Passenger 23

by Sebastian Fitzek

  ‘Yes,’ Daniel conceded frankly. ‘But this time the mess is far more complicated.’

  The captain pointed at the photo of the sweet girl with the slightly sticking-out ears. ‘Anouk Lamar disappeared eight weeks ago. We stopped the ship, informed the coastal stations, spent $800,000 on a completely pointless search with boats and aircraft, declared her dead, organised the funeral with an empty coffin and put our hands deep into our pockets for hush money so that the media would report the story as a suicide, until we could finally shelve the case.’

  Daniel took out a second photo from the black paper folder. Julia barely recognised the girl because she’d aged so much. Not physically, but emotionally. The confident expression in her dark eyes had given way to an uncanny emptiness. Anouk’s gaze was as lustreless as her hair. Her skin exhibited an unhealthy pallor, as if she hadn’t seen the sun in ages.

  ‘When was this photo taken?’ Julia asked anxiously.

  ‘The day before yesterday.’ A smile of desperation played on Daniel’s lips. ‘You heard me correctly. The girl cropped up again two nights ago.’

  11

  She was missing for eight weeks?

  Martin still couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

  Obviously he knew that it wasn’t rare for people to go missing at sea.

  In the period after Nadja’s and Timmy’s death he’d made a detailed study of every case over the past few years. They ran into dozens.

  He’d frequented self-help groups, founded by relatives of ‘cruise victims’, spoken to lawyers who specialised in compensation cases against those responsible, and had tried to make the captain personally liable for the fact that the search operation had been as inadequate as the preservation of evidence in his wife’s cabin.

  Until the unsuccessful action against the captain Daniel Bonhoeffer and the cruise line, some years after Nadja and Timmy’s disappearance, he’d kept up with every report about crimes on cruise ships. He then realised that his campaign against cruise lines was merely an attempt to anaesthetise the pain. Whatever he did, nothing was going to bring back his family. Once he’d accepted this fact he stopped following news reports about missing persons at sea. They’d lost all meaning for him, as had life itself. Which is why this was the first time he’d heard the name Anouk Lamar.

  ‘And now she’s reappeared out of the blue?’ he said, parroting back the words with which Gerlinde Dobkowitz had just finished a long monologue.

  ‘Yes. I saw it with my own eyes. It was at the end of my daily patrol, amidships in between decks 2 and 3. I was just turning a corner when I saw the scrawny creature running straight towards me, her head turned back as if fleeing from someone. I heard rapid footsteps, muffled by this metre-high carpet my wheelchair always sinks into like quicksand. Well, anyway, what’s important is that I saw Anouk stop to throw something into a brass bin affixed to the wall.’ As she spoke she went red in the face; the memory of the episode seemed to animate her.

  ‘After this she stayed exactly where she was, while I wheeled myself as fast as possible behind one of those elephantine flowerpots they use for planting on this boat. I managed to get out of the way just in time before the captain could see me.’

  ‘The captain.’

  ‘No idea what he was up to at that time of night, but he practically ran into the young girl. Here, take a look for yourself!’

  Gerlinde took a mobile phone from her tracksuit trouser pocket and showed him a photo. It was dark and blurred. ‘Yes, I know. I’m no Helmut Newton with the lens.’ Gerlinde pursed her lips. ‘It needed a flash, but I didn’t want to be discovered. I really had to strain to get anything at all on camera through the foliage.’

  ‘Who else is that in the picture?’ Martin asked. Besides a girl and a tall man, the photo showed a third person standing between the two of them. She was barely bigger than Anouk and almost as thin.

  ‘That’s Shahla, such a kind soul. She cleans my cabin sometimes too. Shahla bumped into the other two after fetching a pile of vomit-soaked towels from the infirmary. It was a rough night.’

  With her right hand Gerlinde simulated the movements of a rocking ship.

  ‘I’ll admit that when I took the photo I wasn’t sure exactly who the girl was. I only worked it out when I’d gone through my research files and came across Anouk’s missing-person photo. I knew at once that the girl needed urgent help. I mean, it was half past midnight, she was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties, and her eyes were puffy from sobbing. When the captain asked if she was lost she didn’t reply. Nor when he asked her where her parents were.’

