Just like this internal investigation by Dr Klein, the FBI also came to the conclusion that although Schwartz was an important witness, he wasn’t a suspect and so should be allowed to return to Germany along with Julia and Lisa Stiller, on condition that he make himself available for further questioning. Letting him see the diary entry was probably a favour from the FBI investigator, seeing as Martin wasn’t only a colleague, he’d also proved highly cooperative throughout questioning.

For five whole minutes Martin had read over and over again the few lines Shahla had written, so often that they clung to his memory like leeches, and he could still recite them verbatim in his mind:

I often wonder whether it was chance or destiny that helped me with this German family. During dinner I was about to do the turn-down when I caught the mother in her cabin, indecently assaulting her son. She was lying naked on top of him, and wasn’t able to wriggle off quickly enough.

That was five years ago. Her name was Nadja Schwartz.

When Martin read this for the first time he had to laugh. A paradoxical reaction of his mind, which really ought to have made him scream. He recalled sensing that he was getting a bad nosebleed, but his nose remained dry. Instead he heard a loud, high-pitched buzzing, which didn’t signal a headache this time, but split into two voices. One of them, a deep, calm and pleasant voice, whispered confidentially in his ear that he shouldn’t believe what he was reading. That Shahla was a liar. The other one emitted a shrill, hoarse yell and uttered a single word: condom!

It took Martin back to the day five years ago, before the cruise, before his last mission, when he’d come home early from the meeting. He’d never found out who his wife’s lover was, the man who’d left the condom in his bed.

Unrolled, but unused.

But now, when he thought of how he’d met Nadja, everything took on a different meaning. In casualty with the black eye that her boyfriend had given her. Not out of jealousy, as she’d claimed. But because she actually had got too close to the man’s son.

Martin couldn’t help thinking back to his last conversation with Timmy too: ‘Don’t you want to talk about it?’

The last conversation between father and son, which essentially wasn’t about the five in Maths, nor the unusual increase in his need for sleep and why he’d suddenly stopped wanting to play tennis.

The signs of abuse.

What had been Timmy’s answer back then?

‘It’s because of you. Because you’re away so often, and with Mama…’

… with Mama, who saw in her young son a substitute partner? Just as Shahla’s mother had done?

The deep voice whispered that he was wrong, but it became ever softer.