I answer the phone. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

‘Jaap, they’ve approved my request.’

She doesn’t need to say what that request is. The ground doesn’t feel stable and my throat’s tight.

‘When?’ I finally manage.

‘Don’t know yet. They have to set a date, which they’ll let me know in the next couple of days.’

She sounds oddly emotionless but I know that’s just because she’s holding it all in. Not least because one of the emotions she has swirling around is probably a tiny sense of relief, even if she’s not admitting that to herself. Yet. I tell her I’ll be there, and that we can meet later if she wants. She says she’ll let me know.

Vermeer returns. ‘They’re insisting on a warrant.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Client confidentiality. Which is bollocks. And the thing is, it’s going to take hours.’

She gets on the phone and starts the process. I glance across at the building and wonder if there’s another way. By the time she’s finished on the phone my plan has been worked out.

‘How about we get something to eat whilst we’re waiting?’

Glass

The place is busy, a blur of talk, the clatter of an open kitchen, and a mix of smells which make me realize just how hungry I actually am. Vermeer’s choice, a place on Cornelis Schuytstraat which I’d never been into before. On the outside it looks tiny, but once inside you notice it stretches all the way to the back of the building and spills out into the courtyard as well. A small army of waiters and waitresses wheel platters of food and trays of drinks around at a startling rate. Right now one of them, a girl with a severe undercut, deposits our food in front of us with surprising grace and is gone before we can even thank her.

I’d opted for the burger made from some rare-breed cow, which had been, according to the menu, massaged daily and had Bach’s Forty-Eight played to it during the day and the Goldbergs every night, whilst Vermeer had ordered a pot of mussels. The menu had given a choice, native or Scottish. Being a good Dutch woman she’d gone native.

‘You don’t want any bloody foreign ones,’ she says as she lifts the top off and releases a cloud of steam. She waits till it disperses and starts picking through them, slurping the yellow-orange flesh out of each shell and discarding them into a rapidly growing pile.

‘I still think we should dig a bit further into DH Biotech. Seems too much of a coincidence that both the victims’ fathers have links there.’