Dead Calm (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Just after ten o’clock that evening, Dylan spotted Mike Lloyd striding out onto the deck for a smoke. Dylan slipped on his coat and ventured out to join him. His body was protected, but the wind tore into his face, making his eyes water and his nostrils sting. A sudden gust rocked him on his heels, causing Lloyd to smirk.

“At least it’s not snowing. Yet,” Lloyd said.

“It’s cold enough for it. I suppose it always is this far north. It’s good, though. Very bracing.” Calling himself a complete dickhead for describing this as
bracing,
Dylan looked up at a dark sky heavy with cloud. “I doubt we’ll see the northern lights tonight.”

“Not a hope in hell.” Lloyd, despite having lived in England until a few weeks ago, considered himself an expert.

Dylan turned slightly so that the hungry wind caught the back of his head instead of his face. “What’s new with you?”

“Not a lot.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any news from a postmortem on Hanna Larsen?”

Lloyd shook his head. “We’re not expecting any. These things take ages.”

Dylan knew all too well how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy turned in the UK, but he’d assumed the Scandinavian countries were ultra-efficient. “I suppose they do. You passed on my—concerns though, yes?”

“Of course. I said I would, didn’t I?”

“You did. Thanks.” Dylan would bet Lloyd hadn’t said anything to anyone. He might have joked about it with his colleagues, but he’d bet he hadn’t made his concerns official. “Who did you tell? The ship’s captain?”

“What? Yeah.”

He was lying. He hadn’t said a word about it.

“Another woman was originally allocated Hanna Larsen’s cabin, you know,” Dylan said.

“That’s right. The Larsen woman kicked up a fuss so we had to change. That happens all the time. But I wouldn’t really know anything about it. It’s not my job.”

“I don’t suppose it is.” Dylan stamped his feet to keep frostbite at bay. “Hanna Larsen was due to meet someone while she was on board. Still, I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that either.”

“I don’t. Sorry.” Lloyd flicked the butt of his cigarette for the wind to carry it away. “I’d better get back to work. Have you booked an alarm call if the northern lights are spotted?”

“I have, yes. Thanks.” Bev had at least.

“Okay, Dylan. Be seeing you.”

Dylan was surprised Lloyd had remembered his name. “Good night, Taffy.”

He supposed he could understand the Welshman’s reluctance to seek out his bosses and tell them that some crazy passenger thought Hanna Larsen had been murdered in her bed. Lloyd was a new recruit and, although he strode around the ship like an old hand, he was sure to be trying to impress. Sharing Dylan’s concerns would make him look naive and he’d spend the rest of the trip being the butt of his colleagues’ jokes.

It didn’t matter. If Lloyd hadn’t mentioned his concerns to the ship’s hierarchy, Dylan would do it himself. First thing in the morning, he’d seek out the ship’s captain and have a chat with him.

He went back inside and wandered aimlessly from lounge to bar to dining room. He saw no one he knew. He returned to the bar, bought himself a whisky and inspected his fellow drinkers. It seemed as if a new quota of passengers arrived every day. Dylan didn’t recognise a single face.

Correction. He recognised the barman.

Five minutes later, he recognised another passenger and his spirits sank. It was Bill Carr, the man who’d insisted on telling them how every member of his extended family had met their end.

If he’d been quicker, he would have made his escape. As it was, Carr gave him a cheery smile, no doubt pleased to find someone to bore to death, and sat beside him.

“I owe you a drink, Dylan. What are you having?”

“That’s kind of you.” It was, but Dylan wasn’t sure a free drink was fair exchange for hearing about Carr’s dead relatives. Surprisingly, as far as Dylan knew, none had doused themselves in petrol and struck a match while Carr was talking. “I’m on whisky. Thank you.”

“I’ll have the same.”

When their drinks were in front of them, Carr, who always looked as if he was about to trek to the North Pole single-handed, patted his pockets. “I’ve left my camera in the cabin so what’s the betting we see the northern lights?”

