‘Let’s talk privately, Herr Schwartz.’
She looked down at him like a vulture targeting its prey. Martin eyed her sceptically as she returned to the desk.
‘The machine didn’t show any striking fluctuations,’ she said. ‘In any event, where you pieced together from hearsay all those things you weren’t personally witness to, polygraphic assessment isn’t much use. But at one point…’ She turned the laptop to face him. ‘Here you start to sweat and your heart rate shoots up. Even without the camera, I also detected various microexpressions that signalled to me you weren’t telling the truth.’ She showed him a section of graph where the waves looked like the ECG of someone on the verge of cardiac arrest.
‘What was I saying then?’ Martin asked, even though he had a very good idea.
‘You were basically telling Dr Beck that you hadn’t seen anything in Shahla Afridi’s notes referring to your son’s fate.’
Martin nodded.
‘That was a lie, wasn’t it?’
He swallowed deeply, but didn’t say anything.
‘Herr Schwartz, it won’t change my assessment one bit. As far as I can see, you’ve not done anything wrong except take absence without leave. I’m only interested privately in what you found out about Timmy and Nadja.’
Oh, really? Are you? Why? For a bit of sensationalism, perhaps?
Looking into her good-natured eyes he knew he was being unfair on her.
‘The video that Bonhoeffer showed you. Where you see them jumping from the ship,’ she insisted. ‘You know now why the larger shape went first, followed by the smaller one, don’t you?’
Martin gave a terse nod. He’d learned the truth three days following Shahla’s death, after the Sultan had berthed in New York and the FBI had taken up the investigation. By that point Daniel’s men had already located the secret place near the blue shelf where the chambermaid had hidden Anouk for the last few weeks, and which had also been Lisa’s hiding spot during the night she faked her suicide. In the bare, container-like room, which had been used to store recyclable metal and other raw materials before the waste dumping facility was decommissioned, they’d found a mattress, a banana crate that had served as a bedside table and a metal shelf unit screwed into the wall with books, children’s games, puzzles, cuddly toys and even an iPad full of films, e-books and computer games.
Besides the multimedia content, FBI technicians discovered in the browser a link to a cloud server where Shahla had stored personal documents. After they’d managed to crack the code, they came across a diary entry relating to the day when Timmy and Nadja died. In a break during questioning, the chief FBI investigator had left Martin alone with an extract from the diary.
Just like this internal investigation by Dr Klein, the FBI also came to the conclusion that although Schwartz was an important witness, he wasn’t a suspect and so should be allowed to return to Germany along with Julia and Lisa Stiller, on condition that he make himself available for further questioning. Letting him see the diary entry was probably a favour from the FBI investigator, seeing as Martin wasn’t only a colleague, he’d also proved highly cooperative throughout questioning.
For five whole minutes Martin had read over and over again the few lines Shahla had written, so often that they clung to his memory like leeches, and he could still recite them verbatim in his mind:
I often wonder whether it was chance or destiny that helped me with this German family. During dinner I was about to do the turn-down when I caught the mother in her cabin, indecently assaulting her son. She was lying naked on top of him, and wasn’t able to wriggle off quickly enough.
That was five years ago. Her name was Nadja Schwartz.
When Martin read this for the first time he had to laugh. A paradoxical reaction of his mind, which really ought to have made him scream. He recalled sensing that he was getting a bad nosebleed, but his nose remained dry. Instead he heard a loud, high-pitched buzzing, which didn’t signal a headache this time, but split into two voices. One of them, a deep, calm and pleasant voice, whispered confidentially in his ear that he shouldn’t believe what he was reading. That Shahla was a liar. The other one emitted a shrill, hoarse yell and uttered a single word: condom!
It took Martin back to the day five years ago, before the cruise, before his last mission, when he’d come home early from the meeting. He’d never found out who his wife’s lover was, the man who’d left the condom in his bed.
Unrolled, but unused.
