The Woman in Cabin 10 (14 page)

- CHAPTER 15 -

T
here’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow.

My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices.

But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself
more
how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.

Ben has seen me without makeup. And he walked away. I was angry for a long time, but in the end, I realized, I don’t blame him. The year I turned twenty-five was pretty bloody awful. If
I
could have walked away from myself, I would have.

But that didn’t excuse what he’d done now.

“O
pen up!”

The sound of laptop keys stopped, and I heard a chair scrape back. Then the cabin door opened cautiously.

“Yes?” Ben’s face filled the gap, his expression turning to surprise as he saw me. “Lo! What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?”

He had the grace to look slightly abashed at that.

“Oh, that.”

“Yes,
that
. You spoke to Nilsson,” I said tightly.

“Look—” He put up a hand, placating, but I wasn’t to be soothed.

“Don’t
look
me. How could you, Ben? How long did it take you to spill all the beans—the breakdown, the meds, the fact that I almost lost my job—did you tell him all that? Did you tell him about the days I couldn’t get dressed, couldn’t leave the house?”

“No! Of course not. Christ, how could you think that?”

“Just the pills, then? And the fact that I was broken into, and a few other spicy details to give the idea that I’m definitely not to be trusted?”

“No! It wasn’t like that!” He walked to the veranda door and then turned to face me, running his hands through his hair so it stood on end. “I just— Shit, it all came out. I don’t know how. He’s good at his job.”

“You’re the journalist! What the hell happened to ‘No comment’?”

“No comment,” he groaned.

“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said. My hands were clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms, and I forced myself to unclench them, rubbing my aching palms on my jeans.

“What d’you mean? Look, hang on, I need a coffee. Want one?”

I wanted to tell him to sod off. But the truth was, I did want a coffee. I nodded curtly.

“Milk, no sugar, right?”

“Right.”

“Some things haven’t changed,” he said, as he filled the espresso machine with mineral water and slotted in a foil pod. I shot him a look.

“A hell of a lot has changed, and you know it. How
could
you tell him that stuff?”

“I’m— I don’t know.” He shoved his hands into his unruly hair again, gripping the roots as if he could somehow grasp an excuse out of his head if he pulled hard enough. “He ran into me on the way back from breakfast, stopped me in the corridor, and started saying he was concerned about you—stuff about noises in the night—I was hungover, I actually couldn’t really work out what he was on about. I thought he was talking about the break-in at first. Then he starts on about you being in a fragile state— Jesus, Lo, I’m sorry, it’s not like I went and knocked his door down desperate for a chat. What was he on about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I took the coffee he held out. It was too hot to drink, and I held it in my lap.

“It does. It’s clearly knocked you for six. Did something happen last night?”

About 95 percent of me wanted to tell Ben Howard to piss off, and that he had forfeited the right to my trust by blabbing about my private life and reliability as a witness to Nilsson. Unfortunately the remaining 5 percent seemed to be particularly forceful.

“I . . .” I swallowed against the ache in my throat, and the desire to tell
someone
what had happened. Maybe if I told Ben he could suggest something I’d not thought of? He
was
a reporter, after all. And, though it hurt to admit it, a pretty respected one.

I took a deep breath and then relayed the story I’d told Nilsson the night before, gabbling this time, desperate to make my case convincing.

“And the thing is she
was
there, Ben,” I finished. “You have to believe me!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Ben said. He blinked. “Of course I believe you.”

“You do?” I was so surprised, I put down the cup of coffee with a crack on the glass tabletop. “Really?”

“Of course I do. I’ve never known you to imagine anything.”

“Nilsson doesn’t.”

“I can see why Nilsson doesn’t
want
to believe you,” Ben said. “I mean, we all know that crime on cruise ships is a pretty murky area.”

I nodded. I knew as well as he did—as well as any travel journalist did—the rumors that abounded about cruise ships. It’s not that the owners are any more criminal than any other area of the travel industry, it’s just that there’s an inherent gray area surrounding crime committed at sea.

