‘You’re not trying to hit on me, are you?’ she asks. That breaks it, and we both laugh, relaxing a little, getting us off the awkward track of conversation we’d somehow got on to. We talk about the case, but when we get on to the topic of the warrant Vermeer gets angry again, more animated. For a split second she turns into Tanya before reality flickers back in.

‘We’re supposed to be servants of the law, but do you ever get the feeling we’re actually just servants of the powerful?’ she asks, accompanying the word ‘powerful’ with a wide sweep of her arm.

‘It’s taken you this long to work that out? Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought.’

‘All right, Mr fucking-know-it-all, so why are you still here?’

Yeah, that’s really the question. Vermeer has a knack for asking difficult questions. Sadly, though, for this one I have an answer.

‘Same as you. We’re still here because we can’t help ourselves. We’re addicted to it.’

‘Maybe,’ she says. The music’s turned up a notch, the evening’s softening. I notice the first cocktail is gone. We really should get going before she moves on to the second one.

‘Maybe we should call it a night?’

She gives me the sweetest smile and a middle finger, then reaches for the next, the liquid blacker than night.

‘Smoking gun,’ she says. ‘Six parts gin, one part vodka, smoked chilli syrup, squeezed lime and charcoal. That’s the colour.’

‘Sounds deadly.’

She offers me a sip. I decline. She shrugs and downs it in one.

‘Now let’s call it a night. You’re driving, remember?’

I pay at the bar and we’re just reaching the car when I stop and pat my pockets.

‘Damn, I left my wallet.’

Vermeer rolls her eyes. ‘I’ll wait in the car then.’

She heads off and I duck back inside, make for the toilets and pull out the pre-pay mobile I’d bought earlier. It turns on. Though it has trouble finding reception. The one part of the plan I hadn’t really thought of was that I was going to have to make this call from a basement. There are four cubicles and I notice one of them has a street-level window. I close the door and step up onto the porcelain rim, a dinosaur spine of shit riding down the back of the pan into the water. I hold the phone up … no bars … no bars … yes! Three bars. I place the call, my thumbnail ready against the phone’s speaker.

When the call’s answered I talk in a breathy whisper, scratching at the phone’s mic with my thumbnail. I manage to get the message across, though, and hang up when he asks for my details. SIM down the toilet, battery out of the phone. I’ll dispose of that later.

‘Got it?’