I try not to let the shock show on my face – I guess Leo assumed I already knew about this. So that was why he never wanted to talk about his past. That was why he was here, getting away from things. ‘A young man in his care died,’ Leo continues. ‘There are no criminal proceedings around it, but the patient’s family are apparently campaigning to get the General Medical Council to investigate,’ he adds. ‘That’s all I know, but something like that hanging over you … well. You know what I’m saying.’

‘He was always a bit cagey about his past,’ I say. ‘But I don’t think he’d have … he never gave the impression that …’

No. You are not going to do this. You are not going to avoid blame for his death by claiming it was a suicide. It wasn’t. I’m sure of it. Something has happened here, I think to myself.

‘You think it might have been another suicide, Leo?’ Nico asks, completely ignoring what I said. Fuck’s sake. ‘After that young dancer too? Christ, Leo, what kind of ship do you run here?’

Leo turns puce but he ignores the jibe. ‘We’ve launched two lifeboats to see if there is any sign of him,’ he says, ‘and have also informed the coastguard.’

Nico looks at him in horror. ‘You informed the coastguard? Why?’

‘If there is a man overboard, they need to know. I followed procedure, as I would assume you would expect me to do.’

‘But we don’t KNOW if there’s a man overboard,’ Nico counters. ‘He might have … oh I don’t know, but it’s only a rumour that he went swimming by the sound of it? Ships are always full of rumours which turn out to have no foundation. Maybe he had his own reasons for ignoring the muster call, or he’s found his way back to land somehow, just left, I don’t know. And quite aside from that, if he has been in the water for three days, there’s no way he’s still going to be alive now, is there? There was no rush to call the coastguard. I’m in charge, I should have been consulted.’

‘I’m the captain of this ship, it’s my decision,’ Leo says tersely, unable to hide his annoyance.

‘Technically, yes,’ Nico counters, balling his hands into fists. ‘But you must see that two people going missing literally on your watch, within as many months, plus another man being found dead in his room, isn’t exactly a good look? That’s even before we consider the man who died in the hot tub a couple of years back, and before we even look at the fact that it took three days for you to notice someone was missing this time.’