Passenger 23

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Martin felt as if he were holding onto a soapy leash. The more he squashed her hand, the faster it seemed to slither from his. And this made him furious.

  I haven’t gone through all this shit…

  With a mighty jerk that he felt all the way down to his lumbar column…

  … only to fail…

  … he pulled the mother towards him…

  … just before the end.

  … over the edge of the blue shelf. Onto the floor of the platform. Beside the vessel. To safety.

  Made it!

  Martin lay on the ground, totally shattered. He tried breathing in and out at the same time, which unavoidably produced a coughing fit. But he felt good.

  He looked at Naomi, whose joy at being reunited with her daughter gave her more strength than him, for she managed to get to her feet and stretch out her arms.

  To her daughter, who staggered towards Naomi, no less wobbly on her feet.

  Martin closed his eyes in satisfaction.

  Although it wasn’t his son who he’d saved, not even a child, he’d managed to avert the death of a mother, reunite a family – and provide Anouk with a smile.

  And thus, on this shaking floor beside the blue shelf, which reeked of cold rubbish and sea salt, he felt happy for the first time in a long while, very happy.

  Albeit only briefly.

  Just until the smile she’d greeted her mother with vanished from Anouk’s face, and she struck Naomi in the chest. Rapidly executed, not a particularly hard blow, not even for an eleven-year-old, but strong enough for Naomi Lamar to lose her balance and fall backwards into the blue shelf, towards the water.

  61

  Time was ticking away and Bonhoeffer was getting fed up. On this trip he’d been beaten to a pulp by a paranoid detective, his dear goddaughter had killed herself, for which the ex-wife of his best friend held him responsible, and in the ship’s morgue his security officer, a gunshot to his head, lay in one of the refrigerated cabinets that were now compulsory on board due to the large volume of pensioners the cruise line carried. Evidently the chain of crazy incidents hadn’t yet been broken.

  ‘Can’t you point your weapon somewhere else?’ he barked at the man calling himself Tiago Álvarez, who’d forced Daniel back into his cabin with a revolver and made him sit at his desk, while the dark-haired Latino prowled around the suite like a caged tiger, his gun permanently aimed at the captain’s chest.

  ‘Okay, I’ve been sitting here now for’ – Bonhoeffer said, checking his watch – ‘at least twenty minutes and you haven’t yet told me what you’re hoping to gain from this hold-up.’

  Not that Tiago hadn’t had a huge amount to say. He’d spouted forth like a waterfall, revealing himself to be as perplexed as he was frightened. Now Bonhoeffer knew that ‘purely by accident’ – whatever that meant – he’d been party to a quarrel between an officer and a chambermaid, since when he’d been on the run from that officer, who at the end of his account turned out to be Veith Jesper.

  ‘Are you now going to kill me like you did him?’ he asked Tiago.

  ‘I didn’t kill that man,’ the dark-haired Argentinian protested, making every effort to remain composed. ‘It was he who shoved the gun in my mouth.’

  ‘But decided against it at the last moment and instead shot a bullet through his own head?’ Bonhoeffer laughed. This was clearly a madman before him. Anouk’s kidnapper, perhaps?

  He wondered whether the revolver in the man’s hands actually worked. The section behind the barrel looked as if it had burst somehow, while the trigger seemed to be missing too.

  ‘Did you abduct the girl?’ he asked Tiago straight out. Maybe Veith had caught him in the act. In such circumstances there was every reason to get him out of the way. But what the devil does he want from me then?

  Even if you couldn’t tell a criminal’s deeds just by appearance, Bonhoeffer doubted very much that he had a perverted rapist before him. On the other hand, the man had managed to smuggle a weapon through security and presumably killed the officer with it, for whatever reason.

  ‘I haven’t laid a finger on anyone,’ Tiago protested. ‘I was the one about to be killed. I’m the one who needs protection.’

  Bonhoeffer smiled and said, ‘Perhaps you ought to repeat what you’ve just said, but without brandishing that revolver.’

  The phone rang in his pocket, but before the captain could take the call Tiago ordered him to put it on the table.

