The Woman in Cabin 10 (10 page)

- CHAPTER 11 -

I
stared at him, openmouthed.

“What do you mean?” I managed at last. “What do you mean, no guest?”

“The cabin is empty,” he said. “It was reserved for another guest, an investor named Ernst Solberg. But he pulled out at the last minute—personal reasons, I understand.”

“So the girl I saw—she wasn’t supposed to be there?”

“Perhaps she was a member of the staff, or a cleaner.”

“She
wasn’t
. She was getting dressed. She was
staying
there.”

He said nothing. He didn’t have to—the question was obvious. If she was staying there, where was all her stuff?

“Someone could have taken it out,” I said weakly. “Between seeing me and your coming.”

“Really?” Nilsson’s voice was quiet, his question not skeptical, not mocking, just . . . uncomprehending. He sat down on the sofa, the springs squeaking beneath his bulk, and I sank onto the bed and put my face in my hands.

Because he was right. There was no way someone could have cleared the room. I didn’t know exactly how much time had elapsed between me calling Karla and Nilsson appearing at my door, but there was no way it was more than a few minutes. Five, seven at the outside. Probably not even that.

Whoever was in there
might
have had time to wipe the blood off the glass, but that was it. There was no way they could have emptied the entire cabin. What could they have done with the stuff? I would have heard if they had tipped it over the side. And there simply hadn’t been time for them to pack it up and take it down the corridor.

“Shit,” I said at last, into my hands.
“Shit
.
”

“Miss Blacklock,” Nilsson said slowly, and I had a sudden premonition that I was not going to like his next question. “Miss Blacklock, how much did you have to drink last night?”

I looked up, letting him see my ravaged makeup and the fury in my sleep-bleared eyes.

“I
beg
your pardon?”

“I simply asked—”

There was no point in denying it. There were enough people who’d seen me at the dinner last night, knocking back champagne, then wine, then after-dinner shots, to blow a hole a mile wide in any claim that I was completely sober.

“Yes, I was drinking,” I said nastily. “But if you think that half a glass of wine turns me into some hysterical drunk who can’t tell reality from fantasy, you’ve got another think coming.”

He said nothing to that, but his gaze traveled to the bin beside the minibar, where a number of whiskey and gin miniatures and a considerably smaller quantity of tonic cans were stacked up.

There was a silence. Nilsson didn’t ram home his point, but he didn’t need to. Bastard room cleaners.

“I may have been drinking,” I said through clenched teeth, “but I
wasn’t
drunk. Not like that. I know what I saw. Why would I make it up?”

He seemed to accept that and nodded wearily.

“Very well, Miss Blacklock.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and I heard his blond stubble rasp against his palm. He was tired, and I noticed, suddenly and incongruously, that his uniform jacket was buttoned up askew, with an orphan buttonhole at the bottom. “Look, it is late, you are tired.”

“
You’re
tired,” I shot back with more than a touch of malice, but he only nodded, without rancor.

“Yes, I am tired. I think there is nothing we can do now until the morning.”

“A woman has been thrown—”

“There is no proof!” he said louder, his voice cutting over mine, and for the first time there was exasperation in his tone. “I’m sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said more quietly. “I should not have contradicted you. But I don’t feel there is sufficient evidence to wake the other passengers at this point. Let us both get some sleep”—
and you can sober up
was the unspoken translation—“and we will try to resolve this in the morning. Perhaps if I take you to meet the ship’s staff we can track down this girl that you saw in the cabin. It is evident that she was not a passenger, correct?”

“She wasn’t at the dinner last night,” I admitted. “But what if she was a staff member? What if someone’s missing, and we’re wasting time in raising the alarm?”

“I’ll speak to the captain and the purser now, let them know the situation. But there are no staff members unaccounted for that I am aware of; if there were, someone would have noticed. This is a very small ship with a tight-knit crew. It would be hard for someone to go missing undetected, even for a few hours.”

“I just think—” I began, but he cut me off, politely and firmly this time.

“Miss Blacklock, I will not wake up sleeping staff and passengers for no good reason. I’m sorry. I will inform the captain and the purser and they will take whatever action they see fit. In the meantime, perhaps you could give me a description of the girl you saw, and I can double-check the passenger manifest and arrange that all the off-duty staff members who match the description are in the staff restaurant for you to meet tomorrow after breakfast.”

“All right,” I said sulkily. I was beaten. I
knew
what I had seen, what I’d heard, but Nilsson was not budging, that much was plain. And what could I do, out here in the middle of the ocean?

“So,” he prompted. “She was how old, how tall? Was she Caucasian, Asian, black . . . ?”

“Late twenties,” I said. “About my height. White—very pale skin, in fact. She spoke English.”

“With an accent?” Nilsson put in. I shook my head.

