Passenger 23 Read online

  ‘Open up!’ he shouted at the chambermaid, who could do nothing but obey him, because the worker behind her increased the pressure on her shoulder joint further. The officer shoved the shard of glass in the mouth she’d opened to scream. Shahla’s expression was contorted with terror, but she stayed as calm as she could with a half-dislocated shoulder.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks and snot ran from her nose. She whimpered when the puppy-eyed officer looped the belt around her head and tightened it into a gag in front of her mouth, thereby making it impossible to spit out the piece of glass. At a sign, the worker loosened the armlock.

  ‘Okay, let’s start from the beginning again, Shahla. You can say Yes. But you can’t say No. But you mustn’t lie either. Not unless you’re keen on having a second breakfast.’ The thug clenched his fist.

  With a moan Shahla shook her head. Like Tiago, she’d understood what would happen if the madman punched her in the stomach again, triggering a swallowing reflex if she tried to breathe through her mouth in spite of the gag.

  ‘You found a little white girl, didn’t you?’ the officer began his interrogation.

  She nodded without hesitation.

  ‘And the girl’s still on board?’

  Another nod.

  ‘In Hell’s Kitchen?’

  The cleaning lady answered this question in the affirmative, and the next one too. ‘And you’re getting lots of money for looking after her?’

  ‘Hmmmm!’

  The man asking the questions laughed to his mate and switched to their mother tongue so that Shahla couldn’t understand him. Unlike Tiago, who was a wizard at languages. Besides his native Spanish, he could read and write German, English, and French, while Dutch wasn’t a problem either as he’d lived in Holland for three years as the son of a diplomat.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you this tart is sitting on a goldmine?’ the officer said to his accomplice. ‘They wouldn’t be making such an effort otherwise. I see large amounts of cash here for us.’

  The taller man gave an inane grin. ‘Really? What’s your plan?’

  ‘We’re going to let Pussy here take us to the girl and—’

  Tiago would never discover the second part of the plan.

  At a frantic signal from his chum, the worker let go of the chambermaid, whose eyes suddenly looked as if they were going to pop out of their sockets. She tore the gag from her mouth and staggered into the narrow gap between the television and the bed. Grabbed her throat. And opened her mouth. So wide that, in spite of his poor viewpoint from the floor, Tiago could see her tongue in the mirror. Stretched out.

  Red.

  Shining.

  Without the shard of glass, which was now somewhere halfway between her throat and windpipe, perhaps deeper, and which Shahla was desperately trying to disgorge.

  21

  Martin opened the door, but let Elena enter Anouk’s isolation cabin first.

  ‘Everything okay, darling?’ the doctor asked anxiously, but there seemed to be no cause for concern. Anouk had barely changed position.

  She was still sitting cross-legged on the bed, but had stopped scratching. Although she was still refusing to look at Elena or Martin, her lips were moving very slightly.

  ‘Are you trying to tell us something?’ Martin asked, moving closer. And then the girl actually opened her mouth. She looked a little like a patient trying to form letters for the first time again after a stroke.

  Martin and Elena remained as quiet as mice, just like the cartoon ice age mammoth on the muted television screen above their heads.

  Cautiously, Martin approached the bed, but he couldn’t understand what Anouk was trying to say.

  Why did she press the worry button?

  Deciding to take a gamble, he sat beside her on the bed, ready to move away again immediately if she took this as an unacceptable invasion of her privacy, but Anouk remained calm.

  Her mouth opened again, and now it was quite clear. She was whispering something, trying to form a word, and to understand Martin leaned in so closely that he could smell the apple fragrance of her freshly washed hair and the ointment applied to treat her wounds.

  He was secretly anticipating that what she was trying to tell him would have no significance, or if it did, then he wouldn’t realise it to begin with. A made-up word, perhaps, something from baby language, to which traumatised children readily resorted. For example, they might say ‘nana’ for ‘banana’, or ‘tato’ for ‘potato’.

