‘He was worked up but managed to stop himself. Seems reasonable to expect that as a judge and a father he’d want to find the truth, but I don’t think he has much time left. He didn’t look that well and he has nothing to live for. I reckon he wants to go to the grave with the knowledge that his daughter’s killer was punished. He doesn’t want that messed with.’

‘Surely if there’s a chance the earlier conviction wasn’t right then he’d want to find the real killer?’

‘I don’t think he’s thinking straight; you could see it in his eyes. He wants to die knowing someone was punished for his daughter’s death. Say we were to find out that, in fact, Klaasen didn’t kill her and it was Huisman, then a trial’s still going to be a year, eighteen months away. I don’t think he has that long.’

‘That’s crazy,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘Fuck!’

She sweeps a whole load of paper and a laptop off a nearby table. The laptop crunches against the wall. Paper flutters wildly like a flock of disturbed birds. She storms out of the room.

I wonder about picking it all up, but decide I can’t be bothered. I nip outside, round the corner, and take a few pulls instead.

‘Is that …?’

I turn to see the officer who’d bought the wrong colour shoes, eyes squinting with suspicion. He’s holding a large coffee in one hand and an even larger bagel in the other, two bites breaking the perimeter.

‘Yes. It is.’

‘I don’t think you should be –’

‘Fuck off.’

He does, and I finish up and go back to the incident room where a calmer Vermeer is present.

‘So, what do we do?’ she asks.

‘Give me ten minutes, then I’m taking you for a drink.’

I track Jansen down and tell him what I need.

‘But what exactly?’ he asks.

‘Everything about DH Biotech: company accounts, people involved with it, everything.’

‘Right,’ he says, shaking his head like I’ve just asked him for the impossible. ‘Anything else, sir?’

There is actually. The first step of the plan I’ve been concocting.

‘Is there a phone shop around here?’

He tells me where the closest is. Just as I’m out the door he calls out to me.

‘Oh, thought you’d like to know. Patrol picked up someone breaking into a building right next door to Kleine’s offices. Turns out it was the same guy.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He confessed to it and they got some CCTV footage of him.’

‘Do we need to talk to him?’

‘From what patrol says he’s just a low-grade criminal, bad one at that. Doubt he has anything to do with anything.’