“No, she was English—or if she wasn’t, she was completely bilingual. She had long, dark hair . . . I can’t remember what color eyes. Dark brown, I think. I’m not certain. Slimmish build . . . she was just—pretty. That’s all I remember.”

“Pretty?”

“Yes, pretty. You know? Nice features. Clear skin. She was wearing makeup. Lots of eye makeup. Oh—and she was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt.”

Nilsson wrote it all down solemnly and then rose, the springs squeaking in protest, or perhaps relief.

“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. And now I think we should both get some sleep.” He rubbed his face, looking for all the world like a big blond bear dragged out of hibernation.

“What time should I expect you tomorrow?”

“What time would suit you? Ten? Ten thirty?”

“Earlier,” I said. “I won’t sleep, not now.” I was buzzing, and I knew I would never get back to sleep.

“Well, my shift starts at eight. Is that too early?”

“That’s perfect,” I said firmly. He walked to the door, suppressing a yawn as he did, and I watched as he lumbered off along the corridor towards the stairs. Then I shut and double-locked the door, and went and lay on the bed, staring at the sea. The waves were dark and slick in the moonlight, heaving themselves up like the backs of whales, and then slipping back down, and I lay and felt the boat rise and fall with the swell.

I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating in angry staccato thumps in my chest, I would never relax.

I was furious—but I was not sure why. Because a woman’s body was even now floating down into the black darkness of the North Sea, probably never to be found? Or was part of it something smaller, baser—the fact that Nilsson had not believed me?

Maybe he’s right
, the nasty little voice in my head whispered. Pictures flitted across my mind’s eye—me, cowering in the shower because of a door blowing shut in the wind. Defending myself against a nonexistent intruder by attacking Judah.
Are you completely sure? You’re not exactly the most reliable witness. And at the end of the day, what did you actually
see
?

I saw the blood, I told myself firmly. And a girl is missing. Explain that.

I switched the light out and drew the cover across myself, but I didn’t sleep. Instead, I lay on my side watching the sea, rising and falling with strange hypnotic silence outside the thick, stormproof panes. And I thought,
There is a murderer on this boat. And no one knows but me.

- CHAPTER 12 -

“
M
iss Blacklock!” The knock came again, and I heard a passkey in the door, and the bang as the door itself opened a centimeter and the security chain pulled taut.

“Miss Blacklock, it’s Johann Nilsson. Are you okay? It’s eight o’clock. You asked me to call you?”

What? I struggled up onto my elbows, my head pounding with the effort. Why the hell had I asked to be called at eight o’clock?

“One sec!” I managed. My mouth was dry, as if I’d swallowed ashes, and I reached for the glass of water by my bed and choked some down. As I did, the memory of last night came flooding back.

The noise that had woken me in the night.

The blood on the veranda glass.

The body.

The splash . . .

I swung my legs out of bed and felt the boat shift and lurch beneath me, and I felt suddenly and violently nauseous.

I ran to the bathroom and just managed to get myself positioned over the bowl in time for the retching heave of last night’s dinner against clean white porcelain.

“Miss Blacklock?”

Go. Away.

The words didn’t make it out of my mouth, but maybe the sound of splashing vomit conveyed the sentiment, because the door shut, very quietly, and I was able to stand up and examine myself without an audience.

I looked awful. The dregs of my eye makeup were smudged across my cheeks, and I had vomit in my hair, and my eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. The bruise on my cheek just added to the whole impression.

The boat heaved itself up onto a wave and down the other side, and everything around the sink shifted and clinked. I pulled my dressing gown around myself and went back into the cabin, where I pulled the door open the tiniest, tiniest crack—barely enough to see through.

“I’ve got to take a shower,” I said tersely. “Do you mind waiting?” And then I shut the door.

Inside the bathroom I flushed the toilet and wiped around the rim, trying to destroy all traces of my vomit. But when I straightened, it was not my own pale, ravaged face that caught my eye, but the tube of Maybelline, standing sentinel by the sink. As I stood, clutching the vanity table, my breath coming short and sharp, the ship gave another roll, and everything on the countertop shifted and wobbled, and the tube fell, with a tiny crack, and rolled into the bin. I reached in bare-handed and pulled it out, holding it in my fist.

It was the only tangible evidence that that girl
had
existed, that I wasn’t going mad.

T
en minutes later I was dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, pressed by whoever unpacked my case, and my face was pale but clean. I pulled back the security chain and opened the door to find Nilsson waiting patiently in the corridor, talking on a radio. He looked up when he saw me and shut it off.

“I’m very sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “Perhaps I should not have woken you, but you were so insistent last night . . .”

“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t mean to sound quite so curt, but if I opened my mouth too much I might be sick again. Thank God the movement of the boat provided an alibi for my queasy stomach. Being a bad sailor was not exactly chic, but it was less unprofessional than being considered an alcoholic.