  But when he was so close that her breath was tickling his earlobe, he didn’t have the slightest problem understanding the one and only word issuing from her mouth.

  That can’t be right. It’s impossible, Martin thought, leaping up as if he’d been stung.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Elena said, horrified, as Martin slowly retreated from Anouk’s bed.

  ‘Nothing,’ he lied.

  He felt sick, but it had nothing to do with the rocking of the ship.

  First the teddy. Now Anouk…

  What on earth was happening here?

  ‘What’s wrong all of a sudden?’ Elena asked. Now she was whispering again. ‘What did Anouk say to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Martin lied once more and told her that he needed a little break to get some fresh air on deck – which wasn’t a lie.

  The needle that had caused him so much pain in Gerlinde’s cabin yesterday now pierced his head again. And this time the bolts that flashed through his brain were even more agonising.

  His eyes streaming tears of suffering, he hurried from the patient’s room, Anouk’s voice still echoing in his head.

  The one word, the only word. As quiet as it was disturbing. ‘Martin,’ she’d whispered.

  Even though he’d introduced himself to her by his surname only.

  22

  ‘She’s swallowed it!’ the worker shouted unnecessarily.

  ‘Fuck! How did that happen?’

  Maybe because you stuffed a fucking shard of glass in the chambermaid’s mouth and she gagged on it?

  Shahla had fallen to the ground and Tiago couldn’t see her any more. He could only hear her. She sounded worse than a minute ago, when she’d been punched.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ the taller man said anxiously. The officer ran a hand through his ruffled hair. ‘I’ll be fucked if I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s chuck her out.’

  The worker looked at the balcony. ‘At this time of day? Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?’

  The officer shrugged. He didn’t seem particularly bothered by the fact that a woman at his feet was either suffocating or bleeding to death internally.

  Or both, by the sound of it.

  Finished. All over.

  Tiago didn’t know what he could do to put an end to the nightmare he’d become embroiled in, but nor could he hide on the floor like a coward any longer. He stood up, which Shahla, battling suffocation, didn’t notice. Unlike the two thugs.

  The one with the pout screamed like a girl watching a horror film, which might have looked funny from a safe distance, likewise the reaction of the officer. He couldn’t close his mouth and stared at Tiago as if he were a ghost who’d just escaped from his bottle. ‘Fuck… What…?’

  Tiago went over to Shahla, who was huddled on the floor between the bed and the television set. Grabbing her under her armpits he lifted her up, to which she offered no resistance. Her vitality was starting to ebb away, but she hadn’t yet been able to spit anything out of her mouth, save for foam.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Tiago ordered her in English, with an eye on the door and the two men who continued to stand there immobile with astonishment.

  Tiago stepped behind Shahla, just as the thug had done a minute earlier, but he was trying to move the chambermaid into a position that could save her life.

  If only you’d just bend forwards.

  It took a while for Shahla to lower her torso, and this probably wasn’t a voluntary movement, because her knees gave way too. Tiago h
ad to muster all his strength to hold her up by wrapping his arms around her stomach like a belt and pulling his clasped hands into her diaphragm with a powerful jolt.

  One.

  From the corner of his eye he could see the two men watching him, but they weren’t coming any closer.

  Two.

  Shahla’s throat had stopped rattling and she seemed to be getting heavier.

  Three.

  He tried the Heimlich manoeuvre a fourth time, unsure whether he was doing it right. He pulled again, this time even more powerfully, and…

  It worked!

  Accompanied by a shower of vomit, the glass shot out of Shahla’s mouth, flew half a metre through the room and landed right beside the worker’s feet.

  When Tiago let go of the chambermaid she collapsed to the floor again, wheezing, but at least she was breathing, and thus her condition had improved substantially.

  The same could not be said of Tiago’s situation. When the glass was freed, so were the two men from their paralysis.

