papers on-line. Once his crewmen had realized he wasn't spending his time on the internet looking at porn, they'd lost all interest.

Even with this access to the news, he still worried. Sometimes stories didn't make it into the on-line editions.

Sometimes only an abbreviated version of the story was published electronically. And even if he was getting all that was available in the public domain, it didn't mean that they weren't looking for him. Only that they hadn't made it public. h They might be combing the country with his description. At the very least, they must know what car he was driving. He i wondered if he should sell the Golf immediately, trade it in for another make and model. But if there was a search out for a black VW Golf with Hamburg plates, he would only be drawing attention to himself by getting rid of it.

He was in a dreadful state. He couldn't sleep for more than k half an hour at a time. Food stuck in his throat. The incident in Bremen had been petrifying, not least because he had never M seriously considered the prospect of being caught. He had outsmarted those clever bastards with their degrees and 11 diplomas, he had shown them he was master. He couldn't believe he'd so nearly been snared.

He'd been so careful. Everything had been planned, right down to the last detail. After all, if his campaign were to be cut short, his message would be lost and it would all have been wasted. That stupid woman had almost destroyed everything because she hadn't told her boyfriend to stay away. Stupid fucking bitch. Probably wanted to show off the fact that she could still get a man at her age. The cow had nearly ruined everything, and he had no idea whether he was in the clear or not.

In his good moments, he reassured himself that there was nothing the boyfriend could have told the police that would lead them to him. He was sure he hadn't been seen, and there must be hundreds of thousands of black VW Golfs all over Germany, even supposing the boyfriend had remembered what kind of car had been sitting in the whore's drive.

But in his bad moments, he lay on his bunk, his body secreting the rancid sweat of pure fear. It wasn't prison he was afraid of. Nothing that could happen to him there could be worse than what had already happened to him.

What he was afraid of was the things failure would tell him about himself.

And so, in order to combat the terror that was eating him from the inside, he refused to allow himself to use the river as an excuse. He had made an appointment in the usual way with Dr Marie-The'rese Calvet, flattering her in e-mail and stressing her importance to the reputation of his e-zine: Your work on the manipulation of memory using deep hypnotic suggestion is unrivalled in Europe. Your 1999 study on the alteration of recollection of early sexual experience was groundbreaking. I'd be fascinated to hear about your followup studies. It would make a terrific special feature for our launch edition. No, it hadn't taken much persuasion to get ..her to agree to be interviewed. Like all of them, she was infested with narcissism, a trait he could use as a weapon against her.

But now he had to make a success of tonight's business. Dr Marie-Th£rese Calvet had wanted to meet in a restaurant, perhaps because she was reluctant to allow a strange man into the privacy of her home, or perhaps because she just wanted to screw a free meal out of him, he thought cynically. ^~They had compromised with an agreement to conduct the interview in her office at the university, thanks to his argument that she might want to be in a position to refer to her research materials. It wasn't ideal, but at least in the evening there wouldn't be many people around to notice him. :.^

The one thing he was worried about was trie water supply. The chances were that Dr Calvetxwouldn't have a sink in her office. And he couldn't really wander through a university department with buckets of water. He knew from experience, however, that it took remarkably little to drown his victims. So he had packed four one-and-a-half-litre bottles of Spa in his holdall. It made it heavy to carry, but years of hard physical labour had made him strong. And he'd asked Dr Calvet about parking. She'd told him that at that time in the evening, he could easily park on either of the streets that flanked the Psychology Institute. It shouldn't be too arduous.

The journey passed more quickly than he would have believed possible. Running over his plans always shrank time, he'd found that out in the past few months. The images of what he would do to Marie-The'rese Calvet were better M distraction by far than any kind of in-car entertainment. Before he knew it, he was on the outskirts of Koln, the main artery from Koblenz delivering him right to the inner ring road, a short distance from the university. He checked his street map and navigated his way to Robert Koch Strasse. From there, it took him only a couple of minutes to reach the institute building. Luckily, Calvet had been efficient with her directions, and he didn't have to stop and ask anyone the way to her office.

The corridor wasn't quite empty. A couple of students were walking towards him, deep in conversation. With the self-absorption of the young, they didn't even glance at him as he passed, his head angled down and away from them to minimize the chances of them being able to describe him afterwards. After Bremen, even so casual an encounter was enough to set his pulse fluttering and quicken his breath.

