Martin woke with a persistent ringing in his ears, which sounded as if a telephone had come off the hook nearby. To begin with he didn’t know where he was. The bed he was lying on, the smell of his pillow, the entire room was unfamiliar, even though he could barely make out anything of his surroundings. It was dark. The little light there was in the room was seeping through the narrow slit where the two curtains met.
As he sat up the first memories washed back into his consciousness, bringing with them a touch of queasiness.
Timmy. Anouk. The Sultan.
Rolling onto his side he felt blindly for the bedside light, but then waited for a while before switching it on for fear that the light might burn his retina.
With each movement he made, not only did his head feel as if his brain had the consistency of a fried egg, but his entire body was jammed in a corset of pain. And yet he seemed to recall that it had been even worse yesterday, when he
… was talking to that woman. The mother, yes.
Slowly everything came back to him.
The attack on the naturist deck, his fall into the pool, Gerlinde’s Bermuda Deck theory, Julia, her daughter Lisa, the victim of cyberbullying who’d apparently thrown herself overboard because of a sex video… him fainting.
His boss had warned him. Christ, they’d all advised him against injecting antibodies.
Or coming aboard this ship.
Martin plucked up courage to turn on the light. The flash that shook through him wasn’t as unpleasant as he’d feared.
As he felt for his mobile he asked himself two questions. First, how had he got into his suite? And second, how could the cordless telephone be sitting properly in the charger, inactive and with a dark display, when he could hear the dialling tone loud and clear?
He stuck fingers into both his ears and the sound didn’t get any quieter.
Great. This is what it must feel like when you begin the day as an alcoholic.
Pounding skull, phantom noises, gaps in the memory and a bladder as full as a train after a local derby.
He grabbed the telephone, stood up and shuffled to the bathroom. It felt like it took him ten minutes to get there, and indeed he had to sit down on the bed once for a rest, otherwise he’d have collapsed halfway.
He left the bathroom light off as he wanted to spare himself the sight of his face in the mirror. He also found the loo in the dark.
He lifted the lid, pulled down his boxer shorts (who undressed me?), and dialled Diesel’s mobile number as he sat down. It took an age for him to answer.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s me.’
‘Do I know you? I mean, you could easily be Martin Schwartz if you didn’t sound so fucking awful.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘You’re calling me because you want to know the time? Jesus, you must be bored.’ Diesel laughed and said, ‘At the next stroke it will be two-oh-eight p.m. precisely.’ Then he burped.
Two p.m.! Taking into account the time difference it was now noon on the Atlantic. He’d slept for at least ten hours.
‘But I’m glad you’ve rung. Have you checked your emails?’
‘No.’
‘You ought to. I’ve been through the staff and passenger lists your buddy Bonhoeffer gave you.’
Martin started to relieve himself while Diesel went on talking.
‘We’ve got almost six hundred matches for guests and employees who were on board both the day that Nadja and Timmy vanished, as well as five years later when Anouk and her mother were officially declared missing.’
‘How many of those are potential rapists?’
‘For a start, 338 employees. From the carpenter and the cook to the captain, all of them are on there. That’s assuming the list is complete. And here we have the biggest problem.’
‘Are you saying that Bonhoeffer didn’t give me the complete documents?’ he asked.
‘I’m saying he can’t have given you any complete documents. To save money most cruise lines engage foreign low-wage firms as subcontractors. And for tax reasons these subcontractors sometimes invent names or omit them, or even put down too many to get extra money. It’s a hopeless mess.’
Martin thought hard. This meant the staff and passenger lists were a dead end. ‘What about passengers?’ he asked all the same. ‘Do we have any repeat guests?’
‘Yes, of course. People who go on cruises are repeat offenders. Although the selection here is smaller. If you filter the eighty-seven passengers who were on board both five years ago and two months ago, removing all lone women travellers and pensioners on their last legs, you’re left with thirteen men as possible rapists. And now, hold on tight.’
Diesel paused.
‘What?’
‘One of them is called Peter Pax.’
My cover name?
‘That’s impossible,’ Martin rasped.
‘Well, what do you want me to say, buddy?’ Martin could practically hear Diesel shrug.
‘If you’d got your seahorse badge while at primary school, I’d advise you now to swim back home. I think someone’s trying to pin something on you.’
Yes, and I know who it is.
Martin took hold of the loo paper. ‘His name begins with Yegor and ends with Kalinin.’
‘The ship owner?’
‘The captain might be in on it too, but I’m not so sure, he’s such a weed. Can you find out what cabin this Pax is supposed to have been in?’
Unlike with normal hotels, where it was all down to the benevolence of the receptionist whether you got a sticky cell next to the underground car park or a light-filled sanctuary, when booking cruises you could usually choose your own cabin number.
‘Yes, I’ve got it somewhere. Hang on a mo, I’ll check.’
Martin stood up and flushed.
‘Oh, no, please. Please don’t tell me that while talking to me you’ve been doing what it sounds like,’ Diesel begged in disgust.
Martin didn’t respond to this, but asked him to check another person.
‘Who?’
‘Lisa Stiller, fifteen years old, from Berlin. Her mother’s called Julia and both are on the current passenger list. Please find out who paid for the cruise and where it was booked. And have a look for a video on’ – he had to rack his brains until he remembered the name of the portal that Bonhoeffer had told him about yesterday – ‘on isharerumours or something similar. It’s tagged with the name Lisa Stiller.’
‘What’s the point of that?’
‘Lisa’s fifteen years old and has been missing since yesterday. This video is supposedly the reason for her suicide.’
Diesel sighed. ‘Another child? Bloody hell, what’s going on?’
‘It’s all connected. For example, I saw Lisa yesterday when I was on the way to Anouk on’ – Martin paused – ‘on the lower deck where actually she shouldn’t…’ he muttered, stopping mid-sentence.
What is that?
‘Hello? Hey there? Have you jumped too now?’ he heard Diesel call out.
‘Shut up for a moment.’
The dialling tone inside his head had quietened down, but now there was another noise vexing him. A whole bundle of noises! They must have been there the whole time; it’s just that he’d only become aware of them now.
Placing his hand on the basin, Martin could feel the vibrations. He teetered out of the bathroom, oriented himself by the slit of light in the curtains, went over to it and then opened the curtains as well as the door to his terrace. Cold, clear air poured into the cabin.
What he saw corresponded with the creaking, scraping, droning, vibrating and humming he heard around him.
And with the rocking of the ship.
‘We’re moving,’ he said, looking in disbelief at the foam-crested mountains of waves before him. The misty grey horizon had shunted so close to the ship that you could stretch your arm out to it.
‘Obviously you’re moving. I mean, it is a cruise, isn’t it?’ Diesel said, who couldn’t know that the captain had stopped the Sultan yesterday night for a man-overboard manoeuvre. But now the engines were running again, which could mean one of two things. Either they’d found Lisa. Or given up altogether.
‘Found you!’ Diesel exclaimed, and for a fraction of a second Martin thought he was actually talking about the girl, but of course he meant Peter Pax’s cabin number. ‘He had the same one on both trips,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you ought to pay 2186 a visit.’