But now, when he thought of how he’d met Nadja, everything took on a different meaning. In casualty with the black eye that her boyfriend had given her. Not out of jealousy, as she’d claimed. But because she actually had got too close to the man’s son.
Martin couldn’t help thinking back to his last conversation with Timmy too: ‘Don’t you want to talk about it?’
The last conversation between father and son, which essentially wasn’t about the five in Maths, nor the unusual increase in his need for sleep and why he’d suddenly stopped wanting to play tennis.
The signs of abuse.
What had been Timmy’s answer back then?
‘It’s because of you. Because you’re away so often, and with Mama…’
… with Mama, who saw in her young son a substitute partner? Just as Shahla’s mother had done?
The deep voice whispered that he was wrong, but it became ever softer.
And after Martin had thrown up for the third time, the hoarse voice didn’t have to bellow so loudly to convince him that there was no reason why Shahla, who could never have anticipated that her diary would fall into his hands, should have lied when writing it. Particularly as these lines shed light on the mystery as to why Nadja had fallen overboard first.
And then Timmy!
Shahla had written:
When I saw the mother with her son I flipped out. In a blind fury I grabbed the nearest object, a heavy desk lamp, and hit the woman over the head. She lost consciousness immediately; perhaps she was dead. Her son ran into the bathroom and locked himself in. What was I to do? It was a messy situation. If I hadn’t lost it, I’d have been able to deliver the punishment much more cleanly on another occasion. But now I was forced to dispose of the mother’s body at once. Luckily the weather was bad that night and there was a large sea swell. Besides, it wouldn’t be in the cruise line’s interest to try to prove an act of violence by video analysis. Suicide is better for a shipping company’s image than having a serial killer on board, which is why I didn’t hesitate for long before throwing Mrs Schwartz overboard. Unfortunately her son had by now left the bathroom and was watching me. When he saw his mother fall over the railings he ran to the balcony, right past me, climbed the parapet… and leaped after her.
First the large shadow.
Then the small one.
Here in the interrogation room, Martin had great difficulty not bursting out into a crying fit, similar to the one he’d had when he read the diary extract and understood for the first time the full implication of Shahla’s account.
Timmy loved his mother. In spite of everything.
Just as the battered wife stops the police from arresting the husband who beats her, Timmy’s love for his mother and fear of losing her was much greater and stronger than his fear of further abuse.
Tears shot into Martin’s eyes, which did not go unnoticed by Dr Klein.
‘Don’t you want to talk about it?’ she asked.
Talk about what? he thought.
That there are mothers who abuse their children? And children who love their parents in spite of everything?
Until death.
‘Let me guess,’ the interrogator said. ‘The truth you now know is so horrendous that you don’t care about your own life.’
‘I felt like that before.’
‘Was that the reason?’
‘The reason for what?’
‘That you jumped in after Lisa?’
Martin closed his eyes.
He briefly
felt the impact again, twenty metres down, as a result of which he’d broken his foot. Elena had splinted it with an elastic bandage, which was why he was now limping.
He’d felt as if he’d jumped into a saucepan, except that the foaming water lapping above his head had burned like thousands of pins. Pins of ice, which sucked all strength from his body almost the very moment that the Atlantic had him in its claws.
‘I haven’t given it a thought,’ Martin said, and if he’d still been wired up to the lie detector this would have registered that he was telling the truth. He’d just jumped, a reflex, without making any conscious decision.
Lisa had come off worse. When she hit the water she broke her hip and dislocated her left shoulder. Thank goodness, because she was screaming blue murder when her head popped back up above the surface of the water. The stillness of the sea and the lucky coincidence that the captain had already stopped the ship beforehand, had made it possible to save her.
‘I expect you’ll be given an award,’ Dr Klein said.
‘A medal, I hope. I can at least use that as a coaster,’ Martin muttered. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
In his mind he could taste the salt water which he’d swallowed by the litre and later vomited.