He counted the doors. Fourth on the left, she'd said. He \ stopped outside the plain wooden door and read the name- * plate: dr m-t calvet. He took a deep breath and held it, trying to force his previous state of calm to return. He raised his 'fl hand and knocked once, firmly. 'Come in,' he heard, the high pitch of the voice slightly muffled.

He opened the door and led with his head, his smile stretched to breaking point. 'Dr CaJvet? I'm Hans Hochenstein.' He continued into the room, fixing his eyes on the woman emerging from behind the desk. She was tiny. She couldn't have been more than five feet tall, with a fine-boned gamine face. Her chestnut hair was cut close to her head, and she wore an outfit of smartly casual top and capri pants, which he recognized from the old movies Gunther loved to watch as an homage to Audrey Hepburn. Unfortunately, he thought, she didn't have the eyes to carry it off. Dr Carvel's dark eyes were small, set close against the narrow bridge of her nose, making her look slightly cross rather than carefree and vulnerable. She held out a slim, bony hand to him, and he took il gently, enveloping it in what suddenly felt like an excess oi damp, sweaty flesh.

'I'm pleased to meet you, Mr Hochenstein. Please, take a seat.' She gestured towards a pair of armchairs on either side of a wall-mounted gas fire.

He would have to move fast because there was no knowing how long they would be left alone. In order to get behinc her, he stepped to one side and gave a courteous bow. 'Aftei you, doctor.'

Her mouth and eyebrows quirked in an ironic smile anc she passed in front of him. His hand flashed in and out o his jacket pocket, emerging witl^ the heavy cosh. She mus have registered some movement, for she half-turned as hi arm descended in a swift arc towards her head. He had mean to hit her firmly on the back of the head, but caught her oi the temple. She staggered and moaned, but didn't go down Instead, she stumbled towards him. Panicked, he raised thi sap again and smashed it down on the crown of her head This time, she crumpled in an awkward heap at his feet. H gasped in relief, his head swimming. After what had happene with Schilling, even the slightest glitch was enough to provoke the momentary clutch of terror in his chest. But it was fine, he told himself. Everything was fine.

He crossed to the door and flipped the catch, locking them in. Then he hurried to the desk and swept all the books and papers to the floor in an untidy heap. He turned to Dr Calvet and bent to pick her up. She was light as a child in his arms, which was a welcome change from his first three victims. He laid her on her back on the desk and took the cords from his holdall. It was the work of moments to fasten her wrists and ankles tightly to the metal feet. He flicked up an eyelid with his thumb. She was still out cold. No need to gag her. He was back in control.

He took his grandfather's cut-throat razor from its case and painstakingly cut her clothes away. There was scarcely a scrap of flesh on her bones. If he'd felt inclined, he could have run his fingers over her ribs like the beads on an abacus. He stepped back for a moment, savouring her exposed defencelessness. Suddenly he felt desire well up inside him, a richness in his blood that made him almost dizzy. Until now, he'd always refused to acknowledge that the surge of adrenaline-fuelled urgency that swept through him when confronted with his victims had anything to do with sex. There was no place for carnal desire here. Sex was for afterwards.

But perhaps he'd been wrong. He took a deep breath, noticing the citrus tang of her perfume overlaying the more human scent of her naked flesh. Why settle for low-life whores when he could take what he wanted from his victims? Didn't they deserve that final humiliation, to be fucked over like they'd fucked over their own victims?

His hand crept to his fly, his fingers hesitant on the zip. Suddenly, his grandfather's voice was loud in his head, his taunts blocking every other thought 'Call yourself a man? What's keeping you, little boy? Scared of a woman who can't even fight back? All you're good for is dockside whores like your mother.' He bit back a sob. Now his desire was insistent, impossible to ignore. He'd show the old man. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out the packet of condoms he'd been saving for later. Eagerly, he ripped open the foil package. He smoothed the latex over his erection, his craving making him ham-fisted. Then he was on top of her, thrusting clumsily against her dryness.

She stirred. Her eyelids flickered, showing the whites of her eyes. It didn't matter now. He was in control. There was nothing she could do. He gripped her by the throat, gasping as his climax approached more swiftly than he would have believed possible. He could see her oesophagus spasm as she fought for air, but he continued relentlessly.

Now her chest was heaving, the lungs fighting to snatch some oxygen to keep the heart pumping. Her eyes were bulging, tiny pinpricks of red blossoming in the whites. Her animal panic was wonderful to see, because it was all down to him. Suddenly her body went limp, and he came immediately, his spine arching in a violent spasm. The release was like a veil lifting from his mind.

