The Woman in Cabin 10 (13 page)

Although if this was a test, I was well on my way to failing it. Accusing my hosts of covering up a death was definitely not what
Velocity
had had in mind.

Tina drew on her cigarette again, and then spat out a thread of tobacco and looked at me appraisingly.

“Lot of responsibility, that role. But it’s good that you want a step up. And what will you do when she gets back?”

I opened my mouth to reply—and then stopped. What
would
I do? Go back to my old job? I was just wondering how to answer when she spoke.

“Give me a call sometime, when we’re back in the office. I’m always on the lookout for freelancers, particularly savvy little things with a bit of ambition.”

“I’m on a staff contract,” I said regretfully. I appreciated it was a compliment, and I didn’t want to throw it back at her, but I was pretty sure my noncompete clause wouldn’t let me moonlight.

“Suit yourself,” Tina said with a shrug. The boat lurched as she spoke, and she staggered against the metal rail. “Blast, my ciggie’s gone out. You don’t have a light, do you, sweetie? I left mine in the lounge.”

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

“Damn it.” She flicked the end over the rail and we both watched as it was snatched by the wind and whisked out of sight, gone before it even hit the churning water. I really should have given her my card, or at the very least started subtly pumping her about the
Vernean
’s plans for future issues and how far she’d got in buttering up Lord Bullmer. It was what Rowan would have done. Ben would probably have scored a freelance contract by now, and sod the noncompete stuff.

But right at this moment—with Nilsson probably even now shooting holes in my story to the captain—my career didn’t seem as important. If anything, I should be quizzing her, working out her whereabouts last night. After all, Ben had been playing poker with Lars, Archer, and Bullmer, which left a comparatively small pool of people who could have been in the cabin next to mine. Was Tina strong enough to push a woman overboard? I eyed her covertly as she began to hobble across the salt-sprayed deck toward the door, her narrow heels skidding slightly on the painted metal deck. She was greyhound thin, more sinew than muscle, but I could imagine there would be a wiry strength in her arms, and the picture Rowan had painted was of a woman whose ruthlessness more than compensated for her physical size.

“So how about you?” I said as I followed her towards the door. “Did you have a good time last night?”

She stopped abruptly at that, the heavy door held in one hand, her fingers clenched on the metal, the tendons on the back of her hand standing out like iron cables. She turned to stare at me.

“What did you say?” Her neck was thrust forward like a velociraptor’s, her eyes boring into me.

“I—” I stopped, taken aback by the ferocity of her response. “I didn’t—I was just wondering . . .”

“Well, I suggest you stop wondering, and keep your insinuations to yourself. A clever girl like you knows better than to make enemies in this business.”

Then she let go of the door and let it slam shut behind her.

I stood on deck, staring blankly after her retreating back through the salt-misted door, and wondering what on earth had just happened.

I shook my head and pulled myself together. There was no point in trying to figure it out now. I should be back in the cabin, preserving the one bit of evidence I had left.

I
had locked the door before I left with Nilsson but I realized, as I made my way carefully down the stairs to the cabin deck and saw the cleaners pulling their vacuums after them, their trolleys piled with towels and linens, that I had forgotten to put out the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign.

Inside, the suite had been valeted to within an inch of its life. The sink had been polished. The windows cleaned of salt spray. Even my dirty clothes had magically disappeared. The torn evening dress was also gone.

But I wasn’t interested in any of it. Instead, I went straight to the bathroom, to the neat ranks of makeup and cleansers on the vanity surface.

Where was it?

I pushed aside the lipstick and gloss, the toothpaste, moisturizer, eye makeup remover, half-used blister pack of pills . . . but it wasn’t there. No flash of pink and green leaped out at me. Under the counter, then—in the bin.

I went through to the main bedroom, opening drawers one after another, hunting under chairs. Where was it? Where
was
it?

But I knew the answer, even as I sank to the bed, head in my hands. It was gone. The tube of mascara—my one link to the missing girl—was gone.

