‘You’re telling me they have someone in the police?’

‘I’m not telling you anything. I’m merely thinking out loud, wondering about possibilities. Maybe it’s all a coincidence.’

I don’t like coincidences like this. Neither, it seems, does Vermeer. She’s opening her mouth when Beving cuts her off.

‘But for the moment this discussion is over.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Like I said, I was just speculating. But I don’t think there’s anything I can –’

‘You mean you won’t do anything.’

‘If you’ll let me finish. What you need to do is go out there and find enough evidence that the warrant can’t be turned down. And you, Rykel, where’s that paperwork you were supposed to sign?’

I feign puzzlement.

‘I handed it to the desk sergeant, told him to get it to you straight away. Are you saying you haven’t had it?’

The incident room is winding down, the acid attack still a drain on staff numbers. I keep thinking of Kush, the blood on his muzzle from the man he’d chased and bitten.

‘So what do you suggest we do?’ Vermeer asks me.

I don’t have an answer for that. Not yet, anyway. Jansen’s taken over the map showing Muller and Kleine’s movements and I step up to it. He’s been hard at work. Last time I’d looked there’d been only a few dots, black for Kleine, red for Muller. Now there are many more, but surprisingly none where they overlap. It looks like that was a waste of time, nothing in this case adding up. And yet, I think of the two dead women, two fathers who, despite their grief, are hiding something.

And a man we need to talk to hiding out in a cult-run rehab who have just used some of their power to stop us from getting to him. And then there’s Klaasen. Could he actually have been telling the truth? Could he be innocent?

‘We haven’t really talked about Marianne’s start-up offices being trashed,’ Vermeer says. ‘Could there be a link with the company her father works for?’

‘From what I can gather there’s no link at all,’ Jansen says. ‘Marianne Kleine owns fifty-one per cent and the investors she brought on board own the remaining forty-nine per cent. I’ve checked the investors out; none of them have any obvious connection to DH Biotech.’

Vermeer shakes her head. Jansen looks apprehensive. Vermeer asks him something else, but I don’t hear it, a sudden thought crowding out all the space in my head. It’s about Judge Muller. Has Muller still got enough power left? Could it be that this is his doing? I share it with them.

‘He threatened you?’ Vermeer asks when I’ve finished.