‘You pushed the detached railings over to Lisa so she could keep herself alive until the rescue crew got to you.’
Dr Klein reached for Martin’s hand and squeezed it. He was unsure whether he found this gesture unpleasant or whether it should make him unhappy.
‘I don’t know that Lisa Stiller’s so thrilled about it,’ he said, pulling his fingers back.
If Martin was correctly informed, both Anouk and Lisa were currently in psychiatric institutions; one in Manhattan, the other on the outskirts of Berlin, where Julia Stiller was also taking professional help to process the horrific experience. Martin hoped they wouldn’t too quickly expose the children to the world of doctors with their questions and pills, but not everyone shared his preference for televisions and Game Boys when the aim was to liberate traumatised and mentally ill patients from their world of shadows and illusion.
‘Can I go now?’ he asked, standing up.
Dr Klein nodded. She took a mobile phone from a trouser pocket.
‘Of course. Shall we call you a car?’
Martin forced an innocuous smile and politely declined.
What address would he give to the taxi driver? His life was now void of destinations.
72
Four weeks later
The needle of the speedometer seemed to be nailed down at one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. You might have thought that Kramer had switched on the cruise control, but Martin knew that the head of the operations regarded such aids as ‘pensioners’ accessories’. He bet that in the 1980s Kramer would have sneered at power steering and automatic transmission too, and if the man had ever been on a demonstration, then it would have been to protest against the compulsory wearing of seatbelts.
‘How about a coffee?’ Martin asked when the sign for Michendorf service station appeared. They were driving in the vehicle he’d last sat in outside the Pryga villa in Westend, and where he’d pulled out one of his own teeth. In fact a visit to the dentist was long overdue; the sweet lady from casualty had even left him a concerned message on his answerphone telling him he mustn’t forget to have the interim denture replaced. But he had time. He could cope with the throbbing in his jaw and could sleep well with three ibuprofen, occasionally even four hours at a time. The painkillers also helped with his headache. In addition, the attacks he’d had on the ship had become less frequent ever since he’d prematurely ditched the PEP pills.
‘No coffee. We’re late,’ Kramer decided, even though there were three hours till their meeting at the motorway car park just outside of Jena.
Martin yawned and turned his wrist outwards so he could see his arteries. And the tattoo. A rose with eighteen tiny thorns. A Russian prison tattoo. The sign that you’d reached the age of maturity in jail. He’d had it inked ten days ago for this operation. Their goal was to infiltrate a Croatian biker gang that was seeking to take over the Berlin bouncer business. The people who controlled the doors to clubs and discos also controlled the flow of drugs. A lucrative business that was bitterly contested. In the coming weeks the Croatian gang was planning on eliminating a few bouncers and Martin was going to offer his services as a contract killer.
‘Doesn’t the tattoo look too new?’ Kramer asked, returning his gaze to the almost-empty road after a glance at the rose.
‘I’ll say I had it freshened up in celebration of this day,’ Martin replied. He yawned again. Yesterday hadn’t been a four-hour night. More like four minutes.
They passed the service station and thus the chance of a coffee. Martin shut his eyes and leaned his head against the vibrating window.
‘Hey! Walivakelive ulivup yolivoulivu ilividiliviolivot!’ he suddenly heard Kramer say beside him. Turning to him, he saw his boss giggling into his double chin. Martin, who couldn’t make head or tail of this nonsense, asked Kramer if he was having a stroke. ‘If so, you’d better let me drive.’
‘Rubbish, I’m fine. That’s how my daughter talks at the moment.’ The head of operations was wearing the smile of a proud father. ‘Helivellolivo, for example, means hello.’
He indicated to overtake a white rust bucket that was hogging the middle lane.
‘It’s called Livish,’ he explained as if Martin might be interested in the silly secret language that Kramer’s daughter had concocted.
‘Lottie’s practised it with her friend throughout the entire autumn holiday and now she’s driving her teachers potty too. The principle is very simple. Shall I tell you how it works?’
