Naomi’s last confession consisted of just four sentences:
The worst thing I’ve ever done in my life is to force my daughter to have sex with men.
Martin heard Elena gasp. He continued reading:
There’s no excuse for what I did. Not even the fact that, when it began I was taking hard drugs which were ruining my already unstable psyche. Nor that I stopped it when one of the groups of men I gave her to were so violent that she’s likely to have permanent physical damage. I deserve to die.
‘Jesus Christ, that’s how Anouk got her injuries!’ Elena croaked after he’d uttered the final sentence.
Martin nodded. They’d thought the rapist was still on board. But Anouk had been abused before their departure – and at her mother’s instigation! The wounds hadn’t been inflicted on the ship, but back at home.
‘Now it’s all beginning to make sense,’ Martin whispered.
He looked Elena in the eye. Anger flared in her face. She too had understood why Anouk had hit her mother.
No, not her mother. Her rapist!
Although she hadn’t written it explicitly, everything suggested that Shahla had wanted to free Anouk from her mother rather than abduct her. They would probably find a den in the lower deck, not far from the blue shelf, a place where Anouk had been more or less able to move around freely during the last couple of months. He still didn’t understand what Anouk and Shahla were doing that night when the captain saw them in the corridor near the ‘nest’, where Gerlinde had taken the photograph. But now it was perfectly clear why Anouk had refused to speak a word the whole time, even though she knew exactly who’d taken her away and where her mother was. Why she needed the UV light, so that she could find her way to Naomi without the chambermaid by means of invisible marks. To torture her, observe her, or just to take pleasure in her suffering. Or to kill her, as she had done in the end.
‘We have to let Daniel know,’ Elena said, grabbing Martin’s mobile on the table.
It started to vibrate.