elieved that he wasn't angling to come up for coffee, Carol nodded. Til look forward to it. Good night.'

She took the lift to the third floor and let herself into her apartment. If he was standing in the street below watching, he'd see that she'd gone straight home. As she walked through to the bedroom, Carol unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. She wanted to see Tony, but she didn't want to go to him in Caroline Jackson's clothes that held a whisper of Tadeusz's cigar smoke. She grabbed a clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans and hastily dressed, then walked down the two flights of stairs to his apartment, taking care to check the hallway was empty before she stepped out of the stairwell.

He looked strained, she thought, as he opened the door. But then, he had spent the day probing the murder of a friend. It would have been more strange if he'd greeted her with a cheerful grin. She stepped towards him and kissed him on the cheek. He responded with a tight hug. 'It's good to see you,' he said. 'How did it go today?'

'Interesting,' Carol said. 'As in, "May you live in interesting times."'

Tony led the way back through to the living room where the curtains were already drawn, and they settled down at opposite ends of the sofa, both still more than a little tentative about the new shape of their relationship. 'Tell me about it,' he said, pouring her a glass of red wine from the open bottle on the table.

Carol filled him in on the events of the day. He listened attentively, head cocked to one side. Finally, he said, 'It had to happen. There had to come a moment where he suddenly freaked about the resemblance between you and Katerina and got suspicious.'

'Well, even though it wasn't entirely unexpected, it still threw me. For a moment, I couldn't think how I should react.'

'You ran with your instincts, which in your case is always a good way to go. You've got good gut reactions, Carol, and they worked to your advantage this afternoon. You didn't cave in, you turned it around on to him, which was the best possible way to distract him from what was niggling away at him. But don't be surprised if something like this comes up again.'

XSo what do I do next time? Take umbrage again?'

Tony ran a hand through his hair. 'I don't have all the answers, Carol. Tell you the truth, I've seldom felt less infallible than I do tonight.'

Carol's eyebrows rose. 'Hey, you were the one who said you wanted to help me with this,' she protested.

'I know, but I'm not sure I want to feel accountable if I suggest something that turns sour,' Tony said with a weary smile.

Carol unconsciously drew away from him. 'You could give guilt seminars to Catholics, you know. Look, Tony, I'm just asking for advice here. I take responsibility for my own actions.'

He cursed himself silently for striking the wrong note yet again. 'You want advice?' he said sharply. 'OK, entirely without prejudice, I'd say that if Radecki asks you again, you should tell him you didn't kill Osborne and that you don't know who did. And that you're as uncomfortable with the resemblance to Katerina as he is. That you don't want people thinking you're the sort of person who would exploit his private grief for business advantage. And frankly, it would be easier for you to walk away from this whole deal, because it's not like it's hard to find a source of illegal labour.'

Carol nodded. 'Thank you. I'll give it some thought,' she said formally.

Tony shook his head. 'Shall I go out and come in again? Then we can start fresh? Look, we're both tired and scratchy, let's not take it out on each other.' He reached for her hand and laced her warm fingers through his. 'Tell me how you're feeling.'

Carol shrugged. 'It's hard to describe. A mixture of exhilaration, because I feel like I'm doing better than I had any right to hope, and absolute terror because I know I don't have a safety net if I screw up. I'm living on adrenaline, and it's exhausting. So take my mind off me and tell me about your day.'

'It's not exactly uplifting material. There's been a fourth murder.'

Her eyes widened in shock. 'So soon? That's very close.'

'And he's losing control.' Briefly, he outlined what he'd learned from Marijke earlier that evening. 'Do you want to see my draft profile?'

'If you don't mind letting me see it.'

He got up, crossed to his briefcase, and extracted a few sheets of paper. 'Here you go,' he said, passing it to her. 'Would you like some coffee?'

'Mmm, please,' Carol said, already reading the familiar opening disclaimer. While he brewed up, she gave her attention to the short report. Tony kept out of the way until she'd finished, then returned with the coffee.

'So, what do you think?' he asked. 'I think it's a bit thin, myself. I don't feel that I've come up with anything that really moves the investigation much further forward.'

'Given how little you had to work with, I'd say you've done a good job,' Carol said reassuringly. 'The most important thing is obviously your theory that he's a boatman.'