What had he done? He'd blown it. He'd killed her already, and he hadn't completed his task.

Furious with himself, he rolled off the table and stood leaning on his fists, his breathing ragged. What was he thinking of? He had a plan, a mission, and he'd failed. He'd killed her, but in the wrong way. A wave of despair washed through him. The old man had been right. He was a pathetic failure, a poor excuse for a man.

He stared down at her body, cursing himself for a fucking fool. Then he noticed a tiny nicker of movement in her throat.

Was it a pulse? He reached out tentatively. His fingers felt the faint beat of blood. It was going to be all right.

Hastily, he reached into the holdall and raced through his final preparations. After he poured the third bottle down the funnel rammed into her throat, he checked her pulse points. No question about it. She had paid the price.

He picked up the razor again and considered his target area. She had a compact, dark bush, shot through with occasional coarse grey hairs. He'd never cut a woman before Margarethe Schilling and it had taken a little more thought. But now his was a practised hand. He made his first incision across the top, where the pale skin of her flat stomach disappeared under the hair. Then he made two further incisions at an angle down the side of the mound of Venus. Delicately, he teased the edge of the razor under the skin, gently peeling it back from the flesh below. It Was easier every time, his movements more assured. Where her body began to curve downwards towards the labia, he made a straight cut across the skin and lifted the scalp on the blade of the razor, leaving a raw scarlet trapezoid oozing blood. He unscrewed the jar he'd brought with him and slid his trophy into the formalin, relishing the swirl of red fading to pink as the blood washed clear of the skin. He smiled beatifically, then fastened the jar. Then he began to clear up. The last act was to take out a handkerchief and rub down everything he had touched, including her skin. Finally, wrapping the handkerchief round his fingers, he took a slim folder from his bag and crossed to the filing cabinets. He slid the file into place under the letter C. His case notes on the bitch were safely in place.

The job was done. And done better than ever before. He was the master now, no question of that.

Darko Krasic supposed he had better things to do than sit outside an apartment block off the Ku'damm waiting for a woman. On the other hand, time spent preventing his boss from making a fucking fool of himself had to be time well spent. It had been bad enough when Tadzio had wanted to show his face on the front line. Look where that had got them. Krasic had to set up an assassination and childcare, and he knew which was harder of those two to manage.

While wanting to be involved at the sharp end of his own business was almost understandable, seeing mirages was the kind of thing that got a man a bad name, especially in their line of business. A little megalomania was fine, some degree of paranoia almost obligatory in the circles where Krasic and his boss made their money. But seeing the features of the dead on the face of a stranger definitely fell into the dangerously demented category. If Krasic didn't nip this in the bud, before he knew it they'd be signing up for stances. They would become a laughing stock. Which he needed right now like he needed a hole in the head, what with those crazy Albanians wanting ground-to-air missiles and the Chinese Snakehead gangs agitating abouTshipments of illegal immigrants and heroin.

He shifted in the seat of the anonymous Opel he'd chosen for his surveillance. It wasn't designed for anyone with shoulders, he thought. Fine for skinny intellectuals, but not for real men. Half past ten and no sign of anyone answering the description Tadzio had given him. He'd been there since half past seven, and nobody who looked remotely like Katerina had gone in or out.

Shame about Katerina, he thought. She'd been a bit special. Not a brainless bimbo by any means, but, equally, not one of those smart-mouthed tarts who thought it was clever to try to put a man like him in his place. Lovely looking girl, too. Best thing about her, though, was that she'd kept Tadzio happy. And Tadzio happy was Tadzio on the ball. But right now, the boss was very definitely neither happy nor on top of his game. Eventually, he'd have to accept that the accident had been nothing more than that. Until that happened, Krasic saw a lot more wasted time ahead of him.

On that thought, the door of the apartment block opened and Krasic's jaw dropped. If he hadn't seen Katerina's dead body with his own eyes, he'd have sworn that was her emerging on to the street. OK, the hair was different and he thought this woman had a bit more muscle about her than Katerina had ever had, but from this distance, he couldn't have told them apart. 'Fuck,' he said, outraged. That'd teach him to take Tadzio's word for things.

He was so astounded by what he was seeing that he almost forgot what he was there for. She was already well past him before he gathered himself together and clambered out of the car. She was walking at a good clip, long legs in sensible flat pumps covering the ground confidently. Krasic had to shift to keep her in sight as she reached the corner of Olivaerplatz and turned right.