  ‘You heard all of this?’

  ‘Do you think I’m in a wheelchair because I’m deaf? The plants may have blocked my sight, but not my ears. I also heard the captain warning Shahla pointedly not to tell anyone about this. Then they took the poor thing to Dr Beck in the infirmary. When they’d all gone I found this in the bin.’

  Gerlinde pointed to the cuddly toy that Martin still held tightly in his left hand.

  ‘She threw it in there?’ Martin stared at the teddy, which weirdly looked both familiar and strange.

  ‘I swear it on the sweat of my compression stockings,’ Gerlinde declared, raising her right hand. ‘You recognise it, don’t you?’ Gerlinde didn’t say any more until he looked her in the eye. ‘That’s the teddy your son, Timmy, was clutching in the photos that appeared in the media, isn’t it?’

  Martin nodded. Strictly speaking, only one magazine had reported on his family’s fate and printed Timmy’s photo, and not until a year after the tragedy under the headline ‘Lost – why are more and more people disappearing without trace on cruise ships?’

  Gerlinde was astonishingly well informed.

  ‘And that was two days ago?’

  ‘Yes, on the Oslo–Hamburg leg.’

  ‘Does anyone know where Anouk has been hiding all these weeks?’

  Gerlinde waggled her bony hand from side to side.

  ‘I don’t imagine so, given how agitated the captain was when I paid him a visit the following morning.’ She smiled mischievously.

  ‘He denied everything to begin with and tried to tell me that my beta blockers had been making me hallucinate. But when he saw the photo, the captain started sweating his arse off and ran straight to Yegor.’

  ‘Yegor Kalinin? The ship owner? Is he on board?’

  ‘He moved into the Maisonette Suite a fortnight ago in Funchal. Do you know him?’

  Martin nodded. He’d come across him in court. Most people expect former members of the Foreign Legion of German–Russian descent to be total hulks, whereas in fact the fifty-seven-year-old, self-made millionaire who owned the second-largest fleet of cruise ships in the world looked more like an academic schoolmaster. Stooped, rimless glasses on a pointed nose, and hair receding behind the ears.

  What’s he doing here on board?

  ‘In fact that’s how I got your mobile number,’ Gerlinde explained.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yegor came to see me personally and told me some cock-and-bull story about how damaging a false rumour could be about passengers who vanish and then turn up again. He was trying to intimidate me. He handed me the file from the case you took out against him, with the comment that surely I didn’t want to let false accusations ruin me like they had like you, Herr Schwartz.’ Gerlinde gave a crooked smile. ‘He must have overlooked the fact that your private number was in the case notes. Because of this, it was he and that imbecile Bonhoeffer who first gave me the idea of contact—’

  ‘Bonhoeffer?’ Martin interrupted her in horror. ‘Daniel Bonhoeffer?’

  The crook who hadn’t even thought it necessary to turn around?

  ‘Yes. Why have you turned as white as a sheet?’ It was impossible. Martin may have lost the case, but Bonhoeffer had been suspended after the incidents.

  ‘Yes, Daniel Bonhoeffer. The captain.’

  A bolt shot through Martin’s skull, as if someone were stabbing his brain wit
h a hot needle.

  ‘Oh, goodness me. Didn’t you know that he’d been reinstated?’ Gerlinde asked in dismay.

  Martin didn’t say goodbye. Not to her, nor to the butler in the neighbouring room. He packed his duffle bag, stuffing the teddy into one of the outside pockets, and stormed out of the cabin with the same speed that the pain was spreading through his head.

  12

  ‘We haven’t the faintest idea where Anouk was,’ Daniel said, answering the question Julia had just put to him. ‘The little one’s not saying a word. She’s completely silent.’

  ‘That’s unbelievable!’ she said.

  So unbelievable that she wondered why she hadn’t heard anything of this sensational case in the news. She’d leafed through all the papers on the flight from Berlin to London. Not a single one had reported about this Jesus girl who’d come back from the dead on a cruise ship.

