Tiago couldn’t cope with the captain’s stare. Clearly he found it too uncomfortable to answer, and when he finally did, Bonhoeffer finally knew why the Argentinian had been umming and erring for so long. He was a thief. A common crook specialising in the plundering of passengers’ safes. A description that fitted the troubled and distraught young man far better than that of a murderer and rapist.

‘So it’s only by accident that you came into possession of this… this…’ Bonhoeffer searched for the right words and then used Tiago’s. ‘This plan.’

Tiago nodded. He looked genuinely contrite. ‘You don’t know how much I’ve been blaming myself. If only I’d plucked up courage to tell someone earlier. But this killer, this officer…’ Tiago shook his head. ‘I was in fear of my life. I still am. Till now I’ve had no idea what I got into. Don’t know how it all hangs together. Who can assure me, for example, that it wasn’t you who set this Veith on me?’

‘Do you know what?’ Bonhoeffer said, standing up from the desk. He couldn’t care less about the revolver any more. ‘You can go fuck yourself! I don’t give a shit about you or Veith. Lisa Stiller was my goddaughter. I loved her. Her suicide is worse than any bullet you could stick in me.’

Tiago, who’d just been about to grab his revolver with two hands, froze.

‘Lisa killed herself?’ he asked, confused.

Bonhoeffer was at a total loss. ‘Is this supposed to be a joke?’ he asked, shaking the piece of paper in his hand. ‘You read the bloody plan yourself!’

‘Yes, I did.’ Tiago passed him the second sheet. ‘But it doesn’t talk about Lisa’s death!’

62

Anouk was back in her own world. She’d put one foot in front of the other as if mechanically, apparently feeling neither Martin’s arm supporting her nor Elena’s hand leading her. Out of the cathedral, through the control rooms, back up the steps to Hell’s Kitchen, where she now lay back in her bed, self-absorbed, but her eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Stoical, with a dispassionate expression, refusing to answer any of the questions that he and Elena had put to her in turn.

‘But why?’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Why did you kill your mother?’

Because since losing consciousness Elena had barely been able to stand, Martin accompanied her back to her sickroom, where they now sat face to face across a small dining table.

Martin did indeed find his mobile again in the bathroom. Now it lay before them on the shining matt Resopal top, beside the open laptop which Elena had used to save his life. Blood still stuck to one side, in the spot where it had struck Shahla’s head.