The only thing I can see linking me with Zeeman’s death is the DNA evidence, my own blood found under the victim’s fingernails, but it’s impossible to refute. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s true. My arm’s throbbing now, the uniform’s rough treatment causing it to bleed. We stop at a traffic light. Vermeer seems to be taking it slower than she usually does. The light turns green. We move off. How can something be true and not true at the same time?

Heart accelerating rapidly. The interior of the car shrinks in around me.

Full-on paranoia alert.

I’m trembling to even think it.

What if someone planted my DNA there?

If that’s true, then who? Who would have access to my DNA? Someone in the police?

Or could it be … No. No no no nononooooooo.

It can’t be. I can’t believe that. And yet what else makes sense? How else could it have been done? My houseboat’s been torched, so they couldn’t have got it from there. Or … We’re turning on to Marnixstraat now, the station less than two blocks away.

It can’t be.

But unless I’m to believe that I did kill Dirk Zeeman, that I’ve been running around these last few days unaware that there are two of me in my head, this is my only hope.

One block now.

I clear my throat to speak.

Sour Hound II

‘Listen, Vermeer?’

‘Don’t talk to her,’ the uniform next to me snaps.

‘Vermeer, you need to listen to me. You know this isn’t right, and I think I can prove it.’

We’re now parked outside the front of the station, and I know that as soon as I’m over that building’s threshold things are going to get a hell of a lot harder. This is my last chance.

‘Prove it how?’ she says, turning the engine off. ‘Your blood was found under the victim’s fingernails. I don’t see there’s anything to prove.’

‘It was planted there. By the killer. He wants to frame me for his killing.’

‘Even if I was to entertain such a crazy idea, how would whoever the killer is get your blood?’

This is where it gets tricky, because it’s the only thing I can think of, the only way it would be possible. I need to make it sound plausible enough that Vermeer actually listens.

‘I think he followed me somewhere, somewhere I changed the dressing on my arm. Look, it’s bleeding now.’ I glare at the uniform beside me. ‘If they got hold of the dressing I threw away, then they could have scraped my blood off it.’

A lorry speeds past us, and the car rocks in its wake. I sit in the silence, waiting for Vermeer to make a decision. My arm throbs, pulses. It’s angry.