Dylan smiled and nodded. “I’m sure it can only help.”

“I can soon get it though. I think I’m finally finding my way around the ship.”

“It’s a maze, isn’t it?”

“It is. That’s half the fun though, isn’t it? I’ve met some lovely people as I’ve been trying to find my way around. There’s a chap with a cabin on the same deck as me who’s an architect. Another is a marine biologist. You meet some fascinating people, don’t you? There are people from every walk of life imaginable on this ship, you know.”

There was no need for Dylan to add to the conversation. A nod now and again and Carr was happy.

Thankfully, the ordeal was reasonably short-lived.

“Time I was off,” Carr said, “or I’ll have Maud after me. We have to keep our women happy, don’t we?”

“We do, Bill. It’s time I made a move too. I’ll see you around.”

“Probably when we’re both lost.” Chuckling at his attempt at a joke, he headed off in the direction of the cabins.

Dylan expelled his breath and ordered a nightcap. He was taking a long draught when Tom Jackson came into the bar, a laptop bag slung over his shoulder.

“Hi, Tom,” Dylan called to him.

Jackson looked around and gave a nod of recognition before joining Dylan at the bar. Most passengers had a rosy glow courtesy of the weather, but Jackson looked pale. Tense, too. The only colour in his face came from dark circles surrounding his eyes.

“You haven’t been working, have you?” Dylan asked as Jackson put the laptop case on the bar.

“Me? Certainly not.” He gave a smile that was at odds with those shadows around his eyes. “I’m sure everything’s running smoothly back in Spain. I have good staff. They’re all perfectly competent.”

Dylan would love to know how well—or badly—Jackson’s business was doing. It was bad enough for him to ask his mother for money. Dylan would need to be close to starvation before he approached his own mother, but perhaps Jackson had no such qualms. Or perhaps he
was
close to starvation.

“I’m sure it is. Or as smoothly as anything can run given the current economic state. Greedy bankers have a lot to answer for.”

“Too true. They’ve left us in a right mess.” Jackson ordered himself a double whisky. “Are you having one, Dylan?”

“Thanks, but I’ve just got one.”

Jackson’s hands shook as he took a huge gulp of the fiery liquid. Something wasn’t right in his world and Dylan would love to know what that was.

He was about to ask some probing questions when Jackson’s phone, buried somewhere deep in his pockets, trilled into life. He made no attempt to answer it.

“You’re turning into your mother,” Dylan said with a chuckle. “She was telling me that she’s refusing to answer her phone too.”

Jackson, the whisky relaxing him, gave a weak smile. “It’ll probably be for her anyway. Laura, my sister, phones all the time when we’re away. Of course, Mum doesn’t answer her phone so Laura insists on pestering me. She can damn well wait.”

“You don’t get on well, I take it?”

“We’re okay, probably because we rarely see each other.” He shrugged. “She’s the baby, you know? I suppose she was always going to be spoiled rotten. Daddy’s little girl and Mummy’s favourite.”

That wasn’t the impression Dylan had from Ruby. According to her, both children irritated her equally. She loved them both equally too.

“What about you?” Jackson asked, looking slightly more at ease as he embarked on boring small talk. “Any brothers or sisters?”

“None.” At times, Dylan thought that was a good thing. As they said, you can choose your friends but not your family.

“Lucky you.” Jackson spoke with feeling.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence until Dylan decided to break it.

“People are still talking about Hanna Larsen,” he said.

“Who? Oh, the woman who died?”

“Yes. I’d love to know what really happened, wouldn’t you?”

“How do you mean?”

“Haven’t I mentioned it? Monday night—well, Tuesday morning—when she died, I heard someone go to her cabin. It was about three in the morning. You see, I don’t think she died from natural causes at all.” Dylan kept his voice low. “I think she was murdered.”

Jackson looked at him as if he was crazy. “Murdered?”

It was difficult to tell if Jackson’s shocked expression was due to the possibility of a killer being on board or the fact that Dylan could think such a thing.

