The Woman in Cabin 10 (7 page)

“We do not believe that travel has to mean compromise,” Richard Bullmer continued. “On the
Aurora
, everything should be as you would wish, and if it’s not, my staff and I want to hear.” He paused and gave a little wink at Camilla, including her in the remark as an acknowledgment that she would likely be on the sharp end of any complaints.

“Those of you who know me will know of my passion for Scandinavia—for the warmth of its people”—he shot a quick smile at Lars and Anne—“for the excellence of its food”—he nodded at the tray of dill and prawn canapés traveling past—“and the spectacular glory of the region itself: from the rolling forests of Finland, to the scattered islands of the Swedish archipelago, to the majesty of the fjords in my wife’s native Norway. But I think that, for me, the defining quality of the Scandinavian landscape is—perhaps paradoxically—not the land at all, but the skies—wide, and almost preternaturally clear. And it is those skies that provide what for many is the crowning glory of the Scandinavian winter experience—the northern lights, the aurora borealis. With nature nothing is certain, but I very much hope to share the spectacular majesty of the northern lights with you on this trip. The aurora borealis is something that everyone should see before they die. And now, please raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, to the maiden voyage of the
Aurora Borealis
—and may the beauty of her namesake never fade.”

“To the
Aurora Borealis
,” we chorused obediently, and downed our glasses. I felt the alcohol trickle through me, taking the edge off everything, even my still-aching cheek.

“Come on, Blacklock,” Ben said, setting down his empty glass. “Let’s go do our bit and schmooze.”

I felt a twinge of reluctance to approach the group with him. The thought of being taken for a couple was awkward, given our past, but I wasn’t about to let Ben start making connections while I hung back. As we started across the room, I saw Anne Bullmer touch her husband’s arm and whisper something in his ear. He nodded, and she gathered up her wrap and the two of them began to make their way towards the doorway, Richard holding Anne’s arm solicitously. We passed in the center of the room, and she smiled, a sweet smile that illuminated her drawn, fine-boned face with a shadow of what must have been her former beauty, and I saw that she had no eyebrows at all. The lack of them, together with her jutting cheekbones, gave her face a curious, skull-like appearance.

“You’ll excuse me, I’m sure,” she said. Her voice was pure BBC English, no trace of accent that I could detect. “I’m very tired—I’m afraid I’m ducking out of dinner tonight. But I look forward to meeting you tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I said awkwardly, and then tried to smile. “I—I look forward to it, too.”

“I’m just going to see my wife to her cabin,” Richard Bullmer said. “I’ll be back before dinner is served.”

I looked at them as they walked slowly away and then said to Ben, “Her English is amazing. You’d never know she was Norwegian.”

“I don’t think she actually lived there much when she was younger. She spent most of her childhood at boarding schools in Switzerland, as far as I know. Right, cover me, Blacklock, I’m going in.”

He strode across the room, scooping up a handful of canapés as he went, and inserted himself into the little group with the practiced ease of a born journalist.

“Belhomme,” I heard him say, his tone full of a sort of Old Etonian faux bonhomie, which I knew to be completely out of keeping with his actual background, growing up on an Essex council estate. “Great to see you again. And you must be Lars Jenssen, sir, I read that profile of you in the
FT
. I very much admire your stance on the environment—mixing principles with business isn’t as easy as you make it look.”

Ugh, look at him, networking like a bastard. No wonder he was working at the
Times
doing proper investigative stuff, while I was stuck in Rowan’s shadow at
Velocity.
I should get over there. I should inveigle myself into conversation with them just as Ben had. This was my chance and I knew it. So why was I standing here, holding my glass with cold fingers, unable to make myself move?

The waitress came past with a bottle of champagne and, slightly against my better judgment, I let her fill up my glass. As she moved away, I took a reckless gulp.

“Penny?” said a low voice in my ear, and I whipped round to see Cole Lederer standing behind me.

“Sorry, Penny who?” I managed, though my palms were prickling with sweat. I had
got
to get over this.

He grinned, and I realized my mistake.

“Oh, of course, for my thoughts,” I said, cross with myself, and with him for being so coy.

“Sorry,” he said, still smiling. “Stupid cliché. I don’t know why I said it. You just looked particularly pensive standing there, biting your lip like that.”

I was biting my lip? Well, hell, why not trail the tips of my Mary Janes in the dirt as well and maybe flutter my eyelashes?

I tried to remember what I had been thinking about, other than Ben and my lack of networking skills. The only thing that came to mind was the bastard who broke into my flat, but I was damned if I’d bring that up here. I wanted Cole Lederer to respect me as a journalist, not feel sorry for me.