The
Aurora
wasn’t like some ships I’d written about, which were more like floating cities than boats, but it had the same contradictory legal status in international waters. Even in cases of well-documented disappearances, things get brushed under the carpet. Without a clear police jurisdiction to take control, the investigation is too often left to the onboard security services, who’re employed by the cruise liner and can’t afford to ruffle feathers, even if they wanted to.

I rubbed my arms, feeling suddenly cold, in spite of the fuggy warmth of the cabin. I’d gone in to Ben to bawl him out with the aim of making myself feel better. The last thing I expected was for him to back up my unease.

“The thing that worries me most . . .” I said slowly, then stopped.

“What?” Ben prompted.

“She . . . she lent me a mascara. That was how I met her—I didn’t know the cabin was empty, and I banged on the door to ask if I could borrow one.”

“Right . . .” Ben took another gulp of coffee. His face over the top of the cup was puzzled, clearly not seeing where this was leading. “And?”

“And . . . it’s gone.”

“What—the mascara? What d’you mean, gone?”

“It’s gone. It was taken out of my cabin while I was with Nilsson. Everything else I could almost write off—but if there’s nothing going on, why take the mascara? It was the only concrete thing I had to show that there
was
someone in that cabin, and now it’s gone.”

Ben got up and went to the veranda, pulling the gauze curtains shut, although it seemed an odd, unnecessary gesture. I had the strange, fleeting impression that he didn’t want to face me and was thinking about what to say.

Then he turned and sat back down on the end of the bed, his expression pure businesslike determination.

“Who else knew about it?”

“About the mascara?” It was a good question, and one, I realized with a touch of chagrin, that I had not thought to ask myself. “Um . . . I guess . . . no one apart from . . . Nilsson.”

It was not a reassuring thought. We looked at each other for a long time, Ben’s eyes reflecting the uncomfortable questions that were suddenly churning inside me.

“But he was with me,” I said at last. “When it was taken.”

“The whole time?”

“Well . . . more or less . . . No, wait, there was a gap. I ate breakfast. And I spoke to Tina.”

“So he could have taken it.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “He could.” Had
he
been the one in my cabin? Was
that
how he had known about my medication, and the advice not to mix them with alcohol?

“Look,” Ben said at last. “I think you should go and see Richard Bullmer.”

“Lord Bullmer?”

“Yes. Like I said, I played poker with him last night and he seems like a decent bloke. And there’s no sense in messing around with Nilsson—Bullmer is where the buck stops. My dad always used to say, if you’ve got a complaint, go straight to the top.”

“This is hardly a customer services issue, Ben.”

“Regardless. But this Nilsson guy—it doesn’t look good for him, does it? And if there’s anyone on this boat who can hold Nilsson accountable, it’s Bullmer.”

“But will he? Hold him accountable, I mean? He’s got as much motive as Nilsson for hushing this up. More, in fact. Like you say, this has got the potential to play out very badly for him, Ben. If this gets out, the
Aurora
’s future will be very shaky. Who the hell wants to pay tens of thousands of pounds for a luxury trip on a boat where a girl died?”

“I bet there’s a niche market,” Ben said, with a slightly twisted smile. I shuddered. “Look, it can’t hurt to go and see him,” he persisted. “At least we know where he was all last night, which is more than we can say for Nilsson.”

“You’re sure none of the people you were with left the cabin?”

“Absolutely sure. We were in the Jenssens’ suite—there’s only one door and I was sat facing it all night. People got up and went to the loo and stuff, but they all used the bathroom in the cabin suite. Chloe sat and read for a while and then went into the bedroom next door—there’s no exit from that except through the main room of the suite. No one left until four at the earliest. You can rule out all four men, plus Chloe.”

I frowned, ticking off passengers on my fingers.

