Passenger 23 Read online

  ‘This is so great, Mum,’ she’d cried for joy as they stepped out onto the balcony of their cabin. The tears in Lisa’s eyes may have been stirred by the wind blowing up to deck 5 from the port, but Julia preferred to believe that it was Lisa’s delight at the gigantic cruise ship and the luxurious outside cabin which would be home for the next seven days. And they had one each.

  In her current circumstances, with her income as a nurse and living as a single mum, Julia couldn’t have even afforded an inside cabin on the Sultan of the Seas. But Daniel Bonhoeffer, the captain of the Sultan, had invited her personally. She’d known him for years, almost decades, but she had great difficulty explaining their relationship to outsiders. They weren’t close enough to be considered friends, and yet the ties between their families were too great for them to be called casual acquaintances. Besides, Daniel was Lisa’s godfather. Without this connection she would have lost contact with him long ago, but Daniel had been a kindergarten friend of her husband’s. Julia had never fully understood why her ex had sustained a friendship for so many years with a man who basically was interested in one person only: Daniel Bonhoeffer. Within five minutes he never failed to steer the topic of conversation around to himself. This could occasionally be entertaining when he regaled his listeners with tales about the exotic destinations he sailed to. But, as far as Julia was concerned, it certainly wasn’t enough to constitute a reciprocal friendship. In any case he always gave her the impression that his politeness was put on, and that he simply told other people what they wanted to hear. Each time she met him she felt as if she’d been to a fast food joint. Everything was okay, basically, but a strange feeling lingered in your stomach.

  Now that she was on his ship for the first time, however, she wondered whether she hadn’t been judging Daniel too harshly. After all, once again he’d proven how highly he worshipped his goddaughter. Every year Lisa got a huge birthday present; this time it had been the transatlantic crossing to New York. ‘Thank your godfather,’ Julia had said when Lisa fell into her arms on the balcony. Her daughter had smelled of tobacco and her pale make-up had rubbed off on Julia’s cheek, but she’d been as little bothered by this as by the studded collar pressing into her face. The only thing that mattered to Julia at that moment was the fact that she was finally holding her daughter in her arms again. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d felt so close to her little girl.

  ‘It’s an absolute dream here,’ she told Tom.

  They’d become friends after she’d been summoned to the school because of her daughter’s deteriorating marks and lack of contribution in class. When, a month later, she learned that Lisa was a regular visitor at Tom’s pupil consultation hour, Julia ended the affair. She didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of a relationship with the one person her daughter currently trusted and confided in. In any case, he wasn’t really right for her, not just because of the age difference – at twenty-nine Tom was a good ten years younger – but more importantly because he was so demanding. He’d wanted to see her almost every day and sleep with her all the time. Even though she felt flattered by the interest of such a young and attractive man, this telephone call was further proof that she’d made the right decision.

  Did Tom really think that all he had to do was call and she’d abandon her autumn holiday with her daughter?

  ‘Wild horses wouldn’t get me back off this ship.’

  ‘Maybe wild horses wouldn’t, but a video might!’

  Julia sat up straight.

  ‘What sort of video?’ she asked, sensing that the elation of the past half hour was soon going to dissipate.

  ‘I don’t think a mother ought ever have to see something like it,’ she heard Tom say. ‘But you’ve got to. I’ve sent you the link.’

  6

  It took Julia Stiller less than a minute to retrieve the small tablet from her handbag and log in to the ship’s free Wi-Fi. Beforehand she closed the balcony doors of her cabin and drew the curtains so the setting sun didn’t reflect in her screen.

  ‘You’re scaring me,’ she said to Tom, and sat down at the dressing table beside the television.

  The email he’d sent her just a few minutes earlier had no subject or accompanying comments. She tapped her finger on the blue underlined text, immediately opening a website with a simple design. It looked amateurish, like the privately run forum on which Julia occasionally exchanged information with others who suffered mood swings due to an underactive thyroid.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Isharerumours,’ Tom replied. ‘The plebs’ version of Facebook. Lots of schoolkids use this portal to bitch about teachers or fellow pupils. It’s hugely popular because you can log in anonymously and there are no controls whatsoever.’

