Cold Grave (18 page)

‘Martin said one of them whinged that some woman had vomited in his cabin. Do you keep records on special cleaning requests?’

‘They keep a tight schedule,’ Laura said, ‘so most stewards document reasons why one cabin takes longer to service.’

‘It may be a stretch, but if you could pinpoint the exact cabin, we might find out where Lilly was when she had sex.’

Laura moved her hollowed-out croissant to a napkin on one of the files. She quickly had the cabin number.

Fitz stood, hands on hips. ‘There won’t be any evidence left now. It’s been cleaned a couple of times since then. We don’t know where our dead girl spent the night but it’s the best place to start.’

Laura typed again. ‘Our big spending toolies splurged . . . eighty dollars.’ Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. ‘They were cautioned by security for being drunk and obnoxious but they didn’t spend much.’ She checked the bills again. ‘Lilly’s six drinks wouldn’t have gone far. They could have brought their own alcohol and drunk that first, I guess.’

‘Or taken drugs to supplement the alcohol.’ FitzHarris scratched his stubbly chin.

‘We’ve had ecstasy brought on board, sometimes by teenage girls,’ Laura added. ‘They love it because they get smashed on one tablet, and it has fewer calories than alcohol. Risk your life for twenty dollars a pop? No thanks.’

Anya sipped her tea. Teenagers’ underdeveloped frontal lobes meant risk assessment was not their best skill. She hoped Ben would never be that reckless with his life. When she was younger, there was pretty much only marijuana and alcohol readily available. Heroin was much less visible then. Now, there were far more deadly options for partygoers, and no end of people quick to profit from it. Carlos could have been shot for a drug-related reason. Heroin and cocaine were smuggler’s gold. She wanted to know more.

‘Did you find anything in the Chan cabin?’

‘It was clean, apart from this. I found it in a bag with Lilly Chan’s student ID inside.’ On the small portion of available desk space, Fitz laid out a plastic sleeve containing a crumpled piece of paper. ‘It’s on a dining room docket.’

Anya and Laura looked closer.

In childlike print, were the words ‘U r Goddess. Meet u port spa midnite.’

The love note was unsigned.

‘I don’t trust secret admirers,’ FitzHarris said with disdain. ‘They mess with minds.’

Laura disagreed. ‘If I were sixteen, I’d probably think it was kind of romantic, like getting a valentine and busting to work out who sent it.’

In Anya’s experience, secret admirers were more likely to be stalkers. Besides, there was nothing romantic about an older man propositioning a sixteen-year-old girl. It was also possible Lilly ignored the note and didn’t intend to meet the man. What disturbed her most was that a shy girl with a domineering mother was a predator’s dream victim. ‘He may write like a ten year old, but he sounds confident. He doesn’t ask. Instead he tells her where to be.’

FitzHarris collected a mini fruit flan from the trolley. ‘Could be we’re reading too much into this. Maybe he just plays percentages.’

Anya looked across at him.

‘You know, some guys work on a one percent rule. If they ask a hundred girls to hook up and one says yes, they’re doing well. And if he wants to meet at the spa, chances are any woman who turned up would be prepared to strip down to at least swimwear. He gets a good look before he decides whether or not to commit himself.’

‘So.’ Laura tilted her head and rested a hand under her chin. ‘This is a form letter he sends out and then he sees if he’s hit the jackpot?’

The flan disappeared whole. Fitz mumbled, ‘Not my fault some men like to put it out there.’

The note may have been innocent or sinister. Without knowing who wrote it, they were back to the bowling shirts.

‘Well, out of anywhere on this floating city, our anonymous admirer just happened to choose to meet at a place without CCTV monitors.’ Anya didn’t believe in coincidences. ‘Let’s go back to the nightclub. See where Lilly went after.’

Laura clicked away at the keyboard, alternating between camera views.

A marathon dance set finished with the girls returning to the table and reaching for their drinks. Lilly guzzled hers as if it was water. Her friend finished her own and chased it with another glass from the table.

Lilly moved back to the dance floor and wove her way between the revellers. At the DJ’s station, she bent down and collected her book, stumbling forward as she rose. Yellow-shirted Genny was suddenly at her side. He slipped an arm around her waist and Lilly attempted to push him away. She was ready to go back to her cabin, it seemed. Genny let go and put both hands up in the air, surrendering.

Lilly took a few steps and toppled. Genny caught her and she appeared to laugh.

‘Look.’ Anya pointed to the screen. ‘She’s had one drink and it’s as if he knows she won’t be able to walk.’

Laura paused the image and turned the screen to Fitz, who was sitting opposite now, rubbing his extended right leg in between taking notes.

‘They drugged that one drink, probably at the bar.’ Anya let out a deep breath and thought of Jasmine and her family. ‘All the women on board looking for a holiday romance and they go for an innocent sixteen year old.’

Laura flipped the screen part way around so the three of them had a view.

Captured clearly was Genny sliding his arm back and steering Lilly toward the door that she and her friend initially came out from. She could barely stand, let alone walk.

‘Can you follow where they went from there?’

A camera caught them entering the lift. Genny led Lilly inside, pressed a button and stepped out of the lift, allowing the doors to close.

The video paused with Genny moving back, toward the stairs.

No one spoke for a moment. So far, they had no proof that Lilly had been drugged. The men would argue she had been drinking beforehand and the alcohol must have caught up with her. The footage didn’t show her being forced. In the lift, Genny might have pressed the button for her floor.