'Yes, but have you any idea how much commercial traffic there is on the waterways of Holland and Germany? There must be thousands of craft on the rivers, and our man could be on any of them. I don't even know if there's any record kept of their movements. I spoke to Marijke briefly this evening, and she seemed to think that boats have to register when they go through locks or tie up at wharves, but that still doesn't narrow it down much, and ploughing through all that material could take months. We haven't got months, Carol.'

'And even if they warn potential victims, it might not be any help in catching him,' Carol said.

'That's right. It's possible he might just go to ground temporarily and resurface with a new strategy for cornering his victims.'

'If he's on-line, might there be any mileage in checking with the internet booksellers to see who's bought a wide range of psychology textbooks?' Carol asked.

Tony shrugged. 'If he lives on a boat, it would be easier for him to buy his books in a shop rather than have them sent to an address he might not get to for a few weeks/ '*

'I suppose,' she said, trying not to sound too dejected. 'What about the Stasi angle?'

'Petra has arranged for me to talk to a historian tomorrow. But again, I think we're going to be doing needle-in-a haystack stuff.'

'I'm interested in what he thinks he's doing here,' Carol I mused. 'If you're right, and he thinks his life has been screwed up because somebody close to him was a victim of mental torture, what's his goal here? Is it vengeance, pure and simple? Or is he trying to send a wider message?'

'Well, it depends on whether we're talking conscious or subconscious motives here,' Tony said. 'I'd say that subconsciously he's trying to get his own back. But that's too personal, too petty for him to acknowledge as his primary ?

motive. I think he sees himself as cleaning the Augean stables ;1 of psychology. He's sending a message out - if you mess with people's heads directly, you deserve to die.'

Carol frowned and fiddled with her coffee cup. 'I know this is going to sound off the wall, but do you think he sees what he's doing as a kind of cure? A form of ultimate therapy? Now you won't indulge your horrible destructive habit any more?'

This was what Tony loved about working with Carol. Her mind sloped off laterally and came up with ideas that he would either never have or would have dismissed as too improbable for consideration. She'd done it before, and she'd been right when he'd been wrong. 'You know, that's not a bad idea,' he said slowly. 'But where are you going with this?'

'I'm not sure...' Carol stared at the wall opposite her, trying to put into words the idea that was lurking at the corner of her mind. 'If he sees himself as an instrument of vengeance, couldn't it be that he chooses to humiliate them further, using the tools of their trade? What if he's written to academic journals denouncing them or criticizing their work? It might be an idea to do an on-line trawl as well, given that he's apparently posing as an e-zine journalist.'

Tony nodded. 'It's possible. Worth looking at, anyway.' 'Or maybe writing to their departments complaining about their academic failings?' Carol had a faraway look in her eyes now. 'Maybe he sees their final encounter as a sort of therapeutic session?'

'You mean, he thinks they're the patients and he's the one with the cure?'

'Exactly. What do you think?'

'It's possible. And?' Tony added, pushing to see where Carol might take this idea.

She slid along the sofa and leaned into him. 'And nothing. Sorry, that's my lot.'

'Never mind. Inspiration^doesn't always arrive on cue. I'll suggest to Petra and Marijke mat they have a look for public or professional criticism of the victims' work.' He put his arm round her.

'Oh, this is so comfortable,' Carol sighed. 'I wish I didn't have to drag myself back upstairs.'

Tony swallowed hard. 'You don't have to.'

'I think I do. We've waited so long to get here. I don't want our first time to have the shadow of Radecki hanging over it.

I want it to be just you and me, to be special.' She turned her face up to his. 'I can wait a little bit longer.'

He leaned down and gave her a soft kiss on the lips. 'You're determined to give me no excuse for failure, huh?' he said, hiding his anxiety behind a jokey smile.

'Stop right there,' she said, putting a warning finger to his lips. 'I'm not worried, and neither should you be.' She disentangled herself. 'And now I'm going to bed. We both have too much responsibility to miss out on our sleep right now.' She got to her feet. Til see myself out. And I'll see you soon.'

He watched her walk across the room, amazed at the warm glow of contentment he felt. Maybe, just maybe they could make it work.