“It’s possible, isn’t it?” Dylan said. “She was an old lady, and pretty frail, so it would have been easy enough for someone to overpower her.”

“But that’s madness. Christ, there are lots of people coming and going every night. Last night, a really noisy crowd woke me up in the early hours.”

“Yes, but I have the cabin near the end of the deck. Hanna’s was next to mine—right at the very end. No one was coming or going. The person I heard was definitely leaving Hanna’s cabin.”

“You can’t say that for sure. You didn’t actually see anyone, did you?”

“No. More’s the pity.” Dylan took a slow drink of whisky. “It makes you think though, doesn’t it? It must make
you
think especially. If not for the mix-up with the cabin allocations on that first night, your mother would have been sleeping in that cabin.”

Jackson’s expression didn’t change but a nerve throbbed at his throat.

“I believe she would, yes.” Jackson emptied his glass and put it down on the bar. He grabbed his laptop case and slung it over his shoulder. “I’d love to stay, but I have things to do. Good night, Dylan.”

“Take care.” He’d thought Jackson had looked in need of several drinks. Perhaps he wasn’t. Or perhaps he didn’t like the company or the topic of conversation.

Dylan watched him weave his way through a group of passengers, a tight forced smile on his face for their benefit. He was almost at the exit when he took a phone from his pocket, flipped it open, tapped a few buttons and held it to his ear. He stood perfectly still as he spoke.

It was late to be making a business call, but it didn’t look like a social one.

Whoever was on the other end of that line was receiving the full brunt of his anger. And Jackson looked furious.

Chapter Fourteen

Passengers were in a celebratory mood when the
Midnight Sun
arrived in Bodø on Saturday morning. They were, most of them for the first time in their lives, some distance above the Arctic Circle. And it was snowing—at least, a mix of snow and rain was falling. It wasn’t enough to cover the roads, but the mountains behind the city were a pristine white. A strong wind was blowing although, again, it wasn’t as cold as Dylan had feared.

It was a little after nine-thirty in the morning and the sun hadn’t yet risen. According to the forecast, the sun would shine today—for a total of four hours before it set.

He’d heard someone say that the sun didn’t set from the beginning of June to the middle of July and, consequently, the town was heaving with tourists. Even now, it was busy. Another attraction was the nearby Lofoten Islands, home to sea eagles, and many people were keen to see the birds.

The busy commercial harbour had surprised Dylan, but that was nothing compared to the dozens of gleaming yachts in the large pleasure harbour.

Bev wanted to see everything the town had to offer and they darted from street to street until Dylan thought they were walking in a small circle. They’d left Luke and Freya with Dylan’s mother, which, given her atrocious sense of direction, was probably a bad move. Bev was too happy peering in shop windows to worry.

“Isn’t this—” it took Bev a moment to decide what it was, “—fantastic! It’s so relaxing having nothing to do, no one wanting or needing anything. I could spend the rest of my life on holiday.”

She couldn’t. Like Dylan, she’d be bored to death within a fortnight. All the same, he was finding it a welcome change from investigating insurance claims or watching two-timing spouses. It would be even more refreshing if he could convince himself that Hanna Larsen died peacefully in her sleep.

Earlier, Dylan had managed a meeting with the ship’s captain, a gruff middle-aged Norwegian who went by the name of Lars Melgarde. Most Norwegians Dylan had come across had a fine grasp of the English language. Not Melgarde. Or if he had, he wasn’t going to demonstrate it to an Englishman. It took him four attempts to get Dylan’s name right and that wasn’t rocket science.

They’d met in a small room that boasted a single chair. Melgarde had made it clear the chair was his. He’d swivelled on that chair with an amused smile on his face while Dylan tried to explain that he had reason to think Hanna Larsen’s death was suspicious.

“You have a dream, yes?” Melgarde said in his painfully slow English.

“No. I heard someone leaving her cabin at three in the morning.”

“You—tell me again.”

And so it had gone on.

“I tell police—yes?”

