‘I can’t take her off the ship,’ she heard herself say.

‘But you have to. If Lisa’s planning to take her own life, there’s no better place to do it than on a cruise ship sailing the high seas! All you’ve got to do is jump. It’s the perfect place to die!’

For heaven’s sake. No.

Tears streamed into Julia’s eyes and, in her case, it was certainly not down to the wind.

It’s too late.

She felt the vibrations that were now far stronger than when they’d boarded the ship. She gazed at the people waving on the jetty. Looked down, searching in vain for the gangway they’d used to embark.

On deck music rang out from the loudspeakers, an orchestral theme that could have been from a Hollywood film.

And as the cruise liner slowly pulled away from the jetty, Tom’s ominous voice mingled with the whooshing of the water, the departure music and the bass drone of the foghorn that sounded a further six times before falling silent for the duration of the transatlantic crossing.

Just like Julia’s hope of a carefree holiday with her daughter, of whose whereabouts on this gigantic ship she didn’t have the faintest idea.

7

Martin stood on the veranda of Gerlinde Dobkowitz’s suite, barely registering that the distance between the ship and the quay wall was steadily increasing.

The Sultan had moved about one hundred metres from the harbour basin and was now turning sideways. A huge crane slowly disappeared from view.

The liner was flanked by an unusual number of motor boats. The music from the upper deck, the fireworks, drowned out by the foghorn, all this bypassed his consciousness.

His thoughts were focused exclusively on the barely comprehensible fact that in his hands he held his son’s favourite cuddly toy.

Timmy had called him Luke, maybe because he’d just seen his first Star Wars film and was a big fan of Luke Skywalker. But maybe there’d been no particular reason for it either.

Not everything in life had a point to it.