“All right,” I said sulkily. I was beaten. I knew what I had seen, what I’d heard, but Nilsson was not budging, that much was plain. And what could I do, out here in the middle of the ocean?
“So,” he prompted. “She was how old, how tall? Was she Caucasian, Asian, black . . . ?”
“Late twenties,” I said. “About my height. White—very pale skin, in fact. She spoke English.”
“With an accent?” Nilsson put in. I shook my head.
“No, she was English—or if she wasn’t, she was completely bilingual. She had long, dark hair . . . I can’t remember what color eyes. Dark brown, I think. I’m not certain. Slimmish build . . . she was just—pretty. That’s all I remember.”
“Pretty?”
“Yes, pretty. You know? Nice features. Clear skin. She was wearing makeup. Lots of eye makeup. Oh—and she was wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt.”
Nilsson wrote it all down solemnly and then rose, the springs squeaking in protest, or perhaps relief.
“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. And now I think we should both get some sleep.” He rubbed his face, looking for all the world like a big blond bear dragged out of hibernation.
“What time should I expect you tomorrow?”
“What time would suit you? Ten? Ten thirty?”
“Earlier,” I said. “I won’t sleep, not now.” I was buzzing, and I knew I would never get back to sleep.
“Well, my shift starts at eight. Is that too early?”
“That’s perfect,” I said firmly. He walked to the door, suppressing a yawn as he did, and I watched as he lumbered off along the corridor towards the stairs. Then I shut and double-locked the door, and went and lay on the bed, staring at the sea. The waves were dark and slick in the moonlight, heaving themselves up like the backs of whales, and then slipping back down, and I lay and felt the boat rise and fall with the swell.
I would never sleep. I knew that. Not with my blood ringing in my ears, and my heart beating in angry staccato thumps in my chest, I would never relax.
I was furious—but I was not sure why. Because a woman’s body was even now floating down into the black darkness of the North Sea, probably never to be found? Or was part of it something smaller, baser—the fact that Nilsson had not believed me?
Maybe he’s right, the nasty little voice in my head whispered. Pictures flitted across my mind’s eye—me, cowering in the shower because of a door blowing shut in the wind. Defending myself against a nonexistent intruder by attacking Judah. Are you completely sure? You’re not exactly the most reliable witness. And at the end of the day, what did you actually see?
I saw the blood, I told myself firmly. And a girl is missing. Explain that.
I switched the light out and drew the cover across myself, but I didn’t sleep. Instead, I lay on my side watching the sea, rising and falling with strange hypnotic silence outside the thick, stormproof panes. And I thought, There is a murderer on this boat. And no one knows but me.
- CHAPTER 12 -
“Miss Blacklock!” The knock came again, and I heard a passkey in the door, and the bang as the door itself opened a centimeter and the security chain pulled taut.
“Miss Blacklock, it’s Johann Nilsson. Are you okay? It’s eight o’clock. You asked me to call you?”
What? I struggled up onto my elbows, my head pounding with the effort. Why the hell had I asked to be called at eight o’clock?
“One sec!” I managed. My mouth was dry, as if I’d swallowed ashes, and I reached for the glass of water by my bed and choked some down. As I did, the memory of last night came flooding back.
The noise that had woken me in the night.
The blood on the veranda glass.
The body.
The splash . . .
I swung my legs out of bed and felt the boat shift and lurch beneath me, and I felt suddenly and violently nauseous.
I ran to the bathroom and just managed to get myself positioned over the bowl in time for the retching heave of last night’s dinner against clean white porcelain.
“Miss Blacklock?”
Go. Away.
The words didn’t make it out of my mouth, but maybe the sound of splashing vomit conveyed the sentiment, because the door shut, very quietly, and I was able to stand up and examine myself without an audience.
I looked awful. The dregs of my eye makeup were smudged across my cheeks, and I had vomit in my hair, and my eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. The bruise on my cheek just added to the whole impression.
The boat heaved itself up onto a wave and down the other side, and everything around the sink shifted and clinked. I pulled my dressing gown around myself and went back into the cabin, where I pulled the door open the tiniest, tiniest crack—barely enough to see through.
“I’ve got to take a shower,” I said tersely. “Do you mind waiting?” And then I shut the door.
Inside the bathroom I flushed the toilet and wiped around the rim, trying to destroy all traces of my vomit. But when I straightened, it was not my own pale, ravaged face that caught my eye, but the tube of Maybelline, standing sentinel by the sink. As I stood, clutching the vanity table, my breath coming short and sharp, the ship gave another roll, and everything on the countertop shifted and wobbled, and the tube fell, with a tiny crack, and rolled into the bin. I reached in bare-handed and pulled it out, holding it in my fist.
It was the only tangible evidence that that girl had existed, that I wasn’t going mad.
Ten minutes later I was dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt, pressed by whoever unpacked my case, and my face was pale but clean. I pulled back the security chain and opened the door to find Nilsson waiting patiently in the corridor, talking on a radio. He looked up when he saw me and shut it off.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Blacklock,” he said. “Perhaps I should not have woken you, but you were so insistent last night . . .”
“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. I didn’t mean to sound quite so curt, but if I opened my mouth too much I might be sick again. Thank God the movement of the boat provided an alibi for my queasy stomach. Being a bad sailor was not exactly chic, but it was less unprofessional than being considered an alcoholic.
“I have spoken to the staff,” Nilsson said. “No one has been reported missing, but I suggest you come down to the staff quarters and you can see if the woman you spoke to is there. It may put your mind at rest.”
I was about to protest that she wasn’t staff, not unless the cleaners valeted rooms wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts and not much else. But then I shut my mouth. I wanted to see below decks for myself.
I followed him along the lurching corridor to a small service door by the stairwell. It was fitted with a keypad lock, into which he tapped a quick six-digit code, and the door swung outwards. From the outside I would have assumed the door hid a cleaning cupboard, but in fact there was a small, dimly lit landing and a flight of narrow stairs led down into the depths of the ship. As we descended I realized, unsettlingly, that we must now be below the waterline, or very near it.
We emerged into a cramped corridor that had a completely different feel to the passenger part of the ship. Everything was different—the ceiling was lower, the air was several degrees hotter, and the walls were closer together and painted a dingy shade of beige, but it was the lights that made me feel instantly claustrophobic—dim and fluorescent, with a strange high-frequency flicker that made your eyes tire almost at once.
Doors opened off to the left and the right, eight or ten cabins crammed into the same space as two above. We passed one door that was ajar and I saw a windowless shared bunk room lit by the same graying fluorescent light, and an Asian woman sitting on a bunk inside, pulling on her tights, her head and shoulders cramped in the narrow space beneath the bunk above. She looked nervously up as Nilsson passed, and then at the sight of me her face froze, like a panicked rabbit in the headlights. For a moment she just sat, motionless, and then with a convulsive start she reached out with her foot and kicked the door shut, the sound as loud as a gunshot in the confined space.
I felt myself blush like a Peeping Tom caught in the act, and hurried after Nilsson’s retreating back.
“This way,” Nilsson said over his shoulder, and we turned into a door marked STAFF MESS.