Veith had steel-blue eyes surrounded by light lashes that were bushier than Daniel’s hairline. He looked at least ten kilos lighter than the captain and yet stronger.
‘She’s not here in the cabin,’ he said, stating the obvious. The bathroom door was open, the connecting door was still bolted and she’d already checked beneath the bed.
‘Did you bump into her?’ Julia asked.
Maybe all this is just a dirty trick. Did Lisa flee when she heard me coming?
‘No.’ Daniel and Veith shook their heads in sync.
‘And that would be hardly likely,’ Veith Jesper said, pointing ruthlessly at the door.
In spite of the panic that had grown on Julia like a second head, she realised what the security officer was getting at.
The chain.
It was dangling from the doorframe. Broken. Torn out.
Daniel must have broken it when they stormed into the cabin.
Because Lisa put the chain on from the inside!
Just as she’d bolted the connecting door from her side.
‘No!’
Julia pressed both hands over her mouth and bit her fingers. She turned back to the balcony.
There were two doors you could leave the cabin by.
And Lisa hadn’t used either of them.
40
Anyone entering their home with a reasonable expectation of finding themselves alone will be scared to death if they suddenly hear a voice from the darkness. Even if that voice says calmly, ‘Please don’t be afraid.’
Whipping around, Martin instinctively reached for a heavy lamp on the cupboard in the foyer of his suite, firmly expecting to be attacked again. But it was just Gerlinde Dobkowitz, approaching him with a broad smile. She was wearing a long-sleeved, flowery dress with a green silk scarf that hung down to the spokes of the wheelchair she was sitting in.
‘How on earth did you get in here?’ Martin asked, half in astonishment, half in anger. He put the lamp back in its place. Gerlinde moved closer. The grey tyres of her wheelchair drew deep furrows in the carpet.
‘She let me in.’
Gerlinde pointed behind her to a thin, black-haired woman who got up shyly from the chair where she’d been sitting with her knees tightly together.
She was wearing the old-fashioned chambermaid’s uniform – black skirt, white apron and silly bonnet – which was the norm for cleaners on the Sultan. Unlike Gerlinde, she appeared to feel completely out of place. She stood in the light of an arc lamp, swallowing with difficulty and grabbing her neck. Her eyes were fixed on the floor and she made no move to come closer or say anything. Martin guessed she was in her later twenties. She had Indian features and looked unusually pale with her natural cinnamon-coloured skin.
‘That’s Shahla,’ Gerlinde said. ‘I waited for you all day to arrange a meeting, but you haven’t thought it necessary to pop in to see me for even a minute.’ Gerlinde pursed her lips. She sounded like an offended grandmother scolding her grandchild for not coming to visit often enough. ‘You didn’t even call!’
‘It’s almost one in the morning,’ he said.
‘My official patrol time.’
‘And so you thought you’d just break into my cabin?’
Martin took off his soaking wet leather jacket, which took some effort. All the vertebrae in his back, which had taken the impact of the water, seemed to be displaced. He’d be as stiff as a plank in the morning.
‘I thought I’d let you in on the latest developments. Shahla was attacked.’
Welcome to the club.
‘They tried to find out from her something about the girl, which means that the culprit is still…’ Gerlinde hesitated and adjusted her monstrous glasses that had slipped too far down her nose. ‘Hmm, am I mistaken or did the shock make you wet yourself?’
She pointed at the damp patch on the carpet between Martin’s boots.
‘I’ve been swimming,’ Martin replied tersely, which seemed to be an adequate answer for the crazy cruise passenger as she didn’t quiz him further about his dripping clothing. ‘Okay, Frau Dobkowitz, Shahla…’ he said, nodding to the nervous chambermaid. ‘It’s been a hard day for all of us, and I’d like to be on my own now.’
To get out of these clothes. To take a hot shower. And a bathful of ibuprofen.
He’d squandered the last of his energy shaking off the helping hand of the young British woman who’d pulled him from the pool and, amidst the laughter of the group who thought he was smashed, hobbling back to the naturist deck, where the man who’d heaved him over the railings had long since vanished.