“Oh . . . uh . . . politics?” I brought out, at last. The champagne and the tiredness were starting to hit. My brain didn’t seem to be working properly, and my head was starting to ache. I realized that I was halfway to being drunk, and not the good kind of drunk, either.

Cole looked at me skeptically.

“Well, what were
you
thinking, then?” I said crossly. There’s a reason why we keep thoughts inside our heads for the most part—they’re not safe to be let out in public.

“Other than looking at your lips, you mean?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and tried to channel my inner Rowan, who would have flirted with him until she got his business card.

“If you must know,” Cole continued, propping himself against the wall as the ship heaved over a wave and the ice in the champagne buckets rattled, “I was thinking about my soon-to-be ex-wife.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I said. He was drunk, too, I saw, just hiding it well.

“She’s screwing my best man, from our wedding. I was thinking how much I’d like to return the favor.”

“Screw her bridesmaid?”

“Or just . . . anyone, really.”

Huh. As propositions went, it was certainly direct. He grinned again, somehow managing to make the line sound fairly charming, like he was trying his luck, rather than acting like a sleazy pickup artist.

“Well, I think you shouldn’t have too much trouble,” I said lightly. “I’m pretty sure Tina would oblige.”

Cole gave a snort of laughter, and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt, thinking about how I would feel if Ben and Tina were over on the other side of the room making jokes about me throwing myself at Cole for the sake of my career. So Tina had turned on the charm. Big deal. It was hardly the crime of the century.

“Sorry,” I said, wishing I could take back the remark. “That was a pretty cheap dig.”

“But accurate,” Cole said dryly. “Tina would skin her own grandmother for the sake of a story. My only worry”—he took another slug of champagne and grinned—“would be coming out of the encounter alive.”

“Ladies and gentlemen . . .” A steward’s voice broke into our conversations. “If you would like to make your way through to the Jansson room, dinner will shortly be served.”

As we started to file through, I felt someone’s eyes on my back, and I turned to see who it was. The person standing behind me was Tina, and she was looking at me very speculatively indeed.

- CHAPTER 8 -

I
t took a surprisingly long time for the staff to usher us through into the miniature dining room next door. Somehow I’d been expecting something practical, like the ferries I had been on with rows of tables and a long lunch counter. Of course, the reality was quite different—a room about the size of a private dining room in a restaurant. We could have been in someone’s home, if I knew anyone whose home had raw-silk curtains and cut-glass goblets.

By the time we sat down, my head was throbbing painfully, and I was desperate for some food—or better still some coffee, though I presumed I’d have to wait until dessert for that. It felt like a long way off.

The guests had been arranged into two tables of six each, but there was an empty place at each. Was one where the girl in cabin 10 had been supposed to sit? I did a quick head count under my breath.

Table one had Richard Bullmer, Tina, Alexander, Owen, and Ben. The spare place was opposite Richard Bullmer.

Table two had me, Lars and Chloe, Archer, Cole, and a spare place beside Cole.

“You can clear this,” Cole said to the waitress who arrived with a bottle of wine. He waved a hand at the unused setting. “My wife wasn’t able to attend the trip.”

“Oh, my apologies, sir.” She gave a little half bow, said something to her colleague, and the place setting was whisked away. Well that explained that. The empty place at the first table remained, though.

“Chablis?” the waitress asked.

“Yes, please.” He held out his glass. As he did, Chloe Jenssen leaned across the table with her hand extended towards me.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” She had a low, husky voice, quite unexpected for her tiny frame, and the hint of an Essex accent. “I’m Chloe—Chloe Jenssen, although my professional name’s Wylde.”

Of course. Now that she’d said it, I recognized her, the famous wide cheekbones and slightly Slavic tilt to her eyes, the white-blond hair. Even without stagy makeup and lighting, she looked slightly otherworldly, like she’d been plucked from a tiny Icelandic fishing village, or a Siberian dacha. Her looks made the story of her being discovered by a modeling scout in an out-of-town supermarket all the more incongruous.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, and took her hand. Her fingers were cold, and her grip was almost painfully strong, made more so by the chunky rings she wore, which cut into my knuckles. Up close she was even more stunning, the austere beauty of her dress so obviously outclassing mine, I felt like we might as well have come from different planets. I resisted the urge to tug at the neckline. “I’m Lo Blacklock.”

“Lo Blacklock!” She gave a gurgling laugh. “I like it. Sounds like a fifties film star, the sort with a wasp waist and tits up to her chin.”

“I wish.” In spite of the growing ache in my head, I grinned. There was something about her amusement that was infectious. “And this must be your husband . . . ?”

