Martin lay on the ground, totally shattered. He tried breathing in and out at the same time, which unavoidably produced a coughing fit. But he felt good.

He looked at Naomi, whose joy at being reunited with her daughter gave her more strength than him, for she managed to get to her feet and stretch out her arms.

To her daughter, who staggered towards Naomi, no less wobbly on her feet.

Martin closed his eyes in satisfaction.

Although it wasn’t his son who he’d saved, not even a child, he’d managed to avert the death of a mother, reunite a family – and provide Anouk with a smile.

And thus, on this shaking floor beside the blue shelf, which reeked of cold rubbish and sea salt, he felt happy for the first time in a long while, very happy.

Albeit only briefly.

Just until the smile she’d greeted her mother with vanished from Anouk’s face, and she struck Naomi in the chest. Rapidly executed, not a particularly hard blow, not even for an eleven-year-old, but strong enough for Naomi Lamar to lose her balance and fall backwards into the blue shelf, towards the water.

61

Time was ticking away and Bonhoeffer was getting fed up. On this trip he’d been beaten to a pulp by a paranoid detective, his dear goddaughter had killed herself, for which the ex-wife of his best friend held him responsible, and in the ship’s morgue his security officer, a gunshot to his head, lay in one of the refrigerated cabinets that were now compulsory on board due to the large volume of pensioners the cruise line carried. Evidently the chain of crazy incidents hadn’t yet been broken.

‘Can’t you point your weapon somewhere else?’ he barked at the man calling himself Tiago Álvarez, who’d forced Daniel back into his cabin with a revolver and made him sit at his desk, while the dark-haired Latino prowled around the suite like a caged tiger, his gun permanently aimed at the captain’s chest.

‘Okay, I’ve been sitting here now for’ – Bonhoeffer said, checking his watch – ‘at least twenty minutes and you haven’t yet told me what you’re hoping to gain from this hold-up.’

Not that Tiago hadn’t had a huge amount to say. He’d spouted forth like a waterfall, revealing himself to be as perplexed as he was frightened. Now Bonhoeffer knew that ‘purely by accident’ – whatever that meant – he’d been party to a quarrel between an officer and a chambermaid, since when he’d been on the run from that officer, who at the end of his account turned out to be Veith Jesper.

‘Are you now going to kill me like you did him?’ he asked Tiago.

‘I didn’t kill that man,’ the dark-haired Argentinian protested, making every effort to remain composed. ‘It was he who shoved the gun in my mouth.’