“So that’s . . . you, Bullmer . . . Archer . . . Lars, and Chloe. Which leaves Cole, Tina, Alexander, Owen White, and Lady Bullmer. Plus the staff.”

“Lady Bullmer?” Ben raised an eyebrow. “I think that’s stretching it.”

“What?” I said defensively. “Maybe she’s not as ill as she looks.”

“Yup, that’s right, she’s faked four years of recurrent cancer and grueling chemo and radiotherapy just to provide an alibi for the murder of a strange girl.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic. I was just making the point.”

“I think the passengers are a red herring, though,” Ben said. “You can’t get away from the fact that you and Nilsson were the only people who knew about that mascara. If he didn’t take it, he must have told the person who did.”

“Well . . .” I said, and then stopped. An uneasy feeling, not unlike guilt, was trickling down the back of my neck.

“What?”

“I—I was trying to think. When Nilsson took me round the staff. I can’t absolutely remember . . . I could have mentioned it.”

“Jesus, Lo,” Ben said. He stared at me. “Did you? Or didn’t you? It kind of matters.”

“I know that,” I said peevishly. The boat heaved up and down a wave, and the feeling of nausea swept over me again, the half-digested pancakes shifting uneasily in my gut. I tried to think back to the conversations below decks, but it was hard to remember, I’d been so hungover, so distracted by the claustrophobic artificial light of those narrow, windowless cabins. I shut my eyes, feeling the sofa lurch and tilt beneath me, and tried to think back to the staff canteen and the pleasant, scrubbed faces of the girls tipped up towards me. What the
hell
had I said?

“I can’t remember,” I said at last. “I really can’t. But I could have mentioned it. I don’t
think
I did, but I can’t absolutely say that I didn’t.”

“Bollocks. Well, that widens things out considerably.”

I nodded soberly.

“Look,” Ben said at last. “Maybe one of the other passengers saw something. Someone going in and out of the empty cabin, or whoever stole the mascara going into yours. Who’s in the aft cabins?”

“Um . . .” I counted them out on my fingers. “Well, there’s me in nine, you in eight. Alexander is in . . . I think it might be six?”

“Tina’s in five,” Ben said thoughtfully. “I saw her go in last night. Which means Archer must be in seven. Okay. Want to go and do some door stepping?”

“All right,” I said. For some reason, maybe it was the surge of anger, or the feeling of being believed, or maybe just the effect of having a plan, I was feeling better already. But then I caught sight of the clock on Ben’s laptop. “Shit, I can’t, not now. I’ve got this bloody ladies’ spa thing.”

“What time does it finish?” Ben asked.

“No idea. But I shouldn’t think it will run over lunchtime. What are the men supposed to be doing?”

Ben stood up and flicked through a brochure on the desk.

“Tour of the bridge. Nice and sexist—blokes get technology, women get aromatherapy. Oh, no, wait, there’s a men’s spa morning tomorrow. Maybe it’s just to do with space.” He picked up a pad and pen from the dressing table. “I need to be going, too, but let’s see what we can dig up this morning, and then we can rendezvous back here after lunch and door step the remaining passengers. After that we can take the whole lot to Bullmer. Maybe he can get the boat to divert—get the local police on board.”

I nodded. Nilsson hadn’t taken me seriously, but if we could find out something to corroborate my story—even just someone else who’d heard the splash, it would be a lot harder for Bullmer to ignore.

“I keep thinking about her,” I blurted as we reached the door. Ben stopped, his hand on the latch.

“What do you mean?”

“About the girl—the girl in Palmgren. What she must have felt when he went for her—whether she was alive when she went over. I keep thinking what it must have been like, the shock of the cold water, the sight of the boat pulling away . . .”

Had she screamed as the waves closed over her? Had she tried to call out, as the salt water flooded her lungs, her chest laboring as the cold bit harder and the oxygen leached from her blood, and she sank deeper and deeper . . . ?