Krasic arrived at Tadeusz's apartment shortly after eight with a bag of fresh pastries from the Turkish bakery on the corner of Karl Marx Allee nearest to his apartment. While his boss brewed the coffee, he tipped the contents of the bag on to a plate and absently picked up the crumbs on the tip of a licked forefinger. 'She's a dark horse, this Caroline Jackson,' he said. 'Nobody seems to know much about her. They've heard the name, but not many people have ever met her face to face. I talked again to that dealer that Kramer put you on to. He says he met her first about six years ago, when she was doing some dodgy property dealing in Norwich.'

'What sort of dodgy property dealing?' Tadeusz poured the coffee into cups and carried them across to the table. 'Stop eating the crumbs, Darko, you're not a peasant any more,' he added affectionately.

Krasic sat down and took a gulp of the scalding coffee. The heat didn't seem to bother him. 'She got a tip about a planned supermarket development that involved knocking down some old houses. Some of the owners didn't want to sell to her at the rock-bottom prices she was offering, so she used the traditional methods to persuade them.'

'Violence?' Tadeusz asked, reaching for a crescent studded with toasted sesame seeds.

'Only as a last resort. More general domestic terrorism. You know. Break the car windows. Dogshit through the letter box. Funeral wreaths on the doorstep. Taxis arriving every twenty minutes all through the night. She was extremely imaginative, by all accounts. Anyway, they all sold in the end except for one old lady who was adamant that she'd been born there and she was going to die there. Well, she was adamant until she came home from the shops one day and found her cat nailed to the front door.'

Tadeusz sucked his breath in through his teeth. 'Ruthless. I like that in a woman,' he said, grinning. 'I take it she made a killing selling the land to the supermarket?'

'Kramer's mate reckons she must have cleared about a quarter of a mil. She used it as seed money for more property deals. She always keeps her own hands clean, though. Does everything at one remove, he says. And she's not involved in the drugs trade at all. He offered to cut her in on a deal once, but she said she didn't like being in hock to the kind of gangsters he was hanging with. He's heard she's got something going up on an old American base out in the middle of nowhere, but he's got no idea what it is.'

'Well, that checks out\Tadeusz brushed the crumbs from his mouth with a linen napkin and reached across the table for his cigar case. 'What abdut personally? What's her background?'

'The stuff you told me looks kosher. You remember that geezer we paid to hack into the Customs' computer last year? Hansi the hacker? Well, I slipped him a bundle of readies to check out all he could about Jackson. She was born where she said, when she said. Went to university in Warwick. She's lived at the same place, some fucking manor house in Suffolk, for the last three years. Pays her taxes. The taxman thinks she's a freelance planning consultant, whatever the hell that is. Looks a citizen on paper. Got no criminal record, though she was charged once with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. But they never got it to court.' " 'What about boyfriends? Husband? Lover?'

'Nothing. Kramer's mate calls her the Ice Queen. He's never seen her with anybody. Could be a lesbian for all he knows.'

Tadeusz shook his head, a knowing smile on his face. 'She's not a lesbian, Darko.'

Krasic looked momentarily panicked. 'You've not shagged her?' he demanded, outrage mixing with incredulity.

Tadeusz closed his eyes and breathed out smoke. 'Do you always have to be so crude?' he said sharply.

Krasic shrugged. 'She's not Katerina, Tadzio. She's another villain, just like us.'

Tadeusz glared at him. 'I'm perfectly aware that she's not Katerina. But you treat her with respect all the same, Darko. It's twice as hard for a woman to make it on our side of the law, and she's proved herself. So you don't talk about her as if she's some street-corner slag. Is that clear?'

Krasic knew better than to argue with the suppressed anger in his boss's tone. 'Whatever you say,' he muttered.

'For the record, there is nothing between me and Caroline,' Tadeusz continued, his voice tight and distant. 'I enjoy her company. Being with her, I feel more like myself than I have for a while now. I'd have thought you would welcome that, since you seem to have been concerned about my focus recently.' He pushed his chair back and stood up dismissively. 'Is everything secure with Marlene's kid, by the way?'

'Yeah, I called my cousin last night. He's not seen any strangers around the place. He says the kid whinges about being bored all the time, but what can you expect when she's shut up in the house all day?'