As he reached the corner, he realized she had stopped at a news kiosk. He mingled with the handful of people waiting for the lights to change while she bought an English newspaper. Then she carried on to the cafe" further along the street.

Optimistically, the patron had put out a handful of tables on the pavement, but it was still too early in the spring for most Berliners to fancy their chances outside. Like them, Caroline Jackson went inside.

Krasic hesitated. She might be meeting someone, she might be making phone calls. He didn't want to draw attention to himself this early in the game, but he couldn't let it go. He walked briskly past the cafe", registering that about half the tables were occupied. Enough of a crowd to hide in, probably. He stood moodily staring into a shop window for five minutes by his watch, then walked back to the cafe\ He took a seat at the counter, where he could see the back of her head. He quite liked the idea of not having to see her face. It was too fucking spooky by half to look at somebody who resembled so closely someone you knew to be dead.

She was doing nothing more sinister than reading her newspaper and drinking black coffee. He ordered an espresso and a Jack Daniels and made them last. Thirty-five minutes later, she folded her paper into her bag, paid her bill and walked out. Krasic, who had already settled his tab, was close enough behind her to see which way she went. Heading for the Kudamm, he thought miserably. Women and shops. What was it about them? --

Two hours later, he was still on her tail. She'd been in and out of half a dozen clothes shops, thumbing through the designer racks. She'd bought a couple of classical CDs in a record store and spoken to no one except shop assistants. It had done his head in comprehensively. Not to mention making him feel as out of place as a cherry on a dungheap. He was going to have to get somebody else to keep an eye on her, that much was clear. Ideally, a woman. But failing that, one of those lads who were more interested in Armani than Armalites."

He trailed behind her as she turned into the street where she was staying and watched as she went back into the apartment block. Well, that had been a proper waste of a morning. She was due to meet Tadzio in an hour, so he reckoned nothing much was going to happen between now and then. Time enough to get someone else on the case. Krasic got back into the Opel and took out his phone. If there was anything dodgy about Caroline Jackson, he'd find out. But someone else could do the legwork from now on.

Petra Becker was rising in Tony's estimation all the time. She'd rung him at 9.17 to tell him that a car was on its way to take him to Tempelhof for the short flight to Bremen, where he would be met by one of the detectives on the Schilling inquiry. 'How the hell did you swing that?' he said, still groggy from lack of sleep.

'I lied,' she said calmly. 'I said you were a leading British Home Office profiler who just happened to be doing some work with Europol and that we would be very much obliged if they would extend every courtesy to you.'

'You're an amazing woman, Petra,' he said.

'It's been said before, but not usually by men,' she'd responded dryly.

'Am I right in thinking that nobody in Bremen has made the connection with the earlier murder in Heidelberg yet?'

'The Heidelberg boys were so eager to hand off their unsolved murder to us, they sold it to the local press as a seedy drug-related murder rather than a ritual killing, so it didn\t make headlines outside the region. I'd be very surprised if^ anyone in Bremen had even read a news report about the case.'

'Doesn't it feel weird, being the only cop in the country who's made the connection?' He couldn't resist the chance to probe. He'd never been able to.

'You want the honest truth?'

'Of course.'

'I get a buzz from it. Oh, I know I have to come back inside the rules with these cases, I can't go on acting like somebody in a movie. For now, though, I'm enjoying it. But I don't think we have time for this. You have a plane to catch.'

Tony smiled. It was an obvious evasion, but he didn't mind. 'Thanks for sorting it out.'

'My pleasure. Have a good day. We'll talk soon, yes?'

'I should have something for you before too long, but don't expect a miracle,' he said, guarded.

She laughed. 'I don't believe in miracles.'

The detective who met him at Bremen was a stumpy blond in his early thirties with bad skin and excellent English who announced himself as, 'Berndt Haefs, call me Berndt.' He had the slightly blase" air of someone who is incapable of being shocked. Tony had seen it in cops before. What worried him was that it was generally neither a pose nor a defence mechanism, but rather indicative of a blunting of the sensibilities that destroyed any capacity for empathy.

Certainly Berndt showed no signs of caring much about the woman whose death he was supposed to be resolving, referring to her throughout their drive to Bremen as 'Schilling'. Tony, perversely, made a point of always giving Margarethe her title of Doctor.

They approached the city via a wide bridge over the swollen Weser, which flowed past in a swift torrent the colour of beer slops. 'The river's very high,' Tony said to fill the lull that had grown in the conversation once Berndt had run out of nuggets of largely irrelevant information about the murder.

