Unwilling to risk the operation, the bastards in charge didn’t tell him about what had happened on the Sultan – while he was struggling to survive in the Polish jail – until his undercover mission was over. When he left the prison, Timmy and Nadja had already been missing for forty-three days.

‘Like it was a complete coincidence that you didn’t turn around after my family vanished?’ he screamed into Bonhoeffer’s face.

The captain briefly closed his eyes like a husband who doesn’t know how to continue in a row with his wife.

‘Turn around?’ His voice was squeaking. ‘Didn’t you read the record of proceedings? The Sultan has a stopping distance of two kilometres. It takes an hour and a half to turn this thing around. There was a storm, the waves were several metres high and it was freezing outside. Without a life vest you couldn’t survive in that part of the Atlantic for more than a few minutes. And your family had already been missing for hours.’

‘So how do you know when they jumped? I thought the security videos of the hull were accidently recorded over. Did the same happen with Anouk? Did you tamper with all the evidence relating to her case too, to make it look like suicide?’

‘No,’ Bonhoeffer panted.

‘Oh, yes, you did. Now, maybe you didn’t personally abduct the girl and rape her – we’ll see. But you can’t deny you’re a henchman. You’d do anything to keep your job. That includes hushing up a crime if necessary.’ Martin spat on the ground in anger. ‘Well, this time you’ve been unlucky. Now a Passenger 23 has suddenly turned up again, and this time you’re not going to get out of it so easily.’

He pulled a heap of paper towels from a shell-shaped dispenser beside the basin and tossed them at the captain’s face. ‘Clean yourself up. You’re going to be getting a visit soon.’

He turned to go.

‘Visit? From whom?’

‘The coastguards. They’d love to hear all about coincidences.’

‘If you do that…’

‘What?’ Martin turned around. He looked significantly more enraged than the captain. ‘Are you threatening me, like your boss tried to do yesterday? Are you also going to tell me that you’ll have the girl disappear the moment I lift the lid on all of this?’

‘Is that what Yegor said?’ Bonhoeffer went to the washbasin and turned on the tap.

‘A bluff,’ Martin said.

In the mirror the captain looked Martin in the eye. ‘No, it wasn’t. There’s far too much money at stake. The moment the mere flag of a police boat appears on our radar, Anouk will vanish into thin air a second time. Or do you imagine the owner of the fleet is just going to stand back and watch while you wreck a multi-million-dollar deal?’

‘What kind of a deal?’