Anouk’s cabin reminded Martin of a delivery room in a modern hospital, in which anything that could possibly make patients think of medicine and illness was replaced by bright, everyday materials.
The floor was laminated, but the way it was embossed made it look just like real parquet. The walls were the hue of a well-stirred latte macchiato, and visitors were able to sit on a sand-coloured leather sofa instead of the ubiquitous hospital wooden chairs. Dimmed ceiling spots bathed the cabin in a soft, pastel light.
Within this setting, the height-adjustable hospital bed gave the impression it had been wheeled into a five-star hotel room by accident and looked completely out of place here, in spite of the power strip in the wall behind the bed with numerous sockets for medical devices, connections for oxygen, compressed air and telephone, as well as a red emergency button within the eleven-year-old patient’s reach.
Anouk Lamar was sitting on the middle of the bed with her knees up to her chest, seemingly unaware that she was no longer alone. She was wearing a simple nightshirt, fastened at the back, and white cotton stockings. She hadn’t changed position since Martin and Elena had entered the room. Her head was turned away from them, looking right to the external wall in which a porthole was framed by yellow curtains. The occasional wave sloshed up, creating that washing-machine effect typical of cabins just above the waterline.
Martin doubted that Anouk was staring at the drops on the glass, or anything else for that matter. He didn’t have to look at her face to know that she was lost in her own thoughts and gazing right through everything in her line of vision, while scratching her right forearm with stoical regularity.
Her mere presence filled the room with an oppressive hopelessness, so weighty you could almost touch it. Sometimes Martin wished he had less experience, hadn’t looked into so many empty faces to know first hand that there was no scalpel or chemotherapy in the entire world able to completely remove the cancer-like tumour that had established itself in this girl’s soul after the hell she’d been through. In such cases psychologists and doctors were like engineers in Chernobyl or Fukushima. They could never get rid of the problem altogether, merely mitigate the consequences of the catastrophe.
‘Hi, Anouk. I hope we’re not disturbing you,’ he greeted the eleven-year-old girl in her native English. ‘My name is Dr Schwartz,’ he introduced himself and noticed the doctor looking at him in astonishment. Bonhoeffer couldn’t have shown her the case files or she’d have known that he had the title of doctor, although he set very little store by it. It was a rare exception for him to be using it today. He hoped that Anouk would find it easier to accept the presence of a second doctor rather than an investigator trained in psychology who wanted to root around in her past.
‘We haven’t come to examine you again,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’
Anouk didn’t react. No change in position, expression or gestures.
But her scratching got a little harder.
‘She does that all the time,’ Elena whispered.
‘Let’s talk out loud,’ Martin said kindly. ‘And in English.’
If he was right, Anouk was shutting herself off inside her own world, and you only reinforced this isolation process if, in the presence of a traumatised person, you behaved as if they weren’t there. He knew this from other emotionally shattered people who he’d spent a very, very long time with.
He knew it from himself.
‘I know you want to be alone at the moment and not talk to anybody.’
Especially not to a man.
‘But I just wanted to check the equipment in this room.’
It was a crude attempt to suggest that she need have no fear of any probing questions. His experiences as an investigator had taught him never to pressurise traumatised witnesses. Victims of sex crimes, particularly children, were in a state of unbearable inner turmoil. On the one hand they wanted to be helped and see the perpetrator punished. But they also wanted the horrific event erased from their memory.
Martin looked at the ceiling, where a dark, flat screen hung from a swivel arm. He pointed up.
‘Why’s that not on?’
‘The television?’ Elena asked, confused. ‘I, well… I somehow thought it was wrong.’
Martin nodded. An understandable error of judgement.
Normally you shouldn’t leave a child alone for too long in front of the television. But this was anything other than a normal situation. Whenever he’d had to look after a child in witness or victim protection, which had happened a few times, the first thing he’d done in the safe house was to switch on the box, to take away the little one’s fear.
He got the doctor to hand him the remote control and chose, from the extensive on-board menu, a children’s channel with animated films.
‘Do you like Ice Age?’ he asked. No reply. Anouk remained as silent as the television that he’d muted.
