The Woman in Cabin 10 (18 page)

We all turned and looked at Cole, who was holding something over the side of the Jacuzzi. His hand was dripping blood, running down his fingers onto the pale wooden decking.

“I’m okay, I think,” he said unsteadily. “I’m sorry, Richard, I don’t know how, but I knocked my champagne over and I broke it, trying to save the glass. I don’t think there’s any glass in the water.”

He held out a palmful of bloodstained shards, and Chloe gulped and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Ugh!” Her face was greenish white. “Oh God, Lars . . .”

Richard put down his glass, heaved himself out of the Jacuzzi, his near-naked body steaming in the cold air, and grabbed a white robe from a pile left on the bench. For a moment he said nothing, just looked dispassionately at Cole’s hand, streaming blood onto the deck, and glanced at Chloe, who appeared close to fainting. Then he issued a series of orders like a surgeon barking out commands in an operating theater.

“Cole, for God’s sake put down that pile of glass. I’ll ring for Ulla to get you cleaned up. Lars, take Chloe off to lie down, she’s gone white as chalk. Give her a Valium if that’s what it takes. Eva has access to the medical supplies. And Miss Blacklock . . .” He turned to me and then paused, seeming to weigh his words very carefully as he belted the robe around himself. “Miss Blacklock, please take a seat in the restaurant, and when I’ve sorted this mess out, we’ll run through what you actually saw and heard.”

- CHAPTER 20 -

B
y the end of the next hour, I could see why Richard Bullmer had got to where he had in life.

He didn’t just take me through my story—he grilled me on every single word, pinning me down on times, specifics, winkling out details I thought I didn’t even know—like the exact shape of the blood spatter on the glass screen, and the way it was smeared, rather than sprayed, across the surface.

He didn’t fill in any gaps with speculation, didn’t try to lead me on, or persuade me on details I wasn’t sure of. He just sat and fired questions at me between sips of scalding black coffee, his blue eyes very bright: What time? How long? When was that? How loud? What did she look like? As he spoke the slightly mockney overlay to his speech vanished, and the intonation became pure Old Etonian and 100 percent business. He was utterly focused, his attention on my story absolute, and without a trace of emotion in his face.

If someone had been walking along the deck outside and had glanced in the window, they would never have known that I had just told him something that could deal a sucker punch to his business, and revealed the presence of a possible psychopath on board a small ship. As my story unfolded I was expecting echoes of Nilsson’s distress, or the clannish denial of the stewardesses, but although I watched Bullmer’s face carefully, I saw neither of those, no hint of accusation or censure. We might have been trying to solve a crossword, for all the emotion he displayed, and I couldn’t help being a little impressed by his stoicism, though it felt strange to be on the receiving end of it. It had not been pleasant dealing with Nilsson’s skepticism and upset, but it did at least feel a very human reaction. With Bullmer, I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. Was he furious, or panicked, and simply hiding it well? Or was he really as cool and calm as he seemed?

Perhaps, I thought, as he ran me through the conversation I’d had with the girl again, this sangfroid was simply what it took to have accomplished what he had—pulling himself up by his bootstraps to a position dealing with hundreds of jobs and millions of pounds of investment.

At last we had gone through my account backwards, forwards, and sideways, and I had no more details to contribute. Bullmer sat for a moment, his head bowed, his brows knitted, thinking. Then he looked briefly at the Rolex on his tanned wrist and spoke.

“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I think we’ve got as far as we can, and I can see the staff will want to start laying the table for dinner in a moment. I’m sorry, this has clearly been a very distressing and frightening experience for you. If you’ll give me permission, I’d like to discuss it with Nilsson, and Captain Larsen, to make sure that everything is being done that possibly can be, and perhaps we could meet first thing tomorrow to discuss the next steps. In the meantime, I very much hope you will be able to relax enough to enjoy the dinner that’s coming and the rest of the evening, in spite of what’s happened.”

“What will the next step be?” I asked. “I understand we’re heading to Trondheim—but is there anywhere closer we could stop? I feel like I should report this to the police as soon as possible.”

“It’s possible there might be somewhere closer than Trondheim, yes,” Bullmer said, getting to his feet. “But we’ll be in Trondheim early tomorrow morning, so it might be that it’s still the best place to head for. If we stop somewhere in the middle of the night I think our chances of finding an on-duty police station might be slim. But I’ll have to speak to the captain to find out what the most appropriate course of action would be. The Norwegian police may not be able to act if the incident took place in British or international waters—it’s a question of legal jurisdiction, you understand, not their willingness to investigate. It will all depend.”

