I’m here because of two bits of information that had come together in the lock-up, teased out by the Sour Hound. The artist on the Groeneveen estate had said Benner spent the summer holidays in a log cabin in Bergen, and I remembered the note in the file on Lucie Muller’s death, the officer from Bergen who’d said they’d seen a man fitting the description we’d sent out. And he’d been living in a log cabin deep in the woods. Two little bits of information that are going to end this once and for all. And to it I now add a third: Klaasen had worked on a building site in Alkmaar, which I’d passed to get here. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

Then I think of Benner and his brother signing up for the trial, the lure of easy money overriding the danger that it actually posed. By some chance of fate both Rein and his brother were given the drug, and both fell ill. But Rein survived, and having watched his brother die wanted to get revenge. But then the question: would Rein have flipped, would he have killed at all just from the grief? Or had the drug done something to him? Had his brain been rewired in a way that made him more likely to kill, that made it easier for him to transform from Rein, frustrated actor working as a waiter and labourer, to Sander Klaasen, a stone-cold killer? Had he made the transformation out here in the woods, sitting in the building I’m searching for as the change occurred? Had it been gradual, or had it struck like lightning, the switch happening from one moment to the next? At what point did Klaasen decide he wanted to get revenge on me as well? And, the question I’m not yet willing to face, what part did Sabine play in all this? Because I’m starting to feel that meeting her that day can’t have been a coincidence. Or maybe that’s just paranoia.

It has to be.

Sabine upped and left, that’s all. She has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t. I hear her whispering I’m sorry in her sleep. My throat dries up.

A noise somewhere behind me. It’s like a twig snapping, distinct from the softer dripping of the rain. I’m fully alert, muscles tense, hairs on the back of my neck standing proud, ears primed. I hold my breath and turn my head slowly. Darkness, trunks standing sentinel, moonlight spikes through the canopy. I can smell pine resin, earth, something fungal. But I can’t see anything moving, and the sound doesn’t happen again. After a few minutes I slip off the trunk and continue on my way.

Only now I’ve got the feeling I’m not alone.