Which leaves the third, Stefan Zeeman. Still alive? Check. Offspring? One daughter, one son. Son Dirk lives in Amsterdam, daughter Jill in Maastricht. The alarm’s ringing in my head, faint, but persistent. Vermeer’s phone’s still dead. Jansen’s off. Beving’s out. Time’s speeding up. Fuck it.

Dirk Zeeman works at the Philips head office. I get on the phone. Several layers of bureaucracy, each requiring a new connection. Finally get him.

‘Dirk Zeeman? I’m Inspector Rykel and you need to listen to me very –’

‘Sorry, I’m not Dirk. He hasn’t come in today.’

‘Did he say he wasn’t going to be?’

‘No, we actually tried to call him a little while ago to see if he was okay –’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘His phone just rang out. We were just talking about maybe calling his wife and –’

‘Home address. Right now.’

As soon as I’ve got it I’m in the car, dialling Vermeer. Nothing. Damn. Jansen’s phone is now on but goes to voicemail. I leave one and flick on the siren and lights. It takes me ten minutes to get to Plantage and I skid to a stop outside a house on Henri Polaklaan, completely blocking the road. The car’s blue lights flicker everywhere in the narrow streets. People already at windows. The house I’m looking for has window boxes with spiky grasses. Black paint on the front door glistens like it’s still wet. The door itself is open. Heart rate through the roof. The alarm in my head’s turning into a whine. Toe the door open. Quiet inside.

‘Dirk Zeeman?’

The house gives me nothing. I step in and check the downstairs: two sitting rooms, kitchen and a bathroom. A single white orchid in a slender black vase. My face in the mirror behind. Up the stairs. The seventh floorboard creaks, the rest are silent. Landing, choices. A grandfather clock – sprayed bright pink – ticks. I don’t have long. I pick a bedroom at the back.

The door’s ajar.

Toe again.

The whine’s now a full-blown howl.

The door swings open.

It’s just like the others.

Burn

It’s quiet. Peaceful almost. The bed’s made, the curtains hang in thick folds either side of the window, the glass filled with the contorted branches of a large elm. The bed’s a double, flanked by side tables. Resting on each one is a book. The first looks like an original copy of Storming Heaven by Jay Stevens, the other is a translation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. A piece of artwork hangs above the oak headboard, a wide canvas sliced vertically by silver birch trunks, some close, some further away.