  ‘The sea was rough that night and at the end of my shift I was on my way to the infirmary to check that everything was okay, when the girl ran into me. At first I thought she’d got lost in the dark, but she looked strangely familiar. What was also odd was that she wasn’t wearing the bracelet that all children have around their wrists here on board – a rose-coloured plastic band with a tiny microchip. This allows them access to the area reserved for children and they can use it to buy soft drinks, sweets and ice creams at the bars.’

  ‘And personal data is stored on the chip?’ Julia asked, without averting her gaze from the picture of Anouk that Daniel had handed her. It had been taken in a room flooded with artificial light; in the background she saw a white cupboard with a red cross.

  ‘Precisely. But once we’d got to the infirmary we were soon able to establish her identity, even without the bracelet. When I took her to Dr Beck her first thought was that it could be Anouk Lamar, and then we got confirmation by comparing her to a passenger photo taken two months ago.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’ Julia rounded her lips as she breathed out. ‘What about the mother?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s still missing.’

  ‘And the girl’s father?’

  ‘Died of cancer three years ago. There’s just a grandfather left near Washington.’

  ‘How did he react to the news that his granddaughter’s still alive?’

  ‘The granddad? He didn’t. We haven’t told him.’

  Julia frowned in disbelief. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘For the same reason we haven’t spoken to the authorities yet.’

  ‘What, you mean the police haven’t been informed?’

  ‘No. Not in Germany, nor in the UK or the US. If we’d done that, we wouldn’t be on our way to New York now.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Julia said, stretching out the ‘a’ for an unbelievably long time. ‘A young girl, first declared missing some weeks ago, then dead, suddenly turns up again as if from nowhere – and it’s all swept under the carpet? Just like that?’

  That’s why there weren’t any reports in the newspapers.

  ‘Not just like that,’ Daniel objected. ‘It’s very complicated. You don’t understand.’ Tears welled in the captain’s eyes. ‘Shit, you don’t even understand why I’m telling you all of this.’

  That was true. She’d come to see him to discuss her concerns about Lisa and now the conversation had turned into a confession by her godfather.

  ‘Enlighten me then,’ Julia said softly.

  If they’d been standing closer Julia would have reached for his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m at my wits’ end. I’m being blackmailed and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Blackmailed? How? And by whom?’

  ‘By my boss, Yegor Kalinin. I’m supposed to find out where Anouk was and what happened to her. I’ve got six days. Until we get to New York.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘At least without the authorities, without official help.’

  ‘But why, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘Because we can’t afford any publicity in this matter. It would be the end of us.’

  Daniel stood up and went over to the desk with its polished mahogany top and two cabinets beneath, in which files or other documents could be stored behind lockable doors. In the right-hand cabinet was a hotel safe, bigger inside than it looked at first glance, for Daniel took from it a black lever arch file once he’d tapped in the code to open it.

  ‘Do you remember me saying that in most cases the cause of a Passenger 23 was suicide?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was a lie.’

  Sitting back in the chair with armrests, he opened the file at random somewhere in the first third.

  He tapped his finger on the page before him, which looked like the cover sheet for a police file. ‘This is just an example. 2011, the Princess Pride sailing down the Mexican Riviera. Marla Key, thirty-three, American. Vanishes on the night of 4 December. According to the crew, the young mother fell drunkenly over the railings. But why is her beaded purse damaged? And why was a cardboard box put over the one security camera that could have proved she fell?’

  Daniel turned a few pages.

  ‘And here, a year later, again in December, this time on our sister ship, the Poseidon of the Seas. Cabin 5167. A twenty-five-year-old woman from Munich went to take a quick dip in the pool on the morning of her wedding anniversary. She was never seen again. After a rudimentary search the crew assumed it was suicide. Even though, just the day before, the woman had booked a hairdresser’s appointment for the day she vanished! Or just recently’ – Daniel had turned to the last page – ‘the case of the Italian Adriano Moretti, who disappeared near Malta from the Ultra Line 2, after telling his friend in the disco he was popping to the loo.’ Daniel crashed the file shut.

