Passenger 23

by Sebastian Fitzek

  Diesel lowered his voice as if he weren’t alone in his office and said shiftily, ‘If you know someone who doesn’t have a problem with touching male genitalia, perhaps you should send them round to Schiwy’s with an electric screwdriver. Just saying.’

  Martin watched Elena pull the mobile closer to her on the table.

  ‘And you’re one hundred per cent certain?’ she asked.

  ‘Who’s there with you?’ Diesel asked. ‘Sounds like a dragon whose voice is breaking.’

  ‘I’m Elena Beck, the doctor treating Anouk Lamar.’ Elena spoke as clearly as she could. ‘Listen, it’s absolutely vital that you answer my question. How reliable is all this stuff about Lisa’s teacher?’

  ‘As reliable as using a rubber johnny and the pill together, darling.’

  The doctor leaped up from the table. All exhaustion seemed to be blown away.

  ‘We’ve got to go,’ she said frantically, waving her hand. Martin stood too.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To see Julia Stiller. We have to find her.’

  He shook his head. ‘What’s the point? To tell her that Lisa isn’t just dead, she was also forced to have sex with her teacher before she died?’

  Elena looked at him as if he were dim. ‘Think about it, Martin. A daughter is abused before she goes missing. What does that remind you of?’

  Shahla!

  And that she’d always gone for the mothers.

  Julia!

  Martin ended the call without saying goodbye to Diesel. As he hurried behind Elena he tried to reach Bonhoeffer again.

  68

  Lisa was sweating.

  A fresh breeze was blowing in from the open balcony door, but her daughter looked as if she were standing in a spotlight. Her body was reacting to the flame of insanity simmering deep inside her. A fine trickle of sweat ran down her cheek and collected above the collar of her T-shirt.

  ‘I’ve tried to get Tom back,’ she told her mother. ‘I’ve called him, emailed him, bombarded him via Facebook and WhatsApp. I turned up to one of his consultation hours after he dumped me overnight. I even got him back into bed once.’

  Lisa’s wistful smile at the end unsettled Julia as much as what she’d said.

  ‘Are you talking about the time when I… had a relationship with Tom?’

  Her daughter’s smile gave way to a stony face. ‘But it didn’t mean anything to Tom any more. He said the sex was better with me, but he could only imagine having a relationship with you.’

  Jesus Christ! Julia closed her eyes for a while.

  Lisa’s faked suicide. Her resurrection. The hatred in her voice.

  She wasn’t sure how much more she was capable of taking. Julia looked at her daughter’s hand gripping the screwdriver tightly, observed the reflection of the slowly setting sun on the silver metal and asked Lisa softly, ‘What are you going to do now, darling?’

  ‘Get Tom back.’

  Lisa virtually spat these words at her bare feet. If it hadn’t occurred to her earlier, now Julia was having doubts about who she was talking to.

  The girl before her, with that haunted look and those quivering lips, was no longer her daughter. In all senses of the word Lisa was disconnected.

  Julia had once read that, besides grief, lovesickness could inflict the worst emotional wounds. Evidently including those that didn’t heal on their own.

  ‘Lisa, if someone’s to blame for your heartache, it’s Tom. He should never…’

  ‘Blah, blah, blah… Don’t talk crap. So now you want to pin it on him, do you?’

  Julia just wanted to shout ‘Yes!’ and – had that fucker been here – grab him by the balls and throw him overboard. But as Tom Schiwy was as far away as a clear thought was from Lisa’s mind, she just shook her head. ‘No, it’s not just his fault,’ she said to placate her.

  She was no psychologist, but she knew that something inside her daughter had broken that could not be stuck back together with logic.

  ‘So you admit that you deserved my plan?’ Lisa asked triumphantly.

  ‘What plan?’

  ‘The one I worked out with Querky.’ A dark cloud veiled Lisa’s expression. It looked as if she’d just been visited by a nasty thought.

  ‘Did you steal the envelope from the safe?’ she asked with menace.