“This is Lars, yes.” She looked across at him, ready to bring him into the conversation and introduce him, but he was deep in conversation with Cole and Archer, and she just rolled her eyes and turned back to me.

“Have they got someone else joining them?” I nodded at the spare place at the first table. Chloe shook her head.

“I think that was for Anne—you know, Richard’s wife? She’s not well. Decided to have supper in her cabin, I think.”

“Of course.” I should have thought of that. “Do you know her well?” I asked. Chloe shook her head.

“No, I know Richard quite well, via Lars, but Anne doesn’t often leave Norway.” She lowered her voice and spoke confidentially. “She’s supposed to be kind of a recluse, actually, so I was surprised to find she was on board—but I’d imagine that having cancer might make you—”

But whatever she had been about to say was interrupted by the arrival of five dark square plates, scattered across with small rainbow-colored squares and clumps of foam arranged on what looked like grass clippings. I realized I had no idea what I was about to eat.

“Beet-pickled razor clam,” announced the head server, “with a bison grass foam and air-dried samphire shards.”

The waiters retreated and Archer picked up his fork and poked at the most neon-colored of the squares.

“Razor clam?” he said dubiously. His Yorkshire accent was somehow stronger than it sounded on TV. “Never been that keen on raw shellfish, somehow. It gives me the willies.”

“Really?” Chloe said. She gave a curving, catlike smile that indicated something between flirting and disbelief. “I thought bush tucker was your thing—you know, bugs and lizards and stuff.”

“If you got paid to eat droppings for your day job, maybe you’d fancy a nice steak on your day off, too,” he said, and grinned. He turned to me and stuck out his hand. “Archer Fenland. Not sure if we’ve been introduced.”

“Lo Blacklock,” I said through a mouthful of something that I was
hoping
was not cuckoo spit, though it was hard to be sure. “We’ve met, actually, but you won’t remember. I work for
Velocity
.”

“Oh, aye. Do you work for Rowan Lonsdale, then?”

“That’s right.”

“She like that piece I did for her?”

“Yes, it was very popular. Got a lot of tweets.”

Twelve Surprisingly Delicious Foods You Didn’t Know Were Edible,
or something along those lines. It had been illustrated with a picture of Archer roasting something unspeakable over a fire and grinning up at the camera.

“Aren’t you going to eat it?” Chloe said, nodding at Archer’s plate. Her own plate was nearly clear and she swiped her finger across a slick of foam and licked it up.

Archer hesitated and then pushed his plate away.

“I think I’ll sit this one out,” he said. “Wait for the next course.”

“Fair play,” Chloe said. She gave another slow, curving smile. A movement in her lap caught my eye and I saw that beneath the level of the table, not quite hidden by the cloth, she and Lars were holding hands, his thumb rhythmically stroking across her knuckles. The sight was somehow so intimate, yet so public, that I felt a little shock run over me. Maybe her flirtatious persona wasn’t all it seemed?

I realized Archer was talking to me, and I turned my attention back to the table and focused on him with an effort.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was somewhere else. What did you say?”

“I said, can I refill you? Your glass is empty.”

I looked down at it. The Chablis had gone—though I barely remembered drinking it.

“Yes, please,” I said. As he poured, I stared into the glass, trying to work out how much I had drunk already. I took a sip. As I did, Chloe leaned over and said quietly, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what happened to your cheek?”

Maybe my surprise showed in my face, because she flapped a hand in a
forget about it
gesture.

“Sorry, ignore me, none of my business. I just . . . well, I’ve been in bad relationships, that’s all.”

“Oh, no . . .” For some reason the misunderstanding made me feel ashamed, like it was my fault or I’d been criticizing Judah behind his back, although neither was true. “No, it’s nothing like that. I got burgled.”

“Really?” She looked shocked. “While you were in?”

“Yup. Getting more common, apparently, or so the police said.”

“And he attacked you? Jesus.”

“Not quite.” I felt an odd reluctance to go into details, not just because talking about it brought back unpleasant flashes of what had happened but also out of a kind of pride. I wanted to sit at this table as a professional, the smooth, capable journalist able to take on all comers. I didn’t relish the portrait of myself as a frightened victim, cowering in my own bedroom.

But the story was out now—at least 90 percent of it was—and not explaining felt like getting sympathy under false pretenses.

“It—it was an accident really. He slammed a door in my face; it hit my cheek. I don’t think he meant to hurt me.”

I should have just stayed in my room, head beneath the duvet, was the truth. Stupid Lo, sticking your neck out.

“You should learn self-defense,” Archer said. “That’s how I started, you know. Royal Marines. It’s not about size, even a girl like you can overpower a man if you get the leverage right. Look, I’ll show you.” He pushed back his chair. “Stand up.”