  They launched their attack without conferring. Without uttering a word. The men worked in sync like a well-honed team, which is what they probably were. While the worker leaped at him over Shahla, the officer dived headlong across the bed.

  Tiago would not have been able to say who hit him first. Or which punch ensured that he yanked the television with him as he fell to the ground. This is it, was the thought that entered his head as he saw the fist hovering above his face. He was expecting to hear his teeth crunch and feel his jawbone shatter. But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the fist vanished from his sight and he heard a woman’s muffled voice call out from a distance, and in German, ‘Lisa, are you there?’

  He hurriedly pushed the television set away from his aching upper body and scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Go!’ he heard Shahla say. She was still unable to stand herself. Blood was running down her chin, her eyes were flooded with tears, but the skin on her face wasn’t so blue any more.

  She looked at the connecting door, which had closed again from the movement of the ship. The knob turned slowly.

  ‘May I come in, Lisa?’ the woman behind the door asked, knocking. Tiago had only a few seconds to copy the crew members and make himself scarce.

  He leaped over Shahla’s head to the door, which after the men’s escape was about to close again, wrenched it open, dived into the corridor and didn’t turn back to the voice coming from behind him. It was Lisa’s mother, yelling after him, ‘Stop! Stay where you are!’

  He darted left down the short, empty section of the corridor, turned into the nearest stairwell and, without thinking about it, ran up six flights till he got to deck 11, where he dashed outside, bursting into a group of laughing holidaymakers who’d formed a semicircle for a group photo.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled to the overweight man holding the camera, and looked around. It was just after half past nine, and most passengers were still busy with the breakfast buffets or looking on deck 15 for a place in the sun, which today was struggling to break through the cloud cover.

  In front of him a steward was cleaning the planks; behind him the wall beneath the chimney was being repainted. No sign of the two madmen. Or of the mother. Yet his pulse refused to calm down.

  What on earth did I get into there? he wondered.

  Five minutes ago he’d still been a small-time crook, carving out an easy life for himself with a little charm and a few tricks. Now he was fleeing two madmen who shoved broken glass into their victims’ mouths and had no scruples about watching them choke to death. Men who’d threatened to kill him because he’d witnessed an attempted blackmail he didn’t understand, during the course of which he’d learned a secret that made no sense at all.

  Tiago leaned against the rail and stared at the choppy sea deep below. Dark clouds were gathering, which at that moment seemed like a grim omen.

  So what am I going to do now?

  Feverishly he weighed up how he was going to hide on board from the two men for the next five days. He didn’t even know who they were. Where they worked. And in which part of the ship they had their refuge, where they were deliberating how to get rid of him most easily.

  For whatever reason.

  Tiago was sure the officer would be able to work out his identity as soon as he took the time to trawl through the ship’s computer. Every guest was noted on the passenger list, complete with photo, and the number of young, dark-haired Latinos under the age of thirty on this leg of the trip must be quite small. Feeling his trousers for his key card, unsure when he could dare return to his cabin, he came across an unexpected item in his back pocket.

  The envelope.

  From the safe. From Lisa Stiller.

  In the rush Tiago had stuffed it into his pocket without noticing.

  23

  This time it had taken more than an hour, two aspirins and three ibuprofen before the attack was over.

  Martin sensed that a residue of pain still lingered in his head, like a heap of smouldering embers just waiting to flare up again. The skin over his skull felt taut, as if he’d had sunburn, and his mouth was dry.

  Bloody pills.

  He was just crossing the Grand Lobby when he realised that it was his mobile that had been ringing so insistently the whole time. His standard ringtone was a guitar riff, which is why he hadn’t responded to the futuristic plinking and bleeping coming from his trouser pocket. Here out in the Atlantic, hundreds of nautical miles from the coast of Europe, the mobile network was currently unavailable; someone was evidently trying to phone him via the internet.

  He stopped beside the glass lifts at the edge of the circular lobby adorned with columns, and looked at his phone. Indeed. A Skype call.