  From the breathiness in his voice Julia could tell how uncomfortable Tom was finding this conversation. And she could imagine the expression on his face as he sat at home in front of his computer, while she was focusing on the imitation iPad she’d bought from a food discounter.

  Tom Schiwy had the knack of earning affection and sympathy from those in his presence just by looking at them. Not a bad qualification for a liaison teacher, although when she was a girl Julia would never have disclosed to such a good-looking man that in PE the class sneered at her for being a roly-poly. These days her weight was still north of the German average, but the years had been good to her. The podgy teenager had turned into a round, but well-proportioned woman who’d learned not to get exasperated by her powerful upper arms and thighs, big bottom or chubby cheeks, but to accept the compliments that plenty of men gave her: for her eyes that sparkled with life, her pout and her dark, slightly curly hair that framed her oval face like an expensive painting when not tied up as it was now, emphasising her high forehead with the little beauty spot above her right eyebrow.

  ‘What now?’

  A postcard-sized video window had opened up before Julia’s eyes.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That… that…’ Tom stammered. ‘It’s hard to… Please just watch it.’

  ‘You’re really scaring me,’ she repeated, but tapped on the large arrow in the centre of the video file.

  The recording that now began was typical of the quality of those hidden cameras familiar to reality TV shows, where amateur detectives try to catch out unfaithful husbands. A time code in the bottom corner of the screen revealed that the video had been taken five months earlier, in the spring of this year.

  To begin with neither the lighting nor zoom were right, assuming that the gadget responsible for these shaky pictures had such a function. It took a while for Julia to see that someone was filming from a moving car. It was dark, and drizzle was falling onto the windscreen, which was why the tail lights of the car in front blurred the picture for the viewer. The camera panned across a black dashboard to the passenger seat and captured the front of a sombre tenement block, a grey concrete eyesore of the sort you see on every second corner in old West Berlin.

  ‘Why do I need to watch this?’ Julia asked as the car slowed down and now passed at walking pace by the forecourt of a second-hand car dealer.

  ‘Because of this,’ Tom replied at the moment when the car stopped at a driveway and the electric window on the passenger side disappeared into the door.

  To begin with Julia couldn’t see anything apart from a dense row of trees which virtually concealed the playground behind them. If there was a streetlamp here it was either faulty or far away; at any rate there wasn’t even enough light to make out what the poster was advertising on the huge billboard by the side of the road. Likewise, the woman who suddenly emerged from the dim twilight, wiggling her hips as she approached the car, was little more than a shadow at first. Even when she bent down to the passenger window, thereby entering the light of the camera, Julia couldn’t recognise the face because it was pixelated. In a pretend wicked voice, the woman whispered into the camera, ‘You can do anything you like with me, sweetheart, but filming costs extra.’<
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  ‘Christ Almighty!’ Julia panted, inching herself away from the dressing table. She turned around, but Lisa had closed the connecting door. She was alone in the cabin and, besides, her daughter had said she wanted to take a look around the ship.

  Is that…?

  The woman in the video was the same height, had the same black hair and the same slim build. And worst of all: she had her voice.

  ‘Is that…?’ Julia gasped, but couldn’t utter her daughter’s name.

  No, it can’t be. It’s impossible.

  The girl, who’d now taken a step backwards and turned around to show off some flesh, was wearing clothes that could easily be in Lisa’s wardrobe: a petticoat dress, fishnet tights and spotted peep toes. It was the sort of thing she’d worn before switching from her rockabilly phase to her Goth one without any transition.

  But the voices weren’t that similar, Julia tried to convince herself.

  ‘Please tell me that’s not my daughter,’ she begged Tom as the film cut to a radically different camera angle.