“I have spoken to the staff,” Nilsson said. “No one has been reported missing, but I suggest you come down to the staff quarters and you can see if the woman you spoke to is there. It may put your mind at rest.”

I was about to protest that she
wasn’t
staff, not unless the cleaners valeted rooms wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts and not much else. But then I shut my mouth. I wanted to see below decks for myself.

I followed him along the lurching corridor to a small service door by the stairwell. It was fitted with a keypad lock, into which he tapped a quick six-digit code, and the door swung outwards. From the outside I would have assumed the door hid a cleaning cupboard, but in fact there was a small, dimly lit landing and a flight of narrow stairs led down into the depths of the ship. As we descended I realized, unsettlingly, that we must now be below the waterline, or very near it.

We emerged into a cramped corridor that had a completely different feel to the passenger part of the ship. Everything was different—the ceiling was lower, the air was several degrees hotter, and the walls were closer together and painted a dingy shade of beige, but it was the lights that made me feel instantly claustrophobic—dim and fluorescent, with a strange high-frequency flicker that made your eyes tire almost at once.

Doors opened off to the left and the right, eight or ten cabins crammed into the same space as two above. We passed one door that was ajar and I saw a windowless shared bunk room lit by the same graying fluorescent light, and an Asian woman sitting on a bunk inside, pulling on her tights, her head and shoulders cramped in the narrow space beneath the bunk above. She looked nervously up as Nilsson passed, and then at the sight of me her face froze, like a panicked rabbit in the headlights. For a moment she just sat, motionless, and then with a convulsive start she reached out with her foot and kicked the door shut, the sound as loud as a gunshot in the confined space.

I felt myself blush like a Peeping Tom caught in the act, and hurried after Nilsson’s retreating back.

“This way,” Nilsson said over his shoulder, and we turned into a door marked
STAFF MESS.

This room was larger at least, and I felt the growing sense of claustrophobia lift slightly. The ceiling was still low, and there were still no windows, but the room opened out into a small dining room, a lot like a miniature version of a hospital canteen. There were only three tables, each seating maybe half a dozen people, but the Formica surfaces, the steel grab rails, and the powerful smell of institutional cooking all combined to underline the difference between this deck and the one above.

Camilla Lidman was seated alone at one of the tables, drinking coffee and going through some kind of spreadsheet on a laptop, and across the room, five girls were sitting around another, eating breakfast pastries. They looked up as Nilsson entered.

“
Hej
, Johann,” one of them said, and followed with something in singsong Swedish, or maybe Danish, I wasn’t sure.

“Let’s speak in English, please,” Nilsson said, “as we have a guest present. Miss Blacklock is trying to trace a woman she saw in the next-door cabin—number ten, Palmgren. The woman she saw was white, with long dark hair, in her late twenties or early thirties, and she spoke good English.”

“Well, there’s me and Birgitta,” said one of the girls with a smile, nodding at her friend opposite. “My name is Hanni. But I don’t think I’ve been in Palmgren. I work behind the bar mainly. Birgitta?”

But I was shaking my head. Hanni and Birgitta both had pale skin and dark hair but neither was the girl from the cabin, and even though Hanni’s English was excellent, she had a noticeable Scandinavian accent.

“I’m Karla, Miss Blacklock,” said one of the two blond girls. “We met yesterday, if you recall. And we spoke on the phone last night.”

“Of course,” I said absently, but I was too busy scanning the faces of the other girls to pay proper attention. Karla and the fourth girl at the table were both blond, and the fifth had Mediterranean coloring and very short hair, almost a pixie cut. More important, none of them looked like my memory of that vivid, impatient face.

“It’s not any of you,” I said. “Is there anyone else who fits the description? What about the cleaners? Or the sailing crew?”

Birgitta frowned and said something to Hanni in Swedish. Hanni shook her head and spoke in English.

“The crew are mainly men. There’s one woman, but she’s redheaded and perhaps forty or fifty, I think. But Iwona, one of the cleaners, has dark hair. She’s Polish, I’m not sure how old she is.”

“I’ll get her,” Karla said. She got up with a smile and squeezed out from behind the table.

“There’s Eva,” Nilsson said thoughtfully, as Karla left the room in search of the absent Iwona. “She’s one of the spa therapists,” he added to me.

“She’s up in the spa, I think,” said Hanni. “Setting up for the day. But she’s in her late thirties at least, maybe forties.”

“We’ll go and speak to her after this,” Nilsson said.

“Don’t forget Ulla.” The pixie-haired girl spoke up for the first time.

“Ah, yes,” Nilsson said. “Is she on duty? Ulla is one of the stewardesses for the forward cabins and the Nobel Suite,” he added to me.

The girl nodded.

“Yes, but I think she’ll be coming off shortly.”

“Miss Blacklock,” said a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Karla presenting a colleague, a small, dumpy woman in her forties with dyed-black hair showing threads of gray at the roots. “This is Iwona.”