Elena raised her eyebrows at Martin.
Later he’d explain to her that traumatised victims suffered complications for a shorter time if they were given the opportunity to take their mind off things as soon as possible after having been rescued. Studies showed that soldiers who were given Game Boys after horrendous missions were less likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders than those who took part in psychotherapeutic discussions too quickly.
‘In the few pictures taken of her by the on-board photographer she was often seen holding a sketch pad. So I left paper and pencils there,’ Elena said. ‘But it didn’t go well.’
No wonder. It was far too early for gestalt therapy, even if the idea of letting Anouk draw the gruesome images out of her mind wasn’t in itself a bad one.
‘It’s fine if you don’t want to draw,’ Martin said. ‘You don’t have to do anything here you don’t want to.’
From her face, Elena blew a strand of hair that had come away from her plait. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, going to the bed and pushing the sleeve of Anouk’s nightshirt up to the elbow. Indifferent to what was going on, the girl allowed her to do it. Martin could see a thin plaster above the left wrist.
‘She tried to stab herself in the forearm with the pencil.’
Left forearm. So she’s right-handed, Martin thought, making a mental note.
‘Thank God I’d only just popped into the bathroom.’ With her chin Elena indicated an almost invisible door in the wall beside the bed. ‘To get some water for her tablets. I came back and saw Anouk harming herself.’
‘Did you stab or scratch yourself?’
Once again he directed his question to the girl. Once again he got no response.
‘Hard to say,’ was Elena’s attempt at an explanation. ‘She was holding the pencil like a knife, it was more of a level movement.’
To cut out the pain?
Martin shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for a diagnosis. The key thing now was to win Anouk’s trust.
‘I’m actually only here to test the button,’ Martin said, pointing to the power strip behind her bed. ‘This is a worry button. You can press it any time you feel worried or need help. Okay?’
She blinked, but Martin didn’t take this as a sign of understanding. And yet it was absolutely vital that this initial phase of trust-building was successful. Anouk had to know that her situation had changed for the better and that she wasn’t on her own here any longer, not at any time, not even when there was nobody else in her cabin.
‘Shall we try it out?’ Martin said.
Elena nodded to him when he put his hand on the red alarm button on the power strip behind Anouk’s hospital bed.
‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re frightened, in pain, feel sad or just want to talk to someone, you only have to press this and…’
Martin pushed the button, it made an audible click and almost immediately Elena’s mobile rang, which was in a belt pouch tied around her black trousers.
Anouk flinched and pulled her legs up tighter to her bent-forwards torso.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Elena said, stroking her hair tenderly. ‘I told you about this before. The alarm activates my mobile. When it rings I’ll come straight to you, any time day or night.’
‘All you have to do it press the worry button above your bed,’ Martin added. ‘It works just as you saw.’ Martin gave Elena a sign to go. He wouldn’t be able to achieve any more at the moment.
‘I’ll be right back, sweetheart, okay?’ She stroked Anouk’s cheek softly then followed him out of the cabin.
‘It’s irresponsible,’ Martin said once they’d closed the door behind them. He spoke in a hushed tone, even though he didn’t think Anouk would be able to hear them out here in the anteroom. ‘She’s got serious injuries—’
‘For which she’s being given painkillers and ointments.’
‘—and needs to get to a hospital as quickly as possible.’
‘She is in a hospital,’ Elena insisted. ‘The Sultan is better equipped than many city hospitals.’
‘Only without the appropriately trained personnel.’
The doctor voiced her protest. ‘I lived in the Dominican Republic for three years and in the city hospital there treated more refugee children from Haiti who’d been raped than the head of the Hamburg women’s clinic will see in a lifetime. And from what I’ve just witnessed, Doctor Schwartz, you seem to be very familiar with post-traumatic stress disorders. Listen, I’m not trying to defend what’s happening here. But do you really think that round-the-clock treatment by the two of us is so bad for the child?’
‘Yes, it is,’ was on the tip of Martin’s tongue, but he didn’t manage to get the words out because all of a sudden Elena’s mobile rang.
‘Anouk,’ she said, surprised.
The girl had pressed the worry button.