The floor was laminated, but the way it was embossed made it look just like real parquet. The walls were the hue of a well-stirred latte macchiato, and visitors were able to sit on a sand-coloured leather sofa instead of the ubiquitous hospital wooden chairs. Dimmed ceiling spots bathed the cabin in a soft, pastel light.

Within this setting, the height-adjustable hospital bed gave the impression it had been wheeled into a five-star hotel room by accident and looked completely out of place here, in spite of the power strip in the wall behind the bed with numerous sockets for medical devices, connections for oxygen, compressed air and telephone, as well as a red emergency button within the eleven-year-old patient’s reach.

Anouk Lamar was sitting on the middle of the bed with her knees up to her chest, seemingly unaware that she was no longer alone. She was wearing a simple nightshirt, fastened at the back, and white cotton stockings. She hadn’t changed position since Martin and Elena had entered the room. Her head was turned away from them, looking right to the external wall in which a porthole was framed by yellow curtains. The occasional wave sloshed up, creating that washing-machine effect typical of cabins just above the waterline.

Martin doubted that Anouk was staring at the drops on the glass, or anything else for that matter. He didn’t have to look at her face to know that she was lost in her own thoughts and gazing right through everything in her line of vision, while scratching her right forearm with stoical regularity.

Her mere presence filled the room with an oppressive hopelessness, so weighty you could almost touch it. Sometimes Martin wished he had less experience, hadn’t looked into so many empty faces to know first hand that there was no scalpel or chemotherapy in the entire world able to completely remove the cancer-like tumour that had established itself in this girl’s soul after the hell she’d been through. In such cases psychologists and doctors were like engineers in Chernobyl or Fukushima. They could never get rid of the problem altogether, merely mitigate the consequences of the catastrophe.

‘Hi, Anouk. I hope we’re not disturbing you,’ he greeted the eleven-year-old girl in her native English. ‘My name is Dr Schwartz,’ he introduced himself and noticed the doctor looking at him in astonishment. Bonhoeffer couldn’t have shown her the case files or she’d have known that he had the title of doctor, although he set very little store by it. It was a rare exception for him to be using it today. He hoped that Anouk would find it easier to accept the presence of a second doctor rather than an investigator trained in psychology who wanted to root around in her past.

‘We haven’t come to examine you again,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

Anouk didn’t react. No change in position, expression or gestures.