‘Julia, I understand…’

‘No. You don’t understand. You don’t have any children. You’ve never had any. You’ll never understand me,’ she hurled at him before throwing open the door and disappearing into the corridor.

Daniel, upset by her bitter, hostile accusations, didn’t react and let her go.

As if in a daze he returned to his desk where the phone was ringing. He slowly picked up the receiver.

‘It’s Rangun here from the MCR. Did you just try to call us, Captain?’

He nodded. Tried to concentrate. ‘Yes. I just wanted to find out whether the blue shelf is still connected.’

Officially the dumping machine had been out of service for five years. But unofficially it had never been disconnected from the electricity supply in case the waste incinerator conked out again and there was a refuse problem on a lengthy passage. At any rate nine tonnes of solid rubbish were produced on the Sultan every day, in addition to 28,000 litres of sludge. Every single day!

‘Theoretically, captain, yes,’ the technical officer replied.

Daniel knew the man. With his falsetto voice, on the phone he sounded like a woman. In the ship’s choir he sang a bright soprano at the Christmas festivities, although no one made fun of him because what Rangun’s voice lacked in masculinity was more than made up for by his trained body.

‘Theoretically? What does that mean?’

‘As was recommended, we didn’t disconnect the rubbish press from the electricity supply, but it hasn’t been service in a long time. I’m not sure it’s still fit for purpose.’

Daniel suspected that the engineer might be surprised at the topic of their conversation, but his lower rank prevented him from asking direct questions, and Daniel had no intention of sharing his hunch with the man: that there couldn’t be a better place for hiding someone for months on end.

Or for getting rid of them!

The blue shelf had a floor which, at the push of a button, opened up in the middle and retracted into the walls until the shaft was no more than a bottomless tube through which the press could push the squashed refuse straight into the water. ‘Can you switch it off?’ he asked Rangun.

‘Not from here. It’s not wired up to the new control system. But it’s possible to cut the circuit over there. Do you want me to take a look?’

‘No, wait. I’ll come to you.’

Another witness; that was all they needed!

Daniel hung up, grabbed his captain’s hat from the desk, hurried to the exit, opened the door…

… and found himself staring into the barrel of a revolver.

57

Naomi

Naomi’s farewell note had taken some time to write, even though in the end it consisted of only one sentence. Astonishingly, she’d felt strangely relaxed since closing the computer and putting it back in the bucket.