But for my purposes now it’s almost perfectly located. Jansen had directed me to the phone shop and I bought one, all ready to go in my pocket. The bar takes up all four floors of a late nineteenth-century house, and tonight we’re in the basement, which has all of twenty seats in various little alcoves. The light’s low, the music’s soft, and the atmosphere is … I suddenly wonder if Vermeer thinks I’m trying to hit on her. Which reminds me I’m supposed to be meeting Sabine tonight, but that’s looking like it might be unlikely. I debate texting her to put it off, but decide that, as we’re not due to meet for another couple of hours, I might as well keep my options open for a little longer.

A Latin-type waitress in a strappy top which shows off her tattoos and two thick bushes of underarm hair arrives to take our order. I plump for a Coke whilst Vermeer’s going through the cocktail menu. Because I don’t drink it hadn’t occurred to me that Vermeer might. Which is a problem because I really need her not to have had a drink for what I’ve got planned.

‘The cocktails aren’t that great,’ I tell her, earning me a pretty feisty look from the waitress. ‘How about a Coke?’

‘Hey, you invited me out for a drink, and a drink is what I’m going to have. In fact, now I’m going to have two. And you can drive me back.’

She’s really not that different from me. Taste of my own medicine.

Once the waitress has gone and Vermeer’s off finding the toilets I look around and realize I’m unprepared for the rush of memories this place is bringing back, like they’d been stored here rather than in my head, and I’m only accessing them now through proximity to the source.

Tanya and I had met when a case of hers had crossed over with one I was working on, and she’d travelled down from Friesland to Amsterdam. I remember seeing her the first time we’d met and the feeling I’d got. There was something there right from the start, something that felt light and weighty at the same time. And that was pretty much our relationship summed up. There were light times, times when we felt giddy with it all, with each other, with the world we’d fashioned around us. There were the weighty times too, moments when I suspected there was something Tanya was keeping from me.