Yegor and Konradin were sitting beside the transport airlock, a secret door through which the container with Sandy was going to be wheeled. Just as soon as old Dobkowitz, only a few steps away on the other side of the wall, finally vanished.
‘By the way, how is our patient on his big day?’ Yegor mumbled without taking his eyes off the monitor. Gerlinde was just manoeuvring her wheelchair a metre backwards, as if a little distance would afford her a better view of things.
‘Excellent. He’s healing well. As so often with clients with well-trained bodies,’ Konradin replied.
Tayo’s treatment had lasted over a year. A fake crash of a private jet above the Gulf of Guinea, embarkation in Praia, months of psychological training, concocting stories, then the surgical interventions. He’d booked the full programme, costing him almost two million dollars, half of his savings. But this was money well spent. Because he hadn’t been given the usual cosmetic alterations. Tayo was an international superstar, and his pursuers had a global network. They’d needed to make drastic changes to his external appearance to prevent him from being immediately recognised in his new home. In the end the surgeon hadn’t only persuaded him to have chin, lip and nose alterations, he’d even talked Tayo into having his leg amputated. After much deliberation, this military measure would surely save Sandy’s new life. There was one irrevocable truth in their business: for people to become invisible, they had to break permanently with their old habits. A gambler must never be seen in a casino again, a musician must never pick up a guitar and a sportsman never run again. When they took on Tayo’s case they knew that he would present a particular problem. A man feted by the press as ‘Mr Ultrasonic’ would not be able to keep away from the tartan tracks of his new home in the Caribbean for long. Like a junkie with drugs, Tayo was addicted to sport. His running style was unmistakeable. Even if he were to put a stone in his shoe to slow him down, people would start talking after a few training sessions. And the whispering about the unknown thunderbolt doing his laps in the arena at night would soon reach the wrong ears.
To be absolutely certain that Tayo wouldn’t be discovered and agonisingly tortured to death, there was only one possible course of action: they had to ensure that he never ran again. Because he wasn’t able to any more.
Endless discussions ensued and Tayo kept having second thoughts right up to the operation. In the end the constant dithering had made the surgeon so mad that the tipsy hothead had gone up to deck 8½ straight afterwards where, on a dark and stormy night, from a place not monitored by the cameras, he’d tossed the amputated leg overboard. An inexcusable breach, which ought to have cost him his job, although ‘Plastic surgeon in private victim protection programme on secret in-between deck of cruise ship’ was not exactly a job that applicants were queuing up for. Yegor even put up with Konradin’s increasingly evident alcohol abuse. Besides, the surgeon hadn’t committed any other similar indiscretions. He himself had got a massive shock on his jaunt up to deck 8½ when he’d almost been spotted disposing of the leg in the Indian Ocean. By none other than Anouk Lamar, who’d taken herself there to do some drawing.
That night Konradin had returned the girl to her mother. When she vanished just a few days later, he told Yegor how he’d sensed Anouk’s reluctance to go and that he’d felt sure she’d rather have stayed out on deck alone, despite the inclement weather and darkness. Back at the time, when they’d all assumed it was a case of extended suicide, Konradin thought that Anouk had anticipated her mother’s plans to kill them both. But now they knew the real reason why she didn’t want to be taken back to her mother that night.
‘How is it actually possible that this grannie out there is on our case?’ the surgeon asked.
Yegor groaned. ‘She isn’t. She just happened upon it by chance. That’s why she isn’t looking in the right place, but nearby.’
Where she’d bumped into Anouk.
The whole thing with this old woman was sheer lunacy!
Martin’s investigations had provided the FBI with a culprit and crime scene, even Anouk’s hiding place, which is why in the end the ship hadn’t been gone over with a fine-toothed comb. The FBI agents’ questions had been answered.
But not Gerlinde’s.
‘I thought the old bag was due to disembark some time ago,’ Konradin said.
‘No, she’s got another fortnight. Mallorca. As soon as we’re back in Europe.’
‘Fucking brilliant!’ The surgeon looked at his watch. ‘We won’t get the container out the back.’
Yegor nodded. There was an inconvenient stairway exit, which the surgeon had used to throw the leg over the handrail. But they couldn’t get Tayo off board that way.
‘We’ll have to wait till we’ve anchored. At some point the old nutcase out there is going to have to strike sail. We can…’ Konradin broke off mid-sentence and laughed. ‘Look! She’s buggering off.’
Indeed she was. Gerlinde had given up. Her wheelchair was moving away from their field of view.
Yegor followed her for a while with the adjustable camera and gave a grunt of satisfaction when she vanished into an open lift.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said. ‘Is Ta… er… Sandy good to go?’
The surgeon nodded. Then he went to fetch the client so that Yegor could say goodbye. A bit of fun that the ship owner never passed up on. Yegor loved the before–after comparison and feeling the power of setting someone out in a new life that he’d helped shape.
He opened the sparkling wine that he’d chilled for the occasion and filled three glasses. One for him. One for the surgeon. And the last one for the tall black man who had to duck to avoid banging his head on the cabin ceiling as he hobbled into the airlock on crutches.
*
At the same time Gerlinde looked at herself in the lift mirror with disappointment and decided to give up her search for the Bermuda Deck for good. Today she’d even kept going till sunrise, longer than usual. And what had she achieved?
Nothing but a goddamned headache.
She decided to spend her final days on the Sultan doing nothing but relaxing.
‘Bloody Bermuda Deck. I got carried away,’ she admitted to herself, then grumbled a while longer until the lift doors opened again. As she wheeled herself out she was surprised by the unexpected change.
It took Gerlinde a while to understand that it was the colour of the carpet which was confusing her. On her deck, deck 12, it was quite a bit darker. And thicker.
I’m on the wrong floor, was her first thought. Then she realised what had happened. The lift must be broken. At any rate it hadn’t gone anywhere. She was still on the same level where she’d entered the lift.
‘Nothing’s working today,’ she groused, wheeling herself out of the lift to try the next-door one.
While she waited she looked at herself again, this time in the brass panelling that had been polished to a mirror finish. Its reflection made everything look a little friendlier. Her eyes didn’t appear so tired; she looked slimmer, her hair not so flat. Everything was nicer, prettier, softer and more harmonious.
Apart from the door.
The door behind her and slightly to the side, which opened in the wall as if by magic. Just as Gerlinde turned around to take a look, a head-high laundry container was being wheeled out from it…
About the author
SEBASTIAN FITZEK is one of Europe’s most successful authors of psychological thrillers. His books have sold 12 million copies, been translated into more than thirty-six languages and are the basis for international cinema and theatre adaptations. Sebastian Fitzek was the first German author to be awarded the European Prize for Criminal Literature. He lives with his family in Berlin.
About the translator
JAMIE BULLOCH is the translator of almost forty works from German, including novels by Timur Vermes, Martin Suter and Robert Menasse. His translation of Birgit Vanderbecke’s The Mussel Feast won the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He is also the author of Karl Renner: Austria.
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