But Martin had recovered his mobile phone. It must have dropped from his hand as he fell. The display was a little cracked, but it was still working. As he’d bent down painfully to pick it up, he saw that the Skype programme was still open. In the box for sending text messages, the attacker had left him this:
Timmy is dead. Next time you will be too.
First Elena and now him. Both of them had received their warnings. Of course it didn’t worry Martin one bit, but if he didn’t get at least an hour’s sleep now, soon he’d no longer be able to find his own shoelace, let alone the person who evidently knew the background to his family’s disappearance.
‘Let’s continue tomorrow morning,’ he told Gerlinde, but she wasn’t listening.
‘Tell him what happened,’ she prompted Shahla.
Shahla cleared her throat, but didn’t say anything. She was clearly terrified.
‘Heavens, I imagine she’s completely messed up,’ Gerlinde groused. Then, turning to the cleaning lady, she said, ‘You were almost killed, my child, and that was just shortly after you’d seen Anouk Lamar come back from the dead in the middle of the night. For goodness’ sake, Shahla, it cannot be a coincidence. If you don’t want to talk to me, then talk to this man here.’ She pointed at Martin. ‘Tell him who it was. He’s from the police; he can help you.’
Shahla stoically shook her head, her lips firmly pressed together.
Martin knew that the chambermaid was nowhere near ready to discuss the incident, especially not with a stranger. As he was not in a state at that moment to conduct a sensitive interrogation, he said. ‘Why don’t we speak again when we’ve all had some rest?’
‘Fine,’ Gerlinde said, which sounded like What bloody sissies! ‘Well, then, I beg you to at least have a look at the torch, so that my journey here hasn’t been a complete waste of time.’
‘What torch?’
‘This one here.’ Gerlinde removed it from a drinks holder set into the armrest of her wheelchair. ‘As you can see from the almost-empty batteries it must have been in permanent use.’ She switched on the little torch and demonstrated its weak, barely visible beam.
‘I would have told you about this much earlier if you hadn’t dashed out of my cabin like a Dervish, just because I mentioned the name Bonhoeffer.’
Martin gave her a wary look.
‘The teddy wasn’t the only thing that Anouk threw in the bin.’
‘Okay, fine. So she also had a torch on her when she was found?’
Besides the teddy.
Gerlinde nodded. ‘So you’re not as dense as you always seem.’
‘Oh, yes, I am. What’s it supposed to mean?’
‘That there’s finally some proof for my Bermuda Deck theory.’
Martin recalled the term, underlined twice, on the board in Gerlinde’s study.
‘What the hell is the Bermuda Deck?’ he made the mistake of asking. He’d offered the old lady a perfect opportunity, which she promptly made use of.
‘I’ll tell you in a sec. But first a question of my own: Why is the girl being hidden?’
‘If the ship is seized it’ll cost them millions,’ Martin said, gesturing to the door. ‘Please, Frau Dobkowitz…’
‘And jeopardise the deal with the Chilean investor, correct. But sooner or later the FBI’s going to come rushing on board, isn’t it?’
‘Not if the girl vanishes again.
’
‘Yes, she will. Of course she’ll vanish again. But not until they’ve got a cover-up they can present the authorities with.’
‘I’ve heard the captain say something similar,’ Martin muttered, but unfortunately not softly enough to prevent Gerlinde from hearing.
‘Bonhoeffer?’ Gerlinde crowed irately. ‘Don’t believe a word he says. He’s deep in it too. Let me tell you what I think. No one’s intending to kill the girl. The poor child just has to disappear as quickly as possible back to where she came from and in a way that doesn’t induce the authorities to comb every nook and cranny of this boat looking for her.’
‘How’s that going to happen then?’ Martin asked, now curious after all.
‘By giving the police the wrong culprit and the wrong hiding place, to divert them from the right culprits and hiding place.’
‘Why should the cruise line go to such an effort?’
