Everyone is on eggshells at the station. Creeping round me as if I’m going to blow up. Or they might catch something, as if bad luck’s an illness, a vector for infectious disease. I’m at a desk in the incident room, work going on behind me, my first footstep across the threshold killing the usual banter stone-cold dead. It’s been over an hour since Vermeer got me out of the drunk tank, and I’ve been feeling better, the dab I’d had really calming things down, though maybe it’s taken me a little too far in the opposite direction. Dabs can do that; they can blanket the pain, but sometimes that blanket’s too thick.

Now I’m in the canteen, the same table overlooking the intersection I’d sat at with Jansen three days and a lifetime ago, wondering just how it’s come to this so quickly. Homeless, jobless. Probably responsible for putting an innocent man in prison, definitely responsible for Kush’s death.

‘Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.’

I look up to see Jansen. He slaps me on the back, massages my shoulder.

‘Seriously, I only just heard. That’s so fucked up,’ he’s saying.

I look at him. For some reason I find the expression on his face, the personification of earnest concern, strange. Then I start to find it amusing. It must be the effects of the dab, I realize, a second wave swelling up inside me, blossoming in my head like some kind of weird jungle flower. I start to laugh. Hard. Tears stream out of my eyes, collect with a tickle under my chin. From there they drip down on to my still damp top. I’m finding it all hilarious.

He looks at me as if I’m mad.

‘Get me a coffee, will you?’ I ask when I’ve managed to stop laughing.

He returns with two cups, a stroopwafel balanced on the rim of each. He hands me mine, I can see the caramel centre is already starting to go sticky, and then sits down opposite.

‘You all right? You seem a little …’

I think he wants to say crazy, but doesn’t quite manage to get it out. I take a bite from my stroopwafel, I’m suddenly hungry as hell, and it disappears in no time. Jansen looks at me like I’ve turned into a monster, but then hands me his stroopwafel.

‘Listen, I’ve got to …’

‘Go for it,’ I tell him. ‘And thanks for this.’

He nods, then takes his coffee and starts to walk away before stopping and turning back. I demolish his stroopwafel just as fast.

‘By the way, that info you asked for on DH Biotech? You want it still?’

I think about what else I could be doing right now. Don’t seem to have a lot of options.

‘Yeah. Might as well take a look.’