Everyone is standing waiting for me. Beving looks impatient. Vermeer … I can’t tell what Vermeer’s thinking.

‘Long story short, one of my men was talking to someone at a medical centre on Tuinstraat. They said they’d treated a man who smelt of solvents. The doctor treating him thought it was odd, said the guy seemed jittery as well, particularly when he was asked about it. Gave some story which the doctor didn’t think much of. He got treated anyway and left. They didn’t think any more of it until my man was canvassing the street.’

‘Anything on him? Name, details?’

‘Gave a false name but we got a photo from the medical centre’s CCTV. Looks like he was trying not to get noticed but they have a hidden camera which he didn’t pick up. I can get the image over to you if you’d like?’

‘Send it to my phone.’

‘Will do. We’re stepping up our efforts to track where he went next. I think we’re on to something.’

I’m just thanking him and about to hang up when a question pops into my head. ‘What was he being treated for, burns?’

‘He had a little burn on his arm, but the main thing was a dog bite. Pretty bad according to the doctor.’

I think back to the image we had of the man from Rashid’s CCTV, the way he looked like one of his arms was trailing. It’s because Kush was defending the boat from him, probably got hold of his arm with his teeth.

‘Rykel, we need to go upstairs, now.’

We go up the stairs, the two uniforms following as Beving had commanded. The seventh floorboard creaks. Past the ticking clock. Into the room. The body is still there. Max Bakker is as well.

The uniforms are close behind us, jamming up the doorway. Vermeer’s moved away from me now, closer to Beving. I get an odd sense of being alone.

‘What’s going on?’

‘We got a DNA match,’ Beving says. ‘Bakker, tell him.’

Bakker coughs, stares at the body, as if his script is written there. Which in a way, it is.

‘We checked the blood under the fingernails. It’s not his, so we ran it through the system.’

‘And? Whose is it?’

Bakker coughs again, shuffles his feet. Vermeer’s face is drained. Beving’s unreadable.

My phone buzzes, the image finally arriving. I glance at it, then double-take. There is no air in the room. It’s impossible to breathe. Because I’m staring at an image of the man I’d known as Sander Klaasen. Somehow he’d managed it. He’d made the switch in prison and done his time as someone else. Then on his release he’d killed again.

‘What is it?’ Vermeer asks.

I turn the phone round so she and Beving can both see it.