‘Turned up to find this guy had got really stoned but didn’t have anything to eat in his flat. He called us because he was desperately hungry, thought we might be able to help.’

‘Yeah, it’s dangerous stuff.’

She looks across at me and shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything more.

The drive out there is industrial, painfully so, the horizon dotted with mournful wind turbines that aren’t moving, even though a series of tall oblong flags lining the car park are fluttering dramatically on their poles.

The warehouse is busy, despite the hour. One whole side of the structure itself is open loading bays for large trucks to reverse into. Once in place a swarm of electric forklifts appear to unload the shrink-wrapped pallets and deposit them somewhere deep in the building. It could be a nature documentary on an unusual species.

We park up and go through the motions only to be told that Bastiaan Polman had been due to be working the last shift today, but that he called at the last moment to say he couldn’t. As per company policy this was possible, as long as he arranged his own cover with another employee. Which he has. We get that man’s name and ten minutes later he appears. He’s short, with a rounded belly and face to match. At first he doesn’t want to tell us why Polman wasn’t able to make it, but once we’ve made it very clear to him that if he doesn’t tell us we’ll just have to go and ask the wife, he spills his not inconsiderable guts.

Turns out Polman has a deficient home sex life and is sometimes forced to supplement. And tonight he’s supplementing at a brothel located a quick and convenient twenty minutes’ walk from his place of work. Soon we’re back on the road, hoping that we can catch Polman, quite literally, with his trousers down.

‘You ever been to one?’ Vermeer asks me.

‘Really, you think I’d be the type? What about you?’

‘There are times you’ve just got to put yourself in the hands of a professional.’

‘Sometimes I just can’t read you,’ I tell her.

She smiles but doesn’t say anything else.

We arrive at the address. It’s a classic brothel above a dry cleaner’s and we’re in quickly and talking to the surly Eastern European with a face like a blade. Then we’re moving down a badly lit corridor. We stop outside the last door on the right and listen. There’s a kind of groaning going on, a rhythmic creaking, the occasional soft gasp. I push the door and we walk in.