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wasn’t on the list.”
    â€œYou didn’t hear this from me, but … well maybe he paid cash and someone forgot to take his name.”
    â€œI bet they forgot to put the money in the register as well,” said Bliss, quickly catching on, thinking it was an easy way for a crewmember to make a few extra quid every trip. He’d been in Serious Crimes long enough to know that whenever cash transactions took place, you could bet someone was taking a cut.
    Without a cabin number, he turned his attention to the sleeping lounges. Hundreds of sweaty bodies, fidgeting on reclining chairs, formed a thick smelly carpet of humanity as he fought his way up and down the darkened aisles in between the rows—the stale odour of sleepers alternating with the stink of cheap perfume and the stench of an occasional fart. Backpacks, suitcases, even cardboard boxes stuffed with the belongings of the poorest passengers created an obstacle course in the tight aisles, tripping him repeatedly. Passengers, rudely awakened by his thrashing arms as he tried to steady himself, cursed him in a dozen languages. At the end of one row, between the last seat and the wall, he fell over a body lying on the floor. Pulling himself upright he began apologizing then, to his astonishment, saw he’d fallen over a young couple clearly engaged in oral sex. The woman, an attractive long-haired blond, on top of the young man, looked up with a fierce expression, as if to say, “Piss off,” and carried on, quite unperturbed.
    He quickly found the deck steward, a badly shaven unmade-bed of a man, with rotten teeth and a grubby red coat, slouched in the bright area between the two dimly lit lounges.
    â€œThere’s a couple bonking in there,” he said disapprovingly.
    â€œI’ve seen worse mate,” replied the steward, only half opening his eyes, making no attempt to move.
    With the feeling that he must have led a sheltered life, Bliss walked away, shaking his head.
    Bliss had been deep in the vessel’s bowels, examining Roger’s green Renault, while the ship had been turning around and had not noticed the change in direction. Brushing aside the sign warning of the danger of entering the vehicle deck during the voyage he’d slid open theheavy steel door and had been met by the acrid mechanical odour of engine oil, rubber, and hot metal.
    Roger LeClarc’s Renault, nestling amongst a raft of flashier models, was locked. He tried both doors, and the trunk, then peered through the driver’s window and was surprised to see a suitcase and several smaller bags on the back seat. Maybe he doesn’t have a cabin after all.
    The small green car was familiar, very familiar. Bliss and the other officers had been keeping tabs on it for more than a week. They’d lost him a few times— round the clock surveillance of a target could be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. A moment’s inattention, a little bad luck, or a run of red traffic lights was all it took for a vehicle to disappear, seemingly without trace. But, on each occasion, a quick analysis of Roger’s regular pattern of behaviour enabled him to be located, either at his mother’s or at the little terraced house near Watford railway station where he often spent his evenings before returning home in the early hours.
    Details of his impending trip to Holland were well known. Roger, something of a celebrity in the computer world, had been invited to address a symposium of world leaders in The Hague: “Communicating in the Third Millennium,” a two-day exposé of modern telecommunications, extolling the advantages of globalization and convergence. Ostensibly, Roger was an independent delegate, though few of the attendees would have been surprised to learn that he was the cyber-star of an aggressive multi-media equipment provider hell-bent on cornering the market.
    Following Roger from his mother’s house in Watford on the