  ‘I could go on like this for hours. There are entire websites dedicated to the phenomenon of missing passengers: internationalcruisevictims.org, cruisejunkie.com or cruisebruise.com, just to mention the three best-known ones. And these aren’t conspiracy sites set up by nutters; they’re serious contact points for relatives and cruise victims, as those people who believe themselves to be victims of a crime at sea call themselves.’

  Julia noticed a thin film of sweat on Daniel’s brow.

  ‘Many of the sites are run by lawyers. No surprise there. The cruise industry is booming; it’s a billion-dollar business. At this very moment there are three hundred and sixty liners sailing the oceans. This year alone, thirteen more will enter service. It’s only natural that big US legal firms have specialised in taking out compensation suits against the owners ad nauseam. After the airline industry and tobacco industry, cruise companies are the next in the lawyers’ firing line.’

  ‘So it’s all about money?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Of course. It’s always about money. As soon as the police hear about Anouk, the Sultan will be seized and searched. All passengers will have to get off the ship and will demand their money back plus compensation. Every day we don’t move costs us millions, and we’re talking about weeks here! But that’s peanuts compared to the group action we’ll be served with later.’

  Julia saw a bead of sweat drip from the end of his hair and run down the side of his head.

  ‘I see,’ she said, looking Daniel seriously in the eye. ‘All these years your business has managed to pass off even the most bizarre missing-person cases as suicide. Which only works if none of them turns up again.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Hundreds of cases. Each one will be reviewed. We won’t survive. The entire industry will go down the pan.’

  ‘And so now this girl’s going to be sacrificed for profit?’ Julia said, standing up.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Daniel sounded desperate. ‘I’ll do everything to prevent the worst.’

  ‘The worst? What if you don’t manage to find out what happened to Anouk before we reach New York?’

  The captain looked up. He was stony-faced.

  ‘Then they’ll let the girl vanish again. But this time forever.’

 
13

  Martin was standing outside the entrance to the ship’s infirmary on deck 3. When he saw the name on the door he couldn’t help thinking of another Elena who also had the title of doctor. The other Elena wasn’t a medic on a ship, but a psychologist in Berlin Mitte, a marriage counsellor in Friedrichstrasse with whom Nadja had once booked an appointment, though they never turned up to it. Partly out of cowardice, and partly from the conviction that they’d get through without outside help.

  How naïve.

  Crises had often loomed in their relationship. No surprise there. Martin’s job as an undercover investigator meant he’d spend weeks, sometimes even months, away from home at a time, and five years ago the big bust-up had occurred, which had made Martin realise that things couldn’t continue as they were.

  He’d come back unexpectedly a day early from a preparatory workshop. The classic scenario. It was eight in the morning, the apartment in Schmargendorf was empty; Nadja and Timmy were at school. The bed he sank into hadn’t been made and it smelled of sweat. Of scent.

  And of condom.

  He found it on Nadja’s side between the sheets. Empty, but unrolled.

  She didn’t deny it and he didn’t blame her. During the long period they’d spent apart because of his work he’d had urges too, but he had drowned them with adrenaline. Nadia’s only option for entertainment was an affair.

  Martin had never found out who the guy was, nor did he ever want to know. Two weeks after his discovery of the condom they decided that his next operation would be his last. He’d even offered to quit his job straight away, but Nadja knew how much was at stake. He’d spent a quarter of a year cultivating a new identity as a drug addict and habitual offender. His arm had been dotted with needle marks, some of which were still visible today. The Polish authorities they were working with wanted to plant him in a prison for dangerous criminals in Warsaw, in the cell of a notorious neo-Nazi, the head of a band of traffickers. Martin was to win his confidence so as to obtain information relating to the people-trafficking ring he was running. He was convinced that the heroin he’d had to inject himself with in front of the Nazi was partially responsible for the blackouts he sometimes suffered in moments of extreme physical or emotional stress. At the time it was crucial that his cover wasn’t blown.