As if in a daze he returned to his desk where the phone was ringing. He slowly picked up the receiver.
‘It’s Rangun here from the MCR. Did you just try to call us, Captain?’
He nodded. Tried to concentrate. ‘Yes. I just wanted to find out whether the blue shelf is still connected.’
Officially the dumping machine had been out of service for five years. But unofficially it had never been disconnected from the electricity supply in case the waste incinerator conked out again and there was a refuse problem on a lengthy passage. At any rate nine tonnes of solid rubbish were produced on the Sultan every day, in addition to 28,000 litres of sludge. Every single day!
‘Theoretically, captain, yes,’ the technical officer replied.
Daniel knew the man. With his falsetto voice, on the phone he sounded like a woman. In the ship’s choir he sang a bright soprano at the Christmas festivities, although no one made fun of him because what Rangun’s voice lacked in masculinity was more than made up for by his trained body.
‘Theoretically? What does that mean?’
‘As was recommended, we didn’t disconnect the rubbish press from the electricity supply, but it hasn’t been service in a long time. I’m not sure it’s still fit for purpose.’
Daniel suspected that the engineer might be surprised at the topic of their conversation, but his lower rank prevented him from asking direct questions, and Daniel had no intention of sharing his hunch with the man: that there couldn’t be a better place for hiding someone for months on end.
Or for getting rid of them!
The blue shelf had a floor which, at the push of a button, opened up in the middle and retracted into the walls until the shaft was no more than a bottomless tube through which the press could push the squashed refuse straight into the water. ‘Can you switch it off?’ he asked Rangun.
‘Not from here. It’s not wired up to the new control system. But it’s possible to cut the circuit over there. Do you want me to take a look?’
‘No, wait. I’ll come to you.’
Another witness; that was all they needed!
Daniel hung up, grabbed his captain’s hat from the desk, hurried to the exit, opened the door…
… and found himself staring into the barrel of a revolver.
57
Naomi
Naomi’s farewell note had taken some time to write, even though in the end it consisted of only one sentence. Astonishingly, she’d felt strangely relaxed since closing the computer and putting it back in the bucket.
Despite the imminence of her death and even though she had no idea how it would happen, she no longer felt afraid.
This must be what Catholics understand by the purifying power of confession.
Deep down inside her, in the shadowy world of her consciousness, she’d always sensed that her life would come to a terrible end. It must do, if an entity existed that ensured justice was done.
And it did.
It sat at the other end of the rope and had made her confess the unutterable. Drag what had been suppressed into the light of day.
Write it down.
My confession.
Naomi would have liked to have seen it, the spider deciding her destiny. She’d loved to have known what the person looked like who’d managed to unmask her.
Now she knew how the spider had discovered her most intimate secrets. And why it wanted her to die. Ever since she’d given a thorough answer to the question ‘Who are you?’ Naomi had known the spider’s past and thus its motive.
She understood why she had to be punished and this understanding gave her an inner peace. She wasn’t scratching any more, her breathing was regular and her eyes were barely twitching, like someone whose body was being shaken by a vibration.
It’s happening, she thought, without knowing what the spider had planned for her end.
She heard a scraping sound, like that of two millstones grinding together, then she saw the crack in the middle of the well open. Slowly, but steadily.
More curious than fearful, she got up from her sitting position and watched what was happening to the ground beneath her feet.
It’s moving!
The two halves of the circle were vanishing into the sides of the shaft, like a sliding door into a wall.
She noted with interest that the gap was now a foot wide, and that she could hear the churning water bubbling beneath her. If the floor plates kept moving at this speed it would be less than two minutes before she’d completely lost the ground beneath her feet.
And plunged two and a half metres into the Atlantic.
Naomi smiled at the prospect.
58
If anyone had been watching the two of them propping each other up as they moved forwards, clasped to one another like drowning souls, they’d have thought Martin and Elena were drunk. But on the way to deck C they didn’t bump into anybody, due to the fact that Elena had taken them down a hidden route. Most employees had no business being in the Sultan’s basement, certainly not in this area which housed the cargo hold. Here they stored all the spare parts that weren’t needed on a crossing. To get there you took the cargo lift rather than the metal emergency stairs.
‘A short cut,’ Elena had mumbled, but then lost her bearings at the bottom of the steps when they got to a tubular room lined with pipes, where you had to duck to avoid hitting your head.
Martin felt as if he’d been transported inside a submarine of the sort he’d seen in films. The pipes had vents that could be opened with bilious-green wheel valves. There was a cupboard that seemed to consist of several fuse boxes with numerous instruments whose needles were barely moving.
Elena responded to his question as to which direction they should take by calling the captain on her phone and asking him the way. Martin was amazed that Bonhoeffer was able to understand his fiancée given that she was still mumbling, but after a brief exchange he appeared to have put her on the right track because she pointed to the left and let him go first.
The route brought them to a white bulkhead which required considerable strength to open. Martin needed both hands to shift the wheel and push open the metal door that was as thick as that of a large safe.