Saturday, 26 September

Harringay Echo website

LONDON TOURIST MISSING FROM NORWEGIAN CRUISE VESSEL

Friends and relatives of missing Londoner Laura Blacklock are said to be growing “increasingly concerned” about her safety. Blacklock (32), who resides in West Grove in Harringay, was reported missing by her partner, Judah Lewis (35), during a holiday aboard the exclusive tourist ship the
Aurora Borealis
.

Mr. Lewis, who was not with Miss Blacklock on board, reported that he had become concerned after Miss Blacklock did not return messages on board the cruise liner, and when attempts to contact her failed.

A spokesperson for the
Aurora Borealis
, whose maiden voyage left Hull last Sunday, confirmed that Blacklock had not been seen since a planned trip to Trondheim on Tuesday, 22 September, but the company said that it had been initially assumed that she had decided to curtail her trip. It was only when Miss Blacklock failed to return to the UK on Friday and her partner raised the alarm that they became aware that her departure had not been planned.

Pamela Crew, the missing woman’s mother, said that it was extremely out of character for her daughter not to have made contact, and appealed for anyone who might have seen Miss Blacklock, also known as Lo, to come forward.

- CHAPTER 14 -

I
tried not to let the panic overwhelm me.

Someone had been in my room.

Someone who
knew
.

Someone who knew what I’d seen, and what I’d heard, and what I’d said.

The minibar had been restocked, and I longed with a sudden visceral sharpness for a drink, but I shoved the thought aside and began to pace the cabin, which had seemed so large yesterday and now seemed to be closing in on me.

Someone had been in here. But who?

The urge to scream, to run away, to hide under the bed and never come out, was almost overwhelming, but there was no escape—not until we reached Trondheim.

The realization jolted my thoughts out of their rat-run and I stood, my hands on the dressing table, my shoulders bowed, looking at my white, gaunt face in the mirror. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep. There were deep circles of exhaustion under my eyes, but it was something in my eyes themselves that made me pause—a look of fear, like an animal run to ground.

A whining roar came from the corridor, and I remembered, with a jolt, the cleaners valeting the rooms. I took a deep breath and stood straighter, shaking my hair back over my shoulder. Then I opened the door and put my head out into the corridor, where the hum of the vacuum cleaner still buzzed. Iwona, the Polish woman I had been introduced to downstairs, was cleaning Ben’s cabin just up the corridor, the door wide-open.

“Excuse me!” I called, but she didn’t hear. I ventured closer. “Excuse me!”

She jumped and turned around, her hand on her heart.

“Excuse!” she said, breathlessly, putting her foot down on the switch to silence the hoover. She was wearing the dark blue uniform all the rest of the cleaners wore, her heavy features pink with exertion. “I am startle.”

“I’m sorry,” I said penitently. “I didn’t mean to shock you. I wanted to ask—did you clean my room?”

“Yes, I did already. Something is not clean?”

“It’s not that. It’s very clean—beautiful, in fact. It’s just that I wondered—did you see a mascara?”

“Mass—?” She shook her head, but not meaning no, her expression was uncomprehending. “What it is?”

“Mascara. For your eyes—like this.” I mimed putting it on, and her face cleared.

“Ah! Yes, I know,” she said, and said something that sounded like
toosh do resh
. I had no idea if this was Polish for
mascara
or
I put it in the bin
, but I nodded vigorously.

“Yes, yes, in a pink-and-green tube. Like—” I pulled out my phone, meaning to google Maybelline, but the Wi-Fi still wasn’t working. “Oh, damn, never mind. But it’s pink and green. Have you seen it?”

“Yes, I see last night when I clean.”

Shit.

“But not this morning?”

“No.” She shook her head, her face troubled. “Is not in bathroom?”

“No.”

“I am sorry. I did not see. I can to ask Karla, stewardess, if possible to, um . . . how say . . . to buy new—”

Her floundering words and worried expression made me realize, suddenly, what this must seem like—a madwoman half-accusing a cleaner of stealing a used mascara. I shook my head, put out my hand to her arm.

“I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter. Please don’t worry.”

