PROLOGUE

       Amsterdam, the house of Brechtus Bruin, 2 October

      Brechtus Bruin was not aware that the kitchen clock ticking away on the wall was counting down the last few minutes of his ninety-five years. His movements had slowed of late, and now his complexion was noticeably wan and waxy. Perhaps he was finally feeling the poison in his bones that rainy morning. He must surely have been wondering that his shaking, liver-spotted hands wouldn’t obey his still-sharp brain, telling him to pour the coffee.

      ‘Here, Brechtus. Let me help you. Please.’

      His guest had been sitting at a worn Formica table in that homely place, waiting. He had been drinking in the familiar scene of the cramped kitchen with its sticky, terracotta-painted walls. Savouring the stale scent of cakes that had been baked decades ago by Brechtus’s long-dead wife. Now, he stood to take the kettle from the old man.

      ‘You sit down. I’ve got this. Honestly.’

      ‘I don’t like people fussing,’ Brechtus said, wiping the sweat from his poorly shaven upper lip. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve not been feeling myself. You know?’ His breath came short. His Adam’s apple lurched up and down inside his haggard old neck. ‘Not just my bad back. More than that. I feel…’ He pursed his deeply pruned lips together and frowned. ‘Wrong. Horrible, in fact.’

      Brechtus Bruin fixed his guest with the dulled irises of a dead man walking. There was fear and confusion in those bloodshot eyes; eyes that had seen almost a century of life. Even at his grand age, it was clear that he didn’t want to go. But any minute now, one of the greatest heroes of Amsterdam’s WWII resistance would be nothing more than an obituary in de Volkskrant.

      Slipping a little extra Demerol and OxyContin into the old man’s coffee cup, he hoped that the taste wouldn’t be bitter enough to put him off one final swig.

      ‘There you go, Brechtus,’ he said, setting the mug down on the table. ‘Drink it while it’s hot. Maybe you’re just coming down with something. There’s an awful lot of bugs going round at the moment.’

      The coffee sloshed around as the old man raised the mug to his mouth with an unsteady hand. His thin arms barely looked capable of holding even this meagre weight.

      Go on, drink it, the guest thought. Let’s finish this.

      He savoured the sight as Brechtus Bruin gulped down the hot contents, grimacing and belching as he set the cup back down.

      ‘I think maybe the milk was off,’ he said.

      Still, the clock ticked. Even closer to the end, now. Tick. Tick. Tick.

      Brechtus’s pallor was the first indication that the medication had started to do its work. Then, the sheen of sweat on the old man’s face grew suddenly slicker, giving him a waxy look, as though he were preserved in formaldehyde. One side of his face started to sag in a strange palsy. The old man’s eyes widened.

      ‘I feel…’

      He tried to speak, but it was as if the poisonous cocktail was paralysing his vocal chords.

      ‘Help. Oh.’

      Brechtus Bruin’s guest watched with amusement as the elderly war hero clutched at his chest and inhaled