First thing I see on board is the envelope with the signed letter dominating the kitchen. It’s like a sign. I suddenly get the feeling I’ve been waiting for, the reluctance melting away. Why has it taken me so long? I wonder. The drive gave me time to think of Joel’s proposal, and I’d come to the conclusion that really the only thing I had to lose was the money. And if it paid off I wouldn’t have to get some shit security job, which is what retired inspectors usually ended up doing if they’d not made pensionable age, which I’m very far off. I put it by the front door, so I remember to post it next time I go out.

I’m still holding Jansen’s file. Really I should just call him now and say I’m not going to look at it.

Sander Klaasen could be innocent. You’re responsible for Marianne Kleine’s death.

I sit down at the kitchen table and take a deep breath. Then I open up the file. The more I read the more my stomach drops away.

Footsteps clatter on the gangplank just as I’ve finished going through it. At the door is a man so unabashedly unconcerned with the fact that I’ve been waiting around for him that he must be the electrician. I lead him to the circuit board, which is located in the former engine room at the aft of the boat. Back at the table I realize I’d left the photos out. Which probably has something to do with the strange looks he gave me on the way down.

There’s a box under the sink unit in the kitchen where I keep copies of a few old files. Only those that were either unsolved, or which were solved but that just never felt right. Lucie Muller’s one of latter. Back at the table I clear Vermeer and Jansen’s file away and start reading through the Muller case, and I’m struck all over again by the similarities. It’s uncanny – there is no way this is a coincidence. None at all.

I take a quick break on deck, rolling a joint with Joel’s white cannabis. Smoke curls up in the strangely still air. I watch a seagull cruise out of the sky, wings hooked, orange feet splayed out haphazardly, adjusting as it comes in to land on the water.

Back at the table, reading faster now, seeing how Hank and I tackled the investigation, watching it unfold on paper. I take the photos of Lucie Muller out, compare them to Marianne Kleine. This can’t be coincidence. It just can’t. I read on, flipping between the two, hoping to find something, some detail which could explain the similarity away, all the while the air around me thickening with dread.