‘You know I’m telling the truth, Martin. You must have detected the signs of abuse in your son, didn’t you?’

There was nothing Martin could do. Tears came to his eyes.

‘There you go,’ Elena said, proving that she was able to see him. ‘Back then Shahla was employed to clean the ship’s clinic. Over time we became friends. I learned of her terrible past. Nadja’s death was an overreaction, an accident if you like. And when it happened, when she’d struck Nadja dead, she stormed into my office and asked for help. She didn’t know what to do.’

‘So the two of you threw my wife overboard together and placed the cloth with chloroform in their cabin?’

‘Precisely,’ Elena said. ‘From that point on Shahla owed me a favour, which I called in for Naomi’s punishment. I knew the pleasure it would give her to exact revenge.’

‘Anouk was with you the whole time?’

‘With Shahla,’ Elena replied. ‘She set up a den for her near the blue shelf, where she was supposed to stay till we got to Oslo.’

Martin had never seen it, and yet the fluorescent markings shone in his mind, which Anouk had followed with her UV lamp in the darkness of the lower deck whenever she wanted contact with Shahla, Elena or perhaps even her mother.

‘Her grandfather has friends in Norway. Anouk was going to stay with them.’

There was whistling on the line, but Elena’s voice was still easy to understand. ‘We were planning to get her off the ship and Shahla took her to the nest where she was meant to spend the last night.’ Elena sounded contrite. ‘Unfortunately Anouk played stubborn that day. She was thoroughly bored, nervous, overwrought. She didn’t want to be locked up any longer and managed to run away from Shahla, armed with her favourite teddy and a torch, which she was going to use to pay her mother one final visit.’

‘But she ran straight into the captain!’ Martin shook his head. Bonhoeffer had actually been telling the truth from the start. After Anouk had run away from the nest, the chambermaid had to quickly grab a pile of towels to give her an excuse for being around at that time, should she meet someone while searching for the girl. That’s why to Gerlinde it had looked like a coincidence that the chambermaid had bumped into Anouk, when in actual fact she had been on the run from Shahla.

Martin was no longer able to suppress his anger. Hurrying back to the coffee table he grabbed the beer and hurled it at the television.

For a while he thought the connection had been lost, but then he heard Elena say calmly, ‘You’re directing your anger at the wrong person.’

Martin was almost lost for words. ‘Are you trying to tell me that Nadja and Timmy’s deaths are not your fault, but Shahla’s?’