‘Then you ought to give him a good talking to, same with Gérard Depardieu.’

‘Jacques Gérard?’

‘That’s the fellow. I can’t imagine the assistant won’t get suspicious about where his boss has been all day. Check all men who could potentially be Anouk’s rapist; work out whether they’re intelligent and arrogant. After all – thirdly – the man in question was able to predict your movements and – fourthly – he obviously likes playing games with his victims.’

Which means your analysis can go straight in the bin, Martin thought.

Manipulative criminals were usually of above-average intelligence and, through the art of transformation, able to give their victims and the police the runaround. You could stand face to face with them and they’d be able to disguise their real personality with virtuosity. Depressives would wear permanent grins on their faces, while sadists acted tame. Besides, anyone who kept his victims hidden for weeks and tortured them was quite clearly a psychopath who couldn’t be identified by normal methods. And certainly not by amateur attempts at profiling.

‘And if I were you, I’d feel free to ask whoever it is you put your finger on about their mother.’

‘Why?’ Martin asked, slightly confused.

‘I’m not sure what it means; it’s just a feeling I get in my stomach. Do you know that? Sometimes it starts bubbling and you think you’re going crap your pants, but it turns out just to be wind.’

Rather than giving Martin any time to digest his revolting comparison, Diesel went straight on. ‘Right then, like you asked I’ve been researching other double cases of people missing at sea – where it’s not depressives travelling on their own with money, health or marriage problems, who in all likelihood jumped overboard of their own accord.’

‘And?’ Martin asked. ‘What did you find out?’

‘First of all, besides Timmy and Anouk, there aren’t other instances anywhere in the world where children have disappeared on a cruise ship. Not even a teenager who’s taken the golden plunge in the past ten years. When I think of all those balcony rails I mucked about on plastered when I was sixteen, I find that astonishing.’

It sounded as if Diesel was seeing how many ravioli he could stuff into his mouth at once, as the words that followed became ever more incomprehensible. ‘What’s more, no more than two people have vanished at any one time.’

Which makes the repetition of these cases on the Sultan even more suspicious.

‘But three times, on different liners, one parent of a family has disappeared. And what’s striking here is that each time it’s the woman who’s never been seen again. I’ll send you an email with the name and routes.’