“But yes, it matter!”

“No, honestly. It was probably me. I expect I left it in a pocket.”

But I knew the truth. The mascara was gone.

B
ack in the cabin I double-locked the door and put the chain across, then I picked up the phone, pressed 0, and asked to be put through to Nilsson. There was a long piped-music delay, and a woman who sounded like Camilla Lidman came back on the line.

“Miss Blacklock? Thank you for holding. I’ll put you through.”

There was a click and a crackle, and then a man’s deep voice came on the line.

“Hello?” It was Nilsson. “Johann Nilsson speaking. Can I help you?”

“The mascara is gone,” I said without preamble. There was a pause; I could feel him sorting through his mental filing cabinet of notes. “The mascara,” I said impatiently. “The one I told you about last night—that the woman in cabin ten gave to me. This
proves
my point, can’t you see?”

“I don’t see—”

“Someone came into my cabin and took it.” I spoke slowly, trying to keep ahold of myself. I had the strange feeling that if I didn’t speak calmly and clearly, I might start screaming down the phone. “Why would they do that, if they didn’t have anything to hide?”

There was a long pause.

“Nilsson?”

“I’ll come and see you,” he said at last. “Are you in your cabin?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be about ten minutes. I’m with the captain, I must finish here, but I will come as soon as possible.”

“Good-bye,” I said, and banged the phone down, more angry than afraid, though I wasn’t sure if it was with myself, or with Nilsson.

I paced the small cabin again, running through the events of last night, the pictures, sounds, fears, crowding my head. The feeling I could not get over was one of violation—someone had been in my
room
. Someone had taken advantage of the fact that I was busy with Nilsson to come and pick through my belongings and pull out the one piece of evidence that supported my story.

But who had access to a key? Iwona? Karla? Josef?

There was a knock at the door and I turned sharply and went to unlock it. Nilsson stood outside, an uneasy mixture of truculent, ursine, and tired. The dark circles under his eyes were not as big as mine, but they were getting there.

“Someone took the mascara,” I said.

He nodded.

“May I come in?”

I stood back, and he edged past me into the room.

“Can I sit?”

“Please.”

He sat, the sofa protesting gently, and I perched opposite him on the chair from the dressing table. Neither of us spoke. I was waiting for him to begin—perhaps he was doing the same, or simply trying to find the words. He pinched at the bridge of his nose, a delicate gesture that looked oddly comic in such a big man.

“Miss Blacklock—”

“Lo,” I said, firmly. He sighed and began again.

“Lo, then. I have spoken to the captain. None of the staff are missing, we are quite certain of that now. We’ve also spoken to all the staff and none of them saw anything suspicious about that cabin, all of which leads us to the conclusion—”

“Hey,” I interrupted hotly, as if somehow preventing him from saying the words would affect the conclusion he and the captain had come to.

“Miss Blacklock—”

“No. No, you don’t get to do this.”

“Don’t get to do what?”

“Call me ‘Miss Blacklock’ one minute, tell me you respect my concerns and I’m a valued passenger blah blah blah, and then the next minute brush me off like a hysterical female who didn’t see what she saw.”

“I don’t—” he started, but I cut him off, too angry to listen.

“You can’t have it both ways. Either you believe me or— Oh, no, wait!” I stopped in my tracks, unable to believe I hadn’t thought of it before. “What about CCTV? Don’t you have some kind of security system?”

“Miss Blacklock—”

“You could check the tapes of the corridor. The girl will be on there—she must be!”

“Miss Blacklock,” he said more loudly, “I have spoken to Mr. Howard.”

“What?”

“I have spoken to Mr. Howard,” he said, more wearily. “Ben Howard.”

“So?” I said, but my heart was thumping fast. “What can Ben possibly know about this?”

“His cabin is on the other side of the empty one. I went to see him, to find out if he could have heard anything, if he could corroborate your account of a splash.”

“He wasn’t there,” I said. “He was playing poker.”

“I know that. But he told me . . .” Nilsson trailed off.