The room beyond was wider and darker. It smelled of dust and diesel. Dirt littered the floor and spiders’ webs hung from the instruments inside the cupboard, which looked older than the ones they’d just passed.
‘Where are we?’ he asked Elena, who was leaning exhausted against one of the dusty boxes.
‘No idea. An old control room. Over there…’ she said, gesturing to another door on the far side, too weak to finish the sentence.
Martin went in the direction she’d indicated.
He stepped on thoughtlessly discarded screws, tissues, paper and other rubbish that hadn’t been disposed of for ages, and at the end of the room came to another bulkhead, which was even more difficult to open than the previous one.
Beyond it he discovered a cathedral.
Or at least that was his first impression when he crossed the threshold into a room the height of a house, lit merely by a strip of halogen lamps on either wall.
At the far end – in the altar area, so to speak – was a shimmering oval copper tube, not unlike a brewing copper. Two thirds of its shell bulged into the room, while the rear third was integrated into the Sultan’s outer hull. A sort of fire ladder ran up the vessel and vanished into the darkness five metres above Martin’s head.
‘Here it is!’ he called out, to let the doctor know that he’d found the blue shelf. As they’d descended into the depths of the ship’s hull she’d explained to him where the term came from and why the waste disposal plant was no longer in use.
He looked back, but couldn’t see Elena in the entrance, nor did she answer him.
She was probably just catching her breath. He’d go and check on her in a minute, but before then he wanted to take a closer look at the blue shelf and its surroundings.
He climbed several s
teps to a platform that ran along the perimeter of the vessel, and looked around. Anouk was nowhere to be seen. He called her name, but there was no reply.
Martin peered up.
The rubbish, he guessed, would probably be pushed into the shaft by a device at the top, a deck and a half higher up.
The shaft! The water in the well!
In his mind he saw Anouk’s detailed drawing.
Given how curved the ship’s hull was here, at least a third of the bottom of the tube must be over the raging Atlantic. As soon as the shaft was full, all you had to do was open the floor and the waste would tumble into the sea.
From his vantage point at the bottom of the blue shelf he couldn’t figure out what equipment would be needed to accomplish this. He was wandering around the vessel, wondering whether to climb the ladder, when he discovered a door. It was head-high, presumably a staff entrance for cleaning or servicing inside.
Martin put his hand on the door which was secured by a lever that reminded him of the closing mechanism of an aeroplane door. He was rattling it when he suddenly felt an intense quaking beneath his feet, accompanied by a bloodcurdling crunching sound.
I thought the blue shelf wasn’t in service.
The vessel appeared to have come to life and it felt as if something inside was moving.
Martin was even more startled by a movement behind him.
‘Elena?’
He’d assumed the shadow on the vessel and the draught on his neck was from the doctor, finally catching up after overcoming her exhaustion; but he hadn’t reckoned on this thin, faceless figure standing in the gloom, its head wrapped in a hoodie. He recognised who it was even though they’d met only once. The person was holding a bucket.
Martin was about to call out their name when the figure leaped forwards and hit him on the side of the head with an object that looked like a laptop but felt like a brick when the edge thundered against his temple.
59
Unlike the headaches that had recently assaulted him like a raiding party, the pain from this blow was of a different quality. In the first instance it felt unbearable, but then, after Martin had collapsed to the floor, it subsided considerably more quickly.
Quickly enough, at least, for him to realise that the attacker was on top of him and ready to strike again, this time with a taser. Instinctively Martin jerked his knee up between the killer’s legs, but this merely made the assailant writhe rather than bend double. At least they dropped the taser, which meant that both of them were now scrabbling for the weapon on the bare metal floor.
With the powerful blow to the side of his head still affecting his reaction speed, Martin lost the contest. Although the taser had fallen closer to him, it was now back in the killer’s hand. The other hand was gripping Martin by the throat with a force he would not have believed possible; the arteries in his neck were being squeezed.
Blue flashes flickered before Martin’s eyes.
The attacker had already activated the taser, now just a few centimetres from his head, ready to shoot ten thousand volts through his muscles. Martin felt the damp breath of his opponent in his face and wondered how on earth this thin, delicate person could possibly be responsible for all those crimes that had been committed on the Sultan. Abduction, rape, murder. He thrashed out again to shake off the killer, but found himself hitting thin air.
Where? Where are you?
The hooded attacker was no longer above him, but must have moved to the side to ram the taser into his flank, like before on the naturist deck. As a warning.
Timmy is dead. Next time you will be too.
But the time for warnings had passed.
Instinctively Martin pressed both hands to his body and kicked in the direction where he suspected the killer to be. Then he heard a horrific scream, followed by the noise of crunching bones.
Martin, who again had failed to hit his attacker, pushed himself up on his elbows and now could at least see some clearer outlines with one eye.
The killer on the ground.
Elena beside the killer.
With a laptop in her hand and her body trembling, she stood beside a motionless figure at the bottom of the platform. The head lay in a red puddle slowly growing bigger beneath the hood.
