This time the answer came back with surprising rapidity. Just a few minutes later Naomi was able to open the notebook again. In the bluish, fluorescent light of the screen she read:

The truth is, you’ve no right to ask me questions. But as my answer will put you on the right track and bring all of this to a swifter conclusion, I won’t be so petty. You won’t find out my name. But if I were a character from a fairy tale, my story would begin like this: ‘Once upon a time there was a beautiful little bundle of joy. Although he had no brothers or sisters, he did have a mother who loved him more than anything else in the world. And a strict father who always gave him funny looks when they were alone together.’ Well, are you bored yet? Don’t worry, there is a point to my story, which I bet you haven’t been expecting…

47

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?