Oh, Ben, I thought, and there was a sinking sensation in my stomach. Ben, you traitor. What have you done?

I knew what he’d said. I knew it from Nilsson’s face, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily.

“Yes?” I said through gritted teeth. I was going to force him to do this properly. He was going to have to spell this out, one excruciating syllable at a time.

“He told me about the man in your flat. The burglar.”

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“It, um—” He coughed and folded first his arms, then his legs. The picture of a man his size, perched uncomfortably on a sofa, trying to efface himself into nothing, was almost ludicrously comic. I said nothing. The sensation of watching him squirm was almost exquisite.
You know
, I thought viciously,
you know what a shit you’re being.

“Mr. Howard tells me that you, er, you haven’t been sleeping well, since the, er, the break-in,” he managed.

I said nothing. I sat there cold and hard with rage against Nilsson, but mostly against Ben Howard. That was the last time I confided in him. Would I never learn?

“And then there is the alcohol,” he said. His fair, crumpled face was unhappy. “It, um . . . it doesn’t mix well with . . .”

He trailed off. His head turned towards the bathroom door, to the pathetic pile of personal belongings.

“With what?” I said, my voice low and hard and totally unlike my own. Nilsson raised his eyes to the ceiling, his discomfort radiating through the room.

“With . . . antidepressants,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, and his gaze flicked again to the crumpled half-used packet of pills beside the sink, and then back to me, every inch of him apologetic.

But the words were said. They could not be unsaid, and we both knew it.

I sat, saying nothing, but my cheeks were burning as if I’d been slapped. So this was it. Ben Howard really had told him everything, the little shit. A few minutes, he’d talked to Nilsson. One conversation, and in that time he’d not only failed to support my story—he’d spilled every detail of my biography that he had at hand, and made me look like an unreliable, chemically imbalanced neurotic in the process.

Yes. Yes, I take antidepressants. So what?

No matter that I’ve been taking—and drinking on—those pills for years. No matter that I had anxiety attacks, not delusions.

But even if I’d had full-blown psychosis, that didn’t detract from the fact that, pills or no pills,
I saw what I saw.

“So that’s it, then,” I spoke, finally, the words clipped and flat. “You think, just because of a handful of pills, I’m a paranoid nutjob who can’t tell fact from fiction? You do know that there are hundreds of thousands of people on the same medication I take?”

“That is absolutely not what I was trying to say,” Nilsson said awkwardly. “But it is a fact that we have no evidence to support your account and, Miss Blacklock, with respect, what you believe happened is very close to your own exper—”

“NO!” I shouted, standing up, towering over his unhappily crouched body, in spite of the fact that he must have half a foot on me ordinarily. “I told you, you do
not
get to do this. You don’t get to call me obsequious names and then dismiss what I’ve told you. Yes, I haven’t been sleeping. Yes, I’d been drinking. Yes, someone broke into my flat. It has
nothing to do with what I saw
.”

“But that is the problem, isn’t it?” He stood, too, now, nettled, a flush across his broad cheeks. “You didn’t
see
anything. You saw a girl, of which there are many on this boat, and then much later you heard a splash. From that you have jumped to conclusions which are very close to the traumatic event you yourself experienced a few nights ago—a case of two and two making five. This does not warrant a murder investigation, Miss Blacklock.”

“Get out,” I said. The ice around my heart seemed to be melting. I could feel that I was about to give way to something very stupid.

“Miss—”

“Get. Out!”

I stalked to the door and wrenched it open. My hands were trembling.

“Get out!” I repeated. “Now. Unless you want me to call the captain and tell him that a lone female traveler asked you repeatedly to leave her cabin and you refused. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CABIN.”

Nilsson hunched his head into his neck and walked stiffly to the door. He paused in the doorway for a moment, as if he was about to say something, but perhaps it was my face, or something in my eyes, because when he looked up and met my gaze, he seemed to flinch and turn away.

“Good-bye,” he said. “Miss—”

But I didn’t wait to hear any more. I slammed the door in his face and then flung myself on the bed to sob my heart out.