'At least she's safely out of the way. Now, why don't you go and talk to your Chinese friends and see when they want to send us another shipment? We should be set up to deal with it by the end of the month.'

'You're going to do business with her?'

'I think so. She wants to see something of the way we do things before she commits herself. So make sure everything is running smoothly, OK?'

Krasic tried to hide the dismay he felt. 'You're going to let an outsider into our business?'

'She's not going to be an outsider, is she? She's going to be on the inside. We've been checking her out, haven't we? Well, now she wants to check us out. And at least she's doing it up front, not being underhand like us.'

Krasic shook his head dubiously. 'I don't know, we've always kept things tight, and it's worked for us.'

Tadeusz put a hand on his arm. 'Look, Darko, I know you're uneasy about her. But I've spent a lot of time with her in the past couple of days. And my instincts say she's one of us. She can be trusted. So now you have to trust me. OK?'

Krasic pretended to accept the olive branch. 'If you say so, boss. I better be on my way. I've got things to see to.'

Tadeusz watched him leave, a speculative look on his face. Having Darko so mistrustful around Caroline was no bad thing, he thought. He was well aware^that she had crawled under his defences. Who knew what might be going on in his blind spot? Just as well Darko was there to keep an eye on things. Because, if Tadeusz was wrong, someone would have to clear up the mess.

Carol lay back on the sauna bench and felt the sweat trickle H down her temples and tickle the skin above her ears. "This

has got to be the best meeting venue ever,' she groaned. H Petra grinned. Her eyes were on a level with Carol's breasts.

^ 'It has its good points, I have to admit.'

Carol arched her spine, feeling the satisfying crunch of vertebrae realigning themselves. 'Oh God, I am so out of condition,' she complained. 'By the way, I think Radecki's got someone on my tail. I noticed a young guy outside the apartment this morning, and I thought I spotted him yesterday. So, on my way here, I did a double-take as I passed a shop window. You know the kind of thing? Walk past, then turn back as if you've just realized what caught your eye?'

'Sure. The kind of thing us empty-headed girls do all the time.'

'Exactly. Anyway, I caught him out of the corner of my peripheral vision. Dodging behind a car, trying to look as if he was crossing the road. Fairly professional, but not good enough to fool anyone who's looking for a tail.'

'Are you worried about it?'

'Not really. They'd be sloppy if they weren't keeping an eye on me. It's not as if I'm doing anything to make them worry. At least I know now what my tail looks like if the occasion arises when I do need to shake him.' ?

Petra nodded approvingly. 'Good thinking. By the way, I read your overnight report. I have to say, you handled Radecki well on the boat. You seem to be making real progress.'

'I'm cautiously pleased myself. But yesterday afternoon was a real warning to me not to get overconfident.'

Petra stood up and dripped some citrus oil on the coals. The sharp intensity of the fumes seemed to shift her brain up a gear. 'It's working because you look like Katerina. However much his conscious mind wants to distrust you, his emotions are dragging him in the opposite direction. I'm surprised he hasn't made a move on you yet.'

'Are you? I'm not. He had Katerina on a pedestal. She was his angel, his goddess. He's not going to jump on someone who reminds him that strongly of her. He's going to court me,' she said. 'Tony and I talked about this beforehand, and he reckoned that was what would happen. And, speaking of Tony, he told me about the murder in Koln.'

Petra groaned. 'It's terrible. I get so angry because it feels like the whole investigation is snarled up in bureaucratic nonsense. Apparently, Heidelberg have got on their high horse. They're insisting on being the lead investigators because theirs was the first case. This is the same bunch of fuckwits who tried to hand it off to my unit because they couldn't solve it.'

'I thought everything was going through Europol?'

'They're exchanging information, but there's a mountain of case notes and nobody really to take an overview except Tony. It's very frustrating. But I thought his profile came up with some interesting leads. At least the lead detective in Koln seems to have half a brain. He cottoned on right away to the idea of having a computer expert look at the victim's hard drive, just like Marijke's doing. But that could take days, weeks even, to produce results. Marijke has also asked the German teams to check out your idea about a campaign of academic criticism.'

