When a woman’s body is found in a park of the Tegel suburb of Berlin one evening, it means another night shift for Chief Inspector Bruno Schumann and his colleagues Henry Weber and Anne Vogt of the city’s CID department. Who killed Agnes Rahf with multiple stab wounds in a frenzied attack? The first clues lead our investigators to question Manuel Stiegler, who has just been released from prison on parole. He and the 37-year-old Agnes have been in a relationship for several months now. But why should a divorced teacher plunge into an affair with a convicted murderer? Her ex-husband Hintze, who has remarried and lives with his wife and new family in a terraced house, claims he knew nothing about Agnes and Manuel. However, several witnesses assure the police that even after their divorce, Hintze kept close track of what his ex-wife was doing and even caused her considerable mental torment. Was Agnes getting some sort of revenge on Hintze by having a long-distance relationship with the murderer, only to establish when he was released that they had nothing in common? Just a few hours before she was murdered, Agnes and Manuel were seen arguing violently. And it now emerges that there was some controversy about releasing Stiegler before he had served his full term of imprisonment, according to Dr. Uwe Harms, head of the Probationary Service. But is it really likely that Stiegler committed another murder merely because of a crisis in his relationship with Agnes? Or is Chief Inspector Schumann paying too little attention to Hintze, who is perhaps trying too hard to present himself as the harmless family man in his idyllic suburban home? Was he driven to this act by jealousy and the realisation that he had finally lost all control over his ex-wife? When it finally becomes apparent that both Stiegler and Hintze were present outside Agnes’s apartment on the evening she was killed, the suspicions against both of them mount even further...