“I can to help?” Iwona said, in a heavy Polish accent. “There is a problem?”

I shook my head.

“I’m so sorry.” I wasn’t sure whether to address the answer to Iwona, Nilsson, or Karla. “She’s— You’re not the woman I saw. But I just want to say: there’s no question of this woman being in trouble. It’s not that she’s stolen anything or anything like that. I’m worried about her—I heard a scream.”

“A scream?” Hanni’s narrow eyebrows nearly disappeared into her fringe, and she exchanged a look with Karla, who opened her mouth to say something, but behind us, Camilla Lidman rose, and spoke for the first time.

“I am sure none of the crew is the woman you’re looking for, Miss Blacklock.” She came across the room to stand by the table, putting her hand on Hanni’s shoulder. “They would have said if they had any cause for alarm. We are a very—what’s the expression—very tightly knitted.”

“Very close,” Karla said. Her gaze flickered to Camilla Lidman and back to me, and she smiled, although her raised, overplucked brows gave the expression an oddly unconvincing, anxious air. “We are a very happy crew.”

“Never mind,” I said. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything out of these girls. The mention of the scream had been a mistake; they had closed ranks now. And maybe speaking to them with Camilla and Nilsson present had been an error, too. “Don’t worry. I’ll go and speak to . . . Eva, was it? And Ulla. Thank you for talking to me. But if you hear anything, anything at all—I’m in cabin nine, Linnaeus. Please do come and see me, anytime.”

“We heard nothing,” said Hanni firmly. “But of course we will let you know if that changes. Have a wonderful day, Miss Blacklock.”

“Thanks,” I said. As I turned, the ship lurched, making the girls at the table give little laughing shrieks of alarm, and clutch hold of their coffees. I stumbled, and would have fallen if Nilsson hadn’t grabbed my arm.

“Are you all right, Miss Blacklock?”

I nodded, but actually his grip had hurt, leaving my arm aching. The shock of the movement had sent a stabbing pain through my head and I wished I’d taken an aspirin before heading out.

“I enjoy that the
Aurora
is a smaller ship, not one of these Caribbean monsters, but it does mean that you can feel the impact of a big wave more than you might on a larger vessel. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said shortly, rubbing my arm. “Let’s go and speak to Eva.”

“First, let us take a detour via the kitchen,” Nilsson said. “Then we can head up to the spa to speak to Eva, and finally we can finish in the breakfast room.” He had a list of staff in his hand and was crossing off names. “That should be everyone apart perhaps from two members of the sailing crew, and a few cabin stewards we can find at the end.”

“Fine,” I said tersely. In truth I wanted to get out—out from the narrow, claustrophobic walls and the airless corridors, away from the gray lighting and the feeling of being hemmed in, trapped below the waterline. I had a brief, horrible image of the ship striking something, water flooding the confined space, mouths gasping for the fleeing scraps of air.

But I could not give up now. To do that would be to admit defeat, to admit that Nilsson was right. Instead, pushing the thoughts away, back into my subconscious, I followed him down a corridor towards the nose of the ship, feeling the floor shift and lurch beneath me, while the smell of cooking became stronger. There was bacon and hot fat, and the distinctive buttery tang of baking croissants, but also boiled fish, and gravy, and something sweet. The combination brought a rush of saliva to my mouth, not in a good way, and I gritted my teeth again and grabbed hold of the rail as the ship heaved up another wave and dropped into the trough, leaving my stomach behind.

I was just wondering whether it was too late to turn back and ask Nilsson if we could do this another time, when he stopped at a steel door with two small glass windows and pushed it open. White-hatted heads turned, their faces registering polite surprise as they saw me standing behind Nilsson.

“
Hej, alla
!
” Nilsson said, followed by something else in Swedish. He turned to me. “I’m sorry, all of the deck and hospitality staff speak English but not all the cooks do. I’m just explaining why we’re here.”

There were smiles and nods from the staff, and one of the chefs came forward, his hand stuck out.

“Hello, Miss Blacklock,” he said, in excellent English. “My name is Otto Jansson. Any of my staff will be pleased to help, although they do not all speak good English. I can translate. What do you need to know?”

But I couldn’t speak. I could only gulp, staring down at his outstretched hand, in the pale latex catering glove, while the blood hissed in my ears.

I looked up, into his friendly blue eyes, and then back down at the latex glove, with dark hairs showing through, pressed against the rubber, and thought,
I must not scream. I must not scream.

Please God, don’t let me scream.

Jansson looked down at his hand, as if to see what I was gaping at, and then laughed, and pulled the glove off with his other hand.

“So sorry, I forget I am wearing these. They are for catering, you know?”

He threw the pale flaccid glove into the bin and then shook my limp, unresisting hand; his grip was firm, his fingers warm and slightly dusty from the latex coating.