‘Maybe your colleagues, your boss? Maybe we’ll put it on the internet and it’ll go viral somehow. You’d like to be famous? I’m sure your kids will love having a famous dad.’

Polman hears his future; it’s filled with laughter and mocking voices. He tries out a death stare but in reality we all know he’s beaten.

‘So given that this is as unpleasant for us as it is for you, how about we just get on with it? Sound like a plan?’

Vermeer kicks things off. ‘We have reason to believe you took part in a clinical trial at the AMC. Is that right?’

His eyes flit between us and a quick flick of the tongue moistens his lips. Good.

‘I was,’ he says cautiously. ‘But it turned out I just got the placebo.’

‘Yes, we know that. But we want to know about it, about what happened during the trial itself.’

At this stage all the previous volunteers we’d spoken to had said pretty much the same thing, namely they didn’t want to talk to us. No amount of cajoling had made any difference, and we weren’t in a position to legally force anything.

‘I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you. I signed a non-disclosure agreement. We all did. And they said if we ever spoke to anyone then we’d be sued for everything we had.’

‘You got an Instagram account?’ I ask Vermeer. ‘Or maybe Twitter’s the best place for this … Let’s see.’

‘Don’t be a fucking prick.’

The whip cracks again. If this was standard police issue, getting information out of people would get a whole lot easier. And quicker.

‘Ah … fuck that hurt. Do it again, baby.’

‘You want a go?’

Vermeer takes the whip.

‘You are going to talk to us,’ she says. ‘So why not do it now?’

‘I’ll talk to you once I’ve spoken to my lawyer.’

The whip whistles and cracks.

‘You have a lawyer? You do shift work forklift driving for a living. What do you need a lawyer for?’

He clears his throat and spits something onto the floor.

‘Honestly? It’s to protect me from people like you.’

A Very Dangerous Game

‘You’re sure you don’t need somewhere to stay?’

We seem to have reached an uneasy truce, maybe as a result of our success in finding Polman. Vermeer’s pulled the car over on Marnixstraat, the famous mechanical bridge just visible down the Brouwersgracht. Polman contacted his lawyer, but given the time nothing’s going to happen before the morning. So we’d left, making it very clear that if we don’t hear from him first thing tomorrow then the photo will be going to his wife. Jansen was still struggling with locating the last volunteer and Vermeer had told him to call it a night.