Martin shook his head, but this didn’t spare him Kramer’s explanation.
‘You put liv after every vowel, then repeat the vowel afterwards. Walivakelive ulivup yolivoulivu ilividiliviolivot means wake up you idiot.’ Kramer slapped the steering wheel, as if he’d just told the joke of the year.
‘I understand,’ Martin said, before adding ‘alivarseliveholivolelive’. Kramer stopped laughing and looked straight ahead sulkily.
Martin’s mobile rang. Although the number wasn’t one of his contacts, it seemed familiar, so he took the call.
‘Martin?’ Gerlinde Dobkowitz began the conversation with reproach in her voice. ‘What sort of a way to behave is that? I mean, I can understand that you didn’t propose to me, even though I’m still quite a catch, but to skip offboard without so much as a goodbye, and then not even a call afterwards to say you’re back on dry land, well, that’s pretty steep!’
He was going to tell her that he was deliberately avoiding contact with anyone who reminded him of the Sultan, and thus of Timmy but, as ever, she didn’t let him get a word in edgeways.
‘Anyway, I was just giving you a bell to say that I’ve finished my novel. You know, Cruise Killer.’
‘Lovely title,’ Martin said, seeking a polite way to end the conversation.
‘Isn’t it just?’ she agreed perkily. ‘Although I thought The Bermuda Deck was even better.’ But it appears that my second theory about the secret deck and experiments on people hasn’t proved correct, although I haven’t altogether given up the hunt for a secret way in. Anyway, a female serial killer in the ship’s basement isn’t to be sneezed at, is it?’
‘You had a nose for it, Frau Dobkowitz, but—’
‘I’ll send you a copy if you like. Or I’ll give it to you in person. I’m coming to Berlin next month.’
‘You’re leaving the ship?’ This was a surprise to Martin.
‘Of course, what do you think? As soon as my bestseller came out, they’d have kicked me off the boat anyway as a traitor. Besides, I’ve had enough of being here now. My need for death and violence has been sated. If I don’t watch out I might vanish too in all the excitement. At seventy-eight plus five you’ve got to take things a bit more easily.’
‘Seventy-eight plus fi
ve?’ Martin asked, blinking nervously. He froze. Gerlinde giggled to herself.
‘At my age you don’t just count the years, but the months too. And even the days, if possible, when the final checkout is looming. I mean, I wouldn’t say the worms are already licking their lips when I wheel myself across the meadow, but—’
Martin muttered a goodbye and hung up before Gerlinde could finish her sentence.
‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ Kramer asked, peering at him from the corner of his eye. ‘Is everything alright?’
No, it’s not.
Martin could sense that his mouth was hanging open, but there were more important things to do than close it again.
Gerlinde’s comment about her age had unsettled him. The black van was holding its lane, but in his head a thought had derailed, which he desperately wanted to grab hold of again. Needed to grab hold of.
What had Diesel said about Anouk?
‘The result of her IQ test she took in year 5 was 135… And she came second in a national memory championship.’
Seventy-eight plus five.
Helivellolivo!
‘Stop!’ he screamed at Kramer, who’d just moved into the slow lane. ‘Let me out!’
‘Here?’
‘Right now!’ Martin opened the sliding door on the passenger side. An icy wind flew inside. He heard Kramer curse, but the van slowed down, veered right and finally came to a halt on the hard shoulder.
‘You’re wrecking the operation,’ Kramer yelled after him, as Martin had already jumped out. ‘If you bugger off again without permission, that will be that, you psycho.’
Martin briefly glanced back and nodded.
He ran over to the other side of the motorway to find someone who’d get him back to Berlin as quickly as possible…
78+5
… so he could search through the memory on his phone in peace, where somewhere the truth was hiding…
73
It took him four hours to get home. Thirty minutes for the transcript of the session with Anouk that he’d recorded on his smartphone on the Sultan. And two hours after that he sensed that he was on the verge of cracking the riddle.
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