Martin took off his boots in the hope that this would be a clear signal. If it didn’t work he’d have to push the old woman out himself.
‘Because the Sultan’s real business is not transporting passengers, but what happens on the Bermuda Deck. Look.’
From underneath her she pulled out a transparent sleeve with a pile of typewritten pages. ‘This is precisely the topic of the book I’ve been working on for years with Gregor.’
Moistening her thumb, she leafed through the papers and pulled out one sheet, which she handed to Martin.
‘Read the last paragraph.’
Barefooted and his shirt unbuttoned, he took the paper from her hand. Suspecting that any protest now would ultimately cost him more time, he read out loud:
‘As always, Gerlinde was astounded by the size of the member stretching out before her, but now was not the time to abandon herself to the pleasures promised by—’ He looked up, flabbergasted. With her hand she made a stroppy gesture for him to carry on. ‘… his magnificent sceptre. Not before she knew whether the man who’d given her the most wonderful orgasms in her seventy-three years was really staying in cabin 8056, or whether he was actually working on a secret between-deck, not detailed on any floor plan, where at regular intervals passengers vanished for ever, which is why it was also—’
‘… called the Bermuda Deck,’ Gerlinde said, completing Martin’s reading with exaggerated menace. ‘It’s a novel with autobiographical elements. I’ve made the main character a little younger.’
But clearly no less insane.
‘Come on, then, ask me.’
‘What?’
‘What happens on the deck.’
‘To be honest, I just want to—’
‘Human trafficking,’ she answered herself. ‘I’m not sure whether the passengers disappear unwillingly or whether they might even pay for it.’
‘Pay?’
Martin laughed and went to the bathroom when she made no move to comply with his request to leave his cabin with Shahla.
‘Don’t roll your eyes at me, young man,’ he heard her say through the closed bathroom door. ‘Criminals, tax-avoiders, refugees. There are enough rich people willing to buy themselves a new life. As a detective, you know that better than anyone. And there’s nowhere in the world easier to vanish into thin air than on a ship like this.’
‘Are you finished?’ asked Martin, who by now had completely undressed and dried himself.
Evidently not, for she kept talking through the door. ‘The clients pay one or two million. Officially their disappearance is declared as suicide, which is why there are so many cases where people say, “Voluntary death? That’s impossible.” And the doubters are right, because unofficially the supposed victims are hiding—’
‘… on the Bermuda Deck.’
‘It’s perfectly feasible. Perhaps it might be a state witness programme with a plastic surgeon who gives the passengers a new appearance.’
Martin shook his head and put on a dressing gown. ‘How does your theory work with Anouk?’
‘It’s quite simple. Her mother forced her onto the programme, but the poor little thing doesn’t want a new life. What she’d experienced on the Bermuda Deck must have been so dramatic that she fled. This is the truth and it’s so explosive that they’re even torturing witnesses to find out how much the poor chambermaid has seen.’
Martin stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Okay, Frau Dobkowitz. That’s enough now.’
He could see that Shahla wanted to leave, but Gerlinde blocked her way with the wheelchair.
‘Just one final question and then we will go. Have you ever searched the internet for plans of the lower decks in the bowels of a cruise ship?’
‘No.’
‘There’s no point. Because you won’t find any. Everything below deck 3 is secret. There aren’t any publicly available drawings.’
Gerlinde turned to the chambermaid. ‘Shahla, tell him what the captain said to you about the girl.’
The young woman responded to the old lady like a schoolgirl might to her teacher at the start of the twentieth century.
‘He said thought she was ghost,’ she replied.
‘But why?’
‘Because suddenly there. In front of him. But no door anywhere. Then she runs away.’
‘You see!’ Gerlinde gave Martin a meaningful look. ‘All of a sudden Anouk appears from nowhere, standing in the middle of an empty corridor – apart from me – without there being any door nearby.’
‘And she was holding a torch,’ he said sarcastically.
‘A torch with weak batteries, correct. Because she’d spent so long looking for the secret exit.’