Carol shook her head. 'It's not my finest idea. I hope they don't waste too much time on it.' /

'It might just be the lead they need,' Petra said. 'God, I hate not being able to be involved in the investigation.' She stood up. 'Time for a shower. Then I better ^et back to the office.'

Carol groaned. 'And I have to tour Radecki's video shops and try to look interested.'

'Rather you than me,' Petra said as she walked out of the

H sauna cabin. 'You take care, Carol.'

Yeah, right. Like that's an option, Carol thought wryly. If

taking care was her first priority, she'd never have accepted this assignment. Taking risks was the name of the game. That and survival. And she was determined to survive.

Mostly, Darko Krasic enjoyed his work. He had a taste for power and a profound disregard for suffering. He understood his limitations and had no ambitions to take over Tadeusz Radecki's empire for himself. Why should he? He was already making more money than he could spend, and he wasn't so vain as to think he was smarter than his boss.

But even Krasic occasionally found elements of his work distasteful. Take this, for example. Pawing through a woman's underwear was no job for a man like him. A pervert might get off on it, but Krasic was no pervert. If he ever reached the point where the only way he could get off was by fumbling with lingerie, he thought he would simply pick up one of his handguns and blow his brains out.

Still, it had to be done. Tadzio was carrying his brains in his boxer shorts right now, and somebody had to take care of business. When he'd left the apartment, Krasic had called Rado, his second cousin and the young man he'd assigned to keep an eye on Caroline Jackson. 'Where is she?' he'd asked. j

'She's just gone into that fancy women's health club on Giesebrechtstrasse,' Rado told him. 'She was carrying a gym bag.'

If Caroline Jackson could afford temporary membership there, Krasic thought, she was clearly not short of cash, nor was she afraid to spend it. She'd be at least an hour, he reckoned. 'Call me when she leaves,' he told Rado.

He'd stopped off at a florist and bought a bouquet of flowers. Getting in to the block then had been a piece of cake. He'd simply rung bells until he got a reply, then said he had a delivery for that apartment number. In the lift, he'd scribbled something illegible on the card and handed them over to a slightly bemused Dutch businessman. He knew Caroline Jackson's apartment number, because the car had picked her up there for dinner the previous evening. The lock was pathetic, in his opinion. It took him less than five minutes to pick it, and then he was inside.

Krasic made a quick sortie before he began his search. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room. No serious hiding places. Not even a safe for valuables.

He began with the living room. There was a laptop on a small escritoire by the window. He switched it on and left it to boot up while he looked around. A handful of paperbacks sat on a shelf beside a blue rubber radio. He flicked through the books. Nothing. A stack of English newspapers on the coffee table revealed nothing more than that Jackson liked to do the crosswords and was good at them. The notepad by the phone contained nothing except a note of her arrangement to meet Tadzio at the boat. A briefcase held surprisingly little; estate agent's details of a couple of properties in Ipswich with some scribbled notes in the margins relating to their suitability; a printer's proof copy of a catalogue of hand-made wooden toys with a post office box in Norwich as the ordering address; a sheet of paper with what looked like a series of financial calculations; and a statement for a current account at a bank in Bury St Edmunds. Krasic copied down the details of the account then replaced everything as he had found it.

He turned his attention to the laptop. She didn't even have it password protected, he noted contemptuously. He opened up her comms program, his heart sinking as he saw a couple of hundred e-mails in the in-box. He opened a few at random and found nothing of any significance. They seemed mostly to be from friends or business contacts, generally concerning arrangements for meetings or the exchange of gossip. Ideally, he could use a few hours alone with it to go through everything in more detail, but that wasn't going to happen.

Next, Krasic opened her word processing software. There was a folder of letters^ many of which seemed to be concerned with the lease of a former US airbase in East Anglia and applications for its change of use to light industrial units and residential accommodation for the workforce. Other letters dealt with property sales and purchases, none of which meant anything to him. He opened another folder called 'project EA1 His heart leapt when he saw among the file list one labelled 'Radecki'. Eagerly, he opened it.