'It's not as bad as the Rhine or the Oder,' Berndt said. 'I don't think it's going to flood.'

'What about the barges? How do they cope?'

'Well, they can't cope, can they? Haven't got the horsepower to deal with it when it's flowing like that. If it gets any higher, the river will be closed till the water level subsides. That's already happened on the Rhine. The boats are all tied up in basins and backwaters. The skippers will be tearing their hair out at the thought of the money they're losing, and the crews are all getting drunk.'

'Not much fun for the local cops, then.' J

Berndt shrugged. 'It keeps them off the street,' he said with a high-pitched giggle at odds with his squat frame. 'That's the cathedral over there,' he added with a degree of redundancy. It was impossible to miss the twin towers. 'Schilling was in the city centre the afternoon of the day she died. She ate alone in a little bar off the main market square.'

'Are we far from Dr Schilling's house?' Tony asked.

'About ten minutes.'

'Has her partner been able to remember anything about his attacker?'

'The boyfriend? About as much use as a eunuch in a brothel. He didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. All he knows is that there was a strange car on the drive. A VW Golf, either black or dark blue. I mean, he didn't even notice if it was a local registration. Have you any idea how many black or dark blue Golfs there are in Bremen alone?'

'Quite a few, I should imagine.'

Berndt snorted. 'So many we can't even think about pursuing that line of inquiry.' He turned off the main road into a quiet tree-lined street. 'This is the start of the suburb where she lived. Our man would have had to drive in this way, it's the only logical way in and out.' \

Tony looked out of the window, imagining the streetVui darkness. Houses set back behind small, neat lawns. Privatex lives going on behind closed front doors. No reason why anyone should pay attention to the dark outline of a car making its way to a fateful destination. He wondered if the killer had scouted the area out ahead of his crime. Often they did, staking out their ground, stalking their victim, learning their lives, getting to know the gap that their deaths would leave. But he had a feeling that Geronimo wasn't that kind of killer. His need was of a different order.

Tony pictured him nosing down the darkened streets, making sure he was taking the correct turns. It was a complicated route with lots of potential to end up at the blind end of a cul-de-sac. 'I wonder if he lost his way? Annoyed somebody by turning round in their driveway?'

Bernd looked at him as if he was mad. 'You think we should do a door-to-door to see if he pissed anybody off?'

'Probably pointless,' Tony agreed. 'But you never know. People can be very possessive about their property, especially if strangers make a habit of using their drive as a turning circle.'

Berndt had the expression on his face that Tony had seen from cops before. It was the physical manifestation of the thought that went something like, Fucking shrinks, haven't got a clue about police work. He resolved to keep his mouth shut and save his ideas for Petra and Carol.

The car turned into a small road of a dozen houses that dead-ended in a tarmac semi-circle. They pulled into the drive of a house identical to every other in the road, save for the police tapes across the front door. 'This is it.' Berndt got out of the car and headed for the house without waiting to see if Tony was behind him.

Tony stood by the car for a moment, looking at the other houses in the street. Anyone glancing out of any of a dozen windows could have seen him clearly. 'You're not afraid of being seen, are you, Geronimo? You don't mind if somebody catches a glimpse of you. You think you're so insignificant they won't remember anything about you.' Nodding in satisfaction, he followed Berndt, impatient in the doorway, foot tapping and arms folded.

They walked in, both automatically attempting to wipe their feet on a doormat that wasn't there. 'Forensic took it away. Like they're going to find some rare mud that only exists in a particular quarry somewhere in the Ruhr,' Berndt said sarcastically. 'It happened through here.' He led the way to the kitchen.

Under the film of fingerprint dust, it all looked surprisingly domesticated. Tony even remembered the table. They'd sat around it discussing the possibilities of writing a paper together, drinking endless cups of coffee and glasses of cheap red wine. The thought that it had become the stage for Margarethe's death made him feel queasy. He prowled around the room, taking in its neat order. It didn't look like the scene of a brutal murder. There was no visible sign of blood, nor were there any of the smells associated in his mind with violent death. It was impossible to imagine this mundane kitchen as the location for so deliberately violent an act.

'Nothing much to see,' Berndt said. 'Most murders look like a slaughterhouse. But this? Clean up the print powder and you could do dinner for six.'

'Any indication that he went anywhere else in the house?'

