Once upon a time Timmy and Luke had been inseparable. Timmy had taken him to bed, to school and even to swimming lessons, where he put Luke in the locker only under great protest after having been caught with him in the shower. His interest in the furball may have waned a little in the time before his disappearance, but not so much so that Luke was denied a place in the luggage for their cruise. The commission that investigated the tragedy on the Sultan hadn’t attached much significance to the fact that they hadn’t found Luke in the cabin. Nor to the fact that one of Nadja’s cases had been missing. They’d suspected that the mother had given the unwitting boy his teddy bear before throwing him overboard. But that was as strange as the lack of a suicide note.

Nadja had always made a point of letting him know where she was. Whenever he came home he’d find a note, either on the kitchen table or his pillow, depending on whether she’d just popped out (usually to go shopping) or had gone for longer (usually after a row). Would she really have embarked on what was, after all, her final trip without a single word of farewell?

Nadja wasn’t the type to commit suicide. Of course this was the line peddled by all those left behind who didn’t want to face the truth. But all her life Nadja truly had been the opposite of suicidal. A fighter. Martin had sensed this the very moment he met her at the casualty department where he was waiting for a colleague who’d been stabbed. Nadja hat sat next to him in the waiting room with a swollen eye, and talked quite openly about how her boyfriend had beaten her. Out of jealousy. Not on account of another man, but because his son from his first marriage preferred cuddling the new girlfriend in bed in the mornings more than his papa. ‘He loves his boy; he’d never lay a finger on him. Luckily he let his anger out on me,’ Nadja had confided in Martin, but when he tried to express his sympathy she dismissed it with a grin. ‘You ought to see the state that bastard’s in!’

That very same night she moved out of her ex-boyfriend’s place and a year later they married. She hadn’t been depressed a single day. He’d never got any sense that she might run away from problems or do anything to herself. And she’d certainly never harm Timmy, her little prince who she’d idolised and hugged whenever he’d let her.

Martin pressed the teddy bear to his face in an attempt to find a smell amongst the musty stench that would remind him of his son. In vain.

He turned to face the sound of the sliding door opening behind him.