‘Tiago Álvarez?’
Although it was no longer morning Yegor Kalinin was sitting on the sofa in his suite in dressing gown and leather slippers, tickling the neck of his Jack Russell terrier, Ikarus. Normally dogs and other pets were not permitted in the private rooms aboard the cruise liner, but the owner of the Sultan took no more heed of that than he did the smoking ban in the cabins. To the chagrin of his non-smoking wife, he’d had the smoke alarm deactivated in the bedroom.
‘This chap here?’
On the tinted glass table in front of Yegor was a colour printout with the personal details of the passenger his third security officer had just provided a report on, including a photo, itinerary, cabin number and the status of his bill. To date the Argentinian hadn’t made much effort to replenish the coffers of the cruise company. He had an inner cabin, never drank wine with his meals, didn’t join any on-shore excursions, and hadn’t bought a single souvenir in the shops on board.
‘That’s the bastard. I’m sure of it,’ Veith Jesper said.
‘And he was the one hiding behind the bed?’
‘It’s like I said. I saw him and then found his picture in the passenger files. There’s no doubt about it.’
Yegor eyed the twenty-three-year-old man suspiciously. ‘What were you doing in the cabin, anyway?’ he asked Veith, even though he already knew the answer.
Yegor couldn’t stand his nephew. He hadn’t been able to abide the boy’s cheesehead father, who his sister had insisted on marrying just because she’d let the loser get her up the duff while she was studying in Amsterdam.
At twenty-one, getting involved with a street musician might have been an enticing prospect. But twenty-three years later Irina had also understood that no money, no job and no condom weren’t perhaps the best recipe for a promising future. It was only for his sister’s sake that he’d given the useless brute who called him uncle a job on the Sultan. As far as he was concerned Veith could have wasted the rest of life as a trainer for adolescent street thugs in that Dutch shithole that called itself a martial arts school. His one achievement in life was that he didn’t have a criminal record, but given his penchant for violence, drugs and easy girls, it could only be a matter of time before his accommodation was at the state’s expense.
‘I was dealing with the cleaner,’ Veith said, unfazed. He looked as if he was just about to do a photoshoot for a surfing magazine, which only made Yegor even more irate.
The ship owner pursed his lips and briefly enjoyed fantasising about Ikarus biting into his nephew’s I-have-them-all-on-the-first-date face. ‘Please jog my memory,’ he said. ‘I thought you were employed to help the head of security. Not to torture chambermaids.’
Not a week passed on a ship without substantial friction, both between the passengers and amongst employees. Yegor had thought it wouldn’t do any harm to have on board someone he could trust to deal with the rough stuff. But he’d also thought that Veith was as blond as he looked. A thug without a brain, easily manipulated.
How wrong you can be.
Since the Shahla incident he knew that his nephew was as shrewd as he was unpredictable. Fortunately the girl hadn’t suffered any serious injury, even if she’d be coughing up blood for the next few days. And fortunately the passenger, after she’d established that nothing had been taken from her cabins, had believed the story about the jealous lover/colleague they’d taken into custody.
‘Let’s cut the crap,’ his nephew said in a tone that would have earned non-family members a visit to the jaw surgeon. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, Yegor. But you’re hiding something massive – I’m not interested in what it is.’
‘What do you want then?’
‘My share.’
He grinned as if he’d just told a dirty joke. ‘The girl in quarantine, exclusive treatment from our dear doctor, a bonus for the cleaner – keeping all this under wraps seems to be worth quite a lot to you.’
‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ Yegor feigned surprise. In truth, anything else would have surprised him.
Veith raised his hand apologetically. ‘Hey, I just want to make sure your deal with the Chilean doesn’t go down the pan.’
Yegor smiled. In his daydream Ikarus was now working his way into his nephew’s nether regions. Veith, who mistook the smile for an answer in the affirmative, bent forwards.
‘It’s not meant to be hush money; I want to earn it.’
Yegor, who’d come up with a plan some time ago, spent a while doing nothing but staring into his nephew’s steel-blue eyes. For twenty seconds all that could be heard in the cabin was the roaring of the air conditioning unit, accompanied by the constant noises that a ship of that size produces as it ploughs its way across the sea. They were travelling at about twenty knots, and the swell had noticeably increased.
‘Okay, here’s the deal,’ Yegor said finally, tapping on the photo on the passenger sheet in front of him. ‘Find this Tiago and you’ll get five thousand dollars in cash.’
Veith whistled like a builder who’s just seen a girl in a miniskirt walk past. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He raped a young girl.’
Veith’s expression darkened.
Yegor would never understand why someone who shoved broken glass into the throat of a helpless young woman regarded himself as better than a paedophile, but luckily he’d never been in the situation where he’d had to engage with the pecking order amongst prisoners.
‘The girl in Hell’s Kitchen?’
‘Yes, that one.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Eleven.’
‘What was that fucker doing in the cabin?’
‘The same as you,’ Yegor fabricated. He didn’t believe in the slightest that the South American wannabe Casanova had anything to do with Anouk’s disappearance.
‘Like you, he found out where Shahla was working and lay in wait to grill her. He wanted to know how close we were on his heels.’
The story that Yegor was spinning had holes the Sultan could sink into, but Veith didn’t seem to spot them.
‘What about the girl’s parents? Where are they?’ he asked.
Yegor flicked his hand. ‘Friends of mine. They want to be kept out of it. Just go looking for that fucking bastard.’
‘And if I find him?’
Good question. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to say it out loud.
Yegor lifted Ikarus from his lap, stood up from the sofa and shuffled over to a sideboard beneath the heavy crystal mirror in the entrance area. He opened the top drawer.
‘Be creative!’ he said. Then he checked the cylinder, turned a little lever on the underside of the barrel and handed Veith the revolver.