'Nothing was disturbed, according to the boyfriend. So no, he didn't go through her knicker drawer and wank on the bedspread, if that's what you're getting at.'

Tony could think of nothing polite to say in response. Instead, he went to the window and looked down the garden to the woods beyond.

'Nothing there either,' Berndt offered. 'We checked to see if he'd been watching her from the woods, but there was no sign that anybody had been near the back fence.'

'I don't think he stalked her. Not physically, anyway. It was her mind that interested him, not her physical presence,' Tony said, half to himself. He turned back and smiled at Berndt. 'Thanks for bringing me out here. You're right, there's nothing much to see.'

'Detective Becker said you wanted to look at the crime scene photographs. Is that right?'

Tony nodded. 'If that's possible.'

'They're running an extra set off for you. We'll have to go down to headquarters to collect them. And then, if there's nothing else, I can drive you back to the airport. There's a flight just after two, but if we don't make that, there's another one an hour later.' No offer of lunch, Tony noted. Cooperation with Europol clearly only went so far.

'That would be fine.' He smiled. 'I look forward to being back in Berlin in time for tea.'

Berndt looked at him as if he had just confirmed everything he thought about the eccentric English. Which was exactly what Tony had intended. If Berndt was going to remember anything about this visit, better that than anything else.

Petra bounced into the squad room^m the balls of her feet. So far, the operation against Radecki was going to plan. And she had great expectations of what this morning would bring. Even the sight of The Shark staring gloomily into a computer screen wasn't enough to dampen her good spirits.

'What are you doing?' she said, crossing to her desk. 'I thought I told you to check out Krasic's associates?'

He looked up, his narrow pinched face expressing indignation. 'That's what I'm doing,' he said. 'Somebody told me that Krasic has relatives around the city, and I'm trying to track them dowfi Ihrough official records. With something like this, Krasic might trust family more than his fellow crims.'

It wasn't a bad idea. Petra was both surprised and impressed. Maybe they were going to make a cop out of him yet. 'Good thinking,' she said. 'Any joy?'

'Not so far. I'm having to cross-check all sorts of stuff, it takes ages. How's your operation going?'

'Fine.' She booted up her computer and headed straight for the Europol section of their database. This was where any bulletins from Den Haag ended up. To her satisfaction, there was a message with that morning's dateline.

'You want a coffee?' The Shark asked.

'Are you making fresh?'

'I suppose so.'

'Then I'll have one.' She opened up the bulletin. There was some boring admin stuff at the beginning. She scrolled through it and halfway down the second page she found what she was looking for. REQUEST FOR INFORMATION FROM POLICE IN REGIO LEIDEN, HOLLAND, she read. 'Yes,' she hissed softly.

It was short and straightforward:

Detectives in Leiden, Holland, investigating a murder are concerned that the killer may be a possible serial offender. They have asked us to circulate member forces with details of the offence with a view to comparing any similar crimes in other jurisdictions. The victim was Pieter de Groot, a professor of psychology at the University of Leiden. His body was found in his home, bound and naked. He had been tied to the desk in his study, on his back. His clothes had been cut away from him. The cause of death was drowning. The method appears to have been by insertion of a funnel or tube into the mouth, into which water was poured. There was post-mortem mutilation, which took the form of the scalping of the victim's pubic area. The genitals themselves were undamaged.

Member forces ofEuropol are requested to check their files of unsolved homicides to see if there are any similar offences outstanding in their jurisdictions. Information should be passed directly to Hoofdinspecteur Kees Maartens at Regio Leiden, with a copy to the Europol Intelligence Section.

Petra couldn't help smiling in satisfaction. She was rereading the text when The Shark loomed up at her elbow. 'What's that, then?' he asked, placing the mug by her left hand.

'Europol bulletin,' she said.

'You're the only person I know who bothers with that bumf.'

'That's why I'm the only one around here who's going places, Shark.' ^

He leaned over her shoulder, reading the bulletin. 'Wow. That sounds nasty. Typical of the Dutch, though. Too dumb to solve their own murders so they try to play pass the parcel with them.' /

Petra scowled. 'You couldn't be more wrong. It's extremely smart of the Dutch to read the message of this crime and understand that this has all the hallmarks of a potential serial offender. And very courageous of them to ask for help.'

'You think?'

She tapped a key to print out the relevant page of the bulletin. 'I don't think, I know. And you know what's most interesting about this murder, Shark?'

'I'm about to find out, right?' He moved to one side and perched on the edge of her desk.