‘I told you, no! You think I would have taken them if I’d known? They paid a lot of money, but even if it had been ten times as much I wouldn’t have let them use my ship for that.’ He looked down at the deck, away from his interrogators. ‘They killed all the sailors on the other ship, even . . . even the survivors in the water. They shot them. And there was nothing we could do about it.’ His eyes flicked back to Nina, desperate. ‘There was nothing I could do! You have to believe me – they would have shot us too!’

‘There’s something you can do,’ she replied. ‘Tell us how to find these bastards. We need to know who hired them.’

‘We can protect you,’ said Cheng, joining in with the exchange for the first time.

Nina gave him a look of mild surprise, but pressed on. ‘Is there anything else you know? Any paperwork that might give us a trail to follow?’

Jones shook his head. ‘Harhund took everything.’

‘Did they leave any guns?’ asked Eddie. ‘I know people who can trace serial numbers.’

‘No, they tossed them all overboard. The big stuff, anyway. They kept some pistols – must have been worried about us tossing them overboard after what they did.’

‘What about the money they paid you?’ Cheng said. ‘That must have come from an account that can be traced.’

Another shake of the head. ‘They paid in cash and bearer bonds.’

Eddie snorted. ‘Bearer bonds? Were you hired by Hans Gruber?’

‘Didn’t that strike you as, y’know, incredibly dubious?’ said Nina. ‘Like a pretty obvious sign they were doing something criminal?’

‘I didn’t even know what a bearer bond was! I had to look it up. But I didn’t think about it too much,’ admitted Jones. ‘I didn’t want to think about it. It was a lot of money – more than enough to clear all my debts. And I just figured, maybe someone spotted a shipwreck on the iceberg and Harhund was in a rush to get there before the Torrox so he could claim salvage rights. It happens sometimes, there’s a lot of money in it.’

Nina sighed in frustration. ‘So you can’t tell us anything about Harhund’s employer? Didn’t he report in after they found the coffin?’

‘Yeah, but he made everyone leave the bridge while he used the satphone. I didn’t hear what he— No, wait!’ The Maori’s expression intensified as he searched his memory. ‘Before we left port, he talked to someone on his mobile. Must have been his boss, because he called him “sir”. He said a name, but . . . It was an English name, something really ordinary . . . Miller!’ he exclaimed. ‘He called him Mr Miller.’

‘Yeah, that is really ordinary,’ Eddie noted sarcastically. ‘Might as well be Smith for all the good it does us.’