He’d felt as if he’d jumped into a saucepan, except that the foaming water lapping above his head had burned like thousands of pins. Pins of ice, which sucked all strength from his body almost the very moment that the Atlantic had him in its claws.

‘I haven’t given it a thought,’ Martin said, and if he’d still been wired up to the lie detector this would have registered that he was telling the truth. He’d just jumped, a reflex, without making any conscious decision.

Lisa had come off worse. When she hit the water she broke her hip and dislocated her left shoulder. Thank goodness, because she was screaming blue murder when her head popped back up above the surface of the water. The stillness of the sea and the lucky coincidence that the captain had already stopped the ship beforehand, had made it possible to save her.

‘I expect you’ll be given an award,’ Dr Klein said.

‘A medal, I hope. I can at least use that as a coaster,’ Martin muttered. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

In his mind he could taste the salt water which he’d swallowed by the litre and later vomited.

‘You pushed the detached railings over to Lisa so she could keep herself alive until the rescue crew got to you.’

Dr Klein reached for Martin’s hand and squeezed it. He was unsure whether he found this gesture unpleasant or whether it should make him unhappy.

‘I don’t know that Lisa Stiller’s so thrilled about it,’ he said, pulling his fingers back.

If Martin was correctly informed, both Anouk and Lisa were currently in psychiatric institutions; one in Manhattan, the other on the outskirts of Berlin, where Julia Stiller was also taking professional help to process the horrific experience. Martin hoped they wouldn’t too quickly expose the children to the world of doctors with their questions and pills, but not everyone shared his preference for televisions and Game Boys when the aim was to liberate traumatised and mentally ill patients from their world of shadows and illusion.

‘Can I go now?’ he asked, standing up.

Dr Klein nodded. She took a mobile phone from a trouser pocket.

‘Of course. Shall we call you a car?’

Martin forced an innocuous smile and politely declined.

What address would he give to the taxi driver? His life was now void of destinations.

72

Four weeks later

The needle of the speedometer seemed to be nailed down at one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. You might have thought that Kramer had switched on the cruise control, but Martin knew that the head of the operations regarded such aids as ‘pensioners’ accessories’. He bet that in the 1980s Kramer would have sneered at power steering and automatic transmission too, and if the man had ever been on a demonstration, then it would have been to protest against the compulsory wearing of seatbelts.