“Yes,” Dylan said with more hope than expectation. “Tell the police I heard someone leave her cabin. Make sure whoever is performing the postmortem knows this.”

Melgarde had chuckled. “I think you have a dream, Mr. Scott.”

He almost managed to convince Dylan of that but, no, he’d been wide-awake when he heard those noises. He was sure that Hanna Larsen—the same Hanna Larsen who’d refused to sell her valuable land to a profit-hungry chemical company—had received a visitor in the early hours of the morning.

The other worry was that Hanna’s visitor might have expected to find the very wealthy Ruby Jackson tucked up in her bed.

“You’re not thinking about that blasted woman again, are you?” Bev said. “Honestly, Dylan, I wish you’d give it a rest. She was old. She died. All sad and tragic, but nothing to do with you.”

Bev was right. It was none of his business. It wasn’t as if Hanna had been a likeable woman. But if he’d been murdered in his bed, he’d like the culprit to get his just deserts.

After flitting from shop to shop, they spent an hour in an art gallery. A few decent paintings of the landscape—sea, mountains, snow and the swirling northern lights—shared space with daubs of colour that could have been anything. Dylan wondered if a couple had been hung upside down.

“That would look wonderful in our sitting room.” Bev pointed to a large blue-and-green canvas.

“What is it?”

“The northern lights.” She rolled her eyes. “What did you think it was?”

“An honest answer?”

She looked around at people viewing the paintings. “No.”

“I’ll do you an identical one when we get home,” he promised. “It’ll take me ten minutes tops.”

“Philistine!”

“I just like paintings to look like whatever they’re supposed to be.”

“You have cameras for that.”

A book on art was being sold by the gallery and, before Dylan could object, Bev had handed over two hundred and seventy-five krone.

“That’s about thirty quid,” he said. “For one book.”

“Is it? Yes, I suppose it is.” She shrugged. “If that’s how much it costs, that’s how much it costs.”

“No. If that’s how much it costs, you leave it where it is.”

Laughing, she tucked her arm through his. “Come on, Scrooge. It’s time you bought me lunch.”

They trekked for what seemed like miles before Bev finally found the perfect restaurant on a quiet narrow street. Welcome warmth hit them as soon as they stepped inside and dozens of flickering candles added to the cosy atmosphere.

The most important thing as far as Dylan was concerned was the food and it didn’t disappoint.

It was tempting to linger in the warmth over another glass of wine but Bev had a lot more to see yet so Dylan paid the bill and they stepped out into the cold. Darkness was descending quickly, bringing with it a stiff breeze.

Somewhere nearby, a car’s engine was idling. Dylan was listening to Bev when that engine hit full revs. There was a scream of spinning wheels. He instinctively grabbed Bev’s arm as he turned. Racing straight at them was a big dark car. All that registered as he pushed Bev out of its path and into a doorway was that it had no lights.

It missed them by inches and disappeared round the corner and into the dusk.

Dylan’s heart was racing. Bev’s face was hidden behind her hands. Before either of them could speak, the door he’d pushed Bev against opened and a small lady spoke in a torrent of Norwegian. It didn’t take her long to realise they didn’t have a clue what she was saying and, thankfully, she spoke more calmly in English.

“You poor things. You must come inside. Come. Come.” She ushered them along a hallway and into a cluttered sitting room. “Are you all right? I call the police, yes?”

“There’s no need,” Dylan said. What he meant was “there’s no point.” “We’re fine. Thank you.”

Bev nodded. “Yes, we are. But thank you. It’s very kind of you.”

“Teenagers,” the woman said with a scowl. “They think it’s fun to drive their cars and frighten people out of their lives. Often the cars are stolen.”

“Teenagers? Does this happen often?”

She nodded at Dylan. “Teenagers always drive too fast. They find it fun. They play chicken, you know? They see how quick people are to jump out of the way.” She clicked her teeth at such stupidity.

Dylan longed to believe high-spirited, thrill-seeking idiots were responsible.