  ‘No…’ Julia groaned softly when she saw the steering wheel. The dark dashboard. And the back of the girl’s head, moving back and forth rhythmically, accompanied by squelching noises, while the faceless man in whose lap her head was buried moaned with pleasure.

  ‘Is that Lisa?’ Julia rasped.

  She heard Tom exhale. ‘Hard to tell. Possibly.’

  ‘Possibly is not definitely. It could be someone else, couldn’t it? A fake?’

  ‘Yes, maybe. I mean, you don’t see any faces.’

  ‘My God,’ Julia sighed. She closed her eyes, unwilling to face up to the significance of what she’d just seen.

  ‘Okay… Okay…’ It took her three attempts to complete her sentence. ‘That’s not her!’

  It mustn’t be her.

  ‘I’m not really sure either,’ Tom agreed. ‘But I’m afraid that what we think is irrelevant.’

  He asked her to open up the comments column below the video. Julia felt ill. The screen was flooded with vile contributions from users hiding behind pseudonyms, while her daughter was referred to by her full name:

  easyeast: Sick! Lisa Stiller?

  Habbybln85: Yup. I’ve had her too.

  Tao I: She’ll do anything for cash.

  sventhebam30: Quality’s shit. Just a blowjob, no fucking? Boooooring.

  JoeGeothe: Fuck me, what a slapper. Bi@t€h!

  GuestI: Yes, filthy whore. Hate sluts like that.

  ‘Can this be deleted?’ Julia asked. She felt numbed.

  ‘Hardly. The server’s in Togo. And even if we locate the provider, which I doubt, it can be found on half a dozen other portals. This shit stays on the web forever.’

  ‘It’s nonsense. It’s got to go. My daughter doesn’t do things like this. I mean, she’s not a prostitute! It’s… You—’

  Tom interrupted her. ‘I’ll say it again: it’s completely irrelevant whether she does these sorts of things or not. Your daughter lives in a world where rumours are stronger than the truth.’

  ‘How long has this filth been on the internet?’ Julia’s voice was quavering.

  ‘About six or seven weeks, if the date when the file was uploaded is right. I only discovered it today in the playground when the kids were handing round their mobiles to watch it.’

  ‘This explains everything!’ Julia said in a fluster.

  Her bad marks, why she’s barely eating anything, her ghastly clothes.

  She slapped her forehead in anger. ‘And I thought these were the perfectly normal excesses of puberty!’

  Or the after-effects of our separation. Or both. But surely not that!

  ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Tom said, but this wasn’t any comfort. What Max had said when she was awarded custody was right.

  I’m not up to it.

  Once again she felt helpless. The world around her was teetering; she felt dizzy. No wonder – the carpet had just been pulled out from beneath her feet. Never before had she been so painfully aware that she’d failed as a mother. In every respect.

  ‘Now do you understand why the two of you have got to get off that boat immediately?’ she heard Tom say.

  Yes. Of course. That means…

  She was unable to order the thoughts in her head.

  ‘I’m not sure. I mean, Lisa seems to be happy here, perhaps—’

  ‘Of course she’s happy!’ Tom protested.

  ‘—this holiday’s good for her!’

  ‘No. No way!’

  ‘Why not? Surely a bit of distraction is exactly the right—’

  ‘No!’ Tom was almost screaming. At that moment she heard the first bang.

  A shot?

  Julia jumped and looked at the balcony door. The explosions in the port grew ever more frequent. Behind the curtains the light had changed. Outside there were flickers and flashes.

  ‘Because I know teenagers who’ve done things to themselves after far less cyberbullying,’ Tom said imploringly.

  Suicide?

  Julia got up laboriously from the table, yanked open the glass doors to the balcony and stared at the blue-and-gold sea of light in the evening sky from the fireworks shooting into the air to mark their departure.

  ‘I can’t take her off the ship,’ she heard herself say.

  ‘But you have to. If Lisa’s planning to take her own life, there’s no better place to do it than on a cruise ship sailing the high seas! All you’ve got to do is jump. It’s the perfect place to die!’