  ‘What?’ Julia didn’t understand anything. Her daughter might just as well have been whistling. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Lisa flicked her hand dismissively, as if what she’d said wasn’t important any more. ‘I told Querky that you forced me to go on the game,’ she laughed grubbily.

  Boom!

  Another hand grenade of madness lobbed in her direction by her daughter. And her aim was getting better.

  ‘What? For Christ’s sake, why?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Because she wouldn’t have helped me otherwise. She only looks after children who’ve been raped and abused. So I fibbed to Querky. To prove I was being forced to have sex with strange men against my will I sent her the video.’

  Julia blinked. In the split second that her eyes were closed, scraps of memories flashed in her mind, in which she saw the back of her daughter’s head in the lap of a groaning man who now had a name: Tom!

  ‘The video in which I did him the favour of playing you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘A whore.’

  In her mind’s eye Julia saw Lisa take the money.

  Okay. Stop. Enough. It couldn’t go on like this.

  She took a step towards Lisa. Now there were only a couple of arm lengths between Julia and her daughter. ‘Look at me, Lisa. I know I’ve made mistakes. I wasn’t there for you when your father left us. I didn’t look after you enough when you hit puberty. And, yes, I had a relationship with your teacher. But I ended it.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Lisa gave her the finger.

  ‘No, it’s the truth, darling. Without me knowing what was going on between the two of you…’

  ‘Is. What is going on between the two of us!’

  ‘Fine, fine, fine!’ Julia raised both hands to calm her down. ‘Without knowing what is going on between the two of you I noticed that Tom…’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak his name again!’

  ‘… wasn’t the right man for me.’

  ‘Ha!’ Lisa sneered at her. The sweat was now dripping from her eyebrows too. ‘So you think you’re better, do you? Was he just a disposable item for you?’

  Julia closed her eyes. This wasn’t getting anywhere. She might as well have begged the sea to stop swooshing. She turned angry. Not at Lisa, who was manifestly no longer in control of her senses and in urgent need of professional help. But at Tom, who’d abused his position of authority as a teacher, destroyed the sensitive heart of an adolescent teenager and also deceived her. Her unbridled anger surfaced so quickly that she could no longer control what she was saying. ‘Okay, fine. I’m the guilty one!’ she barked at Lisa. ‘I pinched Tom off you. I deserved being given the biggest fright of my life. But none of that is going to bring that filthy bastard back, who only used you…’

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaa…’

  Emitting a sound reminiscent of a war cry, Lisa leaped forwards with the screwdriver, as if out of her mind.

  And stabbed.

  69

  ‘Please, I beg you. There might still be time.’

  Bonhoeffer put his hands together as if Tiago were a god he was beseeching to hear his prayers.

  ‘If what Lisa wrote is true then the girl is still on the ship. At this very moment she might well be carrying out the last part of her plan.’

  Tiago, who hadn’t given in for the past twenty minutes, scratched his thick mop of hair and shook his head in resignation. ‘I’ve almost bought it once. My gut feeling tells me that if I let you go now it’ll definitely be game over.’

  In fury the captain slammed his palm on his desk, where he was still being forced to sit. ‘But what the hell do you plan to do with me then? Keep me prisoner here
until we arrive in New York?’

  ‘No.’ Tiago stared at Bonhoeffer as if he’d just had an idea. ‘Call the US coastguard. The border police or the FBI. I don’t care. I want to speak to them and outline my position.’

  Bonhoeffer looked at him dumbfounded. ‘That’s your demand? Did you just think of this now?’

  Tiago nodded. He looked conscience-stricken. ‘I’m scared. I can’t think straight when I’m scared.’

  Bonhoeffer sighed. His mouth was dry. He’d talked so much that he could smell his bad breath. ‘Okay, fine. Here’s the deal, Tiago. You let me make two phone calls. With the first one I’ll stop the ship. With the second I’ll try to get hold of Julia Stiller. As soon as that’s done the two of us will notify the authorities together and then you’ll finally hand over that bloody weapon of yours. How does that sound?’