Tadeusz Radecki. 38. Polish background, based in Berlin. Supplied migrant workers to Colin Osborne. According to J, Radecki has extensive business interests with Charlie and Horse. Key player in central Germany, with substantial export element. Also deals in live product. Apparently started out dealing in hardware in the Balkans. Owns a chain of video stores. Said to be scrupulous in delivery but takes no shit. Second in command, according to CO, 'ruthless mad bastard Serb' Darko Krasic, muscle who lets TR keep his hands clean. TR lives in expensive apartment in Charlottenburg. Is driven around in a big black Merc. Likes to travel, mostly to European cities. Interests: opera, hunting, eating out, making money, photography.

Has a box at the Staatsoper, goes there alone. Best chance to make initial contact away from possible interference from the Serb?

She'd done her homework, though she hadn't left many clues as to where her information came from. He didn't like it that an outsider could know even this much about them. And now she wanted to probe further into their business. He didn't like it one little bit. Not from someone this smart.

He closed the word processing software and tried to open the accounts program. This time, he came up against the brick wall of a demand for a password. He didn't blame her; he'd have done the same in her shoes. It showed she understood what was really dangerous and what wasn't.

Krasic glanced at his watch. He'd been inside for thirty five minutes. He'd better close down the laptop now. He wasn't going to learn anything more from it, and it wouldn't do for Jackson to come back and find it still warm from use.

He turned his attention to the bedroom. Clothes hung in the wardrobe; an Armani business suit; a couple of evening dresses with designer names he'd never heard of; a couple of pairs of Armani jeans; a pair of Paul Costello trousers; half a dozen tops with more designer labels. Three pairs of shoes were sprawled on the floor - Bally, Fly and Manolo Blahnik, he noticed. They all looked fairly new; he could still easily read the manufacturers' names inside them. Another Imelda Marcos, he thought negligently.

Finally, the drawers. Her underwear was nothing special. She obviously preferred to spend on what could be seen and stick to the chain stores for what went unnoticed. It was an interesting insight into the way her mind worked, but it didn't take him any further in his attempts to find out if she really was who she claimed to be. Irritated by the fruitlessness of his search, he slammed the drawer shut and headed for the bathroom. He had just opened the cabinet above the washbasin when his mobile rang.

'Hello?'

'It's me, Rado. She's leaving now. Looks like she's heading back to the apartment.'

'Thanks. I'll talk to you soon.' Krasic stuffed his phone back into his pocket and closed the cabinet. Time to get out.

Luckily, he didn't have to fiddle about with his picks, for the door locked automatically when it was closed. He didn't want to risk the lift, so he headed for the fire stairs at the end of the corridor. Within two minutes he was back outside, ducking into a bar on the other side of the street. He was halfway down a glass of pilsner when he saw her walk into the apartment building. Rado was a comfortable thirty yards or so behind her. Krasic glared through the window at Caroline Jackson's retreating back. Even though he hadn't found any reason not to, he still didn't trust her.

Emil Wolf looked as if he spent most of his life in dusty archives, Tony thought as he sat opposite him in the small cafe in Prenzlauer Berg. Thin as a whip, his untidy steel grey hair hung over a forehead the colour of parchment. His brown eyes behind oblong glasses were pink-rimmed, his cheeks pale. His mouth was a grim little line, his lips almost invisible until he opened his mouth to speak.

'I appreciate you giving me some of your time,' Tony said.

Wolf's mouth turned down at one corner. 'Petra can be very persuasive. Did she tell you I used to be married to her sister?'

Tony shook his head. 'No.'

Wolf shrugged. 'Petra thinks this still means we're family.

So I have to jump to her orders. So, how can I help you, Dr Hill?'

'I don't know how much Petra has told you?'

'I understand it is a confidential matter relating to a serious crime. And that you think it possible that the perpetrator or someone in his family has suffered abuse at the hands of the | psychiatric profession?'

'That's right.'

Tm presuming because you are talking to me and this is my area of expertise that you think this may have happened at the hands of the Stasi?'

'It crossed my mind, yes.'

Wolf lit a cigarette and frowned. 'In the West, people tend to lump the Stasi in with the Soviet Union when it comes to the abuse of psychiatry for political purposes. But really, the dynamic was very different in Germany. The Stasi had huge resources at their disposal, and they used them to build an unparalleled network of informers. It's been estimated that one in fifty of the population was directly connected to the Stasi in this way.

