He heard the echo of his own voice and was just about to hang up when there was a clatter on the line, as if someone were playing with dice on a glass table. Then the rustling grew quieter, there were two loud crackles, and all of a sudden he could understand every word. ‘Hello? My name is Gerlinde Dobkowitz. Am I speaking to a Herr Martin Schwartz?’

He blinked in alarm. People who rang this number had no reason to ask his name. He’d given his private number to a select few, all of whom knew who he was.

The unfamiliar voice on the phone had a Viennese accent and belonged either to an old woman or a young lady with a serious alcohol problem. Schwartz thought the first more likely, because of her antiquated first name and old-fashioned way of speaking.

‘Where did you get my number?’ he asked.

Even if the woman was from the telephone company, which he didn’t believe, she wouldn’t have addressed him with his real name but with ‘Peter Pax’, the pseudonym he’d registered the number under years ago. It was his favourite alias as it reminded him of Peter Pan.

‘Let’s just say I’m a dab hand at research,’ the caller said.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I’ll tell you that as soon as we meet.’ Gerlinde Dobkowitz gave a hoarse cough. ‘You must come aboard as quickly as you can.’

‘Aboard? What are you talking about?’

Schwartz noticed the dentist give him a searching look as she arranged her instruments on a side table.

‘The Sultan of the Seas,’ he heard the old woman say. ‘At the moment we’re sailing somewhere in the English Channel, on our way from Hamburg to Southampton. You have to join us as soon as you can.’

Schwartz went cold. Earlier, when he’d been standing opposite Pryga, he wasn’t nervous. Not even when he’d given blood for the HIV test in Pryga’s hallway and it had taken more than the three projected minutes for the second line in the window of test strip to appear. Not even when he saw the naked boy in the swing and the fire doors had closed behind him. But now his pulse was racing. And the wound in his mouth throbbed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

‘Hello? Herr Schwartz? You know the ship, don’t you?’ Gerlinde asked.

‘Yes.’

Certainly.

Of course he did.

It was the cruise liner on which, five years ago, during the third night of the transatlantic crossing, his wife had climbed over the railings of her balcony cabin, and leaped fifty metres into the depths. Just after she’d held a chloroform-soaked cloth over Timmy’s sleepy face and then tossed him overboard.

3

Southampton

Seventeen hours later