  The display showed the photo of Saddam Hussein and so it wasn’t hard for Martin to identify the caller. He knew only one person who found the weekly changing photos of dictators in his contact profile funny.

  He answered the call with the words, ‘I can’t at the moment.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your irregular bowel movements,’ Clemens Wagner replied with an audible grin. For an informer he took quite a lot of liberties, but the eccentric with his dyed, platinum-blond hair and flame tattoos on both forearms could allow himself these. When it came to getting background information there was scarcely anyone better than Diesel. A nickname the nutter owed to his pyromaniac tendencies.

  ‘Found anything out for me yet?’ Martin asked. Surprised, he looked up. The lifts were stuck between decks 5 and 7, so he opted for the stairs.

  ‘No, I’m calling you because I miss your voice so much.’

  Diesel’s main job was as editor-in-chief of 101Punkt5, a private radio station in Berlin. Martin had got to know him through a colleague he was vaguely acquainted with. Her name was Ira Samin, an outstanding police psychologist, who’d saved a number of lives by negotiating after hostages were taken in a spectacular operation at Diesel’s radio station. The editor-in-chief, as gutsy a man as he was crazy, had been a great help to her with his unorthodox methods, and after some hesitation, had accepted Martin’s offer to earn a little extra cash as a private researcher.

  Most people think that police investigations consist mainly of office work, and they’re basically right. In times of scant resources and staff shortages, however, work is increasingly farmed out to private individuals. Diesel was put on a list of unofficial employees as a researcher, and just prior to his meeting with Dr Beck, Martin had emailed him with the confidential request to supply him with information about Anouk Lamar and her family.

  ‘I haven’t got much,’ Diesel said. ‘Cruise companies aren’t exactly WikiLeaks informants. All I know so far is that Anouk is a single child. Highly intelligent, went to a school for gifted pupils. The result of her IQ test she took in year 5 was 135. She learns languages quicker than a computer; apparently she’s fluent in five others apart from English. And she came second in a national memory championship. Intelligence is in her genes. When
she was only seventeen, her mother developed a computer programme that allowed share prices to be predicted by observing fish schooling. Before her death Naomi Lamar worked as a professor of evolutionary biology at a private university.’

  Martin approached the left side of a huge marble staircase which, together with its sister flight, rose from the lobby to a floor with luxury boutiques. A considerable number of passengers who passed through the foyer, or had sat down in one of its classy leather armchairs for an early drink, were holding a mobile phone or camera. With the golden handrail, the antique vases on the pillars and a tastefully illuminated fountain in the middle, the steps of the Grand Lobby were a popular subject for photographs.

  ‘What do we know about the father?’

  ‘Theodor Lamar? Civil engineer, built rollercoasters for amusement parks around the world. Died prematurely of cancer three years ago. You don’t have to worry that he’s hiding on your boat with a cleaver.’

  ‘How do we know all this?’

  Martin recalled an extraordinary case in which a man with memory loss, who’d been declared dead years earlier, had been arrested at the scene of a murder.

  ‘Because there was a forensic post-mortem examination,’ Diesel said. ‘Requested by the paternal grandfather, Justin Lamar. He was intending to sue the hospital because his son Theo had behaved strangely after the cancer operation.’

  ‘Strangely?’

  ‘He wasn’t breathing any more.’

  ‘Malpractice?’

  ‘According to Grandpa Lamar, yes. But I wouldn’t set too much store by his statement.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Diesel sighed. ‘The grandfather’s got a screw loose. Officially he lives in an old people’s home, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a pensioners’ loony bin. There are regular protests by local residents because for some unfathomable reason that straitlaced lot in their fancy neighbourhood don’t want crazed coffin-dodgers sitting stark naked on the swings in their front gardens, which apparently happens all the time. Justin is less of an exhibitionist. His party trick is ringing the police.’