  ‘Lousy,’ Tiago said, pointing at Bonhoeffer’s phone. ‘But I hesitated too long once before.’

  Bonhoeffer nodded and started dialling.

  ‘Just pray to God you haven’t done it a second time.’

  70

  Martin virtually broke through the door. He’d left Elena behind on his dash out of Hell’s Kitchen, and had raced through the staff area and up the six flights of stairs from deck A to the fifth passenger floor of this ocean giant.

  He’d barged into women, leaped over children, knocked a tray carrying room service from a waiter’s hand and compelled him to hand over his skeleton key. And still he came too late.

  Or that’s what he thought when he saw Lisa lunge with a screwdriver at her mother, who for some reason was naked, or at best very scantily clad. But then Lisa tripped, catching the laces of her combat boots around a leg of the bed. This gave Julia time to retreat to the balcony that her daughter was also steaming towards.

  ‘Hey, Lisa,’ Martin shouted with the last of his breath. Lisa hadn’t heard the door crash open, but she responded to her name. She slowly turned around to him.

  The telephone on the bedside table was ringing; nobody paid it any attention.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lisa said, keeping one eye on her mother. The wind was blowing her hair forwards like a hood.

  Noting her glassy look Martin understood the situation at a glance. Lisa Stiller was in a sort of alpha mode, a state in which she would only react to the most powerful external stimuli. The voice of reason had been switched off, as had her ability to distinguish between right and wrong.

  She was probably suffering from a dissociative disorder. If Diesel was right and the teacher had sexually exploited and abused the girl, this negative experience would have touched her sensitive emotional nexus like a burning match and set the whole thing alight.

  She seemed to be blaming her mother for the mental torture she must have been suffering. Over weeks, months perhaps, she’d built Julia up as a bogeyman figure. Martin knew that he wouldn’t be able to deter her quickly from her actions with sound argument. And certainly not with the truth. So he lied to her and said, ‘I’m a friend of Querky’s.’

  Bingo!

  He’d remembered the name Shahla had used when contacting potential clients on Easyexit. Elena’s suspicion proved well founded. There was a connection between Lisa and Shahla too. And by pretending to be Querky’s accomplice he’d gained Lisa’s attention. But also that of her mother, who stared at him wide-eyed and was just about to open her mouth when she read – correctly – from the brief glance he shot at her that this was not the time to butt in.

  ‘Querky doesn’t have any friends,’ Lisa said, somewhat bewildered.

  ‘Oh, yes, she does. I’m her assistant.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No I’m not. She sent me here to tell you to stop.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘No, honest. The plan has been put on hold.’

  ‘Oh, really? So why didn’t she come to tell me herself?’

  ‘Because she…’ Martin’s first instinct was to tell the truth. Because she’s dead. But that might provoke the worst reaction possible. Searching for the appropriate response he began, ‘Because at the moment she’s…’

  ‘Here. Here I am.’

  Martin swivelled around in shock. Elena was standing in the cabin doorway, as out of breath as he was.

  ‘You?’ Martin heard Lisa say behind him. He turned back to the girl. ‘You’re Querky?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elena said. ‘We met on Easyexit.’

  ‘You, you sound completely different.’

  ‘Because I had an accident,’ Elena said, pointing to her disfigured face. ‘It’s going to take a while before I get my old voice back.’ She pushed past Martin. ‘I’ve got a message for you from Tom.’

  ‘From my boyfriend?’ Lisa’s face lit up.

  ‘He says he wants to get back together with you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. On the condition that you don’t hurt your mother.’

  Mistrust flickered in Lisa’s eyes. Elena had overdone it.

  ‘You’re not Querky.’

  ‘Hey, Lisa, think about it. How else would I know about Tom and the video if you hadn’t emailed it to me?’

  ‘No, you’re lying. I bet you don’t know my nickname.’

  ‘Your…’ Elena’s voice started to wobble. She swallowed. It wasn’t only Martin who saw the visible signs of her uncertainty.

