‘I don’t imagine so, given how agitated the captain was when I paid him a visit the following morning.’ She smiled mischievously.

‘He denied everything to begin with and tried to tell me that my beta blockers had been making me hallucinate. But when he saw the photo, the captain started sweating his arse off and ran straight to Yegor.’

‘Yegor Kalinin? The ship owner? Is he on board?’

‘He moved into the Maisonette Suite a fortnight ago in Funchal. Do you know him?’

Martin nodded. He’d come across him in court. Most people expect former members of the Foreign Legion of German–Russian descent to be total hulks, whereas in fact the fifty-seven-year-old, self-made millionaire who owned the second-largest fleet of cruise ships in the world looked more like an academic schoolmaster. Stooped, rimless glasses on a pointed nose, and hair receding behind the ears.

What’s he doing here on board?

‘In fact that’s how I got your mobile number,’ Gerlinde explained.

‘What?’

‘Yegor came to see me personally and told me some cock-and-bull story about how damaging a false rumour could be about passengers who vanish and then turn up again. He was trying to intimidate me. He handed me the file from the case you took out against him, with the comment that surely I didn’t want to let false accusations ruin me like they had like you, Herr Schwartz.’ Gerlinde gave a crooked smile. ‘He must have overlooked the fact that your private number was in the case notes. Because of this, it was he and that imbecile Bonhoeffer who first gave me the idea of contact—’

‘Bonhoeffer?’ Martin interrupted her in horror. ‘Daniel Bonhoeffer?’

The crook who hadn’t even thought it necessary to turn around?

‘Yes. Why have you turned as white as a sheet?’ It was impossible. Martin may have lost the case, but Bonhoeffer had been suspended after the incidents.

‘Yes, Daniel Bonhoeffer. The captain.’

A bolt shot through Martin’s skull, as if someone were stabbing his brain with a hot needle.

‘Oh, goodness me. Didn’t you know that he’d been reinstated?’ Gerlinde asked in dismay.

Martin didn’t say goodbye. Not to her, nor to the butler in the neighbouring room. He packed his duffle bag, stuffing the teddy into one of the outside pockets, and stormed out of the cabin with the same speed that the pain was spreading through his head.

12

‘We haven’t the faintest idea where Anouk was,’ Daniel said, answering the question Julia had just put to him. ‘The little one’s not saying a word. She’s completely silent.’

‘That’s unbelievable!’ she said.

So unbelievable that she wondered why she hadn’t heard anything of this sensational case in the news. She’d leafed through all the papers on the flight from Berlin to London. Not a single one had reported about this Jesus girl who’d come back from the dead on a cruise ship.