‘Tell you what, how about we give you a lift home?’ I ask once Jansen’s sat down opposite her.

I’m rewarded with a grateful smile.

Traffic’s picked up, and we end up crawling on the A4 back into Amsterdam. So far we’ve not spoken much, left her to her own thoughts. I know from experience how the death of someone close to you is an almost psychedelic experience; the whole world looks the same but different, as if you’re viewing it from a millionth of a degree off centre. It’s one of the most disconcerting feelings you can have.

‘You never told me how she died,’ Cheryl’s saying to Jansen.

On the way down I’d asked Jansen if Cheryl had been told about how Marianne had been killed, but he told me they’d kept that from her for now. He and Vermeer had decided the shock of Marianne’s death was enough without adding details into the mix; they could do that when they met face to face. Somehow I don’t think this is quite the moment, though.

Jansen glances at me in the rear-view mirror. I shake my head.

Cheryl’s place is the top two floors of a red and white brick house which is actually closer to a mansion. She may be struggling as a journalist, but from the looks of this I guess her father must have picked up the bill. He’s obviously very high up in that company. We help her up the stairs with her suitcases and soon we’re sitting in the living room with views over the green expanse of Vondelpark. It’s a large space which looks to have been decorated by an interior designer; rich fabrics, vintage furniture and an array of abstract ornaments remind me of a boutique hotel Tanya and I stayed in just off Steinplatz in Berlin.

It’d been a rare Friday when both of us had finished cases and hadn’t yet been assigned another. Tanya had the weekend off anyway, and I called in a favour and got someone to cover for me. We were lucky enough to get last-minute tickets for the seven-hour train journey and a late booking at a hotel we’d not normally be able to afford. We’d spent the nights pulsing to music in a club housed in an old brutalist power station and the days walking through the Tiergarten, trees ablaze with colour, exhausted but exhilarated too. We slept the entire journey home.