  ‘Tell me the nickname I’m registered on Easyexit with.’

  ‘You are…’ Elena turned to Martin in desperation. ‘Your nickname is…’ Red patches spread on the undamaged side of her face.

  ‘Forget it,’ Lisa said scornfully. ‘You’re not Querky. And Tom doesn’t want to have anything to do with me any more. You haven’t got any message from him.’

  Her hand gripped the screwdriver more tightly.

  ‘Drop it!’ Martin said, now just a couple of paces away.

  She looked at him, incensed. ‘You don’t reckon I stand a a chance against you, do you?’

  ‘If you try to attack your mother…’ Martin shook his head.

  One minute earlier she could have hurt Julia badly, so badly perhaps that she’d have been able to throw her mother overboard.

  But now the most she could do was give her mother a scratch before Martin snatched the screwdriver from her hand.

  ‘Well, the plan has failed then,’ Lisa said with a shrug.

  She turned to her sobbing mother.

  ‘I hope you’re happy with Tom,’ she said, tossing the tool overboard.

  Then she leaned against the railings and, together with the parapet she’d loosened with the screwdriver in the hours she’d waited for her mother, she fell into the depths like a guillotine.

  71

  Two weeks later

  Internal Investigations

  Berlin

  The fan on the air conditioning unit, which was currently switched to heating mode, rattled as if a leaf had got caught up in it. Given that the interrogation room was in a soundproofed basement at least two kilometres from the nearest tree, this would have been rather surprising. It was much more likely that the humming box was on its last legs.

  Martin was expecting a loud bang at any moment, to announce that the ancient thing below the ceiling had finally gone out of service.

  Over the last few hours while he’d been attached to the lie detector, the unit had provided the room with warm air to some extent, but it stank of burned rubber.

  ‘Shall we take a break?’ his interviewer said, leaning back in her swivel chair. She’d been introduced to him as Dr Elizabeth Klein. Apparently she’d worked for years at the Federal Intelligence Service, where she’d developed a reputation as an interrogation expert, specialising in psychopathic serial killers. At first glance, however, she looked more like the spiritual course leader of an esoteric self-help group. All items of her clothing shimmered in every tone of orange imaginable, from the cardigan she’d knitted herself to the voluminous culottes.

  ‘No,’ Martin replied, removing the patches from hi
s arm and chest. ‘We’re not going to take a break. We’re going to finish here.’

  Against expectation Dr Klein nodded. ‘So you’ve got nothing more to tell us?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that anyone who contradicts my version of events can kiss my arse?’ Martin put a finger to the corner of his mouth and pretended to think. ‘No.’ He shook his head.

  Dr Klein gazed at one of the many bangles on her right arm, twiddled it and nodded. When she looked back up at him there was a wise expression in her eyes.

  No sympathy, please. I can’t cope with sympathy now.

  Martin cleared his throat and asked whether he might get up. Dr Klein sighed. ‘Alright. Of course, we’re a long way off concluding this internal investigation. You must know how long it takes when an officer is caught up in a homicide.’

  She gave him the hint of a smile.

  ‘But I can tell you now that for the most part your statements concur with the information we’ve received from the captain, the doctor, this’ – she leafed through a slim file in front of her – ‘this Tiago Álvarez character and Gerlinde Dobkowitz.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ Martin rubbed his cold hands. ‘Was I able to convince the technology too?’

  He pointed first at the camera in the ceiling, then at the laptop between them, on which the lie detector had recorded his vital signs during his statement.

  The interrogator wiggled her hand from side to side.

  ‘According to the polygraph you seem to be telling the truth. Apart from…’

  Martin raised his eyebrows. ‘Apart from what?’

  She gave him a long stare. Then she took a tissue from one of the many pockets in an item of clothing – now Martin couldn’t be sure whether it was a pair of culottes or wraparound dress.

  She blew her nose, stood up, went over to the security camera and pulled out a cable that ran directly from the wall into the device.