I’ve made the call, and soon the place will be crawling but for now it’s just me and the body. The clock’s ticking on the landing. I realize the fact I can hear it means the howl has subsided. For now. It does that sometimes, disappears, makes me believe it’s gone before it comes back louder than ever. I need to be prepared. Buddhist initiates often sit with dead bodies to unlock the key to impermanence, so I sit now with Dirk Zeeman, a man I didn’t know, a person I never will. A man killed not because of anything he did, but for his father’s sin.

He’s kneeling, his body slumped forward, forehead on the carpet. Which is soaked with blood. The soles of his feet are facing me; they’re slightly dirty, as if he’s been walking around barefoot. He has a tattoo on his right ankle. I can’t work out what it is. His toes are curled in and his arms are sprawled out, not quite as neat as the other two victims. Both hands are on pristine carpet, the depth of the weave soaking up a lot of blood, limiting the pool. I crouch down. There’s something under his fingernails. I can smell his aftershave, a heavy musk curdling with the scent of death. I lean in closer. It’s blood caught in his fingernails. Could well be from his attacker. I can’t get Rein Benner out of my head. Could it be him, could he be the one behind all this?

I wonder what it was the dead man in front of me wanted from life, what it was he feared, what made him laugh. What he thought about in those last seconds before life slipped away. Whether he’d be satisfied with the life he lived, or had regret flooded his system for all the little deaths he’d endured along the way? Or was he hoping right up until that very last neuron winked out that somehow it wasn’t the end, that he still had a life to live?

All of this, because seven years ago I made a mistake.

Outside, sirens coming. One, two, three … I lose count, unable to distinguish each individual one as they cross over each other, weaving together into a chaotic tapestry of sound. I should be down there, but I find I can’t move, as if my body’s imitating Dirk Zeeman’s. For a single moment of blinding panic I wonder if I have somehow died in here, that when the police come in they’ll find two dead bodies.

‘Rykel?’

Vermeer’s voice downstairs.

‘In here,’ I call out. Not dead then, as I can hear her taking the steps two at a time. I stand up just as she steps into the open doorway.

‘Oh fuck,’ she says.