  ‘Listen here, I’m needed on the bridge,’ Bonhoeffer lied. ‘You don’t have much time left to tell me your demands. They’ll soon notice I’m missing.’

  ‘I don’t have any demands. Who do you think I am?’

  A fucking awful combination, Bonhoeffer thought. Mad and armed.

  Veith must have discovered Tiago’s hiding place, cabin 2186, the love nest where he’d held Anouk prisoner. Yes, that made sense – after all, the girl had been found near there.

  ‘Where’s the mother?’ Bonhoeffer said, venturing a direct confrontation with the man.

  ‘The mother?’ Tiago asked. He sounded bewildered, but that might just be acting.

  ‘Anouk’s mother. Is she in the blue shelf? If so, your hideaway’s been busted. My people are on their way there as we speak.’

  ‘What the hell are you babbling on about?’ Tiago asked. ‘I don’t know any Anouk. Only a Lisa.’

  ‘Lisa?’ Now Bonhoeffer was lost for words. ‘How…?’

  ‘Here,’ Tiago said, pulling an enveloped from his back pocket. With one hand he shook out two pieces of paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ Bonhoeffer asked.

  ‘A plan,’ Tiago said. ‘I’ve been meaning to hand it over for ages.’ He passed Bonhoeffer the first of the two pages.

  The captain smoothed out the paper on the table and started to read.

  Plan:

  Step 1: Put security camera out of order.

  According to Querky’s list Nr 23/C. Access via outside steps on deck 5.

  Step 2: Put farewell note in Mama’s cabin.

  Step 3: Lock cabin door and connecting door.

  Bonhoeffer looked up. ‘Where did you get this?’

  Tiago couldn’t cope with the captain’s stare. Clearly he found it too uncomfortable to answer, and when he finally did, Bonhoeffer finally knew why the Argentinian had been umming and erring for so long. He was a thief. A common crook specialising in the plundering of passengers’ safes. A description that fitted the troubled and distraught young man far better than that of a murderer and rapist.

  ‘So it’s only by accident that you came into possession of this… this…’ Bonhoeffer searched for the right words and then used Tiago’s. ‘This plan.’

  Tiago nodded. He looked genuinely contrite. ‘You don’t know how much I’ve been blaming myself. If only I’d plucked up courage to tell someone earlier. But this killer, this officer…’ Tiago shook his head. ‘I was in fear of my life. I still am. Till now I’ve had no idea what I got into. Don’t know how it all hangs together. Who can assure me, for example, that it wasn’t you who set this Veith on me?’

  ‘Do you know what?’ Bonhoeffer said, standing up from the desk. He couldn’t care less about the revolver any more. ‘You can go fuck yourself! I don’t give a shit about you or Veith. Lisa Stiller was my goddaughter. I loved her. Her suicide is worse than any bullet you could stick in me.’

  Tiago, who’d just been about to grab his revolver with two hands, froze.

  ‘Lisa killed herself?’ he asked, confused.

  Bonhoeffer was at a total loss. ‘Is this supposed to be a joke?’ he asked, shaking the piece of paper in his hand. ‘You read the bloody plan yourself!’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Tiago passed him the second sheet. ‘But it doesn’t talk about Lisa’s death!’

  62

  Anouk was back in her own world. She’d put one foot in front of the other as if mechanically, apparently feeling neither Martin’s arm supporting her nor Elena’s hand leading her. Out of
the cathedral, through the control rooms, back up the steps to Hell’s Kitchen, where she now lay back in her bed, self-absorbed, but her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Stoical, with a dispassionate expression, refusing to answer any of the questions that he and Elena had put to her in turn.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Why did you kill your mother?’

  Because since losing consciousness Elena had barely been able to stand, Martin accompanied her back to her sickroom, where they now sat face to face across a small dining table.

  Martin did indeed find his mobile again in the bathroom. Now it lay before them on the shining matt Resopal top, beside the open laptop which Elena had used to save his life. Blood still stuck to one side, in the spot where it had struck Shahla’s head.

