Since the Shahla incident he knew that his nephew was as shrewd as he was unpredictable. Fortunately the girl hadn’t suffered any serious injury, even if she’d be coughing up blood for the next few days. And fortunately the passenger, after she’d established that nothing had been taken from her cabins, had believed the story about the jealous lover/colleague they’d taken into custody.

‘Let’s cut the crap,’ his nephew said in a tone that would have earned non-family members a visit to the jaw surgeon. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, Yegor. But you’re hiding something massive – I’m not interested in what it is.’

‘What do you want then?’

‘My share.’

He grinned as if he’d just told a dirty joke. ‘The girl in quarantine, exclusive treatment from our dear doctor, a bonus for the cleaner – keeping all this under wraps seems to be worth quite a lot to you.’

‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ Yegor feigned surprise. In truth, anything else would have surprised him.

Veith raised his hand apologetically. ‘Hey, I just want to make sure your deal with the Chilean doesn’t go down the pan.’

Yegor smiled. In his daydream Ikarus was now working his way into his nephew’s nether regions. Veith, who mistook the smile for an answer in the affirmative, bent forwards.

‘It’s not meant to be hush money; I want to earn it.’

Yegor, who’d come up with a plan some time ago, spent a while doing nothing but staring into his nephew’s steel-blue eyes. For twenty seconds all that could be heard in the cabin was the roaring of the air conditioning unit, accompanied by the constant noises that a ship of that size produces as it ploughs its way across the sea. They were travelling at about twenty knots, and the swell had noticeably increased.

‘Okay, here’s the deal,’ Yegor said finally, tapping on the photo on the passenger sheet in front of him. ‘Find this Tiago and you’ll get five thousand dollars in cash.’

Veith whistled like a builder who’s just seen a girl in a miniskirt walk past. ‘What’s he done?’

‘He raped a young girl.’

Veith’s expression darkened.

Yegor would never understand why someone who shoved broken glass into the throat of a helpless young woman regarded himself as better than a paedophile, but luckily he’d never been in the situation where he’d had to engage with the pecking order amongst prisoners.

‘The girl in Hell’s Kitchen?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Eleven.’

‘What was that fucker doing in the cabin?’

‘The same as you,’ Yegor fabricated. He didn’t believe in the slightest that the South American wannabe Casanova had anything to do with Anouk’s disappearance.