Marijke lifted the lid on her coffee and took a sip. ‘From everything I’ve read, people who kill like this – no apparent relationship to the victim, sexual elements in the murder – they don’t stop at one. Agreed?’

‘Oh yes, I think we all know deep down that he’s going to do it again. Particularly since we don’t seem to be able to do fuck all to stop him,’ Tom said pessimistically. ‘Are those smoutebollen you’ve got there?’ He pointed to her paper bag.

‘Help yourself.’ She pushed the bag towards him. ‘Save me from myself.’ Tom unwrapped the bag and pulled out one of the pastries. Icing sugar scattered on his pale blue shirt and he brushed at it impatiently with his free hand. ‘But what I was thinking was, what if this isn’t the beginning of his series?’

Tom stopped eating in mid-chew, then swallowed hard. ‘You mean you think he’s done this before?’

Marijke shrugged. ‘It didn’t look like an amateur job to me. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s been doing this, or something very like it, for a while.’

Brucke shook his head doubtfully. ‘We’d have heard about it. It’s not like pubic scalping is an everyday occurrence, Marijke.’

‘We might not have heard about it if it had happened in another jurisdiction. In France, say. Or Germany’

Tom scratched his head. ‘You’ve got a point. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

‘Yes there is. There’s Europol.’

Tom snorted. ‘Bunch of fucking desk jockeys.’

‘Maybe so, but they do send out those international bulletins.’

‘More fucking paper. Who reads that crap?’

Marijke reached for her paper bag and pulled out one of the napkins she’d placed inside at the smoutebollen stall. Then she extracted one of the pastries, careful not to spill the sugar on her clothes. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘And I bet I’m not the only one.’

‘So you want to pass the case on to the office boys in Den Haag?’ he said incredulously.

‘No, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m suggesting we send a request to Europol with details of the case, asking them to circulate it to member states, asking if anyone else has had anything comparable on their patch. That way, we can at least find out if he’s done it before. And if he has, and if we can pool our information with the investigating team there, we might start to get somewhere.’

Tom gave her a considering look. ‘You know, that might not be such a bad idea.’

‘So I can count on your support when I run it past Maartens?’

He laughed. ‘You’re such a fucking politician, Marijke.’