After a bit of wheedling I’m finally hooked up to someone with a nasal voice and a clipped turn of phrase which suggests he believes he has better things to be doing. I explain what I’m after.

‘I’m not sure those can be given out to just anyone.’

I disabuse the man of his erroneous notion that I’m just ‘anyone’.

‘In that case I’d have to speak to my manager,’ he says.

‘Great, I’ll hold.’

‘Actually, she’s away until next Wednesday. So if you’d like to call back maybe on Thursday when she’s had a chance to catch up –’

‘Christ, what’s that music?’

I look up to see Jansen in the doorway. I tell Mr Nasal to expect me and hang up.

‘You know what this reminds me of?’ Jansen asks loudly just as Vermeer walks in behind him. ‘It reminds me of a desperately sad handjob.’

‘Is there any other type?’ Vermeer asks, flopping down on a chair and putting her feet up on a desk. She closes her eyes and rubs her temples. I’m tempted to tell her that’s what cocktails do, but instead I just kill the call and the music stops, leaving us with sweet silence. They both seem pretty morose, though. Which considering everything I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours seems unreasonable at best. True, Huisman being put out of the picture’s a major blow to everything we’ve been working on up until now, but still. At least neither of them had their house burn down.

I turn back to what I’m doing. I should get going to the hospital. But even if I get the death records that’s not going to tell me who the survivors are without knowing all of their names. And it’s the survivors I’m interested in. I pull up Google and punch in FAA673. To my surprise I get a few hits. The first being a government database of all clinical trials, current and past. With my heart beating a little faster, I click on the link for FAA673. It brings me to a detailed page which outlines the original proposal, the date the trial was set for, and eventually the fact that the trial was abandoned. It doesn’t say why, though. But there’s more, a copy of the original advert, with contact details.

They’re not those of DH Biotech, but another company.