Yegor’s question was a serious one, but the surgeon merely offered a weary smile. They’d been observing Gerlinde for about twenty minutes via a security camera covering the portside corridor on deck 3, not far from the spot where Anouk had been picked up. This must have been the tenth time that the old lady – why had she chosen today of all days to be up and about at the crack of dawn? – had felt the joint in the cabin wall with her bony fingers, right where the wallpaper wasn’t completely flush.

‘It’s five o’clock in the morning – hasn’t the old bat got better things to do?’ Yegor said, while beside him Konradin Franz bent over the monitor and breathed into the ship owner’s neck a mixture of gin and peppermint. The fifty-six-year-old surgeon, who liked to be called doctor, even though he’d never completed a PhD, wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. ‘If she doesn’t bugger off soon I’ll have her on my operating table too,’ he said, even though it was clear that he’d never be in a fit state for any surgery today, not even if he started drinking.

‘When is Tayo’s scheduled checkout?’ Yegor asked, even though he knew the answer. The ‘client,’ as the surgeon called all the patients he operated on aboard the Sultan, was to be disembarked in Barbados using the usual procedure. At six a.m. – an hour’s time – as soon as the ship had come into port. Wrapped in sheets, in a dirty laundry container from the infirmary, marked with the following warning in four languages: Contaminated, risk of infection.

This, together with the bribes paid to staff at the port authority, would ensure that it wouldn’t occur to anybody to peek inside the container on wheels, in which the world-class athlete would struggle to find enough room. The other clients before him had been substantially smaller and less muscly, and hadn’t caused any transport problems.

Tayo, on the other hand, hadn’t beaten the 400m record on three occasions for nothing. He ran the distance in under 43.20 seconds, not fast enough, unfortunately, to escape from the Nigerian gambling mafia, to whom he’d promised to fix races in the summer Olympics. Tayo had agreed to falter just before the finishing line; a tiny stumble, but a decisive one. In the heat of the race, however, he’d forgotten all about it, with the result that the clan had lost a lot of money on the wrong horse. Money they now wanted back from Tayo. There was photographic proof that they weren’t squeamish about collecting debts. They’d removed the eye of a drug dealer with a corkscrew for misappropriating twelve dollars. Tayo wouldn’t get off so lightly; he owed them twelve million.