  For heaven’s sake. No.

  Tears streamed into Julia’s eyes and, in her case, it was certainly not down to the wind.

  It’s too late.

  She felt the vibrations that were now far stronger than when they’d boarded the ship. She gazed at the people waving on the jetty. Looked down, searching in vain for the gangway they’d used to embark.

  On deck music rang out from the loudspeakers, an orchestral theme that could have been from a Hollywood film.

  And as the cruise liner slowly pulled away from the jetty, Tom’s ominous voice mingled with the whooshing of the water, the departure music and the bass drone of the foghorn that sounded a further six times before falling silent for the duration of the transatlantic crossing.

  Just like Julia’s hope of a carefree holiday with her daughter, of whose whereabouts on this gigantic ship she didn’t have the faintest idea.

  7

  Martin stood on the veranda of Gerlinde Dobkowitz’s suite, barely registering that the distance between the ship and the quay wall was steadily increasing.

  The Sultan had moved about one hundred metres from the harbour basin and was now turning sideways. A huge crane slowly disappeared from view.

  The liner was flanked by an unusual number of motor boats. The music from the upper deck, the fireworks, drowned out by the foghorn, all this bypassed his consciousness.

  His thoughts were focused exclusively on the barely comprehensible fact that in his hands he held his son’s favourite cuddly toy.

  Timmy had called him Luke, maybe because he’d just seen his first Star Wars film and was a big fan of Luke Skywalker. But maybe there’d been no particular reason for it either.

  Not everything in life had a point to it.

  Once upon a time Timmy and Luke had been inseparable. Timmy had taken him to bed, to school and even to swimming lessons, where he put Luke in the locker only under great protest after having been caught with him in the shower. His interest in the furball may have waned a little in the time before his disappearance, but not so much so that Luke was denied a place in the luggage for their cruise. The commission that investigated the tragedy on the Sultan hadn’t attached much significance to the fact that they hadn’t found Luke in the cabin. Nor to the fact that one of Nadja’s cases had been missing. They’d suspected that the mother had given the unwitting boy his teddy bear before throwing him overboard. But that was as strange as the lack of a suicide note.

  Nadja had always
made a point of letting him know where she was. Whenever he came home he’d find a note, either on the kitchen table or his pillow, depending on whether she’d just popped out (usually to go shopping) or had gone for longer (usually after a row). Would she really have embarked on what was, after all, her final trip without a single word of farewell?

  Nadja wasn’t the type to commit suicide. Of course this was the line peddled by all those left behind who didn’t want to face the truth. But all her life Nadja truly had been the opposite of suicidal. A fighter. Martin had sensed this the very moment he met her at the casualty department where he was waiting for a colleague who’d been stabbed. Nadja hat sat next to him in the waiting room with a swollen eye, and talked quite openly about how her boyfriend had beaten her. Out of jealousy. Not on account of another man, but because his son from his first marriage preferred cuddling the new girlfriend in bed in the mornings more than his papa. ‘He loves his boy; he’d never lay a finger on him. Luckily he let his anger out on me,’ Nadja had confided in Martin, but when he tried to express his sympathy she dismissed it with a grin. ‘You ought to see the state that bastard’s in!’

  That very same night she moved out of her ex-boyfriend’s place and a year later they married. She hadn’t been depressed a single day. He’d never got any sense that she might run away from problems or do anything to herself. And she’d certainly never harm Timmy, her little prince who she’d idolised and hugged whenever he’d let her.

  Martin pressed the teddy bear to his face in an attempt to find a smell amongst the musty stench that would remind him of his son. In vain.

  He turned to face the sound of the sliding door opening behind him.

  ‘Ah, here you are,’ Gerlinde Dobkowitz said. With the words, ‘I’m just going to squeeze some filth from my hindquarters,’ she’d left him alone with the slightly mortified-looking butler and had shuffled into the bathroom with a loo roll. Now that she was back Martin could ask her the most important question of all: ‘Where did you get this?’