  As far as Martin was concerned it was okay that they hadn’t managed to reach the captain till now. The news they had to pass on was devastating. And seeing as Shahla was dead and Naomi couldn’t possibly have survived her fall, there was nothing they could do until their arrival at New York except take Anouk into safekeeping again and try to question her. The first they’d already done. The second was likely to be fruitless.

  Moreover, he and Elena needed time to resolve all the questions that had been plaguing them ever since they’d discovered who was behind Anouk’s abduction and her mother’s torture.

  To begin with they hadn’t been able to make head or tail of it. Their minds couldn’t progress beyond the question of how Anouk could have been raped by a woman.

  All they had to aid their quest for the truth was the weapon that had killed the culprit.

  The laptop.

  Martin had opened it without any great expectations, merely curious as to why Shahla had been carrying it in a bucket when she attacked him. He’d assumed that the computer would be damaged by the blow to her head and by having been dropped. But the laptop was still in perfect working order. When he flipped up the lid Martin came across the exchange between torturer and victim. At first glance it appeared as if Shahla had been conducting a sort of perverted voyeuristic conversation with Naomi.

  ‘She wanted Anouk’s mother to confess to the worst thing she’d ever done in her life.’

  ‘Why?’ Elena croaked. She sounded as if she’d been screaming her heart out at a rock concert, although she wasn’t mumbling any more. Once again the shock had strange consequences. The fact that she was responsible for someone’s death, even if that individual had probably been a psychopath, had loosened her tongue but irritated her vocal chords.

  ‘Because Naomi was only allowed to die if Shahla was satisfied with the confession.’

  Martin, who’d already skimmed the beginning of the text, gave Elena a brief summary of what Anouk’s mother had admitted to the chambermaid.

  ‘Good God. Is there any sort of hint as to why Shahla did that?’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  He tapped his finger on the screen.

  ‘Naomi asked Shahla who she was, and to begin with the answer was slightly cryptic, in the style of a fairy tale, making a few points that Naomi would barely be able to compute. Then Shahla became more concrete. Here.’

  Martin read out the relevant passage:

  I was eleven when I was abused for the first time. My father was away on business; he was the managing director of a Pakistani electronics firm that would later be sold to Microsoft. But when I was a child my dad spent more time on aeroplanes than at home with us.

  I had everything a child could wish for. A house in an area with security guards, our evergreen garden shut off from the hardship of normal people that we only ever saw when the chauffeur bypassed the traffic jams on the way to our private school. Then we would peer through the tinted windows of our limousine at the ordinary houses where people lived who’d never be able to afford the mobiles and computers that my dad made.

  My life as a young teenager consisted of ballet, golf and English lessons. And sex.

  Or ‘cuddling’, as my mum called it.

  ‘Her mother?’ Elena interrupted him in disbelief. She was so unsettled she bit her bottom lip.

  ‘Yes,’ Martin confirmed. ‘Apparently it wasn’t the father who abused Shahla.’

  Most people would find that unimaginable. But as a detective Martin knew that the sexual abuse of children by their mothers, although a taboo subject, wasn’t completely uncommon. According to estimates, ten per cent of all sexual abusers were women. Children’s organisations spoke of much higher unreported figures, as only very few victims ever took action against their mothers and, if they did find the courage to do so, would come up against the same disbelief shown by Elena:

  ‘Shahla was raped by her mother? How’s that possible?’

  ‘She describes it a little later. Here…’

  Martin scrolled down three paragraphs.

  Mummy knew what she was doing and what she demanded of me was wrong. Whenever my father was away for a period of time she came to ‘comfort’ me, as she called it. I didn’t think anything of it to begin with. I even liked it. The way she stroked and caressed me felt nice. But later her hands started to wander, her fingers touched me in places I found embarrassing. She said it was okay. And that she would kiss me down there. It would help me grow up, she said. A perfectly normal occurrence between a mother and her child. But then she got pushier. When she forced me to put on the condom…

  ‘Wait. A condom?’ Elena asked, now even more incredulous. Her voice was squeaking with tension.