“And if it did? What if we were in international waters?”

“I believe the boat is registered in the Cayman Islands. I’ll have to speak to the captain about how that might affect the situation.”

I felt a sinking in my stomach. I’d read accounts of investigations on boats registered to the Bahamas and so on—one solitary policeman dispatched from the island to do a cursory report and get the issue off his desk as quickly as possible—and that, only where there was a clear sign of someone gone missing. What would happen in this case, where the only evidence that the girl had even existed was long gone?

Still, I felt better for having spoken to Richard Bullmer. At least he seemed to believe me, to take my story seriously, unlike Nilsson.

He held out his hand, taking his leave, and as his piercing blue eyes met mine, he smiled, almost for the first time. It was a curiously asymmetric smile that pulled up one side of his face more than the other, but it suited him, and there was something wryly sympathetic about it.

“There’s one other thing you should know,” I said abruptly. Bullmer’s eyebrows went up, and he dropped his hand.

“Yes?”

“I . . .” I swallowed. I didn’t want to say this, but if he was going to speak to Nilsson, it would come out anyway. It would be better coming from me. “I was drinking, the night before . . . before it happened. And I also take antidepressants. I have done so for several years, since I was about twenty-five. I—I had a breakdown. And Nilsson—I think he felt . . .” I swallowed again. Bullmer’s eyebrows rose even higher.

“Are you saying that Nilsson threw doubt on your story because you take medication for depression?”

The bluntness of his words made me cringe, but I nodded.

“Not in so many words—but yes. He made a comment about medication not mixing well with alcohol and I think he thought . . .”

Bullmer said nothing, he just regarded me impassively, and I found my words tumbling out, almost as if I were trying to defend Nilsson.

“It’s just that I was burgled, before I came on board the ship. There was a man—he came into my flat and attacked me. Nilsson found out about it and I think that he felt, well, not that I’d made it up, but that I . . . might have overreacted.”

“I’m deeply ashamed that a member of this boat’s staff made you feel that way,” Bullmer said. He took my hand, holding it in a viselike grip. “Please believe me, Miss Blacklock, I take your account with the utmost seriousness.”

“Thanks,” I said, but that one small word didn’t do justice to the relief that someone,
someone
finally believed me. And not just someone—Richard Bullmer, the
Aurora
’s owner. If anyone had the power to get this sorted, it was him.

A
s I walked back to my cabin, I pressed my hands to my eyes, feeling them sting with tiredness, and then I felt in my pocket for my mobile to check the time. Almost five. Where had the time gone?

Automatically I opened up my e-mails and forced a refresh—but there was still no connection and I felt a pang of unease. Surely,
surely
this outage had gone on too long? I should have mentioned it to Bullmer, but it was too late now. He had gone—slipping into one of those unsettling concealed exits behind a screen, presumably to talk to the captain or radio land.

What if Jude had e-mailed? Rung, even, though I doubted we’d be close enough to land yet for a signal. Was he still ignoring me? For a minute I had a sharp flash of his hands on my back, my face against his chest, the feel of his warm T-shirt beneath my cheek, and it hit me with such force that I almost staggered beneath the weight of longing for his presence.

We would be in Trondheim tomorrow, at least. No one could prevent me from accessing the Internet then.

“Lo!” said a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Ben walking along the narrow corridor. He wasn’t a big man, but he seemed to fill it entirely, an
Alice in Wonderland
trick of the perspective that made the corridor seem to shrink down to nothing and Ben grow bigger and bigger as he came nearer.

“Ben,” I said, trying to make my voice convincingly cheerful.

“How did it go?” He began to walk alongside me towards our cabins. “Did you see Bullmer?”

“Yes . . . I think it went okay. He seemed to believe me, anyway.” I didn’t say what I had started thinking after Richard left, which was that he had not got as far as he had by showing all the cards in his hand. I’d come out of the meeting feeling confident and appeased, but as I ran back through his words, I realized he hadn’t
promised
anything; in fact, he hadn’t really said anything that could be quoted out of context as unqualified support for my story. There had been a lot of
if this is true . . .
and
if what you say . . .
nothing very concrete, when you came down to it.

“Great news,” Ben said. “Is he diverting the boat?”

“I don’t know. He seemed to think it wouldn’t make any difference to divert now, that we’d do better to push on to Trondheim and get there as early as possible tomorrow.”

We had reached our cabins, and I pulled my room key out of my pocket.

