Rein Benner. The man of the moment. Or ghost of the moment might be more apt. Because Vermeer and I have been at this for hours now, as well as four returning members of the team who had been poached for the acid attack, plus Jansen, plus a few others who are chipping in, and we still have pretty much nothing on him.

Born in Haarlem, he then moved to a flat in the ill-fated Groeneveen estate where he grew up with his younger brother and their father. Mother was on the birth certificate but seems she split early on. Went to the local school and then got various low-paid jobs as a waiter in central Amsterdam, enduring drunk tourists night after night. It was during this period he, and his brother who was starting an apprenticeship at a bodywork place out in Weesp, signed up for the trial. Given neither of them were earning much it must have looked like easy money. These things always do.

The last time we have any kind of official documentation was the hospital discharge papers Jansen had found earlier. After that, nothing. His last known address is his childhood home, and although it was years ago Vermeer and I decide to head there, leaving the team to carry on working.

The drive’s short and we’re soon parked and walking into the apartment complex itself. These were the buildings an Israeli-owned Boeing 747 crashed into shortly after take-off from Schiphol back in 1992 and many lost their lives in the impact. Many more subsequently lost their lives to a mysterious auto-immune disease. At the time there was no information on what the plane was actually carrying; it was a freight not passenger flight, but conspiracy theories flourished. The official view was that El Al Flight 1862 was carrying computer chips, perfume and fruit, and therefore there was nothing that could harm anyone.

The most persistent of the various conspiracy theories centred around chemicals destined to be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons, especially given the dire health effects those exposed to the aftermath suffered, a theory which turned out to be true. Six years after the crash it was finally admitted that the flight had actually been carrying nearly 200 litres of a chemical used in the manufacture of sarin nerve gas. But it didn’t stop there. It was further discovered that Boeing used depleted uranium as a counterweight in the tails of 747s. Anyone there that day received a massive dose of radiation, alongside the sarin precursor.

Despite that, the place has been rebuilt and we walk past the Flight 1862 Memorial with the names of the known victims. Known, because the buildings housed so many illegal immigrants that the death toll that day was definitely higher than the official numbers.