After my chat with Beving I’d been told to go back to my houseboat and wait, then Vermeer had called ten minutes ago saying we were on and that Jansen would be round to pick me up soon. I spent the time looking at the report Ron Koopmans had given me. It was just a single sheet of A4, a standard incident report someone knocked up in Word with printed boxes, some of which are filled in by hand. The handwriting itself is on the edge of being illegible, but I could just make out the sequence of events which ended with Jan Akkerman being expelled from the club. There was no photo of him, but the sparse description – male, average height, tattoos on both arms – fits with my memory, though it could equally apply to hundreds, if not thousands, of people in that area of Amsterdam alone. It did say he’d been with two other people, one of whom didn’t have a name, but was just referred to as ‘Snake’. I’d put a call into Ron asking who that was but was told he was out and would get back to me.

Jansen’s ready to go, so I throw some food in the bath and Kush hops in.

‘Where was her sister?’ I ask as Jansen gets us moving south towards Schiphol airport.

‘Bali apparently. She’d gone with her fiancé and a few days in they get our call. Best holiday ever.’

‘She as high-flying as Marianne?’

‘She’s a journalist, freelance. Got the impression she’s struggling, though. Her father told me there was a chance she was going to be joining Marianne’s business at some stage; she’s got a degree in biology, and the business was something to do with microbiome research, so makes sense.’

I’d read the file. Marianne and Cheryl’s father is pretty high up in a large pharmaceutical company, so the old thing about apples not falling far from the tree seemed to be true in this case.

We reach Schiphol, park and are soon being ushered into a room by an immigration officer. Moments later the door opens and a woman is brought in. She has that slenderness I often associate with models, one which suits the camera but in real life can appear almost too willowy, too thin, giving her an aura of fragility. Mind you, having just got off a long-haul flight with nothing to do but come to terms with the death of your sister isn’t going to be doing anyone much good. Her dark hair is tied up in a high bun. We’d been told her fiancé had to get a later flight.

She shakes hands with us both as Jansen does the intros and invites her to sit. The room has been designed to sniff out law-breakers; it’s stark, the lighting’s harsh, and there are no windows.