‘No footage,’ he says. ‘They don’t keep it that long.’

‘There’s something else.’

I tell him what I need him to do. He promises to get right back to me. My thoughts have been shaken up. I let them settle out until I can see clearly. Two goths walk past, hooded and brooding, listening to music on their tinny phone speaker. Chains clank on black jeans.

My phone’s alive in my hand. Jansen.

‘You were right, a Rein Benner was discharged. It was three weeks after the trial.’

I get into the car and sit, not aware of my surroundings. My mind’s shifted gear; it’s like Tetris in there, different parts all sliding into place, getting faster, stacking up. Trial gone wrong, people dead. A man, who I’d thought might be Muller but wasn’t, threatening Stephanie Dekker to keep quiet. Another man, Rein Benner, who may have been the only one to have been given the drug and survive.

And Klaasen. He’d always protested his innocence because he is innocent. Because I fucked up he went to prison and got beaten into a vegetable.

I check the pathology reports against the images I have of the volunteers.

Somehow I’m not surprised to find that, by process of elimination, Rein Benner is the photo which has been bugging me, the one who is so familiar.

‘Who are you?’ I ask the photo.

I get no response, just a pair of eyes staring back out at me. Eyes which I’m starting to think could be the eyes of a killer.

Ignition on. Foot down. Amsterdam slides into a blur.

Back at the station I’m told Beving has left for a meeting down in Den Haag with the police commissioner. In the incident room I try to get hold of Vermeer but her phone’s off. I find the desk that has the file on DH Biotech Jansen compiled and dive in. By flipping back and forth between multiple sheets I work out who was on the board when the trial actually happened. Unsurprisingly Muller and Kleine are there, and three others. I scribble down their names and hit Google. My existence narrows down to the screen. I’ve plugged into the Matrix, part man, part machine.

The first died four years ago, and his only daughter is a mildly successful beauty blogger who moved to the US three years ago and, according to her Instagram feed, was only yesterday at a beach party in La Jolla, California. I think she’s pretty safe for now. The next also turns out to be dead, a legit-looking car accident on the A15 between Dordrecht and Rotterdam. His son lives in Singapore. Also pretty safe.