‘I… I…’
Elena was gasping, unable to believe what she’d done.
‘I aimed for the head… and…’ As Elena wiped the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her dressing gown, she dropped the notebook. It hit the floor with a clunk. She pointed at the head lying at an unnatural angle. The attacker’s neck had been broken in the fall from the steps.
Martin crawled on all fours to the body and removed the hood from the head.
‘No!’ Elena screamed. Her horror at the sight of the corpse intensified once more, causing her to pass out and collapse next to the body. Martin, who managed to cushion the fall by thrusting his arm beneath her head, felt for her pulse.
It was fast, but regular.
Unlike Shahla’s.
Martin turned to the corpse. Stared into her wide-open, utterly expressionless eyes.
Even if it made no sense – for this culprit couldn’t possibly have raped Anouk – right in front of him, in her own blood, lay the chambermaid who had purportedly found the girl, but in all likelihood had abducted and kept her hidden for weeks.
And, if Martin wasn’t mistaken, below here was also where Anouk’s mother was being held prisoner.
In the blue shelf.
Where the floor had been vibrating for the ninety seconds or so that their struggle had lasted. As if it was moving.
As if the hatch was opening.
Martin stood up and teetered to the door in the vessel.
It took a further ten seconds for him to finally open it.
60
Now the floor beneath her feet was no larger than a narrow ledge, no wider than a bookshelf. The rest had already disappeared into the wall. And if Martin hadn’t opened the door to the cleaners’ entrance the blue shelf wouldn’t have had a floor at all any more. He had activated an emergency stopping mechanism which had halted the opening of the dumping chute.
At the last second.
One centimetre more and Naomi Lamar wouldn’t have been able to hold on any longer.
One third of her feet were protruding over the edge. She looked like a swimmer waiting for the starting gun before plunging into the water below. Martin was sure that the next time the Sultan pitched, Anouk’s mother would disappear into the ocean.
‘Naomi,’ Martin yelled, but she was as paralysed with shock as her daughter had been earlier. She didn’t react. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard him; the Atlantic was roaring so noisily beneath her.
From below, spray slapped her scratched face. This filthy woman, her skin covered in weals, was dripping all over. Martin, too, was soaked by the showers of water.
‘Come.’ He was holding on to the edge of the vessel door, leaning perilously forwards into the shaft. He held out his free right arm as far as he could into the refuse compactor. With a little courage, surely Naomi would be able to grab his hand. But Anouk’s mother gave Martin an impression of world-weariness and looked anything but courageous. As if she didn’t want him to help her. At any rate she wasn’t showing the slightest inclination to move towards him. She stood there as if screwed to the floor, staring into the foam bubbling at her feet.
‘Anouk’s alive!’ he shouted, and the mention of her daughter’s name did seem to have an effect.
Naomi moved her head. Raised it. Turned her chin to the side, in his direction. Looked at him. And opened her lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, or something similar.
Her voice was far too weak to compete with the raging of the sea.
‘Noooooo!’ Martin screamed, because it appeared as if Naomi were about to take a step forwards. To death. If she jumped now she’d inevitably be sliced to pieces by the ship’s propeller.
‘Your abductor is dead!’ he yell
ed.
Naomi paused one last time. Opened her lips as if for a final farewell, but then something in her expression changed. The corners of her mouth wrinkled. To begin with it looked as if she were crying. But then as if she were trying to laugh. Finally it seemed like she was doing both at once.
Martin noticed that she was no longer staring at him, but at a point above his shoulder.
He glanced behind. The reason for the change in her emotions was standing right behind him.
Anouk.
She’d finally found the way there.
At the last second.
Holding the torch, she slowly came closer.
Her face was wearing an expression he’d not seen in the girl before. Hardly surprising, as she was smiling.
He heard a cry of joy, which came not only from the girl but Naomi too.
Martin turned back towards the mother, now bellowing her daughter’s name. So loudly that even the Atlantic couldn’t swallow it up.
Naomi was laughing too. Raucously, a huge belly laugh. A big mistake. For the joyful trembling and quivering that had seized her entire body made Naomi stumble.
Once more she looked like someone on the edge of a pool, but this time she gave the appearance of a non-swimmer thrashing her arms about in a desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable.
Plunging into the sea.
‘Come to me,’ Martin yelled, this time in German as the tension of the situation had overtaken him. It was more by luck than design that Naomi grabbed hold of his hand as she lurched forwards.
Martin felt a jolt that darted from his shoulder to his jaw, which he clenched as tightly as possible while trying not to let either of his hands slip. Not the one Naomi was dangling from, her feet centimetres from the seething surface of the water. And certainly not the one stopping him from falling to his own death. Luckily Anouk’s mother weighed barely more than a little girl. The lack of food that had almost killed her might now prove to be her salvation if…
… I don’t let go of her.
Naomi was light, morbidly emaciated, but her hand was damp. Wet. Slippery.
Passenger 23 Page 22