CANDLES ALL ROUND, PLEASE

Under a dark sky the engine gives one last cough, clears its throat like an old man, then floods.

I get out, sit on the rusty-gold bonnet and raise my face to the heavy, cold air.

Cigarette.

First things first: I'm going to smoke this damn fog dry.

A weekend in the country: bullshit.

What was I thinking? It was a bloody stupid idea in the first place. So much for get yourself a car, get yourself out, have a change of scenery.

Bloody marvellous.

The car's a heap of junk and my driving's worse than a cow on ice. Which means, if I want to drive anywhere, nobody will come with me. So there's nobody but me. I can deal with that in town – better than anywhere else, anyhow. Driving through the countryside alone is like eating Sellotape.

Someone's waiting for me in town – I'm finally needed again – but now I'm trapped out here. Of course, the guy who's waiting for me doesn't know that he's waiting for me, because he's lying in hospital, smashed to bits. They called me because they always call me in cases like this.

They haven't called anyone else, because they don't know who he is.

I phone Faller, thanking God we still know each other. Nothing's happened yet that could have forced us apart.

He answers after the second ring. 'Good morning, my girl.'

'Good morning, Faller.'

'Well?'

'The Ford's dead.'

'Oh.'

'Can you pick me up, please? I need to get into town – urgently.'

'Where are you then?'

'In the middle of fucking nowhere,' I say.

'Where exactly?'

'Mecklenburg. Between Zarrentin and Wherethehellever. Somewhere on the B195, north of the motorway.'

'Aha.'

He's in the west of Hamburg, having breakfast probably. He could be here in an hour or so, if he puts his foot down.

'Don't go anywhere,' he says. 'I'll be there. Might take a while though.'

'I've got cigarettes. Call me when you get close, yeah?'

I hang up and grab the bonnet with both hands – it's already nearly cold. We've just never hit it off, this old car and me. Maybe it looked pretty good at first, maybe there was a superficial spark, maybe you could have been forgiven for thinking: genius! Why didn't anyone think of getting those two together! But in the end it was just one of those briefly exciting bar encounters, the kind that don't last ten sentences on closer inspection, and definitely not in daylight.

I turn up my coat collar, grab my bag from the boot and start walking down the road. Heading west. A vast landscape lies ahead of me: farmland and meadows and fields and a few isolated trees – a bit of ochre here, a bit of green there. I light my next cigarette and listen to my boots. We soon find a rhythm; we like walking on asphalt, my boots and me.

Faller will find me.

Behind me to the east, behind the wet, grim clouds and a long way away in this uniquely big Mecklenburg sky, there's a miserable scrap of morning sun.

I feel like a cowboy whose horse has been shot.

Faller's currently going through some kind of belated midlife crisis. I still can't believe he's bought a Pontiac. Sky blue, Catalina model, from the seventies. When he started spending more and more time openly checking out pretty young things his wife asked him if he wouldn't mind getting himself an unsuitable car instead. In fact, to put it another way, when he started claiming that the pretty young things were checking him out, his wife told him, 'You need something to do.'

And he's got that now – the Pontiac's always broken down. I'm in luck that his banger happens to be running just when mine isn't. 'Cos who the hell else could I have called?

Calabretta's got a big sign up saying No Servizio; it's nailed to his heart. I couldn't have dealt with that kind of misery this morning.

Klatsche will still be asleep. And he will have been behind the bar until just a few hours ago, so even if he were awake I couldn't assume he'd be able to drive.

And then there are Carla and Rocco. But they don't have a driving licence between them, and anyway, they're still officially on Calabretta-watch.

Seems me and my friends are a pretty immobile bunch.

He drives up slowly beside me, the Pontiac spluttering. He stops and rolls down the passenger window.

'I said to stay where you were.'

'Couldn't help it,' I say.

'But apart from that? Have a good weekend?'

I open the door, chuck my bag into the back seat and drop onto the black leather.

'Fantastic. That was definitely my last bloody trip out into the bloody country.'

He looks at me and shakes his head. 'Why do you do these things, Chastity? Just take off out of town? You need your concrete.'

What do I know? I thought I'd listen to my friends for once. Something had to give. All that sitting around just isn't for me. Since the business at the port, I'm still officially a public prosecutor, but unofficially I'm sidelined. They took a long time fretting over what to do with me. From the outside you'd imagine accusing your boss of corruption would get you promoted, but it's not looked on so kindly within the service.

And then there was the unauthorised use of firearms.

Having saved Calabretta's life is one thing; having shot a loser in the crown jewels instead of the leg is quite another. I don't know what happened to the guy after that; I never heard another word about it, and there wasn't even a murmur in the press. No idea how they wangled that, and I don't want to know either. They assured me that I had nothing to fear – just swiped my dad's army pistol and took me out of circulation for a while. And then, after months and months in the arse-end of nowhere, up they popped with the offer of a new job. A position created specially for me: victim protection.

If anyone gets half killed in a beating or a shooting or a hit-and-run anywhere in Hamburg, if anyone gets pushed off a bridge or a building and survives, it comes under my jurisdiction.

But only the victim, not the investigation.

Thrilling job.

Let me through, I'm here to hold his hand.

For the first few weeks, I stayed out of sight like a good girl and did as I was told. I've widened my horizons since then. Now I get a firm grip on the few cases that fall at my feet, even if that wasn't really the plan. Nobody's said anything yet though. What could they say? We're all in the same boat, after all, and the boat's called 'the good ship Let's Just Not Make a Fuss about the Bloke with No Balls'.

So there you are.

All things considered, no wonder I'm not wild about my temporary...