  Martin, who’d already read the next couple of sentences, was able to explain the apparent contradiction.

  ‘In this exchange of messages, Shahla describes her own experiences of abuse to extract a confession from Anouk’s mother,’ he told Elena. ‘And now she reveals another bombshell.’ He grabbed his throat, which had just started to constrict. ‘We’ve already heard that it was the mother rather than father who jumped into bed with her. Now Shahla tells Naomi’ – he cleared his throat – ‘that she was born a boy.’

  63

  Julia Stiller opened the door to her cabin. The room seemed alien. No, she felt alien inside it. She didn’t belong in this environment. Not in the cabin, nor on the ship. Not even in her own body.

  She opened the cupboard and with the tips of her fingers touched the sleeves of her neatly arranged clothes that she’d never wear again. Like the travel bag on the suitcase rack. Her inseparable companion on every journey, she’d never hold it again.

  When she disembarked from the Sultan she’d leave it behind, like everything else that had once had meaning in her life: her keys, ID cards, photos, money, love of her life, hope, future.

  Lisa.

  Julia went into the bathroom and smelled the bottle of expensive perfume she’d bought specially for his trip. Its fragrance now made her sick.

  She sprayed it on, as nausea was easier to bear than impotence and grief.

  As she looked in the mirror, she saw for some reason the image of her sick three-year-old daughter, when Julia had been obliged to swap shifts with a colleague because she couldn’t send Lisa to kindergarten. Lisa had a temperature of forty degrees, a ‘snotty nose’ and a hacking cough. With a brittle voice that sounded as hoarse as that of the wicked witch Ursula, who Julia always had to imitate when she was reading. At the time Lisa had lain in bed and asked her, ‘Do I have to die now, Mama?’

  Julia had laughed and wiped away the sweaty hair from her brow. ‘No, my darling. People don’t die that quickly. You’re going to live a long, long time.’

  Another twelve years.

  Julia pressed both her hands firmly on her forehead, eyes and cheeks. So firmly that she saw stars.

  For a while she remained motionless in that position, before filling a glass with water from the tap. She brought it to her lips, but then didn’t see the point any more so tipped it down the plughole.

  One of many pointless actions that would follow on from each other in her life from now. Useless ac
tivities such as thinking, feeling, breathing.

  I have to call Max.

  It was the first time she’d thought of her ex-husband, since Lisa…

  She left the bathroom.

  Someone had made the bed. A small bar of chocolate lay on her pillow. One on each side. Two bars too many.

  Julia looked for the note Lisa had left for her – ‘I’m sorry, Mama’ – but it wasn’t on the cupboard any more. She’d probably given it to Daniel; she couldn’t remember.

  She shook the connecting door, but it was still locked on Lisa’s side.

  Perhaps it’s better that way.

  If she’d had a key she’d have entered Lisa’s cabin and gone through her things.

  What difference would that have made?

  Julia pushed open the balcony door. Fresh wind blew through her hair.

  Given where they were in the Atlantic, the sea was astonishingly calm, the water almost still in contrast to this afternoon. The biggest waves were being made by the ship itself.

  The evening air had a soft tang of salt and diesel. Laughter washed down from the upper balconies. In the distance she could hear pop music mingling with the swishing of the sea. The ship’s programme had announced a karaoke afternoon.

  ‘Why?’ Julia thought, shaking the railing she’d climbed over the night before. ‘Why did you have to hold onto me, Daniel?’

  She leaned over the railings and looked down. The sea no longer looked menacing, but enticing. She heard a whispering in the gentle whooshing of the waves. It sounded like her name. Enticing.

  People don’t die that quickly!

  ‘Lisa?’ she wanted to shout out, but her voice failed.

  Why didn’t I insist?

  Why didn’t I force Daniel to stop the ship and turn around so we could go overboard?

  I knew about the video, didn’t I?

  Full of fury and self-hatred, she kicked the screen between the balconies. Hammered on it with her first. And kicked again. Once. Twice.

  On the third occasion her foot went right through the plastic wall.

  Without destroying it.