‘It’ll take a few minutes to check the other levels.’ Laura wrote down the time recorded on the bottom right of the screen.

Anya arched her back, stretching her sore shoulders.

Fitz picked a pen from a holder and rolled it between his fingers. ‘There are cameras in most public areas and outside restrooms, but not on all the passenger corridors. And, before you ask, we don’t have surveillance inside rooms either. We’re not about to violate passengers’ right to privacy.’

‘What about Lilly’s basic human rights? Who protected them?’ Anya thought out loud.

Laura had likened the ship to a city, only most cities had ubiquitous video surveillance. In London, more than 10,000 cameras captured images of people and, although they had not necessarily reduced the crime rate, they had helped enormously in collecting information on crimes, victims and suspects. Complaints weren’t concerned so much with privacy as the cost to taxpayers.

‘Even if we did film everyone twenty-four seven, unless someone was watching every camera every minute, we couldn’t stop things like this happening. This isn’t Big Brother.’ Fitz dropped the pen back into its container. ‘I need to take a leak.’ He left, closing the door behind him.

‘Don’t mind him,’ Laura offered. ‘His leg’s probably giving him trouble. Once he takes something, he’ll be fine again.’

Anya had noticed the limp had become more accentuated. ‘What’s wrong with his leg?’

‘He’s pretty private, but one night we had a few drinks and he got kind of morose. I asked why he’d given up homicide for a gig like this, unless he was running away from something.’

Anya was listening. She had wondered the same thing.

‘Turns out he was retired early from the force. One night he got a call to a domestic. When he arrived, it was a bloodbath. The wife was on the kitchen floor. He got down to check her pulse and suddenly the husband jumped out from the pantry with a carving knife. The maniac stabbed Fitz in the stomach, arms and leg, before killing himself.’ Her eyes darted back to the door. ‘Please don’t let on you know.’

‘I won’t.’ Anya had seen too many wives killed by partners. For police, a domestic dispute was the most dangerous call-out to attend. The situation sounded horrific, and would no doubt have left far more permanent scars than just the physical ones on Fitz. Maybe something positive came out of it. ‘Do you know what happened to the wife?’

Laura bit her top lip. ‘Apparently she was already dead when he got there. The police found the body of a two year old in the bedroom, only Fitz thinks that if he hadn’t let his guard down, the boy could have been saved.’

Without knowing the details, Anya doubted it. Whether the father was psychotic or in an uncontrolled rage, a child that small was unlikely to have survived a frenzied attack with a carving knife.

A printer–fax beeped in the back left corner of the room.

Anya checked the machine. ‘A fax is coming through. Where does Fitz keep the spare paper?’

Laura wheeled back to a cupboard and handed Anya a wad before returning to her task.

Anya filled the tray and the printer resumed. She waited to check there was no jam and saw the name of the sender.

‘It looks important. Something from Mats Anderson.’

Laura clicked away, continuing with her search. ‘His father had prostate surgery and is due out of hospital soon so Mats is taking every opportunity to throw his weight around. Personally, I think the younger brother, Lars, is the pick of them all. He’s an environmentalist and wants the company to be more innovative. For Mats and the old man, it’s all about money and cutting costs every possible chance.’

The fax completed. Anya glanced at it, and caught sight of her name. She checked Laura wasn’t watching and read the message.

David,
you must keep a lid on this. Do whatever it takes. Shares in the company are in freefall. We cannot afford any negative publicity. Keep me informed of every detail. Suzanne Wist is on her way. Brief her immediately on arrival. If family sues, we countersue. Drugs, whatever you think is useful.

Until then, keep Chans happy. Offer discount trips, champagne, the usual.

And watch Crichton. She could cause trouble.

More than ever, our image is everything.

If all goes well, you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Anya took a sharp breath and glanced at Laura who was still occupied at the computer. She wondered if she was also party to Anderson’s instructions.

‘I didn’t think anyone sent faxes anymore. Why not just email?’

Laura pulled up some more views of cameras and didn’t glance up. ‘Employees and hackers have been known to leak emails, and phones can be hacked for messages. The Andersons have always been paranoid about privacy. Guess they think faxing a letter is safer. Sounds like Fitz just made it to the inner circle. We mere mortals aren’t blessed with faxes from on high.’

The door opened again and Anya quickly moved away from the printer.

FitzHarris limped back in. ‘Got anything yet?’

‘Lilly didn’t get out on her floor,’ Laura announced. ‘I’m trying the others . . . Nothing deck nine. Not on eight. Not seven . . .’

Anya studied FitzHarris. He often wore a navy windbreaker, even when the weather didn’t warrant it. He was probably hiding the scars on his arms. He hadn’t been kicked out of the force, but he was in the pocket of at least one of the Andersons. It wasn’t in his or the company’s interest to discover the truth, unless it made Lilly Chan look irresponsible. The anonymous information Anya received could well have been a warning about a personal threat.

Watch Crichton
. Anderson’s words chilled her. He was paying security to cover up a crime and make any scandal disappear. FitzHarris wasn’t really interested in finding out the truth, he was keeping an eye on her. At least when Carlos reached Fiji, local police would have to be notified of a patient with gunshot wounds, even if the FBI claimed it wasn’t in their jurisdiction. Anya’s mind raced. This investigation was a farce, but if Laura were an unknowing participant, she could actually help identify whoever was last with Lilly. With her present, FitzHarris could not deny the findings.