I stood, feeling slightly awkward, and with extraordinary swiftness he grabbed my arm and twisted it up behind my back, tilting me off-balance. I grabbed for the table with my free hand, but the twisting motion in my shoulder continued, pulling me backwards, the muscles screaming in protest.

I made a noise, half of pain and half of fright, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Chloe’s shocked face.

“Archer,” she said, and then more urgently, “Archer—you’re scaring her!”

He let go, and I sank back into my chair, my legs trembling, trying not to show how much my shoulder was protesting.

“Sorry,” Archer said with a grin as he pulled his chair back to the table. “Hope I didn’t hurt you. Don’t know my own strength. But you see what I mean—very tricky to get out of, even if your attacker’s bigger than you. Anytime you want a lesson . . .”

I tried for a laugh, but it came out sounding fake and shaky.

“You look like you need a drink,” Chloe said bluntly, and she topped up my glass. Then, as Archer turned away to speak to a waiter, she added in a lower voice, “Ignore Archer. I’m starting to believe the rumors about his first wife were true. And look, if you want something to cover up that bruise, come over to my cabin sometime. I’ve got a whole array of stuff and I’m a pretty mean makeup artist. You need it in the trade.”

“I’ll do that,” I said, and attempted a smile. It felt false and strained and I picked up my glass and took a sip to hide it. “Thanks.”

A
fter the first course, the places switched around and I found myself, somewhat to my relief, at the other table from Archer, sitting between Tina and Alexander, who were having a very knowledgeable conversation about foods of the world over the top of my head.

“Of course the one type of sashimi you really
must
try is fugu,” Alexander said expansively, smoothing his napkin across his straining cummerbund. “It’s simply the most exquisite taste.”

“Fugu?” I said, trying to insert myself into the conversation. “Isn’t that the horribly poisonous one?”

“Absolutely, and that’s what
makes
the experience. I’ve never been a drug taker—I know my own weaknesses, and I am very aware of being one of life’s lotus-eaters, so I’ve never trusted myself to dabble in that sort of thing—but I can only assume that the high one experiences after eating fugu triggers a similar neuron response. The diner has diced with death, and won.”

“Don’t they say,” Tina drawled, sipping at her wine, “that the art of the really superlative
chef is to slice as closely as possible to the poisonous parts of the fish and leave just a sliver of the toxins on the flesh to heighten the experience?”

“I have heard that,” Alexander conceded. “It is supposed to act as a stimulant in very small quantities, although that particular slicing technique may be more to do with the expense of the fish and the chef’s disinclination to waste even a morsel.”

“So how poisonous is it?” I asked. “In terms of quantity, I mean? How much would you have to eat?”

“
Well
, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Alexander said. He leaned across the table, a rather unpleasant gleam in his eye as he warmed to his topic. “Different parts of the fish have a different toxic load, but in terms of the most poisonous parts—which is to say, the liver, the eyes, and the ovaries—we’re talking very, very little. Grams, if that. They say it’s around a thousand times more deadly than cyanide.” He pushed a forkful of fish carpaccio into his mouth and spoke through the delicate flesh. “It must be a quite horrible way to die—the chef who prepared it for us in Tokyo took great delight in describing the process of the poison—it paralyzes the muscles, you know, but the mind of the victim is quite unaffected, and they stay fully conscious throughout the experience as their muscles atrophy and they become unable to breath.” He swallowed, licked his moist lips, and smiled. “Eventually they quite simply suffocate.”

I looked down at the slivers of raw fish on my own plate, and whether it was the wine, or Alexander’s vivid description, or whether the sea had picked up, I felt rather less hungry than I had before dinner. I put a piece reluctantly in my mouth and chewed.

“Tell us about yourself, darling,” Tina said suddenly, surprising me by flicking her attention abruptly from Alexander to me. “You work with Rowan, I hear?”

Tina had started at
Velocity
in the late eighties and had briefly crossed paths with Rowan, who still talked about her and her legendary ferocity.

“That’s right.” I swallowed my mouthful with uncomfortable haste. “I’ve been there
about ten years.”

“She must think very highly of you to send you on a trip like this. Quite the coup, I would have thought.”

I shifted in my chair. What could I say in answer to that?
Actually,
I don’t think there’s any way she would have trusted me with this if she weren’t on a hospital drip?

“I’m very lucky,” I said at last. “It’s a real privilege to be here, and Rowan knows how keen I am to prove myself.”

“Well, enjoy it is my advice.” Tina patted my arm, her rings cool against my skin. “You only live once. Isn’t that what they say?”