Martin tapped his head and then grabbed the grips of her wheelchair. ‘So you’re saying the cruise line would rather hand over a psychopathic serial killer to the authorities and somewhere a cabin is being prepared, which they’ll later present as a dungeon, rather than run the risk of this Bermuda Deck being discovered during a search of the ship?’
‘You’ve understood!’ Gerlinde praised him, as Martin pushed her wheelchair through the room. ‘Anouk should never have re-emerged. She’s putting the entire multi-million-dollar business model in danger. That’s the only reason the authorities haven’t been informed.’
‘With respect, that’s a complete load of nonsense.’
‘Really?’ She twisted her head back while at the same time keeping her eyes on the door. ‘So how do you explain…’
She stopped mid-sentence and her mouth stayed open.
‘What?’ Martin asked, turning around. Shahla was standing two steps behind him with her head cocked to one side, as if she were listening closely.
‘What’s up with the two of you all of a sudden?’ he asked, but now he noticed too.
The ship. The noises.
The ever-present sonorous vibrating of the generators had gone quiet.
The Sultan wasn’t moving any more.
41
Too late.
From a distance Tiago could see the opened cabin door, through which bright light shone into the corridor like car headlamps. He knew he hadn’t arrived in time to be able to avert the catastrophe.
If only I’d opened the envelope earlier!
Holding Lisa’s letter, he’d slowly approached the cabin which only yesterday he’d searched for cash. Now there was an unusual level of activity here for this time of night. Although he couldn’t see or hear the people inside, their bodies cast flickering shadows in the corridor whenever they got in the way of the light streaming out of the cabin.
He stopped and wondered whether there was any point in turning himself in. Tiago knew why the door was open. What the people in there were looking for. It was in the letter, which now he put back in his pocket.
He realised that he couldn’t hear engine noises any more. The ship was swaying but he felt no vibrations. Just as Tiago was touching the handrail against the wall with the tips of his fingers, he stepped out of the cabin.
Shit.
Tiago turned around, but not quickly enough, u
nfortunately. The security officer had recognised him.
‘Hey!’ he heard the man call out, the same man who’d tortured the chambermaid with the shard of glass, and even this Hey! sounded as if glass shards wouldn’t suffice as a starter in the menu he had in mind for Tiago.
Tiago made the mistake of turning around. They were alone in the corridor. He and the officer, who launched into a sprint without any discernible transition.
Fucking shit.
Tiago ran back the way he’d come. The thud, thud, thud in his ear of heavy shoes on thick carpet was accompanied by the rushing of his own blood – the soundtrack of his growing fear.
He banged a shoulder against the swing door to the stairwell and pushed the lift button, but when none opened he dived down the stairs without thinking. For if he had he’d have realised that he was heading towards the ship’s basement, where the surfer type knew his way around.
He ran down a wide corridor. A brass sign told him where he was.
Deck 3. Where now? Where?
The shops were closed, the atrium empty, the theatre closed. He stopped, looked around.
The casino. This is the casino. It’s open round the…
Crash!
He heard the crunching of his own bones as he fell to the floor, as if hit by a demolition ball.
Tiago tried to breathe, but something was lying on his face. Something was lying on his entire body.
He felt a kick between his legs and a roller of pain ground up his spinal cord from his stomach. Something was tugging at him, his head was hitting against it somewhere (or was it something hitting his head?) but no force in the world would have been capable of removing his hands, which he pressed against his crotch without being able to relieve even a hint of the pain that was bringing his balls to bursting point.
He became aware that his lips were touching a metal bar, a carpet trim, perhaps, but he kept his eyes closed simply because there was no single muscle in his body that wasn’t contracting, not even the one controlling his eyelids. Tiago was suffering a full-body cramp. ‘Got you,’ the officer said. A door closed near by.
Tiago turned on his side. Saliva was seeping from his mouth. He looked around. Tried to form an image of where the officer had dragged him. The roller was still parked on his balls, juddering back and forth so as not to let the flame of pain cool down.
Passenger 23 Page 17