“You like tea.” She made it a statement rather than a question, as if she believed the English drank nothing but tea. “Sit down there and I will make you tea.”

Before they could accept or decline, she’d gone.

“You okay?” Dylan asked, and Bev nodded and gave him a weak smile.

“Yes, but I’d like to get my hands on those morons. I thought London had the monopoly on joy riders and car thieves.” She nodded in the direction of the adjoining room. “But how kind is this? How lovely to be welcomed into a stranger’s home.”

Over a quick cup of tea, they chatted with their hostess about London and Norway. They couldn’t linger though so they soon said their goodbyes, thanked her for her generosity and, once again, stepped out onto the dark street.

“It’s time we met up with Vicky and the kids.” Bev put her arm through his and shivered. “It gets dark early, doesn’t it?”

The residents of Bodø would enjoy their summers, their nights of the midnight sun, but these short days had to be depressing. Lights twinkled merrily from the buildings as if the residents were trying to outwit the darkness.

They were closer to the harbour than Dylan had thought. His mother and children were nowhere in sight but they had another half hour before they’d agreed to meet. The snow and rain had stopped, but the wind was stronger than ever.

Dylan saw Bill Carr and his wife strolling along the waterfront. Fortunately, Carr was busy looking at the ships.

He spotted another face he recognised. “Tom!” he called.

Jackson had been frowning, looking as tense as ever, but he forced a smile on seeing Dylan.

“Tom.” Taking Bev with him, he strode across to Jackson. “I couldn’t beg a favour, could I? We’re supposed to be meeting up with my mother, but there’s no sign of her.” He gave Bev’s arm a warning squeeze. “I couldn’t borrow your phone, could I, to give her a quick call? I’ve only just realised that I left my own on the ship.”

“Of course.” Jackson dived into his pocket and handed Dylan a shiny iPhone.

“Thanks.” Dylan tapped in what he hoped was his mother’s number and let it ring briefly. “It must be switched off. No matter, I’m sure she’ll be here in a minute. Thanks, Tom. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No problem. See you later.” Jackson returned his phone to his pocket and carried on walking.

“Okay,” Bev said. “Explain in words of one syllable what that was all about because I know for a fact that your phone’s in your coat pocket.”

She was trying to look annoyed, probably because she guessed it was connected to Hanna Larsen’s death, but it wasn’t working. Wearing a bright red padded coat that added several inches to her width, thick woollen gloves and a woollen hat decorated in snowflakes, she looked more like a cuddly toy than an angry wife. She was still shaken from their brush with the idiots driving that car too.

“I was talking to him last night,” Dylan said. “When I mentioned that his mother should have been in Hanna Larsen’s cabin, he seemed—well, I don’t know how he seemed. Irritated perhaps. Annoyed.”

“Good grief, I’m not surprised. What an awful thing to say to someone. How would you feel if someone said
your
mum should have been in that cabin. It would be unsettling, to say the least.”

“Hmm. But no sooner had I mentioned it than he went off and made a phone call. I’m not sure if I prompted that call, but he was annoyed with whoever he was speaking to. I wanted to get hold of his phone and get the number he called, that’s all.”

“What?” The way she was looking at him, he might have confessed to murdering nuns in the confessional. “You can’t do that.”

“I can. Damn it, Bev, if Ruby was the intended victim—”

“For a murder that only exists in your imagination?”

“If Ruby was the intended victim, Tom Jackson stands to inherit a fortune.”

“And if you were the intended victim, I’d stand to inherit a fortune. Okay, not a fortune. But peace, quiet and a bloody normal life. It doesn’t mean anything, does it? Everyone inherits something when someone dies, but people don’t go around hurrying proceedings along.”

“Some people do. Perhaps Tom Jackson did. Obviously, he didn’t do the deed himself, but who’s to say he isn’t in on it? Who’s to say—?”

“Dylan, get real. Besides, whatever mad theories you have, you can’t go grabbing people’s phones. It’s an invasion of their privacy.”