'They relied on what they called the "decomposition" of people. Decomposition meant making people feel they had no power to act. They were paralysed as citizens because they were convinced that everything was controlled. One of my colleagues has called this "the relentless application of a quiet coercion leading to compliance."

'Stasi oppression was subtle; people were persuaded that a throwaway remark in a bar could ruin any chances of career advancement. Children were taught that any adolescent rebellion could deny them a university place. Co-operation, on the other hand, was the route to a better life. So you had the twin methods of bribery and blackmail.

'The Stasi controllers targeted people they thought had a predisposition to collaborate then motivated them into believing they were doing something worthwhile. When you live in a culture where you have been conditioned to believe you have no power, it's very seductive to be offered the chance to do something active. And, of course, because they believed they were doing the right thing, it's very difficult to confront or punish them afterwards. The aftermath of the fall of communism has poisoned many people's lives, because the opening up of their files has forced them to acknowledge how much they were betrayed by wives, husbands, children, parents, friends and teachers.

'So you see, there was seldom any need for the state to abuse psychiatry. The population was cowed into submission already.'

Tony looked sceptical. 'But there was still dissidence. People were imprisoned and tortured. I've read that some activists were incarcerated in psychiatric units for short periods of time to prevent them taking part in planned actions against the state. It's disingenuous to say that there was no abuse of the medical system, surely?'

Wolf nodded. 'Oh, you're right. There were cases, but they were relatively rare. And most of them have been documented since. Some thirty psychiatrists have been discredited because they allowed themselves to be used for this purpose, but they were a small minority. And their names are known. If your criminal had an axe to grind from the Stasi years, he wouldn't have to look too hard to find people to blame. Really, in the great scheme of things, their crimes were insignificant. You see, the Stasi had a unique way of dealing with dissidents. They sold them to the West.' ?'What?'

'That's right. Every year, the Federal Republic bought the freedom of East German citizens who were imprisoned for expressing views or taking action against the state. I'm not just talking about high-profile people like writers and artists. I'm talking about people from all levels of life. So there was no real need to exploit the possibilities of subverting the psychiatric profession/ ;

This wasn't what Tony had expected to hear from a West German historian. 'You're certainly undermining my prejudices here,' he said wryly.

'You don't have to take my word for it. There have been studies done both by academics and government institutes. They all say the same thing. A few isolated incidences of people having their spirit broken by psychological torture, but very little abuse of the process. If you want details of documented cases, I have a colleague who could probably supply them. Also, you should bear in mind that the medical profession in general was resistant to the controlling efforts of the Stasi. They had a very low percentage of internal informers, they did all they could to maintain the right of patient confidentiality, and the state really didn't trust them to be reliable administrators of government policy.'

Tony couldn't help feeling disappointed at Wolf's words. He'd been convinced he'd been right in his supposition. But it looked as if he'd been mistaken. Since the guilty practitioners from the old Communist regime had been publicly identified, if the killer believed his troubles had originated under the Stasi regime, those individuals would have been the obvious targets, not academics from the West.

'You look depressed, Dr Hill. I'm sorry I haven't been able to tell you what you wanted to hear. But if you're looking for serious and widespread abuse of psychiatry and psychology in this country, you're going to have to go back to the Nazi era.'

'That all seems very remote now,' Tony said.

Wolf stubbed out his cigarette. 'Not necessarily. Don't forget, they destroyed many children's lives with their eugenics policies. Some of those children survived. They would only be in their seventies now. That's still well within living memory. It's certainly possible they will have told their stories to their children and grandchildren. And, of course, the people responsible for what was done to them are long dead, so they're not available as targets.'

Tony perked up as the implications of what Wolf was saying sank in. 'Are there records from that period of admissions to psychiatric units?'

Wolf nodded. 'The Nazis were obsessive record keepers. It's one of the more depressing things about them, I've always thought. They had to find a justification for what they were doing that went beyond the service of Hitler's desire to create a master race, so they convinced themselves that they were carrying out proper scientific research. There are records of admissions, records of deaths, and records of a lot of the experiments they conducted.'

Tony felt a quickening of his pulse. 'So where are these records held?'