“God, I hope this dinner isn’t another eight-course one tonight,” I said wearily as I unlocked and opened my door. “I want to get enough sleep to be coherent for the police in Trondheim tomorrow.

“That’s still your plan, then?” Ben asked. He leaned his hand on the doorframe, effectively preventing me from either leaving or closing the door, though I assumed it wasn’t that calculated.

“Yes. As soon as the boat docks I’m going there.”

“Doesn’t it depend on what the captain says about the boat’s position?”

“Probably. I think Bullmer’s speaking to him about it now. But regardless, I want to get this on record with someone official, even if they can’t investigate.” The sooner my words were down in some official file, the safer I’d feel.

“Fair enough,” Ben said easily. “Well, whatever happens tomorrow, you’ve got a clean slate with the police. Stick to the facts—be clear and unemotional, like you sound like you were with Bullmer. They’ll believe you. You’ve got no reason to lie.” He dropped his arm and took a step back. “You know where I am if you need me, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I gave him a tired smile and was about to shut the door when he put his hand back on the frame so that I couldn’t shut it without trapping his fingers.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” he said casually. “Did you hear about Cole?”

“His hand?” I’d almost forgotten, but it came back to me now with shocking vividness, the slow drip of blood on to the decking, Chloe’s greenish face. “Poor guy. Will he need stitches?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not just that. He managed to knock his camera into the hot tub at the same time—he’s beside himself, says he can’t understand how he came to leave it so close to the edge.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. He reckons the lens will be okay, but says the body and the SD card’s fucked.”

I felt the room shift and move a little, as if everything were going in and out of perspective, and I had a prickling flash of the photo of the girl on the little screen—a photo that was most likely gone forever now.

“Hey,” Ben said with a laugh, “no need to look so doom-laden! He’ll have insurance, I’m sure. It’s just a shame about the shots. He was showing them to us over lunch. He had some great pics, there was a lovely one of you from last night.” He stopped and put out a hand to touch my chin. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I jerked my head away from him and then tried to force a convincing smile. “I’m just—I don’t think I’d go on a cruise again, it’s really not suiting me . . . you know . . . the sea . . . the kind of hemmed-in-ness of it all. I really just want to get to Trondheim now.”

My heart was hammering, and I couldn’t wait for Ben to get his hand off the door and leave. I needed to get my head together—needed to work this out.

“Do you . . . mind?” I nodded at Ben’s hand, still resting on the doorframe, and he gave an easy laugh and straightened up.

“Sure! Sorry, I shouldn’t be gabbing. You probably want to dress for dinner . . . right?”

“Right,” I said. My voice sounded high and false. Ben moved his hand, and I closed the door with an apologetic smile.

When he was gone, I slid the dead bolt across and then I slumped down with my back against the wood, drew my knees up to my chest, and rested my forehead on my knees, a picture, stark in front of my closed lids. It was Chloe, reaching out for her glass of champagne, her arm dripping onto Cole’s camera on the deck below.

There was no way Cole or anyone else could have knocked that camera in. It wasn’t on the rim of the tub. Someone had taken advantage of the kerfuffle surrounding my announcement and the broken glass and had picked it up from the floor and thrown it in. And I had absolutely no way of knowing who that was. It could have happened at any time—even after we’d all left the deck. It could have been almost any of the guests or staff—or even Cole himself.

The room seemed to close around me, stiflingly warm and airless, and I knew I had to get out.

On the veranda the sea mist was still close around the boat, but I took great gulping breaths of the cold air, feeling the freshness fill my lungs, jolting me out of my stupor. I had to
think.
I felt like I had all the pieces of the puzzle in front of me, that I must be able to put them together if I only tried hard enough. If only my head wasn’t aching so much.

I leaned over the balcony, just as I had the night before, remembering that moment—the sound of the veranda door sliding stealthily back, the huge smacking splash, shocking in the quiet, and the smear of blood across glass, and suddenly I was absolutely and completely certain that I had
not
imagined it. None of it. Not the mascara. Not the blood. Not the face of the woman in cabin 10. Most of all, I had not imagined her. And for her sake, I could not let this drop. Because I knew what it was like to
be
her—to wake in the night with someone in your room, to feel that utter helpless certainty that something awful was going to happen, with nothing you could do to prevent it.

The September night air felt suddenly cold, very cold, reminding me how far north we were—almost to the Arctic Circle now. I shivered convulsively and, drawing my phone out of my pocket, I checked the reception one more time, holding it up high as if that would somehow magically improve the signal, but there were no bars.